View from Ararat (26 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 Co-operation (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 World Government, with responsibility for international and inter-planetary 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 Act
– 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 Project
.

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.

2284
ad
/ 112
as

Proclamation and establishment of the State of Vaana.

2291
ad
/ 118
as

Human/Elokoi Trade and Mutual Cooperation Treaty.

2328
ad
/ 150
as

Launch of first C-ship from Deucalion to Casia System.

2332
ad
/ 153
as

Destruction of Callas. First (and only) outbreak on Earth of CRIOS.

2397
ad
/ 203
as

Arrival of C-ship
Pandora
over Deucalion.

2397
ad
/ 203
as

Outbreak of ‘Crystal Death' on Deucalion (three million die in four months). Discovery of ‘crystalase' by Research team on Carmody Island stems the epidemic. Beginning of Deucalion ‘planetary quarantine'.

2398
ad
/ 204
as

Landslide defeat for Leon Müller's PUP party in Council/Presidential elections. Restructuring of Security Service.

2402
ad
/ 207
as

MacMillan/Tseng/Hartog corporate compensation settlement to Republic of Deucalion (largest in history).

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'.

Also in this series by Brian Caswell

The Dreams of the Chosen

Telepathy, technology and eight hundred years of unbroken peace. For the younger generation, life on Deucalion is utopian but maybe just a little bit too predictable.

But now, a thousand years after the settlement of the planet – and centuries after all contact was lost with Earth – an expedition, using a new and untried technology, is setting out into the unknown to discover what happened all those years ago on the mother-planet. What they find there will
threaten their very survival and raise questions about what it means to be human and civilised.

The Dreams of the Chosen
is the long-awaited final chapter in the multi-award-winning Deucalion Sequence
,
which started with
Deucalion
and was followed by its acclaimed sequel,
The View from Ararat
.

ISBN 978 0 7022 3605 1

Also in this series by Brian Caswell

Deucalion

Across light years of space millions of settlers have come to the planet Deucalion to escape their past and build their future. Deucalion is a source of great wealth, and offers a chance
of a new beginning. But what does this mean for the Elokoi, who lived there first, or for the children of Icarus, who made the journey for a different reason? And why are people dying mysteriously?

Brian Caswell effortlessly takes you on an excursion into future-history, merging fact with fantasy that will leave you wanting to read the whole series.

ISBN 978 0 7022 2865 0

First published 1999 by University of Queensland Press

PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

This edition first published 2013

www.uqp.com.au

©
Brian Caswell 1999

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

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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-

The view from Ararat / Brian Caswell.

Young adults.

Science fiction.

Caswell, Brian, 195
4
– Deucalion.

A823.3

ISBN 978 0 7022 3067 7 (pbk)

ISBN 978 0 7022 4859 7 (pdf)

ISBN 978 0 7022 4860 3 (epub)

ISBN 978 0 7022 4861 0 (kindle)

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