The temporal drifts were such that we were able put our first big canister back some two hundred and thirty-five years, and still be under the island. Before that, and they would emerge in the rock under the sea, and that didn’t seem like something that I’d personally want to dig my way up from.
Intuitively, one would think that the sensible thing to do would be to go in small steps, sending the first canister back one year, say, and the next back for two. I mean, that’s the way things are normally built. If you are building a railroad, you start from where you are, and build in the direction that you are going to. Then you continue the proscess until you finally get to where you want to be.
But it doesn’t work that way when you are building a railroad line into the past. Consider that tunnels, by their very nature, tend to last a long time. Starting out below ground, we had to first tunnel our way out.
Suppose that we made our first canister emerge in 1900, planning to have other canisters emerge earlier than that. In 1900, we couldn’t know what we would find out there in 1890, so we couldn’t possibly know what we would need to build in 1890 once we got there. And since we didn’t know exactly what we would need in the past, we couldn’t be sure that we wouldn’t wreck some of it as we dug ourselves out. If we made sure in 1890 that there would be plenty of empty space for the 1900 people to dig themselves out, we would be seriously reducing our building options.
Then, of course, when we went back to 1880, our problems would be even more difficult, and by 1750… well, you see the problem. Even when you have a time machine, you have to start at the beginning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Barbara’s Family
One evening, I was sitting on a couch in the American Room of Camelot with Barb snuggled up comfortably at my side, as naked as all of my other servants around the place. Fumbling through my pockets, I dug out the list of things I had to do prior to marriage.
“Ian says that to do things properly, I need your father’s permission to marry you.”
“Tom, we are both adult human beings. Neither of us needs parental approval to do anything.”
“I agree. However, I think that it might be a good idea for me to meet your relatives in any case, and if that satisfies Ian, well, so much the better.”
“Very well, if that is your wish.”
“Is there some reason why I shouldn’t? Is there some problem between you and your folks? I mean, you’ve never mentioned them, or anything.”
“My siblings and I maintain a normal relationship with our parents and our other ancestors, and meet them at all the usual quarterly meetings.”
“Quarterly meetings? Now you’ve got me confused again, Barb.”
“Among my people, it is customary to spend a day with one’s biological ancestors every three months, at the solstices and equinoxes. This permits parents to observe the developments of their offspring and their further descendants.”
“Sort of a culture-wide family reunion, huh? Not a bad idea, I suppose. I’m surprised that I’ve never been invited to one.”
“Well, you don’t have any ancestors here, Tom. But I expect that the real reason for the lack of invitations is that these meetings are terribly boring, even for those who are seeing their relatives again. An outsider would simply feel lost.”
“Well, if everybody is bored stiff at them, why do you hold them at all?”
“Because not everybody is bored. The older people enjoy the meetings immensely. Parents are naturally far more interested in their children than the children are in them. This is even more noticeable between grandparents and grandchildren. And when they are eight or ten generations removed, well, I’ll let you imagine the results for yourself.”
“Eight or ten generations! Good God, Barbara, I knew that your people lived longer than mine, but that’s ridiculous! Even at twenty years per generation, you are talking about people who are more than two hundred years old!”
“I think that the average length of a generation among us might be closer to fifty years, Tom, although people over two hundred years old subjective are extremely rare. And since you are about to ask it, no, I am nothing close to fifty years old. You got me started on raising children quite early, as it turned out.”
“Please don’t tell me what I’m going to ask you next. I’m never sure if it’s just an expression of yours, or if you really have read my next statement out of one of your history books.”
“It’s simply that your facial expressions are very telling, Tom, so your thoughts are easy to guess. I never really know what you’re thinking. The history of this century has never been written. Quite possibly, it never will be.”
“One strange statement at a time, young lady. Back to these ancestors of yours who are ten of your fifty year generations old without pushing two hundred.”
“Isn’t it obvious? After they reach retirement age, people in my culture have a great deal of freedom. They can do just about anything they want, go anywhere, or any when. Many of them become extremely interested in their descendants, and attend two, or three, or sometimes even seven successive quarterly meetings a week, subjectively. There are some who have made meeting their descendants the major hobby in their lives, and attend all of the meetings for thousands of years.”
“So the world for them becomes like a series of conventions, with the same old pros there every time, and an ephemeral bunch of young neos bubbling through and going their way.”
“Yes, I suppose that it could seem that way to some of them.”
“Huh. Back home, I knew a couple of old guys who treated science fiction conventions that way. So, do I have to wait for the next solstice to meet your folks?”
“Of course not, Tom. They’d be delighted to meet you at any time. My siblings would like to meet you as well. Shall I invite them here? I know that they’d all like to see this place.”
“It sounds fine to me, and let’s do it as soon as you feel it’s appropriate. I’d just as soon get this thing over with as soon as possible.”
“As you wish. Would this coming Saturday at six be acceptable to you?”
One of the glories of having time travel available was that you never had to check with anyone else before you scheduled any sort of gathering, party, or other event. If your guests had something else going on at the same time, they could always go to both things if they wanted to. On the other hand, if they didn’t show up, they had no possible excuses except that they simply didn’t want to go.
Most people had a long list of social events in the past that they had promised to attend, and simply hadn’t gotten around to showing up at yet. It wasn’t considered wise or even polite to mention those events to them. After all, if a hostess chided you for not coming to her party, she was proving that you never would go to it, thus relieving you of having to worry about it in your subjective future.
Not that it made any difference to me back then, since they still weren’t letting Ian and me use the time machines that we hadn’t completely invented yet. It wasn’t so much that they forbade us to use them, it was more that they had hidden the things, and try as we might, we hadn’t been able to find them. Yet.
* * *
When Saturday afternoon came around, I found that a silk tie and a vicuna sports jacket had been laid out for me. Barb had apparently decided on the evening’s dress code, and I wasn’t about to argue with her about it.
I noticed a more startling change on my way down tairs. All of the usually nude serving wenches that filled the place were now properly dressed. This took me aback for a moment, but then I realized that having a naked harem girl answer the door for my fiancée’s parents would not be the socially corect thing to do.
Ian had invited himself over, with Ming Po on his arm, I suppose mostly to lend me his moral support.
I was in good hands, but I was still nervous as all hell.
Meeting Barb’s parents was less of an ordeal than I feared it would be, once I got over their appearance. They both looked to be incredibly young, about my own age. That troubled me a bit. Your girl’s folks are supposed to look old.
Furthermore, Barb’s mother is every bit as beautiful as Barb is.