Deucalion (23 page)

CHRONOLOGY

Earth standard/Deucalion Standard

One Earth standard year = 0.82 Deucalion Standard year

One Deucalion Standard year = 1.24 Earth standard years

ad
:
anno domini
,
Earth Calendar

bs
: before settlement,
as
: after settlement, Deucalion Calendar

2019
ad
/ 104
bs

Escalation of the Trade and Subsidy Wars between the European Bloc and the AmeriPacific Confederation; beginning of the Hundred Years' Depression in Europe and the Americas.

2021
ad
/ 102
bs

Establishment of Asia/Southeast Sphere of Economic and Social Cooperation (including the Republic of Australasia).

2022
ad
/ 101
bs

Publication of DiBortelli's
Grand Theory of Sub-Dimensional Physics,
including details of the ‘sub-dimensional warp'.

2025
ad
/ 98
bs

Initiation of first successful ‘warp-jump'; beginning of unmanned ‘warp-shuttle' exploration.

2040
ad
/ 86
bs

Amendment of United Nations Charter, which led to the establishment of a World Government, with responsibility for international and interplanetary affairs, but no control over the domestic and economic affairs of individual nations.

2075
ad
/ 58
bs

Discovery of Deucalion.

2097
ad
/ 40
bs

Launch of first C-ship to Deucalion.

2101
ad
/ 36
bs

World Government Charter extended to incorporate the oversight of the domestic economic affairs of all member nations; establishment of the Grants Council to oversee all aspects of Funded Research.

2145
ad
/ 00
as

Date of arrival and first settlement on Deucalion.

2169
ad
/ 20
as

Introduction of the
Native Species Protection Bill
– outlawing, in part, the forced expatriation of intelligent species from their planet of origin, and the mistreatment of indigenous species.

2193
ad
/ 39
as

Return of first C-ship with two Elokoi on board.

2195
ad
/ 41
as

Beginning of top-secret and illegal
Icarus
Project
.

2199
ad
/ 44
as

Discovery and dismantling of
Icarus P
roject
.

2269
ad
/ 100
as

Deucalion Centennial.

2270
ad
/ 101
as

‘Phony' elections on Deucalion; Elokoi ‘Long March' from Edison to New Geneva.

2272
ad
/ 102
as

First free elections on Deucalion; landslide win to PCP; beginning of Second Great Trek; ‘Unilateral Declaration of Independence', commonly known as the Revolution.

2277
ad
/ 106
as

End of Second Great Trek.

2281
ad
/ 112
as

Proclamation and establishment of the State of Vaana.

NOTES

On Elokoi pronunciation:
Elokoi wordspeech is basically phonetic. Vowel sounds are always ‘soft' except in the case of the dual vowels ‘ae', ‘ie', ‘aa' ‘ea' etc. which are always pronounced as two distinct sounds, the first being the short, ‘hard' vowel, the second, the longer, ‘soft' sound. There is no diphthong in Elokoi. In multi-syllable words, the stress is always on the first syllable.

It is worth noting that Elokoi wordspeech, like Old Earth German, employs many compound nouns, so that, in translation, the adjective and the noun it modifies are often fused, as in firstmate, moonlife, Thoughtsong, etc.

On the Deucalion clock and calendar:

Dates:
The Deucalion year has a duration of four hundred and fifty days, divided into fifteen months of thirty days each (thirty days being the period between the occurrences of the ‘hunter's sky' when both moons, Pyrrha and Pandora, are full). The calendar uses the day/month/year configuration: 30/15/100, for example, represents New Year's Eve of the year 100.

Dates are measured from the date of settlement, 1/1/00. Years prior to the landfall of the first settlers are designated
bs
(before settlement) and dates post-landfall,
as
(after settlement). It is common practice, however, to omit the designation
as
, unless the omission would tend to lead to confusion.

Time:
Deucalion operates on a metric time-system. The day is of approximately the same duration as that of Earth (23.976 hours, Earth standard), but it is divided into ten hours, made up of one hundred minutes, which in turn are divided into one hundred seconds, expressed in the form hour:minute:second. So midnight is 00:00:00 and midday is 5:00:00. In official records, and for the purpose of historical consistency, all times for places in time zones other than that of New Geneva are automatically converted to Standard (Eastern mean time).

The metric system was introduced at the foundation of the settlement, as it was deemed unnecessary to cling to the archaic, arbitrary and clumsy system of time measurement employed on Old Earth.

On the use of the word ‘Standard':
Other than when applied to time (see above), the use of the adjective ‘Standard' following a noun indicates that the noun being modified is specifically Deucalion. A lower-case ‘s' (for example
Earth standard
) implies an origin other than Deucalion, and is always modified further by indicating the place of origin.

The most common use of the term ‘Standard' is in relation to the official human language of Deucalion. ‘Standard English' is based on a dialect of Old Earth English, originally spoken in the Asia Southeast Region, specifically the Republic of Australasia. It has long been considered the purest form of the original tongue, differing significantly from both Amerenglish and Euroenglish, both of which degenerated markedly during the Hundred Years' Depression which followed the Trade Wars of the early twenty-first century.

So common is this usage of the word that ‘Standard English' is universally referred to simply as ‘Standard'.

This novel was born in December 1994, when I was invited to write a short story for the CBC anthology
Celebrate
!
That story was “Centennial”, and what it had to say was important to me, but I realised immediately that the history of Deucalion still remained to be explored.

The planet, its inhabitants and all they had come to represent for me, during the writing of “Centennial”, were the genesis of the novel, and I would like to thank sincerely Anne Hanzl, Margot Hillel and Suzanne Wilson for allowing me to be a part of their celebration, for giving me the chance to discover the hidden secrets of Deucalion and for giving me something to occupy my time over the subsequent months.

Thanks too (as usual) to my soon-to-be-canonised family, who bore with me (as usual) through those months of exploration, put up with the (occasional) blaring music and the (even more occasional) bad moods, and almost never forgot to call me for meals.

First published 1995 by University of Queensland Press

PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

Reprinted 1996, 2003

This edition first published 2013

www.uqp.com.au

© Brian Caswell 1995

This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,

criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,

no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior

written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

Typeset in 11/14 pt Adobe Garamond by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane

Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

National Library of Australia

Caswell, Brian, 1954–

Deucalion / Brian Caswell.

Science fiction.

A823.3

ISBN (pbk) 978 0 7022 2865 0

ISBN (pdf) 978 0 7022 4856 6

ISBN (epub) 978 0 7022 4857 3

ISBN (kindle) 978 0 7022 4858 0

University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.