Charles Sheffield: Tomorrow and Tomorrow

And the population of other planets and moons? It was one of Drake’s few questions. Par Leon replied with a verbal shrug. There were people living out there, certainly, but who cared how many? Other planets and moons had no long history, in particular no long musical history. Therefore, they were without interest. If Drake wanted to know such strange things, he could do so without taking the valuable time of a human. The machines and data banks were available. Even if Drake had to learn a new language, that also would be no problem. Vocabulary and grammatical rules could be instilled almost instantly using the feedback helmets. Use of language, particularly spoken language, came a little more slowly, because it required physical coordination and practice. A week, maybe, rather than a day.

“But now” — Leon had clearly spent as much time as he wanted to on such dull matters — “let’s talk about music.”

He did. Happily, and incomprehensibly. Drake did not tell him that he could not understand. He would do his duty and learn about modern music when the time came. For tonight, he was content to sit back, eat and drink, and build his resolve for whatever lay ahead.

A civilization consists of far more than facts, rules, and languages. After a couple of weeks of induced-knowledge nights, Drake began to wonder if some aspects of his new world would be forever beyond him, no matter how long he lived there.

Science was one of them. Twenty-sixth-century science, particularly the basic assumptions that lay beneath it, totally eluded him. It was no surprise that he would find the subject difficult. That had always been the case. In his own time his teachers had accused him of having talent but no interest, and of dreaming his days away with words and music.

Even so, the general ideas of science ought to be accessible. They were supposed to be no more than common sense, elevated to become a discipline. But he found himself struggling hopelessly — and he was struggling, hard, working to understand more than he had ever done as a young man. Ana’s salvation, when it finally came, would derive from science, not from music.

Finally he sought help — not from Par Leon, who was itching for Drake’s indoctrination to end so they could get to work, and who neither knew nor cared about science. Instead Drake dived into the data net, developed beyond anything dreamed of in his own time. He asked for someone who would be willing to translate for him from Science, which he could not speak or write, to Universal. In return he offered knowledge of his own times.

The woman who contacted him had no apparent interest in the early twenty-first century, or at least in the things that Drake might have to say about it. That confirmed the wisdom of his long-ago decision to provoke the curiosity of musical specialists. Cass Leemu was a specialist also, but her own field was one that Drake was unable to comprehend, even in general terms and even after hours of conversation and study. She said it was a form of physics. It seemed to be no more than pictures, that somehow yielded quantitative results.

Cass was a black woman whose age, like Par Leon’s, was difficult to determine. She was a tall brunette with a slightly large and blocky head, no eyelashes or eyebrows, and a sumptuous body. Drake suspected minor genetic modifications. Her motive in meeting was either pure curiosity in a specimen of primitive humanity — Drake — or it was for a reason beyond his comprehension.

Her explanations were as clear as they could be, given Universal’s limits for scientific explanation.

“It is the typical problem of a major paradigm shift.” They were in her private quarters. Cass Leemu was almost naked, lolling back on a couch and scratching her bare belly thoughtfully as she spoke. In an earlier time, Drake reflected, her exposed body would have been a major obstacle to simple information transfer. It would also have been considered a clear invitation.

She went on, “Is the name of Isaac Newton familiar to you?”

“Of course. Gravity, and the laws of motion.”

“Right. Familiar, and easy to comprehend. We agree on that. But did you know that most of his contemporaries found his work quite beyond them? He introduced notions of absolute space and time, which they found implausible. They argued, with justice, that only the separation between objects could have physical meaning. The idea of absolute coordinates, as opposed to relative distances, made no sense to them. Also, his work was most easily derived and understood employing the calculus, which to the scientists of the seventeenth century was shrouded in the paradoxes of infinitely small quantities. It took three generations to resolve the paradoxes, absorb the new world view, and work with it comfortably. The same thing happened two centuries later, when Maxwell elevated the concept of a field to central importance. Many of his contemporaries, to the end of their lives, tried to devise mechanical analogies that dispensed with the need for an electromagnetic field. And in the twentieth century, when uncertainty and undecidability assumed a dominant position in the prevailing world view, even the greatest scientist of his

time — Einstein — had trouble accepting them.”

“Are you telling me that the same thing happened again, after I entered the cryowomb?”

“Indeed it did.” Cass Leemu smiled and stroked her right nipple. It was clear that she considered her action quite empty of erotic content. Paradigm shift. Drake was tempted to ask her to have a private meal with him, and see if and where she blushed.

“It has happened not once,” she went on, “but three times. There have been three major viewpoint shifts. Our understanding of Nature differs more from the perspectives of your time, than yours differed from the Romans.”

“So I am going to be like Newton’s colleagues, unable to comprehend a new foundation.”

“I am afraid so. Unless you can master the concept of…” She paused, then smiled again at Drake, this time apologetically. “I am sorry. The word for the idea that now underpins science lacks any adequate useful paraphrase in Universal. Even the general data banks are silent. But if you really wish to study science, and learn the Science language beginning with the absolute basics, I would be willing to help you.”

“I can’t do that. Not yet.” Drake had already given up any notion of learning science for himself, but he was reluctant to say an outright no to Cass Leemu — he might need her later. “You see, Cass, I owe the next six years to Par Leon. He revived me.”

“Of course. Six years only? He is being generous. A sponsor like Par Leon, who chooses an individual in whom no one else has an interest, can set his own terms with the Resurrect.”

And there again was the paradigm shift. Cass was pointing out to Drake that the brave new world he now lived in contained other elements at least as hard to grasp as science.

After he had returned to his own spartan living quarters, he worried over the problem. Slavery did not exist. On the other hand, six years of absolute service to Par Leon was taken for granted. It was a form of slavery, but its ethical basis was never questioned. Drake could not understand that basis. He comforted himself with the thought that Henry VIII would have been appalled at wars that killed civilians, while accepting as natural a public hanging, drawing, and quartering.

As he placed his helmet over his head, he wondered what induced lesson he would receive tonight. He felt beyond surprise. Before he lost consciousness, it occurred to him that humanity was able to manage with very few absolutes. Why? Because people could live within — and apparently justify — any imaginable variation of ethics and morality.