Through the Gate: The Chronicles of Cornu Book 1

by L J Dalton Jr

  “What about cattle for meat. Are you doing anything there?”

  “We are, what we are looking to do is to replicate another breed from the home world, the Angus. Like the Guernsey, it’s trouble free and this cow is a good producer of meat. We’ve got four fields already fenced in and we’re starting to bring in some suitable candidates to start the breeding program. My brother Olaf is in charge of finding those. Peter and I take care of things here. Let’s go look at the sheep.”

  They walked over to another four-field setup. There were rams in one field and ewes in the other three. “This is our Merino sheep program. It’s another animal from the home world. I should warn you that the animals from the home world only gave us the things that we wanted in a breed. Ours may look different from those animals, but hopefully their characteristics are close enough. The Merino produces good wool and meat. We started putting out starter herds to villages that wanted to raise sheep two years ago. Now what we are doing here is a breeding program, putting together starter herds. These herds are bigger than the Guernsey herds. There are fifty to sixty animals in each herd. We’re working to develop dogs to guard and herd the sheep. With the predators here on Cornu, we need bigger dogs than on the home world. We’re working with the shepherds on the breeding. Next up are the horses.”

  They had to walk a half mile to where the horse breeding operation was. “Joanne, these are big horses, these aren’t for riding, are they?”

  “No, they’re not. These are draft horses meant to pull wagons and agriculture machinery. The horses here on Cornu aren’t really suited for that. A team can pull a single plow and four together can pull a wagon, but not a heavily laden one. My father has no idea why draft horses weren’t developed here on Cornu. They were developed on the home world. Although, probably well after the last migration of humans from the home world. But the lack of them makes using the McCormick reaper, the Amish plow and the seed drill much more difficult.”

  “Who or what is McCormick and Amish?” asked Randall.

  “McCormick is the name of the man who invented the reaper back on the home world. The Amish are a group of people back on the home world, that wanted to live a simple life.” Joanne saw Randall’s confusion. “You’re wondering about the ‘simple life’. Their concept of the simple life was using techniques and machinery that is more advanced than anything we’ve found on Cornu yet. The machinery that they didn’t use was much more advanced and probably more advanced than you or maybe I can imagine. Maybe the next person who walks through a gate will have amazing things to tell us about.”

  “Joanne are these the Jorgenson horses?”

  “Yes, your grandfather insisted on calling them that. My father wanted to call them Percherons, after a breed back on the home world. My mothers agreed, so Jorgenson horses they are. He’s a bit embarrassed by the name.”

  “I don’t see why with all he’s done for us he should be honored in some way. The name of the breed will live on for years after we are all gone. I know that my grandfather made him an Earl, but that is only a small reward.”

  “Well thank you for your kind words. Let’s head back to the office so we can go over what you’ll be doing for the next few weeks. This should help you understand the scientific method.”

  For the next five weeks, Randall did a bit of everything. He mucked stalls, not his favorite job, but he saw that Morton helped, so how could he beg off. He collected data and entered it into the records. As he saw the detailed records that they kept, he started to realize the wealth of information that they collected and how they were able to discover so much and make progress. This was something that could be applied to other things as well. He realized he needed to keep this technique handy. He also helped in the breeding, or as Morton called it ‘Animal Matchmaker’.

  He spent a lot of time with Morton and they grew closer. He soon found out that Morton was the generalist in the family. The one who collected old texts and stories and reviewed them and then gave his siblings the ones he thought relevant.

  After five weeks, Randall started to work with Steven and Mary. This was what they called the medical research school. Steven explained. “Randall, what we’re trying to do here is to advance human medicine here in Nordia. There have always been healers and they used natural items to help people with diseases and injuries. My father was a doctor who took care of animals back on the home world. Humans are animals, so there are things that can transfer over from his discipline. The big thing is that there are small organisms, called germs, that cause disease. Things like honey stop the growth of those germs. So do things like the sap from one of the fir trees, what we call the Balsam Fir. Most of the medicines on the home world originally came from plants and animals. So, we’ve been testing different substances for the effect on different ailments and are standardizing them and dispersing that knowledge. We’ve got a six-month course where we bring in healers from all over the kingdom and teach them what we’ve learned so far. We have a yearlong course that teaches people how to be more of what we call a doctor. They can perform surgery to cure injuries and other things. It’s a two-tier system. We get a lot of well-trained people out of the six-month course. We usually have 25 students at a time. We get a few very well-trained people out of the year course. That course has only five students a year. That’s the maximum we feel that we can train. Do you have any questions?”

  “No, I guess that is a quick overview. What are you going to have me doing and what will I learn?”

  “You’ll be helping us do some research. Cataloging plants and other things and what they are used for. Then we’ll set up controls to see how well they work. You’ll be helping with that. When you’re done here, you’ll have a good idea of what we teach and what people know.”

  Mary added. “The one thing we are working on is a way to put people to sleep for an operation that doesn’t involve the poppy extract that’s currently used. My father says there is a liquid called ether that does that. He remembers some of how to make it and we’re currently experimenting with it. Or rather Steven is.”

  Randall looked at Steven. Yes Randall, Mary and I divide up the duties. I do a lot of the research; she works with the healers in getting things into use and doing outreach into the farther areas of the kingdom. Luckily, the crown as well as all the dukes and duchess support all of this. Her husband is enthusiastic as well. His ties to the nobility help. That makes it a lot easier. Many people are reluctant to change. If it was good enough for their grandparents, it’s good enough for them.”

  Just like with the breeding programs, Randall did a little of everything. He sat in on the lectures and practical work that the healers in the six-month course took. He occasionally sat in on the yearlong course. He wasn’t all that thrilled with the surgery portion of it and Morton agreed with him. When he worked with Steven, it was preparing herbs and looking to get consistent doses. Reviewing reports from the field on various preparations that were being used and noting the results. By this time, he’d read the book on the scientific method twice and he was really seeing how it applied to what was being done.

  Next up on Randall’s rotation was the biology group or as Dr. Jorgenson called it the Extension Service. It was catch-all group that was run by Dr. Jorgenson’s son Joshua with help from his sister Janice and Morton. Joshua took the lead in giving Randall and overview. “Randall, the breeding program and the medical institute are paying dividends for Nordia right now. But to have real impact over generations and generations we’ve got to keep ideas and discoveries coming. We cover just about everything else. Biology or the study of the plants and animals on Cornu. Since, they all come from earth, we’ve got a head start with what my father knew when he arrived. More importantly, why only life from earth except for some ferns, mushrooms and lichen. There are coal and oil deposits on Cornu, and they take millions and millions of years to develop. Probably far longer than earth life has been here. So, all that coal is from those early ferns and lichens. Or best guess,
and it’s only a guess, is that life from earth started arriving only thirty million years ago.”

  Randall was shocked. “Only thirty million years! That’s a very long time.”

  “Yes, to us it is. But in geologic time, it’s pretty short. The planets are far older than that, several billion years old. We’ve looked for fossils of early life on Cornu, but we find very few except for simple ferns and very small animals. Now some of them have survived to this day. There are plants and animals here that died out on the home world. Also, there are small animals in the soil that aren’t from earth. We’ve no idea how they affect plants and animals, although we assume that they do.”

  Once again Randall asked a question. “What is a fossil?”

  “When an animal dies, very rarely it dies in a place where it’s not eaten by scavengers and it gets covered by something like mud. The mud preserves it and over time the bone and the hard part of the animal is converted to stone. This lets you see what the plant or animal looked like. My father was out looking for fossils when he stumbled through the gate.”

  Randall nodded and Joshua continued. “Up to now we’ve only found small creatures that are very old, and we only find evidence of colonies of these small creatures. Our best guess is that was as far evolution got on Cornu. That’s where we get the coal and oil from, the deposits of these dead creatures building up over time.”

  “What’s evolution?”

  “You saw how we breed animals? Well God or nature or whatever you want to call it does the same. Only this time it’s the world. If there is a weakness it’s eliminated, because the weak animal can’t survive. So over time things change. If an opportunity presents itself, then one animal might be just different enough to start to take advantage of it. Then as time goes on, one of the offspring may be better at it and then it will have more offspring than the others. We call this natural selection, survival of the fittest. Nature or God does the breeding for us. Simpler animals turn into more complex. We know that it happened on the home world; we have no idea how come it seemed to stall here.”

  “That sounds very strange. What role does God play in this?”

  “As you may have noticed, the scientific method never brings in God. That’s not because we don’t believe in God. It’s just that we can’t allow our beliefs in what we think to cloud our judgement about what is. As my father says, who can really understand all that God is doing?”

  “How does that sit with the priests?”

  “Well on the home world, not so well. We don’t advertise it here because we don’t see the need to antagonize the priesthood. We can continue our work without ever getting into theological arguments. The time will come when that’s something that people will start to figure out on their own. We think that’s a long way off.”

  “Well that makes that easy. Don’t pick a fight you don’t need to.”

  The next three weeks were full of work. Most of it was what could be described as ‘grunt’ work. Entering data, classifying items, reviewing old tomes and texts for anything relevant. Morton told Randall that this was 90% of the work. During this time, he learned how animals and plants were classified. Saw microscopic plants and animals through the station’s primitive microscope and generally got a good grounding in biology. The group didn’t only study biology. Morton was gathering texts and collecting stories on engineering, astronomy and history.

  One day Randall asked his friend Morton what he’d found about history.

  “A lot of the history wasn’t written down until long after it happened. The written accounts come from Oral History. Now a lot of that may be myth, but as my father says, there is often a kernel of truth in there. So, if I strip away a lot of the mystic stuff, here’s what I guess is fairly accurate. First, all the people who came to Cornu came from North America, Europe and the East.” Morton pointed out the areas on the map of the earth they had. “Nobody from the southern part of the home world. Why we have no idea. Landia is pretty much European. Other continents are mixed or pure Asian or pure American Indian. What we can get out of the stories, is that almost all of the people who came here were desperate. They were either starving or being pursued by enemies. It looks like the last influx of people came around three thousand years ago. These were farmers who brought their techniques to here. Then it’s been one or two people arriving every one hundred to two hundred years, just like my father.”

  “Morton, do you think that somebody else will come through the gate in our lifetime?”

  “I hope so and I hope that they bring new knowledge. Unless, they’ve managed to do real harm to themselves back on the home world.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Talk to my father about the wars they have there.”

  “How can they have wars? Wouldn’t that kill to many men and the population would crash and the kingdoms involved fail?”

  “Once again that’s for my father. He experienced it firsthand and therefore is the best source. As to the population collapse, maybe it’s time to talk to Joshua about the differences between people here and on the home world.”

  A puzzled Randall sought out Joshua and asked about it.

  “An interesting subject, and the one that causes us the most difficulty in figuring it out. Let’s get a cup of tea and sit down somewhere and talk about this.”

  Both got some tea and then sat down in the office. Once they were comfortable Joshua started. “Well people here on Cornu, don’t look different, but are different than people on the home world. You know my father sired eight children, in the last few hundred years on Cornu that is unheard of. On the home world it would be unusual, yet not unheard of. And that’s with one wife, not two like he had here on Cornu.”

  “So, people on the home world have a lot more children? How do they do that?” asked Randall.

  “There are a couple of things. On the home world, women are fertile every twenty-eight to thirty days. That can vary, longer or shorter, but that’s usually the norm. Here women are only fertile twice a year. Not to give away a secret but my sisters are fertile four times a year. Less than on the home world, but more than here. The other thing is that far more female babies are born here than male. On the home world slightly more boys are born than girls, but it eventually evens out.”

  “Is that all, just the number of times a woman is fertile? Most married women try and get pregnant when they are fertile. They know and while they don’t tell everyone, once you get to a certain age you know about these things.” asked Randall.

  “You’ve hit the other thing as well. What we know is that men on Cornu are significantly less fertile than men on the home world. My father and brother Steven have looked at male sperm under the microscope there are far fewer than normal. Which then leads us to the other issue, the almost frantic mating when a woman is fertile. This is unusual as well. We suspect that pheromones are responsible. The reason for the frantic mating and the use of lotions is to increase the chance of pregnancy.”

  “What are pheromones, Joshua?”

  “All many animals and plants give off scents, we call pheromones as signals. Now, we human supposedly can’t detect them, at least at a conscious level. We suspect that humans here on Cornu give off pheromones, and we detect them but don’t realize it. We think but we can’t be sure. We think that it affects who you choose as a mate and your sex life. My father is the only man I know from the home world and he was surprised how strongly he was attracted to his first wife. It was not something he had experienced before. He would have ignored except that he observed it again and again.”

  “So does the mean people on Cornu mate less often than on the home world? I really can’t believe that because as far as I can tell married people are always engaged in mating if they can.”

  “Randall, once again you’re right that frequency doesn’t seem to be the problem, people may mate more here than on the home world. Why is this happening, you might ask. Our best guess is the ‘Choosing’. That seems to weed out people
with genetic issues. What else it does, we don’t know. But we are thinking that it may be influencing human fertility and through that society. What we know of biology is that if you can produce more children, your genes and ability will be passed down. Eventually the descendants of those who have more offspring will easily outnumber those who can’t. This is exactly the opposite of what is happening on Cornu. It’s difficult to explain without something overriding the natural order or what we think is the natural order.”

  Randall was left to think all about that. Before he was leaving Dr. Jorgenson invited him to come see him the next night in his study.

  Randall met with the doctor and sat and listened to him. “You may or may not know that at one time I was a soldier on the home world. I participated in the ‘war to end all wars’ as we called it. What a joke it did nothing but kill millions in the most horrible ways imaginable. It was all caused by the stupidity of the rulers involved and greed.” He then went on to describe the horrors of trench warfare. The mud, filth and disease. Of men charging across fields filled with obstacles only to be killed in their thousands by guns that shot hundreds of bullets in a minute. Dynasties falling and the resulting chaos and death. A whole generation almost wiped out. Of men unable to take any more and simply breaking down mentally. Executions of men for refusing to go to certain death. When he was done, he explained “That’s why I have never worked on arms of any kind and never will. I will do everything in my power to keep arms to muskets and swords. They cannot kill on the vast scale of the weapons on the home world. I am sorry to have tell you about this horror. Hopefully, you will only have some inkling of what is involved in our kind of war and avoid it with all your might. Tomorrow we will meet again tomorrow night and I will give you a task, one that I’ve asked of both your father and grandfather.”

  With that the conversation was over. Randall went to his room and thought about it. He almost couldn’t believe what the doctor was talking about. Guns shooting hundreds of bullets a minute and killing thousands of men. He couldn’t even conceive of such a thing. What did strike him was the doctor’s expression when he was talking about. The look of horror on his face. He would talk to both his father and grandfather about this. When he had power, he’d crush any effort to improve the kingdom’s arms. He did know that everything was not peaceful. The only reason that there weren’t wars was because both sides would end up losing. There were still bloody dynastic feuds over succession and power. Those weren’t widespread and were contained to a small group. There were bands of brigands and there were thieves, swindlers and even murders. The various kingdoms dealt with them differently. Some banished people and others executed them. Nordia did banish people to the far north for crimes.