The Other Nineteenth Century (34 page)
Read The Other Nineteenth Century Online
Authors: Avram Davidson
But the other señora, señora Alvarado? was of a different opinion. “It is because he knows of a certain yerba which grows in a hidden vale there on that island, or, some say, on another of those Islands. Twice a year he goes there, secretly, and he eats that secret yerba. And it purifies his blood. Once in January and once in June he purifies his blood with the substance of this secret yerba. And it is that which prevents him from the aging.”
Mrs. Phlux said, “How very selfish of him. I am sure that we would all
love
to know the name of this herb! Why don’t we?”
love
to know the name of this herb! Why don’t we?”
Said the señora, “Because it is a secret one.” She said this very mildly, conscious of no artifice herself, and she nodded two or three times, not very deeply but somewhat less than rapidly. Clearly, to her, that was all the explanation needed.
Said the Spanish priest, “Old Padre Lizarraga, of the Botanical Gardens,” everyone nodded at this reference; afterwards I learned that it was not that they all knew Padre Lizarraga, but that they all knew the Botanical Gardens. Or knew
of
the Botanical Gardens. “Told me that he had spent forty years investigating the native herbal medicaments, so often said to be so good for this ailment and for that; and the result of his studies was that he found that ninety-five percent of them were purgatives.”
of
the Botanical Gardens. “Told me that he had spent forty years investigating the native herbal medicaments, so often said to be so good for this ailment and for that; and the result of his studies was that he found that ninety-five percent of them were purgatives.”
I felt that he expected that this statement would make some certain effect, but none was visible. Only the usual polite nods. After a moment, he went on. “Surely we have all heard of the Deception Theory?” And the attorney said, “The malice of the press of Las Bonitas is almost beyond belief. Conceive with what effort this theory must have been compounded.”
So now I heard, if only in faintly greater detail, for the first time more about Old Kielor’s other sons than the sole fact of their existing. Old Kielor’s sons had been named, one after the other: Washington, Bonaparte, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Masaryk … called informally, Tony, Bony, Sony, Cony, and Max. Either History had ceased to supply Old Kielor with Immense Liberator Figures, or Time had changed the angle of the telescope. Or else Old Kielor had been simply consistent, and it was we who had underestimated Masaryk. And the Deception Theory was, simply, that the entire Kielor family (prompted, so it was implied, by the government of Ereguay) had conspired to deceive the visitors to las encantadas by replacing each brother, as he grew older, with the next youngest brother. That is, the tourists or trippers, the visitors, had only seen the real Tony for an unnamed period of time; after that, the one who came down to the shoreline and was photographed would have been Bony. And, when his own inevitable maturity would have become
obvious, the one who was introduced as El Vilvoy was actually Sony. And so on, down through Cony and Max.
obvious, the one who was introduced as El Vilvoy was actually Sony. And so on, down through Cony and Max.
And here one heard certain other variations in the conventional legend. Bony would make a patriotic speech. Cony performed a certain dance, presumably of his own invention. Sony would hang from a branch of a tree by the shoreline and swing back and forth. Max brandished a machete and demanded assurance that the party was really from Ereguay, and not las Bonitas.
Mostly I had just looked and listened. Now I asked a question. Had anyone here ever been to Grand Encantada?
“But one does not go there anymore,” said the señora whose husband was
un burócrata.
“Because it is uncomfortable the voyage, and on the Island there is no retrete, and nowadays one has the cinema.”
un burócrata.
“Because it is uncomfortable the voyage, and on the Island there is no retrete, and nowadays one has the cinema.”
The youthful stranger had rolled himself dexterously a cigarette in what looked like a leaf of pale tobacco, and now he lit it and sat forward in his chair, watching the smoke. It was not rank, merely somewhat strange. I thought that perhaps it reminded me of the small puro being smoked by the man, his face I did not see, who had brought the side of venison to the ristorante where Diego and I had eaten the morning before our arrival in the Ciudad. Only, perhaps I did see his face.
—But when had these visitations left off? Opinion was divided. And how many years had separated the brothers Kielor one from the other? No one had any idea. There were, however, any number of ideas involving such reference-points as the Revolution of the Year of Drought, and the Interim Presidency of the Very Sad Leap Year, and the Battle of Apostolo Santiago: events clearly as significant to those others present as The Bonus March or Pearl Harbor was to me; but of which we, all of us in the Northern Continent, were but utterly ignorant. Every Latin American republic has its own Alamo, its own Gettysburg, and we have never heard of any one of them. Nearer to us than to Ereguay is a country once convulsed by a great civil war during a period which we remember chiefly for the wearing of sleeve-garters, and funny female hats.
It was, however, where I now tarried, absolutely a matter of national belief that on the Islas Encantadas lived
El Vilvoy
, who had (a) come to the rescue of an innocent young girl, daughter of a national hero, who was once menaced by a thug; he immediately bit off the thug’s ear, thus causing him to flee into the night with his bleeding ear in one hand; (b) this same wild but inestimably praiseworthy young vilvoy had upon a subsequent occasion rescued none other but the President of the Republic from a gang of invaders intent upon depriving Ereguay of the sovereignty of the Islands, and (c) had cut off the heads of twenty-seven of them and hidden the heads in a cave; and (d) he—
El Vilvoy
, who had (a) come to the rescue of an innocent young girl, daughter of a national hero, who was once menaced by a thug; he immediately bit off the thug’s ear, thus causing him to flee into the night with his bleeding ear in one hand; (b) this same wild but inestimably praiseworthy young vilvoy had upon a subsequent occasion rescued none other but the President of the Republic from a gang of invaders intent upon depriving Ereguay of the sovereignty of the Islands, and (c) had cut off the heads of twenty-seven of them and hidden the heads in a cave; and (d) he—
Mrs. Phlux said, “In a way it rather reminds me of Arthur and the Island of Avalon, or of Barbarossa in his cavern asleep with his beard still growing … and, of course, of poor young King Sebastian, who didn’t really die in battle five hundred years ago was it? and will of course some day return. My. I do rather like it.”
The priest, Padre Juan, had taken up his cup of chocolate, and now he put it down again. “We have all heard,” he said, “of something which was done in another country, which should not have been done,” and again he took his cup, and again he put it down. And it seemed that there was now a bit more interest displayed; could it be that people had been just a bit restive at hearing their own legend put down, and were now pleased to be hearing of some other nation being blamed for … for what? “I refer,” said the priest, “to the Julio Castillano forgeries.” People were being, definitely, more interested.
I
was certainly even more interested, for I had never heard of the matter.
I
was certainly even more interested, for I had never heard of the matter.
“What was that?” I asked. Julio Castillano, it was explained to me, had been a well-known journalist in Nueva Andorra; perhaps he was at least as well-known for his candid camera as for his candid commentaries. And in a celebrated series of news articles he had supplied, I did not learn exactly how many photographs, of a Leading Political Figure in the company of a Leading Theatrical Artiste who was not his lawful (or even unlawful) wife. To make the matter very short, if not indeed curt: the photographs were revealed, exposed
as we might say, as forgeries, hoaxes … of a sort … that is, they had all been taken of the two people involved in entirely different pictures, and the clever scoundrel had somehow joined the two together. Indeed, there was no real evidence that they had ever been together at any time in any place. Sought by the law and by the outraged husband of the Leading Theatrical Artiste, Julio Castillano had fled the country for another: and there he had shot himself.
as we might say, as forgeries, hoaxes … of a sort … that is, they had all been taken of the two people involved in entirely different pictures, and the clever scoundrel had somehow joined the two together. Indeed, there was no real evidence that they had ever been together at any time in any place. Sought by the law and by the outraged husband of the Leading Theatrical Artiste, Julio Castillano had fled the country for another: and there he had shot himself.
“What do you suggest, then, Father?” the attorney asked. “That the photographs showing the vilvoy were all hoaxes? In what way?”
Padre Juan hesitated for a moment. “What proof do we have,” he asked, “that all or most of those pictures had not been taken in the course of, say, one or two years? with fictitious date subsequently ascribed to them? Or what proof do we have that the dates may have not been let us say confused?”
Asked la doctora, “But what proof do we have that they were?”
It was, he said, a deduction, a theory, not an accusation. The press was almost everywhere of a sensationalist tendency, ready to manufacture exciting news when that happened to be in short supply. It would not have been difficult to assemble a collection of photographs and to misascribe, or even to confuse, their dates. “Thus gratifying,” he said, “he jaded tastes of a public unnaturally eager for, always, more novelty more and more novelty. Even when it involves an interference in the natural law, whereby all men are mortal, and whereby all who live an age must become aged.”
The attorney made a gesture which foretold a comment, then for a moment he withheld his comment. Then he said, “I believe, reverend sir, that you wish to remind us that the Church cautions us against accepting a miraculous explanation for anything as long as a mundane explanation is acceptable.” He did not put it in the form of a question.
And the priest slowly nodded his agreement that this was, indeed, just what he meant. A murmur was heard, as that of several people all saying
Mmmm
at once.
Mmmm
at once.
While the latter part of the conversation had been going on I was aware of a figure walking very slowly around the other end of
the gardens (it was a large garden and might very well have rightfully deserved the plural form), but this had not been in the forefront of my mind. Presently the figure came gradually nearer, and I saw that it was an old woman. Whoever said that in passing through life (or however does it go?), be sure to pause and smell the roses, would have been pleased with this elderly person. Stopping, stooping, bending her face to the blossoms, almost she seemed to be stroking the plants; and perhaps she was. “What a shame you had not been here even a few years ago,” the attorney said to me. “You would have been able to meet the former President Gaspar de la Vara, who was tragically killed whilst driving his motor car, when he was ninetysix.” And the señora said, “Ninety-seven.”
the gardens (it was a large garden and might very well have rightfully deserved the plural form), but this had not been in the forefront of my mind. Presently the figure came gradually nearer, and I saw that it was an old woman. Whoever said that in passing through life (or however does it go?), be sure to pause and smell the roses, would have been pleased with this elderly person. Stopping, stooping, bending her face to the blossoms, almost she seemed to be stroking the plants; and perhaps she was. “What a shame you had not been here even a few years ago,” the attorney said to me. “You would have been able to meet the former President Gaspar de la Vara, who was tragically killed whilst driving his motor car, when he was ninetysix.” And the señora said, “Ninety-seven.”
Slowly the woman drew nearer, then slowly she wandered on away. Eventually I formed the thought, and leaned over and asked my host, “Who is that?” and I gestured. It was a small gesture.
He gave her only the slightest of glances, smiled (so it seemed, fondly), and then he said to me, “That is my great-aunt Bertha. She never goes out, and socially she sees almost no one.” Scarcely had I engaged this answer to my question than another question formed, for the young—as I had thought, hunter or farmer, perhaps—who had, save for occasionally touching his very slight moustache, and smoking his cigarette, hardly moved; he had gotten up and, walking through the lower part of the garden, had come face to face with the old woman. She looked up as he stood before her, and then in a rush she held out her hands, and he took them. “Oh, Tony!” she cried, “Oh, Tony! You never grow old!”
This poignant tale of the miseries of old age was written when Davidson was in his mid-sixties and confined to a wheelchair. His linguistic and narrative acrobatics give form and history to a character
unique in fantasy literature. The vilvoy’s antecedents are complex: one can discern traces of Rousseau’s Noble Savage, Melville’s “The Encantadas” (sketches of life in the Galapagos), a clear nod to the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a satire of the
Swiss Family Robinson,
etc. “What if Henry James wrote Tarzan with a wacky foreshadowing of magic realism?” is how Don Webb described the story. Howard Waldrop has observed that “El Vilvoy de las Islas” is like a Tarzan “archetype written by a Spanish-surnamed magic realist … Davidson’s stories were usually lots wider and deeper than they were long.”
unique in fantasy literature. The vilvoy’s antecedents are complex: one can discern traces of Rousseau’s Noble Savage, Melville’s “The Encantadas” (sketches of life in the Galapagos), a clear nod to the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a satire of the
Swiss Family Robinson,
etc. “What if Henry James wrote Tarzan with a wacky foreshadowing of magic realism?” is how Don Webb described the story. Howard Waldrop has observed that “El Vilvoy de las Islas” is like a Tarzan “archetype written by a Spanish-surnamed magic realist … Davidson’s stories were usually lots wider and deeper than they were long.”
—
Henry Wessells
Henry Wessells
edited, with interpolations,
by Michael Swanwick
by Michael Swanwick
Introduction:
Here and there and everywhere: AD set out to write a novel and failed to complete it. No surprise in
that.
How many books are begun and not finished? How many stars are in the sky? How many broken hearts on Broadway? Fragments, notes, and a cursory outline, however, he left behind. Enough to provide a taste, a holographic glimpse of what might have been.
Here and there and everywhere: AD set out to write a novel and failed to complete it. No surprise in
that.
How many books are begun and not finished? How many stars are in the sky? How many broken hearts on Broadway? Fragments, notes, and a cursory outline, however, he left behind. Enough to provide a taste, a holographic glimpse of what might have been.
I lifted these pages from a box full of such: bits and shards, stories begun and galleons launched for faraway cities of gold; but never, alas, arrived at; nor readily made publishable, alack, any of them. Save this. With a little shuffling and a few speculative additions, I’ve arranged a construct something like Philadelphia’s famous Ghost
House, which is a three-dimensional outline in white girders of the long-gone house wherein Benjamin Franklin dwelt, not a reconstruction but a map of our knowledge, and of our ignorance as well.
House, which is a three-dimensional outline in white girders of the long-gone house wherein Benjamin Franklin dwelt, not a reconstruction but a map of our knowledge, and of our ignorance as well.
Here: See, taste, enjoy. In the theater of your mind, reconstruct the whole. AD’s ghost-novel is laid before you like a brass horn upon the table; put your ear to its mouth. Let it speak.
California:
The campus had begun to be shrouded with fog which, seemingly, had ridden on high, mad winds, all the way from the Pacific, past the crag and sea-flung Farallones, over the tide-rushed Golden Gate, across the darkened Bay; before swooping down and settling on the trees and lawns and buildings gathered there on the hills rimming round them. But it was all illusion, Casey Swift knew. The fogs had not ridden in from anywhere—not from the ocean, not from their legendary breeding ground in a particular potato patch in Marin County there north across the straits from Frisco—they were forming right here now in front of his eyes, changing out of one state of vapor invisible into another state of vapor coalescent in response to certain nonmystical motions of temperature and pressure. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew.
The campus had begun to be shrouded with fog which, seemingly, had ridden on high, mad winds, all the way from the Pacific, past the crag and sea-flung Farallones, over the tide-rushed Golden Gate, across the darkened Bay; before swooping down and settling on the trees and lawns and buildings gathered there on the hills rimming round them. But it was all illusion, Casey Swift knew. The fogs had not ridden in from anywhere—not from the ocean, not from their legendary breeding ground in a particular potato patch in Marin County there north across the straits from Frisco—they were forming right here now in front of his eyes, changing out of one state of vapor invisible into another state of vapor coalescent in response to certain nonmystical motions of temperature and pressure. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew.
Explication:
They are born of course, are the fogs, when worlds collide. Which happens more often than you might think. Every day, on every continent, new timelines are constantly being split off underfoot. The universe reaches an instant in which two outcomes of a choice are equally likely and, in the spirit of a greedy three-year-old confronted with a choice of two equally large slices of cake,
reaches for both. But
unlike
the three-year-old, the universe is by this very act ripped in two. The two scion timelines race away from each other along curved timelike arcs of virtual existence that may last anywhere from 2.225 nanoseconds to (in rare cases, admittedly) three weeks before their divergent paths again converge and, like quarreling lovers, they fall into each other’s arms, kiss, and are reconciled.
They are born of course, are the fogs, when worlds collide. Which happens more often than you might think. Every day, on every continent, new timelines are constantly being split off underfoot. The universe reaches an instant in which two outcomes of a choice are equally likely and, in the spirit of a greedy three-year-old confronted with a choice of two equally large slices of cake,
reaches for both. But
unlike
the three-year-old, the universe is by this very act ripped in two. The two scion timelines race away from each other along curved timelike arcs of virtual existence that may last anywhere from 2.225 nanoseconds to (in rare cases, admittedly) three weeks before their divergent paths again converge and, like quarreling lovers, they fall into each other’s arms, kiss, and are reconciled.
These secret divergences sometimes leave their mark in divergent memories. “You remember the time …” you begin, and “It wasn’t like that at all!” your Significant Sweetie says. He said, she said. Maybe you’re both right.
Maybe not.
California:
“We’re not where we were the last time you were here,” he said to the other man in the car. “They finally broke down and gave us the new facilities we asked for.”
“We’re not where we were the last time you were here,” he said to the other man in the car. “They finally broke down and gave us the new facilities we asked for.”
“The Regents?” asked Dr. Galloway. His ego did not much at all miss the sir but his ears noticed its absence immediately; at the British “redbrick” university where he had spent the recent year it had so invariably been forthcoming that now a sort of visible or auditory lacuna seemed to take shape. He was faintly bothered that he should in any way be bothered by it, so asked the question in whose answer he had no great interest. Facilities were either existent or nonexistent; where they were not, there was not Herbert Galloway. Mildly he pitied the scholars of the permanent faculties, obliged to come like Buddhist beggars with bowls outstretched.
Elsewhere:
He saw something moving through the star-lit sky, moving oddly, oddly, very oddly, its outlines and its markings as faint as the faintest star. A plane? No plane moved in that curious, sinuous, curving fashion. Nor were birds shaped like that, nor did birds have markings like a leopard-fish or a moray eel.
He saw something moving through the star-lit sky, moving oddly, oddly, very oddly, its outlines and its markings as faint as the faintest star. A plane? No plane moved in that curious, sinuous, curving fashion. Nor were birds shaped like that, nor did birds have markings like a leopard-fish or a moray eel.
He stood amazed.
This strange place was an In-Between. It lay in-between times, spaces, dimensions, worlds: by itself and of its own. But it wasn’t hermetically sealed. There was a certain … seepage … not much; enough to have seeded the place with the elements of its present population. A band of women and children who, following too slowly after their men-folk who were hunting down a woolly rhino, took a wrong turn and left the Aurignacian forever. A group of veterans of the Varingarian Guard, returning from long service in Byzantium, never reaching their old homes in Norseland. The last of the Martians. Other. Others. And, at length, Casey Swift.
“Do you often … just have people
stolen …
like this? Simply for your own use or pleasure or convenience?” Casey asked.
stolen …
like this? Simply for your own use or pleasure or convenience?” Casey asked.
“Of course. Oh, quite often, said the Green King.”With my arcane powers, it’s easy.” He chuckled fatly.
“Oh. Then … uh … how come you don’t just, well, take over? The Earth, I mean.”
The Green King shrugged. “A headache,” he said. “Who needs it?”
California:
Casey guided the little MG along roads already glistening wet and black, still rather amused that he had only had to go as far as the railroad station and not all the way to the airport to pick
Galloway up. Not for the first time he considered the perpetual oddities of many great men: Galloway, for instance, whose professional climate was one in which the jet plane was already as good as obsolete, crossing the continent by train. Casey hadn’t even known that the trains, whose rattle and honk he was sometimes aware of as background sounds on quiet nights, still stopped here for passengers at all.
Casey guided the little MG along roads already glistening wet and black, still rather amused that he had only had to go as far as the railroad station and not all the way to the airport to pick
Galloway up. Not for the first time he considered the perpetual oddities of many great men: Galloway, for instance, whose professional climate was one in which the jet plane was already as good as obsolete, crossing the continent by train. Casey hadn’t even known that the trains, whose rattle and honk he was sometimes aware of as background sounds on quiet nights, still stopped here for passengers at all.
“The Regents, yes,” he said; “plus about two and a half rich old alumni who’d been considering the matter for a couple of years. Fortunately the money came through before the enthusiasts started getting enthusiastic and the demonstrators started to demonstrate, or we’d never have seen a penny of it … Do you know what I’m talking about? I suppose it must have made the papers over there—people who want the University run by a Committee of Workers, Peasants, and Students.”
Galloway watched the fog swallow up a grove of eucalyptus trees. “Your characterization seems a bit severe,” he suggested. “Of the Free Speech Movement, I mean.”
Elsewhere:
He took the stuff for kicks, despite the yatatata about “expanding his horizons and perceptions” with which he justified it. Stepping through the jeweled mists he came upon a place frozen still … then moving slowly … then in full motion. He was In-Between, though he didn’t know it yet. Nor did he know that he’d been procured by the Green King to be a gamesman for him: a “slayer.” He learned that quite quickly, though.
He took the stuff for kicks, despite the yatatata about “expanding his horizons and perceptions” with which he justified it. Stepping through the jeweled mists he came upon a place frozen still … then moving slowly … then in full motion. He was In-Between, though he didn’t know it yet. Nor did he know that he’d been procured by the Green King to be a gamesman for him: a “slayer.” He learned that quite quickly, though.
The Kings did not spend all their time watching games. Politics, the ritualized politics of their world, was their main occupation. They had no actual countries, they had their seats, and outside of them—in province and in city—they worked endlessly, sometimes in alliance, sometimes in enmity, for control. In Iddinan, where the Green King had a palace, he currently held six places on the council
against the nine of the Yellow King and the six divided between three other kings. It was impossible for him to move openly, nakedly, for greater strength. He had to juggle the status quo in a dozen cities and a score of provinces against such factors as his own liberality in holding games and the niggardliness of his current ally, the Yellow. And, always, the great imponderable of the runesmen or redesmen, the Servants of Mickelrede.
against the nine of the Yellow King and the six divided between three other kings. It was impossible for him to move openly, nakedly, for greater strength. He had to juggle the status quo in a dozen cities and a score of provinces against such factors as his own liberality in holding games and the niggardliness of his current ally, the Yellow. And, always, the great imponderable of the runesmen or redesmen, the Servants of Mickelrede.
Interpolation:
Why would the Green King select an academic to be a slayer? On this AD was silent. Surely, though, R. Caswell Swift was chosen for his mathematical skills, which will prove decisive to his meteoric rise through training to stardom as a gamesman. Never particularly physical, much less the object of popular adulation, Casey will experience the heady intoxication of the intellectual who finds himself magically transformed into a jock.
Why would the Green King select an academic to be a slayer? On this AD was silent. Surely, though, R. Caswell Swift was chosen for his mathematical skills, which will prove decisive to his meteoric rise through training to stardom as a gamesman. Never particularly physical, much less the object of popular adulation, Casey will experience the heady intoxication of the intellectual who finds himself magically transformed into a jock.
But every self-absorbed hero needs a wake-up call. I’ll let Casey’s be a post-coital conversation with a woman of affordable virtue (provided him by a grateful home-team booster), who lets drop the info that
this
particular gig is, among whores, just about as popular as assignment to the Pediatric Burn Ward is among nurses. Soon as you get attached to one, she says, he dies.
this
particular gig is, among whores, just about as popular as assignment to the Pediatric Burn Ward is among nurses. Soon as you get attached to one, she says, he dies.
For the first time, Casey applies his mathematical insights to the game
as a whole
, and sees what should have been blindingly obvious all along: it’s a zero-sum game, a rigged wheel. For every winner, there’s a loser. For every game, so many deaths. As an individual gamesman, he’s doing fine; as a statistical gamesman he’s already half-dead.
as a whole
, and sees what should have been blindingly obvious all along: it’s a zero-sum game, a rigged wheel. For every winner, there’s a loser. For every game, so many deaths. As an individual gamesman, he’s doing fine; as a statistical gamesman he’s already half-dead.
California
: The younger man laughed—not scornfully—said, “Oh, I suppose they would run the store about as well as the Regents and the two and a half rich old alumni who run it now. Differently, of course, but no worse. I frankly don’t care. I’m like the Vicar of Bray … We park here.” He showed something in his wallet to the attendant, slid the car smoothly into the space between the white lines, briefly displayed the items in the wallet to Galloway. “My neck-verses,” he commented, grinning. And got out and walked away.
: The younger man laughed—not scornfully—said, “Oh, I suppose they would run the store about as well as the Regents and the two and a half rich old alumni who run it now. Differently, of course, but no worse. I frankly don’t care. I’m like the Vicar of Bray … We park here.” He showed something in his wallet to the attendant, slid the car smoothly into the space between the white lines, briefly displayed the items in the wallet to Galloway. “My neck-verses,” he commented, grinning. And got out and walked away.
Such frankness might well be disarming had I arrived armed, Galloway thought. Young Swift’s British equivalent would surely have gone around and opened the door for the newly-arrived savant. But then
he
wouldn’t have
had
a car of his own to drive. Anyway, it was an attempt to compare incomparable categories. Mr. Caswell Swift had no foreign equivalents. It didn’t matter. The junior must be competent enough, or Brannard wouldn’t have him. And it was only competence that counted. Galloway got out of the little car and followed. He wanted to meet Brannard again after all this time, but even more than that he wanted to see for himself something of what Brannard had been doing here. He wanted this so much he could almost taste it. Time enough after for trifles like his baggage, where he was going to stay, or washing after his journey.
he
wouldn’t have
had
a car of his own to drive. Anyway, it was an attempt to compare incomparable categories. Mr. Caswell Swift had no foreign equivalents. It didn’t matter. The junior must be competent enough, or Brannard wouldn’t have him. And it was only competence that counted. Galloway got out of the little car and followed. He wanted to meet Brannard again after all this time, but even more than that he wanted to see for himself something of what Brannard had been doing here. He wanted this so much he could almost taste it. Time enough after for trifles like his baggage, where he was going to stay, or washing after his journey.
I’ve got a tiger by the tail,
Brannard had written;
and I don’t know whether it’s going to turn out to be a camera or a cannon. Maybe you’ll know. Somebody had damned well better.
Brannard had written;
and I don’t know whether it’s going to turn out to be a camera or a cannon. Maybe you’ll know. Somebody had damned well better.
Elsewhere:
Casey, doing his own juggling, heard of the redesmen. Heard, too, of Mickelrede, the great, holy, and numinous rune-stave, the source of all knowledge. Including technical knowledge. For this world did have its technology. There were firearms, forges, mills,
engines … There was a science, a science sealed. Not for a while did Casey realize that he had to break the seal. Much more to the immediate moment was learning to handle the lance and the sword and the other implements of the games; that the users of local technology did not stand as employers vis-a-vis the technicians, that the technicians were redesmen, consulted like oracles—he pieced this together later.
Casey, doing his own juggling, heard of the redesmen. Heard, too, of Mickelrede, the great, holy, and numinous rune-stave, the source of all knowledge. Including technical knowledge. For this world did have its technology. There were firearms, forges, mills,
engines … There was a science, a science sealed. Not for a while did Casey realize that he had to break the seal. Much more to the immediate moment was learning to handle the lance and the sword and the other implements of the games; that the users of local technology did not stand as employers vis-a-vis the technicians, that the technicians were redesmen, consulted like oracles—he pieced this together later.
The world of the gamesmen was abrupt, a mixture of brutality, cunning, vainglory—and occasional sparks of love and mercy. True, one of his fellow-gladiators, surprising Casey in the chance act of scribbling in the sand, then and forever after insisted that Casey was—must be—an outcast redesman. Other than such odd bits, the Servants of Great Mickelrede remained as vague in Swift’s mind as the Jacks o’ the North: rulebreakers, these: rebels, raveners, rabble, rioters, owing fay to no king, no color. Things afar off …
California:
Coming out of the mist and fog as though she had invented them Casey Swift saw the girl the same second she saw him; he looked at her straight on, but she only peeped at him out of the corners of her eyes as she went on along, perhaps not quite so serenely self-pleased now. Llewellyn Thompson, or so she incredibly called herself—perhaps she was really so, officially and actually, a product of the creeping custom of giving male names to female children, although with the increasing emancipation of the masculine sex little boys might soon enough find themselves being christened Margaret or Mary. Likelier, though, Miss Thompson had merely co-opted to become Llewellyn as part of her own personal make-yourself-more-interesting program. Casey Swift, in a burst of anger which had surprised him as much as it could have her, had once told her that “Sadie” would go much better with her last name than any other. It had flown straight home, too, and she showed it whenever she met him; but of course that didn’t do Joe Foyle any good. Not a bit of good.
Coming out of the mist and fog as though she had invented them Casey Swift saw the girl the same second she saw him; he looked at her straight on, but she only peeped at him out of the corners of her eyes as she went on along, perhaps not quite so serenely self-pleased now. Llewellyn Thompson, or so she incredibly called herself—perhaps she was really so, officially and actually, a product of the creeping custom of giving male names to female children, although with the increasing emancipation of the masculine sex little boys might soon enough find themselves being christened Margaret or Mary. Likelier, though, Miss Thompson had merely co-opted to become Llewellyn as part of her own personal make-yourself-more-interesting program. Casey Swift, in a burst of anger which had surprised him as much as it could have her, had once told her that “Sadie” would go much better with her last name than any other. It had flown straight home, too, and she showed it whenever she met him; but of course that didn’t do Joe Foyle any good. Not a bit of good.
Because Joe Foyle had gone right to pot when Llewellyn T. began putting him through the wringer. Joe Foyle had flunked out, been fired, rusticated, sent down. And had in consequence lost his neck-verses and was semi-immediately conscripted and sent to East Iridium or some such hellhole rich in bullets and beriberi and where the West Iridiumese were now trying to blow his ass off, which had been made for better things.
Casey was damned sorry for Joe, but he was (he felt)
manageably
sorry, which meant being damned sure not to make the same mistake. No medieval student was ever more careful of the scrap of parchment bearing a Latin verse or two of the Psalms, ability to read which would obtain him benefit of clerical privilege if accused of any of the many capital offenses and thus save his neck from the gallows or the block (hence “neck-verses”), than Casey Swift was of the card which declared him a graduate student in physics or the card which stated his consequentially deferred draft status. He fooled around with girls, true; he drank on occasion into merriment ; true; he fenced and skied and swam in due season, true. But he never allowed any of these things, or any other things, to bring down his marks by a hair or a minus-sign. He avoided political activity not only of the far right or of the far left but of the bland and ever-shifting center as well. You never knew. There were only a few years to carry him beyond draft age and into some well-furnished and well-paying corporation lab of the sort which was always so roomy along its constantly expanding sides as to make the presence or absence of room at the top a matter of indifferent definition only.
manageably
sorry, which meant being damned sure not to make the same mistake. No medieval student was ever more careful of the scrap of parchment bearing a Latin verse or two of the Psalms, ability to read which would obtain him benefit of clerical privilege if accused of any of the many capital offenses and thus save his neck from the gallows or the block (hence “neck-verses”), than Casey Swift was of the card which declared him a graduate student in physics or the card which stated his consequentially deferred draft status. He fooled around with girls, true; he drank on occasion into merriment ; true; he fenced and skied and swam in due season, true. But he never allowed any of these things, or any other things, to bring down his marks by a hair or a minus-sign. He avoided political activity not only of the far right or of the far left but of the bland and ever-shifting center as well. You never knew. There were only a few years to carry him beyond draft age and into some well-furnished and well-paying corporation lab of the sort which was always so roomy along its constantly expanding sides as to make the presence or absence of room at the top a matter of indifferent definition only.
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