The next morning, shaken and mortified, he contacted Professor Anderson.
‘Everything was going splendidly,’ he lamented, ‘when she suddenly became hysterical and pushed me away. I was afraid I’d hurt her somehow -‘Then she called the roomlight – we’d been in darkness – and jumped out of bed. I guess I was just staring like a fool…’ He laughed ruefully. ‘She was certainly worth staring at.’
‘I’m sure of it. Go on.’
‘After a few minutes she relaxed and said something I’ll never be able to forget.’
Anderson waited patiently for Poole to compose himself. ‘She said: “I’m really sorry, Frank. We could have had a good time. But I didn’t know that you’d been – mutilated.”
The professor looked baffled, but only for a moment. ‘Oh – I understand. I’m sorry too, Frank – perhaps I should have warned you. In my thirty years of practice, I’ve only seen half a dozen cases – all for valid medical reasons, which certainly didn’t apply to you…’
‘Circumcision made a lot of sense in primitive times – and even in your century – as a defence against some unpleasant – even fatal – diseases in backward countries with poor hygiene. But otherwise there was absolutely no excuse for it – and several arguments against, as you’ve just discovered!’
‘I checked the records after I’d examined you the first time, and found that by mid-twenty-first century there had been so many malpractice suits that the American Medical Association had been forced to ban it. The arguments among the contemporary doctors are very entertaining.’
‘I’m sure they are,’ said Poole morosely.
‘In some countries it continued for another century: then some unknown genius coined a slogan – please excuse the vulgarity – “God designed us: circumcision is blasphemy”. That more or less ended the practice. But if you want, it would be easy to arrange a transplant – you wouldn’t be making medical history, by any means.’
‘I don’t think it would work. Afraid I’d start laughing every time.’
‘That’s the spirit – you’re already getting over it.’
Somewhat to his surprise, Poole realized that Anderson’s prognosis was correct. He even found himself already laughing.
‘Now what, Frank?’
‘Aurora’s “Society for Creative Anachronisms”. I’d hoped it would improve my chances. Just my luck to have found one anachronism she doesn’t appreciate.’
13
Stranger in a Strange Time
Indra was not quite as sympathetic as he had hoped: perhaps, after all, there was some sexual jealousy in their relationship. And – much more serious – what they wryly labelled the Dragon Debacle led to their first real argument.
It began innocently enough, when Indra complained:
‘People are always asking me why I’ve devoted my life to such a horrible period of history, and it’s not much of an answer to say that there were even worse ones.’
‘Then why are you interested in my century?’
‘Because it marks the transition between barbarism and civilization.’
‘Thank you. Just call me Conan.’
‘Conan? The only one I know is the man who invented Sherlock Holmes.’
‘Never mind – sorry I interrupted. Of course, we in the so-called developed countries thought we were civilized. At least war wasn’t respectable any more, and the United Nations was always doing its best to stop the wars that did break out.’
‘Not very successfully: I’d give it about three out of ten. But what we find incredible is the way that people – right up to the early 2000s! – calmly accepted behaviour we would consider atrocious. And believed in the most mind-boggled -‘
‘Boggling.’
‘- nonsense, which surely any rational person would dismiss out of hand.’
‘Examples, please.’
‘Well, your really trivial loss started me doing some research, and I was appalled by what I found. Did you know that every year in some countries thousands of little girls were hideously mutilated to preserve their virginity? Many of them died – but the authorities turned a blind eye.’
‘I agree that was terrible – but what could my government do about it?’
‘A great deal – if it wished. But that would have offended the people who supplied it with oil and bought its weapons, like the landmines that killed and maimed civilians by the thousand.’
‘You don’t understand, Indra. Often we had no choice: we couldn’t reform the whole world. And didn’t somebody once say “Politics is the art of the possible”?’
‘Quite true – which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.’
‘Well, I’m glad you have a good supply of genius, so you can put things right.’
‘Do I detect a hint of sarcasm? Thanks to our computers, we can run political experiments in cyberspace before trying them out in practice. Lenin was unlucky; he was born a hundred years too soon. Russian communism might have worked – at least for a while – if it had had microchips. And had managed to avoid Stalin.’
Poole was constantly amazed by Indra’s knowledge of his age – as well as by her ignorance of so much that he took for granted. In a way, he had the reverse problem. Even if he lived the hundred years that had been confidently promised him, he could never learn enough to feel at home. In any conversation, there would always be references he did not understand, and jokes that would go over his head. Worse still, he would always feel on the verge of some “faux pas” – about to create some social disaster that would embarrass even the best of his new friends…
Such as the occasion when he was lunching, fortunately in his own quarters, with Indra and Professor Anderson. The meals that emerged from the autochef were always perfectly acceptable, having been designed to match his physiological requirements. But they were certainly nothing to get excited about, and would have been the despair of a twentyfirst-century gourmet.
Then, one day, an unusually tasty dish appeared, which brought back vivid memories of the deer-hunts and barbecues of his youth. However, there was something unfamiliar about both flavour and texture, so Poole asked the obvious question.
Anderson merely smiled, but for a few seconds Indra looked as if she was about to be sick. Then she recovered and said: ‘You tell him – after we’ve finished eating.’
Now what have I done wrong? Poole asked himself. Half an hour later, with Indra rather pointedly absorbed in a video display at the other end of the room, his knowledge of the Third Millennium made another major advance.
‘Corpse-food was on the way out even in your time,’ Anderson explained. ‘Raising animals to – ugh – eat them became economically impossible. I don’t know how many acres of land it took to feed one cow, but at least ten humans could survive on the plants it produced. And probably a hundred, with hydroponic techniques.
‘But what finished the whole horrible business was not economics – but disease. It started first with cattle, then spread to other food animals – a kind of virus, I believe, that affected the brain, and caused a particularly nasty death. Although a cure was eventually found, it was too late to turn back the clock – and anyway, synthetic foods were now far cheaper, and you could get them in any flavour you liked.’
Remembering weeks of satisfying but unexciting meals, Poole had strong reservations about this. For why, he wondered, did he still have wistful dreams of spare-ribs and cordon bleu steaks?
Other dreams were far more disturbing, and he was afraid that before long he would have to ask Anderson for medical assistance. Despite everything that was being done to make him feel at home, the strangeness and sheer complexity of this new world were beginning to overwhelm him. During sleep, as if in an unconscious effort to escape, he often reverted to his earlier life: but when he awoke, that only made matters worse.
He had travelled across to America Tower and looked down, in reality and not in simulation, on the landscape of his youth – and it had not been a good idea. With optical aid, when the atmosphere was clear, he’d got so close that he could see individual human beings as they went about their affairs, sometimes along streets that he remembered…
And always, at the back of his mind, was the knowledge that down there had once lived everyone he had ever loved, Mother, Father (before he had gone off with that Other Woman), dear Uncle George and Aunt Lil, brother Martin – and, not least, a succession of dogs, beginning with the warm puppies of his earliest childhood and culminating in Rikki.
Above all, there was the memory – and mystery – of Helena…
It had begun as a casual affair, in the early days of his astrotraining, but had become more and more serious as the years went by. Just before he had left for Jupiter, they had planned to make it permanent when he returned.