And Having Writ . . .

by Donald R. Bensen

  I thought I might divert him with an excursion to Roslyn, the neighboring village, as I had noticed next to the tavern a large mechanical device of a sort I thought he might find interesting. "Ha," he said when he saw it. "The water coming down off the hill there turns it, and that shaft it's connected to runs inside that building, where it does some work. My word, these people like to do things on the cheap—all that power, and not paying for it. Hmm—interesting arrangement of slats or whatever . . . catches the water so it turns, but lets it out so it doesn't slow the motion down. How . . . ?"

  He leaned forward to examine it, but his interest was dampened—as indeed, was he himself, as I humorously pointed out afterward, though he did not seem to understand the jest—when he slipped and fell onto the wheel, which rolled him down into the stream that fed it, then carried him beneath it and expelled him into the waters of the harbor.

  A native in a boat nearby caught him when he surfaced, hoisted him aboard, and brought him ashore. As a needed restorative measure for Dark, and a reward for his rescuer, I insisted that both repair with me to the tavern. In short order, Dark, wrapped in a blanket while his sodden clothing steamed in front of the fire which warmed the room, sat next to me on a bench, while our guest faced us across our table and sipped a warming drink.

  Dark took a gulp of his—it was made, I believe, with a distillate of fermented molasses and adorned with a lump of animal-derived fat, and had been heated by plunging a piece of hot iron into its container—and said, "Ha! What power that thing had! Just whooshed me along under the water and flung me out! Those slat things really bite into the water. Say . . . that'd work the other way, wouldn't it? I mean, look—you could put a power source onto one of those wheel things, d'you see, and stick it into the water. And if you had it on the side of a boat, when it turned, why, the boat would just push through the water like mad!"

  Our guest looked at his glass and at ours before he spoke. "Seems t' me you'd just sort of spin round if you did that," he said carefully. "Hangin' it over the side, the way you seem t' be suggestin', why, it'd turn your boat in circles, 'stead of goin' ahead, as I s'pose you'd want it t' do."

  "Oh." Dark thought this over. "You're right, I guess. What a shame."

  "O' course," the other went on wryly, "you could put a pair of 'em on, one on one side, one on t'other. That way they'd balance out, an' you'd get more power, too, I expect."

  "Hey, that's a great idea!" Dark exclaimed. "Listen," he said to me, "do you think we could do ourselves some good with these people by putting them onto that? Or maybe," he went on, lowering his voice and giving a quick glance across the table, "if things don't go so well when You-know-who gets inaugurated as You-know-what next March, and we have to make our own way, we could sell the notion. We'd cut this chap in on the profits for helping, of course."

  "There was talk," said Dark's rescuer, looking at a point somewhere above our heads, "about sellin' off the William Cullen Bryant place down the shore road for a lunatic hospital. Either of you fellers hear if that ever come about? Or if there was any other such enterprise openin' up hereabouts?"

  "No," I answered. "We don't, ah, get around very much, and don't get to hear what the na—what you people talk about."

  "Did seem t' me that was the way of it," the man said, standing up. "Been interesting talkin' to you fellers. I don't know when I've had a conversation just like it. Thanks fer the drink, but I think I've had enough. Suggest maybe you have, too."

  "Ah," Dark said, "but look at it this way. If one of these things gives me a whole new approach to water transportation, what wouldn't another one do?"

  The native seemed to have no adequate response to that, and left.

  Our walk home, an hour later, began pleasantly, though the sky was covered with clouds and the brisk wind was bitingly cold. After a bit, though, I had the uneasy impression that the unfamiliar stimulant we had taken at the tavern was affecting my senses; it seemed to me that I saw several white spots whirling through the air, and at the same time I experienced a chilly, stinging sensation on my face and hands. Worse, it appeared to me that the ground and trees were gradually becoming tinged with white, as though my ability to perceive color were draining away.

  "Well," Dark said loudly as we trudged along. "This is interesting countryside, the trees and all. They look different from our trees, don't they? The fronds or whatever they are falling off them like that."

  "They aren't the same as at home, no," I agreed.

  "Quite different, in some ways," he said. "And the ground, too. One notices, from time to time, so to speak, some differences about that." I saw him give a quick sidelong glance at me. "And it isn't to be expected, I suppose, that the air would always be the same, either."

  "How do you mean?" I asked.

  "Nothing in particular, Raf, but—whoop!" One foot skidded from under him, leaving a trail in the illusion of whiteness on the roadway, and he nearly fell.

  I stooped and ran my hand along the ground. A scraping of white matter gathered on it, which quickly resolved itself into a clear liquid which I recognized as water.

  "Hey, this stuff's real, isn't it?" Dark called, having made the same experiment.

  "It seems so," I replied. "It's like rain, I imagine—of course, it'd naturally come down frozen when the temperature drops." I was irritated with myself for not having foreseen this phenomenon, which now seemed natural enough. It does not occur on our home planet—nor does the climate there change with time, as on Earth, which I suppose accounts for its absence—and I had not encountered it in the course of my Exploration duties; but still, given the factors involved, I ought to have been able to predict it.

  "That's good," Dark said. "I thought that stuff we drank was making me see things."

  "That would be extremely unlikely," I told him.

  "Our implants are specifically designed to keep us from being affected harmfully by anything we ingest." I spoke with some severity, I fear, as I was reproaching myself for having forgotten this.

  "That may be," Dark said, "but I don't know that they were meant to handle anything like that rum stuff."

  In spite of our enforced leisure, the time passed swiftly. Shortly after we marked the turning of the year with the ceremonies Oxford insisted on, which for some reason resulted in all of us being afflicted by a temporary return of the fatigue I had experienced at the players' club in New York, I realized that there was not much time remaining before Mr. Edison's inauguration as President.

  I sought out Ari. "Listen," I said, "hadn't we better start working our plans out? I don't know what Edison will do with us, but it seems to me we've got to be ready to get at this business of speeding up the native technology, or we'll never get away from here."

  "I think I've got an approach," Ari said. "Mind you, it's not completely clear in my mind yet, but it's coming. This is a remarkable world, remarkable. There are some very intriguing possibilities. . . ."

  As an experienced Recorder, I have to say that this sounded as though what was being communicated was that Ari was completely baffled, but in fact only a few weeks later, he called us together out of Oxford's hearing to lay out his proposed course of action.

  "One thing that has fascinated me," he began—Dark rolled his eyes; we all knew from experience that whatever fascinated Ari was likely to take a lot of time in the telling—"is the attitude toward warfare. It seems to be a general assumption that, in spite of the disastrously prolonged wars of the planet's past, modern weaponry and transport will result in wars which, if they are fought at all, will be short and sharp. All the major nations have secret plans, which journalists are able to ferret out only with some effort, calling for swift movement of troops by railway, automobile and bicycle to deliver decisive blows to an adversary. At the same time, there is a worldwide interest in peace, with many nations cooperating in a running conference designed to assure it in one of the smaller countries in Europe. The almost unanimous opinion of informed people is that wars are on the
way to becoming a thing of the past and, if they occur at all, will only be temporary and local.

  "Yet," he went on, "I have discerned a Metahistorical pattern in some of the very measures designed to assure this. In Europe, for instance, all the major powers are allied with others, the notion being that no one will go to war with any one nation, as several others are pledged to assist it, presenting a joint antagonist too powerful to deal with."

  "That doesn't seem like such a bad notion," Dark observed. "I've gone to lots of refreshment places and such on different worlds that I wouldn't care to enter unless I had a couple of friends with me to discourage some disorderly chap from seeing if he could take me apart for fun."

  "Quite," Ari said. "But I recall a few occasions on which such friends have had to deliver you to Wanderer in a fairly used-up state."

  "Well, that was when the disorderly chap had some friends with him, too, and . . . oh."

  "Precisely. This balance of alliances may well deter one power from making war on another—but if it does not, it then assures that any war becomes a general war. And that, gentlemen, is what is about to happen."

  We would have taken his word for it, but he felt impelled to go into detail—I suppose to have some fun after all those months of research. There was a lot about the effects of industrialization and public health work, but the interesting bits concerned the fairly odd people who ran some of the big countries. There was one in England, where Wells came from, who seemed fairly sensible, but he was getting on and not well, and so would have to be considered as a temporary element. For some reason, which I didn't understand Ari's explanation of, two of the other important rulers were relatives of this King Edward's, by blood or marriage. One of them, the Emperor of Germany, was apparently a highly excitable type and much given to doing alarming things. He claimed to be an absolute monarch, but all the same had nearly been thrown out, within the past few months, owing to a lot of odd goings on. Apparently he had been at a party where one of his generals, dressed in a woman's dancing costume, had dropped dead; and this and similar matters had not set well with the Germans. The other was also an emperor, in a place called Russia, and while not as active as his cousin or whatever the relationship was, was almost as alarming, as he had a tendency to do nothing much and pay attention to whomever had spoken to him last. This resulted in many countries being under the impression that they had agreements of various sorts with Russia—agreements which turned out not to be effective.

  These and several of the other kings, emperors and such in Europe had possessions and alliances in other parts of the planet. "So the whole point," Ari explained, "is that once anything happens, it's going to spread all around the world. And, given the factors I have already pointed out and the extremely unstable temperament of the principal personalities involved—Wells was right about that, you know—why, that anything is bound to happen. This Nicholas, the one in Russia, for instance; he could get nervous about keeping his people under control and decide to start up a war to give them something to keep busy at. He tried it a few years ago, and it didn't work, but that doesn't seem to bother these people. If he went into what they call the Balkans, say, that would bring Turkey into it, and England would get nervous about India, and likely join with the French to stop him; William in Germany might lend a hand either way, and they'd all draw on their colonies and friends and relations, and you'd have—"

  "Hey!" Dark said. He had been studying the map Ari had provided, trying to keep track of the countries involved in the discourse. "Here's something interesting."

  "Interesting as opposed to what?" Ari said testily.

  "Look here. This Russia place, a bit of it runs all the way to this ocean here, see? And on the other side of that, you've got San Francisco, which is near where those ham-fisted natives sank poor old Wanderer. Well, then, this part here, what they call Siberia, that's where we near as anything crashed. I think I could work it out . . . Ha! Right here, a place called Tunguska. We'd have blown a damned big hole in it if we'd impacted."

  Ari and I looked quickly at Valmis, expecting him to get into his familiar routine about the morality of using the Probability Displacer and point out that in one continuum we had created an impact crater in the Tunguska region, but he merely shrugged and said, "What is, is. Or perhaps it isn't. But we might as well act as if it is, as there isn't any way to act as if it isn't."

  There isn't much you can do with a statement like that, and I rather welcomed Ari's resumption of his lecture.

  "The main point is, this whole place is close to critical mass, so to speak. It's going to go up, to explode in general warfare, and soon. Probably not for another three years, but certainly within six or seven—say, 1912 to 1916. Every principle of Metahistory dictates that, in spite of what the natives may think. There will be wholesale destruction and slaughter; much of the civilization on this planet will lie in ruins; all the energy, wealth and ingenuity the major nations possess will be expended on an effort which will drain them completely and achieve none of the objectives they intend."

  We contemplated this dire picture for a moment, then Dark said, "Ah, then, what we've got to do is work out a way to get them to stop it and set about learning how to do what they've got to do to refit Wanderer. How do you think we could—"

  "No." Ari shook his head. "On the contrary, we must bend every effort to get them into this war as quickly as possible!"

  13

  I am no Metahistorian, nor would I care to be, so I could not fault Ari's logic as he explained it; but the idea did seem a bit raw to me.

  So it did to Dark. "It makes sense the way you put it," he said dubiously, "but I can't say I like it. I mean, it's all very well to say that they're going to have the war anyhow, and if they start it up now, it'll go faster and be done with, so we get the benefit of the speed-up in science and so on without everything getting used up—all right, you're the Metahistorian, and I expect you know what you're talking about. But all the same, prodding them into it, that seems pretty shabby."

  "True enough," Ari said. "It was not an easy decision to arrive at, either ethically or, I may point out, in terms of long hours of study and calculation performed whilst you, Raf and Valmis were amusing yourselves. It represents my best effort and thought, but I should of course be glad to hear of any more acceptable alternative you might have to offer."

  As he was well aware it would, this effectively silenced our objections, and he proceeded to the next stage of his plan. It was necessary, according to him, to pay personal visits to certain of the important rulers—mainly Edward of England, Nicholas of Russia, William of Germany, and possibly Francis Joseph of Austria, though this last, being advanced in years, might well not be in any condition actually to comprehend much of what was said to him—and, using Metahistorical principles and techniques, to act upon them so as to speed up their war plans. He refused to be more specific than this, saying, "I'm a Metahistorian, and you're not. It's all I can do to handle the responsibilities of my craft, and I can't imagine what it might do to you to have to deal with it. I'm certain I don't want to be an Integrator or a Captain or a Recorder."

  "How are you to get to see these fellows?" Dark asked. "Or is that a secret, too?"

  "On the contrary," Ari replied. "It is a matter of practical detail, not of Metahistory, and so does not fall within my scope. Getting us from one place to another, setting up appointments—that's the sort of thing Recorders and Captains traditionally do, as I recall, and I am sure that you and Raf can manage it. I am perfectly willing to handle the really difficult parts of the enterprise, the actual dealing with these monarchs."

  Dark and I found after a few moments' discussion that the solution was easily arrived at. That is not to say that it struck either of us as very good, just that it was the only possible one.

  "Everyone still takes us for ambassadors, bar Oxford, Edison and Roosevelt," Dark summed it up, "so there'd be no trouble about getting at the kings and such, once we were where they are.
So we've got to get Edison to let us go over to this Europe and go see them. Not, of course, telling him that we want to stir them up into shooting at each other—I don't suppose he'd go for that—but, oh, saying that they might want to help out in doing something to get Wanderer refitted. That's what we actually will be after, of course, in the long run, so it's not that far off the truth."

  When we told Oxford what we felt prudent to reveal of our plans, he said, "I don't know why he wouldn't go for that. If you're traveling around hobnobbing with the Kaiser and so on, that'll help keep up the fiction that you're what you're supposed to be a while longer. I don't know what he'd do with you otherwise. I have to say, it tickles me that you guys put such a big one over on both those big guns, Teddy and Edison. And, for that matter, I'm a little easier in my mind thinking of you as beached sailors instead of a sort of advance guard of a whole new civilization. It kind of got to me when old Geronimo said what he did, because that seems to be the way of it—even if the civilized fellows come in with the best of intentions, the ones who are there already get it in the neck, one way or another. They just can't compete, and they sort of give up and turn themselves into carbon copies of the new people. We've done that often enough, Lord knows, and I don't favor poetic justice one bit, not when I'm on the short end of it."

  As our intention was precisely to create drastic change in the society of the whole planet, though not quite in the way he spoke of, his comment made me uneasy. I liked Oxford—we all did—and had reason to be grateful to him, and it went against my grain to have to conceal from him that we proposed to act in a way he would find upsetting. On the other hand, concealment was necessary if our interests were to be served, so there seemed no choice; conscientious action, it seemed to me, ought always to be founded on rationality.

  "It is a sort of ordeal," Ari observed, "perhaps a survival of customs I have read of in Levels Two and Three in this planet's cultural evolution. They conduct the ceremony in the open in this abominable cold to show that both the old President and the new one are hale enough to stand it, and I suppose it works well enough; I believe only one of them ever died of it."