Cast Under an Alien Sun (Destiny's Crucible)

by Olan Thorensen

  A more fundamental question and one for which even the Watchers didn’t have the answer was why had that other alien race transplanted humans, along with other terrestrial plants and animals? Was it a benign act to let humans spread and evolve on more than one planet? A safety measure to assure humans survived in case something happened to their original planet? A malign act? A reason only understandable to an alien species?

  On one starry evening, he sat in the complex gardens and gazed at the stars with no constellations he recognized.

  He was likely the only human, on Earth or Anyar, who knew about the Watchers and the other human worlds, and there was nothing he could do with the information. He knew what would happen if in 1700 Earth he tried to describe television and aircraft. Depending on the country and perhaps even the locals, he could end up in an insane asylum or burned at the stake. So forget about telling anyone. Ever. It was knowledge he’d hold close and in isolation. That wasn’t all he knew. Even if he couldn’t share how he got here, he had scientific knowledge that would push Anyar civilizations ahead centuries. But what to do with that knowledge?

  For sixdays, he thought about how he might introduce knowledge or whether he dared at all.

  Chapter 9: Interview with the Abbot

  “Yozef! Wait a moment.”

  Yozef stopped and turned to face Brother Fitham. The kindly older brother smiled as he always did.

  Fitham laid an arthritic hand on Yozef’s forearm. “Abbot Sistian requests you meet with him in his office tomorrow after morning meal.”

  Yozef’s breath skipped at the words. He had been expecting this. “Did the abbot say what he wanted to meet about?”

  “No, but I assume he’s interested in how you’re progressing.”

  Yozef’s gut tightened. “I’m sure. Tell the abbot I’ll come as soon as I finish eating.”

  “Fine, fine.” Fitham patted him on the shoulder, turned, and retraced his steps.

  So. It’s that time. I’ve been wondering when the abbot would get around to this. I expected it to happen soon. The fact that I can carry on conversations with Brother Fitham is proof I’m ready to answer questions. The abbot has to be curious in the extreme about who the hell I am and how I got here. His manner is friendly enough, but this is likely to be a serious interrogation all the same. I’d better be on my toes.

  He ambled back to his room as he reviewed the past months. The language studies had progressed faster than his initial concerns, based on his experience with high school Spanish and chemical German. He was a sponge, soaking up Caedelli. He knew part of the reason was total immersion. There was nothing to fall back on, to clarify uncertainties in lessons, to socialize, or to retreat into English. Caedelli was it—unless he wanted to talk to himself, which he often did. Even granted the incentives, the speed at which he went from stumbling over a few words to freely conversing was unanticipated. New words keep cropping up, though once he heard them two or three times, he didn’t forget.

  Then there was the sheer necessity. He couldn’t communicate for any purpose without the language. In spite of that incentive, the speed with which he was picking it up gave him pause. He knew he was smart. Science, mathematics, yes. Languages, no. Yet here, fewer than three months into intensive study, and he could carry on conversations and read simple texts.

  At first, two-way verbal communication was a multi-stage process with a mental English-Caedelli dictionary. A local would say something, he would mentally translate, assemble the suspected correct Caedelli words, and pronounce them back. As time went on, mentally leaning on English faded. He still thought to himself and dreamed in English, but talking in Caedelli became easier day by day.

  He thanked God, or whomever, for the simple grammar. The rules were reasonably straightforward, with limited irregularities, compared to the declensions, cases, and genders of Spanish and German.

  He wondered whether his progress was only because of necessity or from effects of whatever the Watchers did when they fiddled with his physiology to help him survive? Was he now smarter, or was his memory enhanced? He suspected memory, since he didn’t feel smarter.

  “Thank you for coming, Yozef,” said the avuncular-sounding abbot as he welcomed Yozef. “Selmar and Brother Fitham tell me you’ve made amazing progress in learning Caedelli. Enough so that I’m anxious to learn more about you and your people.” The abbot waved to a pair of chairs facing each other, and they both sat. “And the medicants say you’re fully recovered from your ordeal.”

  The abbot continued inquiring into Yozef’s condition and was oh so friendly and supportive sounding. However, Yozef never lost the feeling that the agenda was to determine whether he was a victim or a danger, a lost human, an enemy spy, or a demon of whatever pantheon of gods they had here.

  “Tell me, Yozef, where is your home? The name of your people?”

  Best stick as close to the truth as possible—without telling the whole truth. The closer to the truth he stayed, the fewer inconsistencies would crop up later. Lying forced him to remember what story he told.

  “My people are Americans, and our country is called America.”

  “America,” said Sistian, letting the syllables roll off his tongue. “America. I don’t believe I have ever heard of America. Of course, I’m not well traveled throughout the world. What continent is America on, or is it more of an island like Caedellium?”

  “It’s on a continent, but we’ve had little contact with neighboring peoples. Though I don’t understand why, I know I’d never met any other peoples of Anyar before I awoke here on Caedellium.”

  Well, thought Sistian, the world is wide. There were many lands he was sure he’d never heard of. Still, it was unusual the man had never met anyone from outside his own people.

  Sistian reached behind himself and pulled a folded paper off a shelf. He laid it on the small table separating them and unfolded it several times to reveal a world map.

  “This is a map of Anyar. Can you show me where your land is?”

  Yozef looked at the map, his eyes roving over the features of the planet. He’d seen Anyar from images of the globe Harlie had shared with him, but the projection map made clearer the relationships of the major landmasses concentrated on half the globe.

  To the left side of the map was an island with more prominent labeling than the other lands. Yozef’s Caedelli reading lessons let him recognize the name of the island, Caedellium. It was about half the size of Texas or Madagascar, maybe some hundreds of miles across. Selmar hadn’t shown him any of this, so he wondered where Keelan lay.

  “I’m afraid I can’t show you where my land is, Abbot. To be honest, this is the first complete map of Anyar I’ve ever seen.” Which was true, though, of course, it was the only map of the planet he’d ever seen—he didn’t count the images of Anyar Harlie had shown him.

  “I don’t know why, but for some reason my people don’t interact much with the other lands. All I can say is that the voyage here was long. I wasn’t always fully conscious, so even that might be faulty memory. The climate also seemed similar to Caedellium, yet that could include much of the world.”

  “Do you remember how you got here? On what ship and of what people?”

  “No. I never saw those who took me from my homeland.” True. “They fed me, but I never left a small compartment or saw anyone.” True. “I don’t understand why they took me or how I got from their ship to the beach near Abersford and the abbey.” True . . . or close enough.

  The abbot shook his head. “Too bad. We would all like to know more about you, how this happened to you. What about your family? What is their place among your people?”

  Yozef paused. Was the abbot trying to pigeonhole him into a societal class? If he said the wrong thing, would it change how they treated him? Maybe they’d been so supportive of him out of being uncertain whether he belonged to a powerful family or clan. Yozef decided to take a chance and continue saying things were different where he came from . . . yet not too diffe
rent.

  “My father’s a scholastic, one who studies the heavens and the stars.”

  “Ah, an astrologer. One who predicts the future.”

  “Not exactly. He studies the heavens, only by observing the moons, the planets, and the stars. It’s called astronomy, and my father is an astronomer. In my land, we don’t depend on predictions based on the heavens. Although they can sometimes come true, we believe such auguries are often too vague to serve as guidelines for our daily lives.” That was as close as Yozef thought he could come without debunking astrology.

  Sistian nodded. “Something I agree with, although a few of my more conservative colleagues are not so sure. Astrology was important to our people in the past, though not so much anymore, except for perhaps the common, less educated people. It’s a belief not given credence by most of my brothers and sisters, so I find it interesting your people have come to the same conclusion.”

  Yozef saw an opening to both establish a rapport with the more educated locals and cover himself for the future. “Yes, it makes one consider that no matter where we are in the world, our peoples are coming to common understandings of God’s realm.”

  Sistian frowned a little. “Well, now we’re getting into theological areas we can discuss later.”

  Whoops, thought Yozef. Maybe I reached a little too far on that one. Be careful.

  “And the rest of your family? Are they all scholastics?”

  “Not all. Many found different goals to their lives. Some soldiers (at least in Grandfather’s generation), some theophists (I think Aunt Marcie’s minister diploma from that mail-order outfit qualifies—at least as far as the Caedelli are concerned), some leaders of our peoples (Uncle Fred was mayor of Castleton for one term before they realized he was spending more time bonking constituent wives than running the town—and Mom and Dad had stints as chairs of PTA chapters), and merchants and skilled tradesmen (well, a butcher at Safeway and cousin Bill’s marijuana dispensary in San Francisco have to count). My people believe that God’s plan for us is to do what each is best at and not be tied to a particular position or trade.”

  Sistian frowned, more puzzled than disapproving, “Then how does your family know its proper place? It sounds chaotic. Does the family have no role?”

  Yozef formulated his next words carefully. From what he’d gathered so far in speaking with Carnigan and other staff, the family, the village, and the clan took care of its members and normally provided a role for them. This naturally meant limiting options. If you were the son of a blacksmith, chances were you’d also be a blacksmith, since by the age of twelve a boy would be helping his father. If a daughter, you’d learn the skills of being a mother and caring for a family and in some circumstances work in a family trade. Stepping out of those boundaries would be difficult. If your family members were tradesmen and you decided to be a farmer, you’d have to save enough money to buy your own farm. Your family would help if they were affluent enough, or you’d marry the daughter of a sonless farmer. And forget about moving to a different village or town. It was always a balance between limiting options and providing for livelihood.

  Yozef thought there were advantages to knowing your place. He wondered whether the United States was overall better. Yes, the options there were infinitely greater, but the downside was less family and community support. But how to answer the abbot?

  “My people put great value on each person being responsible for his or her own success in life. While sometimes this means people don’t have as much help from family and clan as you have here, they have more options for what to do with their lives. Now that I’ve seen the people of Caedellium, I’m not wise enough to say which is better, your system here or ours at my home.”

  “Interesting. I’d like to speak with you more about this. As for your feeling your own lack of wisdom, the Word tells us that a path to wisdom is knowing you don’t have it.”

  Yozef frowned. “The Word?”

  “The Word of God,” Sistian stated. “Our main religious writing. It’s usually shortened to the Word in everyday speech.”

  Yozef nodded. “My people say a wise man knows he doesn’t know, while a fool knows what isn’t true.”

  Okay, maybe he couldn’t exactly the quote, but who here would know?

  Sistian smiled and nodded appreciatively. “Very true and interestingly stated. I may even use those words someday in a Godsday message.

  “And yourself, Yozef? You mentioned you were a student. Forgive me, but for us, someone of your age who was still a student would be unusual or the student not particularly bright. Certainly, the latter doesn’t apply to you. By your age, they would have finished their schooling and have a position based on their learnings.”

  He’d been waiting for the question. It was his chance for an opening to explain why he seemed to have so much exotic knowledge. No matter how careful he tried to be, it was only a matter of time before he began dropping pieces of that knowledge. He had to find a way around this, or it could have catastrophic consequences for him.

  “Our land is blessed by God to be extraordinarily bountiful. We’ve more than enough food for all, and we send much of our bounty to a trading center where it is exchanged with other lands for their goods. Also, our hills and mountains are rich in gold and silver. All of this allows our people to spend more time considering the wonder of God’s world in all its aspects. Many of the fields of study would probably seem trivial and pointless in Caedellium. Your land is productive, at least the parts I’ve seen, but still requires much effort and sweat to yield. Imagine if suddenly your people only had to work half as much time as they do now. What would they do with the rest of the time?”

  Sistian considered this novel idea for a few moments. “I think it’d depend on each person. Many would simply take the time to do nothing. Sit and talk, engage in games, perhaps consume more alcohol, if they had both the extra time and money you suggest. For myself, there are always people I wish I had more time to counsel, and I’d spend more time studying and considering the Word.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “Diera? Ah . . . she’d spend more time with patients and studying medical books. She always worries she’s forgotten some piece of knowledge or records of past treatments that she might find useful.”

  “What if Diera had access to ten times as many books and records?”

  “I’m afraid she would try to drive herself to learn everything, no matter how much there was.” Sistian smiled. “I might have to drag her from the library every day.”

  “What if it was a hundred times? A thousand?”

  Sistian was silent, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Yozef. “A thousand times as much knowledge? How is that possible? I know we’re remote from the rest of Anyar, but we’re not that isolated!”

  “Consider if your people spent half their time in study for a hundred years.”

  Sistian sighed and sat back farther in his chair. “I see where you’re headed. I can’t say I truly understand the consequences of what you imply, though I can see how the amount of knowledge could become huge. However, in your proposal, if there’s that much knowledge, how does any one person learn it all?”

  “They don’t,” said Yozef. “With this much knowledge, the best that can be done is that any one person can only study small parts of the total.”

  “Then they would be almost ignorant of the whole and all the interconnections of knowledge!”

  “Not completely. All students study basic topics. This gives some knowledge common to everyone and takes perhaps the first fifteen years of study. Beyond that, we narrow our focus into specific topics and study those in more depth—a common knowledge base and then specializations. While it’s not a satisfactory solution, it’s the best resolution my people have come up with, and many have argued and struggled with the problem.”

  “I can see how that might be one solution,” Sistian allowed, “although, as you say, not completely satisfactory. I suppose it’s not that di
fferent from here, although your people spend many more years at study than we do. And that explains how someone of your age is still a student.”

  “Yes. I had the common ten years of study, followed by another four years narrowing to only a fraction of knowledge, and finally, another two years of even narrower specialization before whatever happened led me to be here on Caedellium.”

  “And yourself, what’s the area of knowledge you specialized in?”

  “We call it ‘chemistry.’ The study of how to take known substances and use them to make new ones.”

  “Chemistry,” repeated Sistian slowly. “Chemistry. I’ve never heard this word. I assume it is in your language. What exactly does it involve?”

  “Many aspects would be difficult for me to explain to you because you don’t have the words or background knowledge. This one example may be instructive. You make beer out of barley and wheat. Do you know exactly what is happening during the process of beer-making?”

  “No. I assume the brewers do, though.”

  “I doubt it. They probably are simply following steps they learned from past brewers. In contrast, our scholastics understand exactly what is happening. The same with winemaking. Although I have never made beer or wine myself, by ‘chemistry,’ I know that both drinks contain something we call ‘alcohol,’ the ingredient that makes you relax and feel good. This alcohol is converted from the ingredients of the grain or fruit—starch in grain for beer and sugar in fruit juices for wine.”