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NINETEEN

His Royal Grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI sat with one hip on the corner of the desk of Tom Strong, E.E., Warlock of the Western Islands. 

"So, Tom. What have you and your people learned about the various equipments our visitors have brought to my island?" 

"Less than I'd hoped, Your Grace. Over the shortwave, they have been talking for fifty years about the rapid progress that has been made outside in electronics, but it wasn't until I actually saw some of it that I realized, on a gut level, just how much has really been accomplished. Everything is a thousand times smaller than what we used in the war. It does a thousand times more, and seems to use less than one hundredth of the power to do it with. With most of the devices I've opened up, the truth is that I don't have any idea of how they work. I often don't even see how they could be built in the first place. Wires almost too tiny to be seen are somehow glued to thin sheets of hard plastic, and then soldered somehow to the legs of other devices as small as insects. I daren't try to unsolder anything, for my own equipment is so crude by comparison that I would surely do damage. And my understanding is far cruder than my equipment!" 

"But surely there's something that you've learned." 

"I think that I know what some of this stuff is supposed to accomplish, Your Grace. Five of these things are radios of various sorts, that operate on various frequencies. This suggests that the shortwave sets that I have managed to keep operating can receive only a small portion of the broadcasting that is actually going on out there.  

"There are several televisions, which receive a full-color moving picture, along with the sound that an ordinary radio would reproduce. There are two devices that also reproduce a picture, but do it on paper. This is in addition to a printing device that connects only to a thing called a `computer,' but which seems to do other things besides computation. This disc, clearly labeled `The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' fits into a slot in the computer, which suggests all sorts of things." 

"And what might this Britannica thing be?" 

"When I was out there, it was a set of large volumes printed on very thin paper that took up seven feet of shelf space. It was a summation of all human knowledge." 

"And now all of that is apparently on this small, shiny disc, along with all the new things that they've learned in the last fifty years. Yes, I see your problem. I take it then that you will recommend that our visitors explain it all to you." 

"Yes, Your Grace, and that they get it all working again. This equipment can teach us a great deal about the outside world, things that we will need to know, if we are ever to deal with them on any but disastrous terms." 

"And you think these men can be trusted? When helping us might mean hurting their own world?" 

"Sire, you are used to thinking of the outside as being a single entity, as the Western Islands are a single social, political, and economic entity. This is a mistake. The outside world consists of many separate, disorganized governments, with many conflicting interests. This fact is one of the few in our favor." 

"We have other strengths, Tom. Don't forget that we of the Islands are each the result of seventy-five generations of very careful selective breeding. We are a superior people, and that will tell more than any other factor when we go out to face the world." 

"I hope so, Your Grace, for face them we must, and soon." 

 

* * *

* * *

 

Spiffed up and dressed in my best, it was with considerable trepidation that I followed the warlock's page past two clerks who doubled as armed guards, up a bodaciously long spiral staircase, over a stone bridge that spanned a cleft in the central mountain that had to be over three hundred feet deep, and finally into the great man's inner sanctum high above the Bay of Avalon.

It wasn't at all what I had been expecting. The room was huge, as were almost all rooms on the Western Isles, but whereas every other area I'd seen was extremely underfurnished, to the point of looking naked, this place was crowded with tables that were piled high with arcane equipment.

The equipment wasn't what Hollywood told you a warlock's workshop should have, either. There was not one eye of newt or ear of toad in the place. No bubbling retorts, no imps and devils staring out from sealed bottles.

On the wall, where one would have expected stuffed owls and mummified bats, there was instead a hand- drawn chart of the Periodic Table of Elements, with the last ten or so at the bottom missing. There was some ceramic chemistry equipment standing long unused in one corner, but mostly the place was filled with books and old electrical junk. In truth, the room looked more like a World War II electronics lab than anything else that came to mind, with lots of ancient tube-type equipment lying around in various states of disrepair.

In addition to all the old stuff, three big tables were covered with all of the new electronic stuff that had been taken from The Brick Royal, while a fourth held much of our library.

"Ah! G'day, mate," said a voice in English with a strong Australian accent. "Tom Strong here. Welcome aboard and all that."

I turned to find the warlock sitting at a rolltop desk on a swivel chair. The fellow looked to be in his sixties, with white hair and clear blue eyes. He was wearing a long black robe, and there was a tall pointed black hat on the credenza behind his desk, but his outfit wasn't embroidered with the astrological symbols that you'd just naturally expect. It was embroidered with tube-type circuit schematics.

"Thanks for the gifts you sent me, though you really sent too much. The gold in particular, well, you might as well take it back. I just wouldn't have any use for it. Later on, if you still feel generous, maybe I can talk you out of some of your incredible electronic gear."

"As you wish, sir. You're Australian?" I said.

"Right. I was on a bomber during the last big war, one of your B-17s, actually, when our navigator and our pilot got each other lost on a dark and stormy night. The twits had us a thousand miles in the wrong direction, the fuel ran out, and the pilot had to make a dead-stick landing on the island. Made a complete hash of it. Been here ever since. Have a chair, won't you?"

"What happened to the rest of you?" I said, sitting down.

"Well, only three us survived the crash, and one of the gunners was killed a few months later doing something really stupid. That was over fifty years ago, and Johnny died last year. Cancer, I think it was, although they're not much for autopsies around here. I'm the last one left. It's one of the reasons that I'm so happy that you bastards have arrived. Someone from the outside world to talk to, you see."

I reminded myself that "bastard" was a polite term, if you were an Australian.

"Then why have you waited two months before you asked me to visit you?"

"In part because of the quarantine rules, in part to give you time to heal from your wounds, and to give you a bit of time to start learning the language. Also, it took me a few weeks to recover from that mild form of influenza that you chaps gifted us with. Then, too, there's a bit of politics going on between me and the good archbishop, but you don't want to hear about that. Anyway, after fifty years, what's a few more months?"

"So you've been here the whole while? You never thought of going home?"

"Oh, at first I did, but there was really no way to do it. I didn't bring a boat the way you folks did, and the old bird I came in on was total loss and no mistake. Then, after a while, well, this place sort of grows on you. I married, settled in, and prospered. But look here. I'm the one who is supposed to be questioning you, and not the other way around." He pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Nguyen Hien Treet. That's Indochinese, isn't it."

"Vietnamese, actually."

"But it says here that you're a U.S. citizen."

"I am. I was born and raised in the United States. In fact, this `vacation' is my first extended trip away from there."

"And how does a Vietnamese fellow like you get born in the U.S.?"

"It didn't take much talent, I assure you. After the same war that you fought in, my parents found work as a nanny and a gardener, employed by a British general. He promised them long-term employment and British citizenship if they would go back to England with him. Naturally, they jumped at the chance, and sailed there with him. But after the war, England was forced to go on an extreme austerity program. The general found that he could no longer afford many servants, and was forced to let my parents go. He was an honorable man, however, and even after they were no longer his employees, he used his influence to see to it that they received the promised citizenship papers. Despite this, my parent's financial prospects in England were not good. Those few jobs that were available always seemed to go to Anglo-Saxons. In time, though, they discovered that as British subjects, it was fairly easy to get a visa to the United States, and their friend the general was able to arrange free military transportation for them to Michigan. They got there in 1948, and eventually, as you say, they prospered. I was born in 1953."

"I see. I was wondering why you had a Yank accent and not an Indochinese one."

"I'm sorry to say that growing up, I learned very little Vietnamese. My parents felt that I would be better off learning only English. The problem with that was that they barely spoke the language themselves, so my first language was actually broken English. To make matters worse, they used Vietnamese between themselves when they wanted to discuss something that we children shouldn't know about. I think that I must have internalized the strange attitude that somehow, other languages were something that I shouldn't know. Anyway, in school, I really blew it, trying to learn Latin and later Russian."

"But I understand that your Westronese is coming along quite well, Treet," he said in Westronese.

"I think they call it total immersion. But look. Could you answer just a few questions for me?"

"Certainly, mate, in a few minutes. First though, what was your profession? I mean, you seem to be an educated man, but what did you do with yourself?"

"I was an engineer, working in the special machine tool trade in Michigan. My partner and I owned our own company, and we mostly designed and built special machines for the auto companies."

"Special machines? That's like lathes and drill presses?"

"Hardly. Most of the machines we built were completely automated, without any workers at all. They did things like assembling automatic transmissions or rebuilding used crankshafts."

"Humph. Not much call for that sort of thing around here, I'm afraid. Your friend Adam Kulczynski was also an engineer?"

"Yes, we were partners. Mostly, he took care of the shop and I took care of sales, although we each filled in wherever needed."

"Pity. Well now, I'll answer your questions then. Within reason, of course."

"Thank you. First, could you please tell me just where in the hell we are, and just how someplace as obviously impossible as this island can seem to exist?"

"Now that takes quite a long answer. I don't imagine that there's any chance that you brought any tobacco with you, is there?"

"Sorry. I used to smoke, but everybody back home is quitting it now, since the habit was proved to cause long-term damage to one's health. We've got some Foster's beer stored somewhere, though, if you could see fit to answer my questions."

"Bribery, I see. Very well, then. I'll expect a few cases tomorrow. To answer your question, I suppose that the story starts some fifty thousand years ago, during the last ice age. So much water was tied up in the ice caps that covered half of Europe, Asia and North America that the sea level was down several hundred yards, and most of the world's continental shelves were exposed.

"A series of volcanoes erupted in an area that was then dry land, but is now a hundred miles off the west coast of France.

"Now, most volcanoes come in one of three varieties. They spit out either lava, or dust, or mud, or sometimes all three. But there is a very rare sort where the lava is glassy and has just the right amount of gasses absorbed in it. When this sort of lava oozes out slowly, the absorbed gasses come out of solution and form bubbles in the lava. There's one like that in Hawaii, they tell me, and when the molten rock flows out on the ocean, the fluffy stuff just floats away. Well, the lava from our ice-age volcanoes didn't float away just then because it was a hundred miles from the ocean. It just kept on oozing and solidifying, and piling higher, wider, and deeper.

"When the ice age ended, the sea level rose and our volcanoes became a collection of islands. Now they didn't float away because they were stuck quite firmly to the continental shelf, and there they sat for the next forty-nine thousand years or so.

"In time they were discovered by people. It happened quite early, we think. While we have no records of the first landings, there are written records on this island that go back to 2754 B.C., and since they used to have five times our current land area, there were about as many people then as now. The old histories make fascinating reading. You might have that lady friend of yours check out some of our early books from the library, when your reading skills pick up, that is.

"For the most part, due to their remote location, the Western Isles were spared the invasions and empires that have wracked Europe from the earliest times. We have tended to be a fairly peaceful people, at least compared to the other European nations. Oh, we've had our wars, rebellions, and assassinations, but they were fewer in number and lower in ferocity than the average.

"Also, we were the first nation in the world to become Christians. You've heard of the apostle, Doubting Thomas? Well, about in the middle of the first century he came to our islands, and converted us from paganism without much fuss and bother at all. St. Thomas became our first bishop, and the church he founded has been the only one here ever since.

"I gather from your expression that you're not very religious, but you have to realize that Christianity is a powerful force hereabouts, and has been for almost two thousand years. Aside from our unique geology, it's been the dominant molding force both for the culture and technology of the islands."

"Christianity is responsible for your low level of technology?" I said.

"No, mate. It has been responsible for the high level of our technology. We both know that on the mainland, there has always been a tension between science and religion. It's not that way here, the current political differences between me and the archbishop notwithstanding.

"Think about the stories that you've heard concerning Doubting Thomas. He wouldn't believe that Christ had arisen, even after he had personally seen Him himself. He insisted on positive proof, putting his fingers into Christ's nail holes, and his arm into the spear wound in Christ's side.

"Can you understand that such an attitude was just what was needed to foster the scientific method? St. Thomas always insisted that one should always examine everything for one's self, and never trust to dogma or unsubstantiated folk tales. As a result, there has been a formal scientific organization here for over eighteen hundred years. The whole scientific revolution started here fifteen hundred years before it caught hold in Europe."

"And you are the current head of this scientific organization?" I asked.

"Right. The Wizards. Oh, the titles and all are a bit archaic, but that's to be expected with so old an organization. We've been carrying on our scientific researches for almost two millennia."

"Then why are you so far behind the rest of the world?" I said.

"First off, we're not as backward as we might appear to be. True, our clothing styles haven't changed much in the last five hundred years, but that's because of some of our high technology, not because of any lack of imagination on our part. When any article of apparel can be expected to last several hundred years, there is very little incentive to make much new clothing. We have no group of garment manufacturers here eager to increase their sales by making last year's fashions obsolete. What little new clothing we need to make is done as a hobby by the women here. They like to compete with each other on their embroidery, but if they changed the basic styles, everything they inherited from their grandmothers would be obsolete. A change in style would make them poorer, not richer.

"Then too, as you well know, in certain fields, horticulture, for example, and the study of ocean currents and weather patterns, we're considerably ahead of the rest of you.

"But for the rest, there are several obvious reasons why we're presently behind. You know that we have always been in a really dismal state when it comes to raw materials. We have no ores, no fossil fuels, and almost no minerals at all. Furthermore, there are damn few of us. There are only about twelve thousand people on all of the islands together, compared to upwards of six billion of you in the outside world.

"You can't expect us to stay ahead of the rest when we're outnumbered by a half million to one!"

 

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Framed