Launch Pad

by Jody Lynn Nye

  Anno Domini was my first pause in twenty years. I legislate in the Senior chamber of the Parliament of Stars. We tend to feel, we beings of the Senior Chamber, that our efforts bind the intelligences of the galaxy together, for all that races still aggress and habited planets are still fused in anger. We also feel that, despite all our posturing, blustering and rhetoric, we accomplish nothing save the passage of time, for all that beings have not starved, races have not been destroyed and planets have not turned to stars through our efforts. This dichotomy slowly erodes empathy, emotion and intellect.

  So I paused. I returned to Sol to become again a man of Earth, an Earthman, and walk among trees and down narrow, twisting streets and wide boulevards, but mainly to walk among the men and women of Earth who are my constituency, my ancestry and my soul. The races of man are varied and the farther one gets from Sol the greater the variation, though all are men and can interbreed and trace their language back to a common source—if they still have language, if they still have sex. But I no more represent the Autocracy or the Diggers of Melvic than I speak for the Denzii Hive or the unfortunate Urechis of Mol.

  I felt a need for history: to be one with Earth is to be a part of the sequence of man, a product of all that has come before and a precursor to all that will follow. To return to Sol, to Earth, to man, to our common history: that was my plan.

  I spent the first month in the present, walking, looking, visiting, remembering, chronolizing myself to the fashions, mores, idiom and art of this most volatile of human cultures. Then I retreated to Earth itself, to the past, to Anno Domini, the religious years: twenty-four centuries called after the Son of the One God. The period right before the present era, when man no longer needs any god but himself.

  Earth is now all past: the present comes no closer than Earth’s satellite, the moon; the future—I wonder at times what future a planet can have when it has renounced the present.

  I picked Seventeen to start, and was garbed and armed and primed and screened and out before I could say, All the world’s a stage

  And all the men and women merely players

  They have their exits and their entrances.…

  The town was London and the year was sixteen-whatever. In this re-created past the years sometimes slip and events anachron—a fact of interest but to scholars and piddlers. The costumes of this re-created century were exotic, but no more than the smell. Charles had been beheaded a few years before. The Roundheads had been in power for however long the Roundheads were in power, and now William the Orange was about to land at Plymouth Dock.

  I was sitting in the Mermaid Tavern, at a small table at the rear. Next to me, over my left shoulder, was a large round table where Ben Jonson sat deep in conversation with Will Shakespere, John Milton, Edmond Waller and the Earl of Someplace. As writers will when alone together, they were discussing money and I quickly tired of their talk.

  She walked in as I was preparing to leave. Walked? She danced with the unassuming grace of wind-blown leaves. She flowed across the walk and quickstepped through the door as though practiced by a master choreographer and rehearsed a dozen times before this take. These are the images that came to mind as she appeared in the doorway.

  I sat back down and watched as she came in. She was aware of everything, and interested in all that she could see, and the very air around her was vibrant with the excitement of her life. And so I was attracted and excited and aware before a word had passed between us.

  A man too doltish to see what she was stood by the door as she passed. He thought she was something other, and he spoke to her so: “Hey, girl; hey, wench, you should not be alone. P’raps I’ll keep you company if you ask me pretty.”

  She did not reply. She did not seem to hear, but passed him by as if he were a wall.

  He reached out to grasp her by the shoulder and I stood up, my hand falling to the handle of my walking stick.

  She spun almost before his hand had touched. She reached out, her fingers

  appearing to not quite reach his neck. He fell away and she continued the pirouette and entered without further pause.

  I must have stood like a stone, frozen in my foolish heroic pose with half-raised stick. She smiled at me. “No need,” she said. “Thank you.”

  I stammered at her some wish that she share my table and she nodded, sat and smiled again, introduced herself and looked about. She was also, I decided, a visitor to this re-created Seventeen. I pointed out to her the round table next to us and its famous occupants, indicating each with almost the pride of a creator, as though I had done something clever merely to have sat next to them and imposed myself on their conversation. They were reciting to each other now—each trying to impress the rest with the wit and feeling of his verse. Diana was interested, but not awed. She asked to be introduced, and so I complied.

  “It is an honor to meet each of you,” she told the table. “And especially Mr. Shakespere, whom I have long admired.”

  “Nay, not ‘Mr. Shakespere,’” Shakespere insisted firmly. “Will, if you will. Aye, an’ if you won’t ’tis still a simple ‘Will.’ ’Tis my will, so you must.”

  Jonson glared across the table. “You are the most convoluted simple-minded man,” he said. “You will if you won’t, but you can’t so you must. Spare us!”

  The sound of fifes came at us from a distance. A far rumble soon became the beat of many drums. The entourage of William approached and we all went outside the tavern to join the patient mob that awaited his passing.

  First the soldiers, row on row, and for a long time nothing passed but soldiers. Then soldiers astride horses. Then soldiers astride horses pulling small cannon. Then a military band. Then more horses with soldiers astride, but now the uniform had changed. Then a coach and the crowd went wild—but it was the wrong coach. By now, unless he were twelve feet tall, the new king was an anticlimax. I looked over the crowd and tried to tell which were residents and which were guests of Anno Domini. I couldn’t.

  If this were the real Seventeenth Century—that is, if it were historical past rather than Anno Dominical re-creation—there would be signs. The pox would have left its mark on most who lived. Rickets would be common. War cripples would be begging from every street corner. This Seventeenth century, the only one the residents knew, was being redone by a benevolent hand.

  The new king passed. His coach was open and he smiled and nodded and waved and was cheered. A stout, red-faced little man—anticlimax. I laughed.

  We left then, Diana and I, and I offered to walk her to her inn. She named it and I discovered it was my own.

  “How do you like this time?” I asked her as we walked. “Have you been here long?”

  “All day,” she said. “Then you’re a guest too? I wondered why you were the only one in the tavern I hadn’t heard of.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “In realtime I am well known. My return to Earth was mentioned as primary news. I am a third of Earth’s voice in the Parliament of the Stars. I am known and welcome in half a thousand worlds throughout the galaxy. I number some fifty life forms among my friends. It is not necessary that you have heard of me.”

  “You’re insulted!” she said, clapping her hands together. “How delightful! Now you make me feel important, that my words could insult one as essential as you. I thank you for feeling insulted. I am pleased.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, ever before. Somehow she made me glad that I had felt insulted. It was nice to be insulted for her: it made her happy. She reminded me of a beautiful half-grown kitten, newly exploring the world outside its kitten box.

  O O O

  The inn was a U-shaped structure around a central courtyard. The stables were to the right, the rooms to the left and the common room straight ahead. It had been called The Buckingham the last time I was there, some thirty years before. Now, after a decade of being the Pym & Thistle, it sported a new signboard over the door: The Two Roses. The device showed a red and white rose thoroughly entwined. The landlor
d I didn’t remember—a small, chubby man with a wide smile carved into his unhappy face. I asked him what the new name signified.

  “It signifies I’m tired of changing the name of my inn,” he told me. “I’m becoming nonpolitical. York and Lancaster settled their differences quite a ways back.”

  “Let us hope William doesn’t think it means you prefer the white and red to his orange,” I suggested. He looked after me strangely as I escorted Diana across to the common room and we sat at a table in the corner.

  “Dinner?” I suggested.

  Diana nodded enthusiastically, spilling her red hair around her face. “Meat!” she said. “Great gobs of rare roast—and maybe a potato.”

  “I—uh—I think they boil their meat these days,” I told her in jest.

  “No!” She was horrified. “Boil perfectly good, unresisting roasts and steaks? That’s barbaric.”

  “O tempora, o mores!” I agreed, wondering what my accent would have sounded like to Marcus Tullius.

  Diana looked puzzled. I tried again, slanting the accents in a different direction. She looked more puzzled.

  “It means: ‘Oh, what times—oh, what customs!’ It’s Latin,” I told her.

  “It’s what?”

  “Latin. That’s a pre-language. Ancient and dead.” Now I was puzzled. Who was this girl of Earth who didn’t know of Latin? For the past four hundred years, since humanity had begun trying to re-create its cradle—or at least its nursery—all born of Earth, except those born on Earth, knew something of prehistory and the prelanguages: the times and the tongues of man before he met the stars.

  “You know what tongue was spoken here?” I asked her.

  “Common,” she said, looking at me as if I had just asked if she knew what those five slender tubes at the end of her hand were called. “The language of Earth. The one standard language of humans throughout the Galaxy.”

  “I mean,” I explained, “what language was spoken in the real Seventeenth Century London? What language all that beautiful poetry we heard discussed in the tavern by those great names at the next table was translated from?”

  She shook her head. “I hadn’t thought—”

  “English,” I said.

  “Oh. Of course. England—English. How silly!”

  The servitor approached the table circumspectly, waiting until he was sure we had finished speaking before addressing us. “Evening m’lord, m’lady,” he mumbled. “Roseguddenit. Venice impizenizeto.”

  Diana giggled. “English?” she asked. “Have we really receded in time?”

  “In time for what?”

  Diana giggled again. The thin lad in the servitor’s apron looked puzzled, unhappy, frightened and resigned.

  “Would you go over that again?” I asked him.

  “Parme?”

  “What you said, lad. Go over it again for diction, please.”

  Now he was also nervous and upset and clearly blamed me. “My lord?”

  “Speak more slowly,” I told him, “and pronounce more carefully and those of us without your quick wit and ready mind will be able to comprehend. Yes?”

  “Yes, my lord.” If he could have killed me.… “Sorry, my lord. The roast is good tonight, my lord. The venison pie is very nice, my lord. My lady. What may I serve you?”

  “Roast!” Diana stated. “Thick slices of roast. You don’t boil your roast, do you? You wouldn’t do that?”

  The boy nervously replied that he wouldn’t think of it, heard my order, then removed himself like a blown candle flame, leaving not even an after-image.

  “You frighten people,” Diana told me.

  “It’s my most valued ability,” I said. “I shall not frighten you.”

  “You certainly shall not,” she agreed. “My teachers were all more menacing than you—and more unforgiving. And they didn’t notice my body.”

  I ignored the last part of her remark and stared into her blue eyes. “You went to an unpermissive school,” I said, smiling.

  “The universe is unpermissive,” she said seriously. It was a learned response and I wondered who had taught it and why.

  The innkeeper approached us during dessert. “Good?” he asked. “You enjoyed?” “Indeed,” I assured him.

  “My pleasure,” he nodded. “My guests. There will be no reckoning.”

  “Gracious of you, sir,” Diana said.

  “Why?” I asked, being wiser and therefore trustless of hostels.

  “I am taking your suggestion,” he told me. “And I thank you by feeding you dinner.”

  “Suggestion?”

  “Yes. I am changing the name of the inn. Henceforth it shall be known as The Two Roses and the Tulip. I have sent a boy to notify the sign painter.”

  II

  We walked into the night, Diana and I. Hand in hand we walked, although it was conversation and not love that bound us then. We contrasted: she bright and quick, with an aim as true as a hawk’s; I ponderous and sure as a great bear (I metaphor our speech only). We learned from each other. I arrayed my vast store of facts before her in the patterns dictated by the logic of my decades. She swooped and plucked out one here, another there, and presented them as jewels to be examined for themselves, or changed their position to create the fabric of a new logic.

  “These people,” she asked me, waving a hand to indicate the residents in the houses around us, “what do they feel? What do they think? They are human, yes? How can they just spend their lives pretending they’re Anno Domini?”

  “They’re not pretending,” I told her.

  “But this isn’t the Seventeenth century.”

  “For them it is. They know of nothing else. Weren’t you warned about postchronic talk while you’re here?”

  “I thought it was just not to spoil the-the-flavor. They don’t know?”

  “Truth.”

  “But that’s cruel—unfair!”

  “Why? They’re stuck in their lives just as you and I are imbedded in our own. Are we any less actors in someone else’s drama than they?”

  “Philosophy, like religion, is a very useful drug,” she didacted, “but it should be used only to condone the evils we cannot control—and not those we create.”

  “You’re quoting,” I guessed.

  “My most valued ability,” she agreed. “I have a memory like a wideband slowcrystal—the input can’t be erased without destructing the device. Do you condone this make-believe?”

  “It isn’t make-believe. And convince me that it’s evil.”

  “But it’s so limited—”

  “They have the whole world. Their world—the world of the Seventeenth.”

  “They don’t—not in any real sense. This whole area can’t be bigger than—than—”

  She looked to me for help. I shrugged. “I don’t know either. But however large it is, it’s also—in a very real sense—unbounded. How much can a man expect to see in one normal lifetime—especially limited to horses and sailing ships for transportation? Any of these people who wish to go to France or the New World will get there. Aided by Anno Domini, they will arrive in their France without noticing whatever odd maneuvering the ship does in the ‘channel.’ I’ve taken that trip.”

  “What would happen if I decided to get up and just walk—” she pointed off to the left—“that way, in a straight line?”

  “You’d come to the edge,” I said. “Wherever that is.”

  “Yes. Suppose I were a native—a resident—then what?”

  “Then you’d probably fall asleep by the side of the road, and when you woke you’d suddenly remember urgent business back in town, or forget what you were doing there in the first place. And you’d never have the urge to roam again.”

  “You mean they dethink and rethink these people? Just to keep them putting on a show for us?”

  “Also to keep them happy,” I argued. “It’s for their own good. Think how they’d feel if they knew they were part of a display. This way they live out their lives without knowi
ng of any options. It’s no more unfair to live here than it was to live in the actual Seventeenth century. A lot better: the food is adequate, diseases are eliminated, sanitation is much improved.”

  “It sounds like an argument for slavery,” Diana snapped. “Or pig farming!”

  O O O

  We had come to what had to be the main street of the district. It was paved and lit. Bayswater High Street, the signpost read. The lights were open flames on stanchions, bright enough to mark the way but not to illuminate. “Perhaps we had better head back,” I suggested. “In another half-hour it will be too dark to see our way.”

  “The moon will be up in twenty minutes,” Diana told me. “And it’s only two days off full. Plenty of light.”

  “Example of your memory?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I saw a chart once.”

  The houses were two and three story, the upper stories overlapping the first. Picturesque in daylight, they were transformed at dusk into squatting ogres lurking behind the streetlights. The few people left on the street were scurrying like singleminded rats toward their holes.

  “Some things are changeless,” I said, pointing my walking stick at a receding back. “Fear of the night is one such. These people fear footpads and cutthroats—our people fear the stars. Evolution, I fear, is too slow a process. Our subconscious is still a million years behind us—in the caves of our youth.”

  “You mean that literally?” Diana asked. “About our people fearing the stars?”

  “Extraordinarily literally. Astrophobia is the current mode. Not a fear of standing under the stars, like Chicken Little, but fear that, circling one of those points of light, is the race that will destroy humanity. The government spends billions each year in pursuit of this fear. I believe that it couples with the subconscious belief that we deserve to be destroyed. That all Earth has turned its back to the stars to live wholly in the past is part of the syndrome.”