Arthur Clarke - Imperial Earth

For one gut-wrenching moment, until Washington had reassured him, he had feared that he might be served real meat. Apparently it was still available, and there was no actual law against it, thought many attempts had been made to pass one. Those who opposed Prohibition pointed out that attempts to enforce morality by legislation were always counterproductive; if meat were banned, everybody would want it, even if it made them sick. And anyway, this was a perversion which did harm to nobody... Not so, retorted the Prohibitionists; it would do irreparable harm to countless innocent animals, and revive the revolting trade of the butcher. The debate continued, with no end in sight.

Confident that lunch would present mysteries but no terrors, Duncan did his best to enjoy himself. On the whole he succeeded. He bravely tackled everything set before him, rejecting about a third after one nibble, tolerating another third, and thoroughly appreciating the remainder. As it turned out, there was nothing that he actively disliked, but several items had flavors that were too strange and complicated to appeal to him at first taste. Cheese, for example—that was a complete novelty. There were about six different kinds, and he nibbled at them all. He felt that he could get quite enthusiastic about at least two varieties, if he worked on it. But that might not be a good idea, for it was notoriously difficult to persuade the Titan food chemists to introduce new patterns into their synthesizers.

Some products were quite familiar. Potatoes and tomatoes, it seemed, tasted much the same all over the Solar System. He had already encountered them, as luxury products of the hydroponic farms, but had always found it difficult to get enthusiastic about either, at several solars a kilogram.

The main dish was—well, interesting. It was something called steak and kidney pie, and perhaps the unfortunate name turned him off. He knew perfectly well that the contents were based on high-protein soya; Washington had confessed that this was the only item not actually produced on the farm, because the technology needed was too elaborate. Nevertheless, he could not manage more than a few bites. It was too bad that every time he tried to take a mouthful, he kept thinking of the phrase ‘kidney function’ and its unhappy associations. But the crust of the pie was delicious, and he polished off more than half of it.

Dessert was no problem. It consisted of a large variety of fruits, most of them unfamiliar to Duncan even by name. Some were insipid, others very pleasant, but he felt that all were perfectly safe. The strawberries he thought especially good, though he turned down the cream that was offered with them when he discovered, by tactful questioning, exactly how it was made.

HE was comfortably replete when Mrs. Washington produced a final surprise—a small wooden box containing a wax honeycomb. As long as he could remember, Duncan had been familiar with that term for lightweight structures; it required a mental volte-face to realize that this was the genuine, original item, constructed by Terran insects.

“We’ve just started keeping bees,” explained the professor. “Fascinating creatures, but we’re still not sure if they’re worth the trouble. I think you’ll like this honey—try it on this crust of new bread.”

His hosts watched him anxiously as he spread the golden fluid, which he thought looked exactly like lubricating oil. He hoped it would taste better, but he was now prepared for almost anything.

There was a long silence. Then he took another bite—and another.

“Well?” asked George at last.

“It’s—delicious—one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.”

“I’m so pleased,” said Mrs. Washington. “George, be sure to send some to the hotel for Mr. Makenzie.”

Mr. Makenzie continued to sample the bread and honey, very slowly. There was a remote and abstracted expression on his face, which his delighted hosts attributed to sheer gastronomical pleasure. They could not possibly guessed at the real reason.

Duncan had never been particularly interested in food, and had made no effort to try the occasional novelties that were imported into Titan. The few times that any had been pressed upon him, he had not enjoyed them; he still grimaced at the memory of a reputed delicacy called caviar. He was therefore absolutely certain that never before in his life had he tasted honey.

Yet he recognized it at once; and that was only half the mystery. Like a name that is on the tip of the tongue, yet eludes all attempts to grasp it, the memory of that earlier encounter lay just below the level of consciousness. It had happened a long time ago—but when , and where? For a fleeting moment he almost took seriously the idea of reincarnation. You, Duncan Makenzie, were a beekeeper in some earlier life on Earth...

Perhaps he was mistaken in thinking he knew the taste. The association could have been triggered by some random leakage between mental circuits. And anyway, it could not possibly be of the slightest importance...

He knew better. Somehow, it was very important indeed.

Of all the old cities, it was generally agreed that Paris and Washington offered the best combination of beauty, culture, history—and convenience. Unlike such largely random aggregations as London and Rome, which had defied millennia of planning, they had been adapted fairly easily to automatic transportation. Could he have risen from his tomb in Arlington, the luckless Pierre Charles L’Enfant would have been proud indeed to have discovered how well he had laid the ground for a technology centuries in his future.

Though an official car was available whenever he wished, Duncan preferred to be as independent as possible. Coming from an aggressively egalitarian society, he never felt quite happy when he was afforded special privileges—except, of course, those he had earned himself. Now that his sprained ankle was no longer paining him he had no excuse for using personal transport, and one could never know a city until one had explored it on foot.

Like any ordinary tourist—and Washington expected the incredible total of five million before the end of July—Duncan rode the glideways and autojitneys, gaping at the famous buildings and remembering the great men who had lived and worked here for half a thousand years. In the five-kilometer-long rectangle from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol, and from the Washington Monument to the White House, no changes had been permitted for more than a century. To ride the shuttle from Constitution Avenue and back along Independence, on the south side of the Mall, was to take a journey through time.

And time was the problem, for Duncan could spare only an hour or two a day for sightseeing. His planned schedule had already been wrecked by a factor that he had refused to take seriously, despite numerous warnings. Instead of his usual six, he needed no fewer than ten hours of sleep every day. This was yet another side effect of the increased gravity, and there was nothing he could do about it; his body stubbornly insisted on the additional time, to overcome the extra wear and tear. Eventually, he knew, he would make a partial adaptation, but he could hardly hope to manage with less than eight hours. It was maddening to have come all this way, to one of the most fascinating places on Earth, and to be compelled to waste more than forty percent of his life in unconsciousness.

As with most off-worlders, his first target had been the National Museum of Astronautics on the Mall, because it was here that his own history had begun, that day in July 1969. He had walked past the flimsy and improbable hardware of the early Space Age, and had taken his seat with several hundred other visitors in the Apollo Rotunda just before the beginning of the half-hourly show.