It has been easier than I expected. Accent gave me some trouble at first. But I listened and now speak as harsh a Cornbelt accent as I did as a youngster. It is amazing how things have come back. I confirm from experience the theory that childhood memories are permanent, even though one may “forget” them until restimulated. I left this city when I was younger than you two are; I have been on more than two hundred planets since then, I have forgotten most of them.
But I find that I know this city.
Some changes . . but changes in the other entropy direction; I am now seeing it as it was when I was four T-years old. I am four years old elsewhere in this city. I have avoided that neighborhood and have not yet tried to see my first family—the idea makes me a bit uneasy. Oh, I shall, before I leave to travel around the country; I’m not afraid of being recognized by them. Impossible! I look like a young man and much—I think—as I looked when I was in fact a young man. But no one here has ever seen what that four-year-old will look like when he grows up. My only hazard would lie in trying to tell the truth. Not that I would be believed—no one here believes even in space travel, much less time travel—but because I would risk being locked up as "crazy”—a nonscientific term meaning that the person to whom one applies that label has a world picture differing from the accepted one.
Kansas City in 1916—You put me down in a meadow; I climbed the fence and walked to the nearest town. No one noticed us—tell Dora that she did it slick as a pickpocket. The town was pleasant, the people friendly; I stayed a day to get reoriented, then moved on to a larger town, did the same there and got clothes to change me from a farm worker into someone who would not be conspicuous in a city. (You dears, who never wear clothes when you don’t need them—except festive occasions—would have trouble believing how status here-&now is shown by clothes. Far more so than in New Rome —here one can look at a person and tell age, sex, social status, economic status, probable occupation, approximate education, and many other things, just by clothing. These people even swim with clothes on—I am not farcing; ask Athene. My dears, they sleep in clothes.)
I took a railroad train to Kansas City. Ask Athene to display a picture of one from this era. This culture is prototechnical, just beginning to shift from human muscle power and animal power to generated power. Such as there is originates from burning natural fuels or from wind or waterfall. Some of this is converted into primitive electrical power, but this railroad train was propelled by burning coal to produce expanding steam.
Atomic power is not even a theory; it is a fancy of dreamers, taken less seriously than “Santa Claus.” As for the method for moving the Dora, no one has the slightest notion that there is any way of grasping the fabric of space-time.
(I could be wrong. The many tales of UFO’s and of strange visitors, throughout all ages, suggest that I am not the first time-tripper by thousands, or millions. But perhaps most of them are as reluctant to disturb the “native savages” as I am.)
On arrival in Kansas City I took lodging at a religious hilton. If you received my arrival note, it was on stationery bearing its emblem. (I hope that note is the last I will have to entrust to paper and ink—but it took time to arrange for photoreduction and etching. The technology and materials available here-&-now are very primitive, even when I have privacy to use other techniques.)
As a temporary base this religious hilton offers advantages. It is cheap, and I have not yet had time to acquire all the local money I will need. It is clean and safe compared with commercial hiltons costing the same. It is near the business district. It offers all that I now need and no more. And it is monastic.
“Monastic”? Don’t look surprised, my loves. I expect to remain celibate throughout these ten years, while dreaming happy fantasies of all my darlings, so many years & light-years away.
Why? The local mores—Here the coupling of male and female is forbidden by law unless specifically licensed by the state in a binding monogamy with endless legal, social, and economic consequences.
Such laws are made to be broken—and are. About three squares or a few hundred meters from this monastic hilton, the “Y.M.C.A.,” starts the "red-light” district, an area devoted to illicit but tolerated female prostitution—and the fees are low. No, I am not too lazy to walk that far; I’ve talked to some of these women—they “walk a beat” offering their services to men on the street. But, my dears, these women are not recognized artists, proud of their great vocation. Oh, dear, no! They are pathetic drabs, furtive and ashamed. They are at the bottom of the social pyramid, and many (most?) are in thrall to males who take their meager earnings.
I do not think there is a Tamara, or even a pseudo-Tamara, in all of Kansas City. Outside the ‘red-light’ district there are younger and prettier women available for higher fees and by more complex arrangements—but their status is still zero. No proud and happy artists. So they are no temptation; I would not be able to put out of my mind the gruesome fashion in which they are mistreated under local laws and customs.
(I tipped those I talked to; time is money to them.)
Then there are women who are not of the profession.
From my earlier life here I know that a high percentage of both “single” women and “married” women (a sharp dichotomy, much sharper than on Tertius or even Secundus)—many of these will chance unlicensed coupling for fun, adventure, love, or other reasons. Most women here are thus available sometimes and with some men—although not with all men nor all the time; here&-now the sport is necessarily clandestine.
Nor do I lack confidence, nor have I contracted the local “moral” attitude.
But the answer is again No. Why?
First reason: It is all too likely to get one’s arse shot off!
No joke, dears. Here-&-now almost every female is quasi-property of some male. Husband, father, sweetheart, betrothed—someone. If he catches you, he may kill you —and public opinion is such that he is unlikely to be punished. But if you kill him . . you hang by the neck until dead, dead, dead!
It seems an excessive price. I don’t plan to risk it.
There are a small but appreciable number of females who are not “property” of some male—so what’s holding you back, Lazarus?
The overhead, for one thing. (Better not tell Galahad this; it would break his heart.) Negotiations are usually long, complex, and very expensive—and she is likely to regard “success” as equivalent to a proposal of lifetime contract.
On top of that she is quite likely to become pregnant. I should have asked Ishtar to offset my fertility for this trip. (I am terribly glad I did not.) (And I am honing for you darlings, my other selves—and thank you endlessly for kicking my feet out from under me. I couldn’t initiate it, dearly as I wanted to!)
Laz and Lor, believe this: Mature females here do not know when they are fertile. They rely either on luck or on contraceptive methods that range from chancy to worthless. Furthermore, they can’t find out even from their therapists—who don’t know much about it themselves. (There are no geneticists.) Therapy is very primitive in 1916. Most physicians are trying hard, I think, but the art is barely out of the witch-doctor stage. Just rough surgery and a few drugs—most of which I know to be useless or harmful. As for contraception—hold on tight!—it is forbidden by law.
Another law made to be broken—and is. But law and customs retard progress in such matters. At present (1916) the commonest method involves an elastomer sheath worn by the male—in other words they “couple” without touching. Stop screaming; you’ll never have to put up with it. But it is as bad as it sounds.
I’ve saved my strongest reason for the last. Dears, I’ve been spoiled. In 1916 a bath once a week is considered enough by most people, too much by some. Other habits match. Such thing when unavoidable can be ignored. I’m well aware that I whiff like an old billy goat in very short order myself. Nevertheless, when I have enjoyed the company of six of the daintiest darlings in the Galaxy—well, I’d rather wait. Shucks, ten years isn
’t long.
If you have received any of the letters I will send over the next ten years, then you may have rushed to check up on Gregorian 1916-1919. I selected 1919-1929 both to savor it—a vintage decade, the very last happy period in old Earth’s history—but also to avoid the first of the Terran Planetary Wars, the one known now (it has already started) as “The European War” then will be called “The World War,” then still later “The First World War,” and designated in most ancient histories as “Phase One of the First Terran Planetary War.”
Don’t fret; I’m going to give it a wide berth. This involves changes in my travel plans but none in the 1926 pickup. I have little memory of this war; I was too young. But I recall (probably from school lessons rather than from direct memory) that this country got into it in 1917, and that the war ended the following year—and that date I remember exactly, as it was my sixth birthday and I thought the noise and celebration was for me.
What I can’t remember is the exact date this country entered the war. I may not have looked it up in planning this junket; my purpose was to arrive after 11 November 1918, the day the war ended, and I allowed what I thought was a comfortable margin. I was fitting in those ten years most carefully, as the following ten years, 1929-1939, are decidedly not a vintage decade—and they end with the start of Phase Two of the First Terran Planetary War.
There is no possible way for me to look up that date—but I find one bright clue in my memory: a phrase “The Guns of August.” That phrase has a sharp association in my memory with this war—and it fits, for I remember that it was warm, summery weather (August is summer here) when Gramp (your maternal grandfather, dears) took me out into the backyard and explained to me what “war” is and why we must win.
I don’t think he made me understand it—but I remember the occasion, I remember his serious manner, I remember the weather (warm), and the time of day (just before supper).
Very well, I’ll expect this country to declare war next August; I’ll duck for cover in July—for I have no interest in this war. I know which side won (the side this country will be on) but I know also that “The War to End All Wars” (it was called that!) was a disastrous defeat both for “victors” and "vanquished”—it led inevitably to the Great Collapse and caused me to get off this planet. Nothing I can do will change any of that; there are no paradoxes.
So I will hole up till it’s over. Almost every nation on Terra eventually picked sides—but many did no fighting, and the war did not get close to them, especially nations south of here, Central and South America, so that is probably where I will go.
But I have almost a year to plan it. It is easy here to be anything you claim to be—no identification cards, no computer codes, no thumbprints, no tax numbers. Mind you, this planet now has as many people as Secundus has (will have—your "now”)—yet births are not even registered in much of this country (mine was not, other than with the Families), and a man is whoever he says he is! There are no formalities about leaving this country. It is slightly more difficult to get back in, but I have endless time to cope with that.
But I should, through ordinary prudence, go away for the duration of this war. Why? Conscription. I’m durned if I’ll try to explain that term to girls who just barely know what a war is, but it means “slave armies”—and it means to me that I should have asked Ishtar to make me look at least twice the apparent age I look now. If I hang around here too long, I risk becoming an involuntary “hero” in a war that was over before I was old enough to go to school.
This strikes me as ridiculous.
So I’ll concentrate on accumulating money to carry me a couple of years—convert that into gold (about eight kilos, not too heavy)—then the first of next July, move south. A mild problem then, as this country is conducting a small-scale border war with the one just south of it. (Going north is out of the question; that country is already in the big war.) The ocean to the east has underwater warships in it; these tend to shoot at anything that floats. But the ocean on the other side is free of such vermin. If I take a ship going south from a seaport on the west side of this country, I’ll wind up outside the fighting zones. In the meantime I must improve my Spanish—much like Galacta but prettier. I’ll find a tutor—no, Laz, not a horizontal one. Don’t you ever think about anything else?
(Come to think of it, dear, what else is worth thinking about? Money?)
Yes, money, at the moment, and I have plans for that. The country is about to elect a chief of government—and I am the only man on Terra who knows who will be elected. Why did it stick in my memory? Take a look at my registered Families’ name.
So my pressing problem is to lay hands on money to bet on that election. What I win I’ll use to gamble in the bourse—except that it won’t be gambling, as this country is already in a war economy and I know it will continue.
I wish I could accept bets on the election instead of placing them—but that is too risky to my skin; I don’t have the right political connections.
You see—No, I had better explain how this city is organized.
Kansas City is a pleasant place. It has tree-shaded streets, lovely residential neighborhoods, a boulevard and park system known throughout the planet. Its excellent paving encourages the automobile carriages that are beginning to be popular. Most of this country is still deep in mud; Kansas City’s well-paved streets have more of these autopropelled vehicles than horse-drawn ones.
The city is prosperous, being the second largest market and transportation center of the most productive agricultural area on Terra—grain, beef, pork. The unsightly aspects of this trade are down in river bottoms while the citizens live in beautiful wooded hills. On a damp morning when the wind sets from that quarter one sometimes catches a whiff of stockyards; otherwise the air is clear and clean and beautiful.
It is a quiet city. Traffic is never dense, and the clopclop of horses’ hooves or the warning gong of an electrically propelled street-railroad car is just enough to accent the silence—the sounds of children at play are louder.
Galahad is more interested in how a culture uses its leisure than in its economics—and so am I, as scratching a living is controlled by circumstances. But not play. By play I do not mean sex. Sex can’t take up too much time of humans matured beyond adolescence (except a few oddies like the fabled Casanova—and Galahad of course —Me ‘at’s off to the Dyuke!’).
In 1916 (nothing I say necessarily applies ten years later and certainly not one hundred years later; this is the very end of an era)—at this time the typical Kansas Citian makes his own play; his social events are associated with churches, or with relatives by blood and marriage, or both—dining, picnicking, playing games (not gambling), or simply visiting and talking. Most of this costs little or nothing except the expense of supporting their churches —which are social clubs as much as they are temples of religious faith.
The major commercial entertainment is called “moving pictures”—dramatic shows presented as silent black-and-white shadow pictures flickering against a blank wall. These are quite new, very popular, and very cheap—they are called “nickel shows” after the minor coin charged as a fee. Each neighborhood (defined as walking distance) has at least one such theater. This form of entertainment, and its technological derivatives, eventually had (will have) as much to do with the destruction of this social pattern as the automobile carriages (get Galahad’s opinions on this), but—in 1916—neither has as yet disturbed what appears to be a stable and rather Utopian pattern.
Anomie has not yet set in, the norms are strong, customs are binding, and no one here-&-now would believe that the occasional rumble is Cheyne-Stokes breathing of a culture about to die. Literacy is at the highest level this culture will ever attain—my dears, the people of 1916 simply would not believe 2016. They won’t even believe that they are about to be enmeshed in the first of the Final Wars; that is why the man for whom I am named is about to be reelected. “We Are Neutral.” “Too Proud to Fight.” “He Kept
Us Out of War.” Under these slogans they are marching over the precipice, not knowing it is there.
(I’m depressing myself—hindsight is a vice . . especially when it is foresight.)
Now let’s look at the underside of this lovely city:
The city is a nominal democracy. In fact it is nothing of the sort. It is governed by one politician who holds no office. Elections are solemn rituals—and the outcomes are what he ordains. The streets are beautifully paved because his companies pave them—to his profit. The schools are excellent, and they actually teach—because this monarch wants it that way. He is pragmatically benign and does not overreach. “Crime” (which means anything illegal and includes both prostitution and gambling) is franchised through his lieutenants; he never touches it himself.
Much of this crime-by-definition is handled by an organization sometimes called “The Black Hand”—but in 1916 it usually has no name and is never seen. But it is why I don’t dare accept election bets; I would be encroaching on a monopoly of one of this politician’s lieutenants—which would be very dangerous to my health.
Instead, I’ll bet by the local rules and keep my mouth shut.
The “respectable” citizen, with his pleasant home and garden and church and happy children, sees none of this and (I think) suspects little of it and thinks about it less. The city is divided into zones with firm though unmarked bounds. The descendants of former slaves live in a zone that forms a buffer between the “nice” part of town and the area dominated by and lived in by the franchised monopolists of such things as gambling and prostitution. At night the zones mix only under unspoken conventions. In the daytime there is nothing to notice. The boss maintains tight discipline but keeps it simple. I’ve heard that he has only three unbreakable rules: Keep the streets well paved. Don’t touch the schools. Don’t kill anyone south of a certain street.
Time Enough for Love Page 57
