“Monsieur Verne?” he asked.
Jules Verne nodded. Despite his sickness, his blue eyes held a fire Robin could not deny. Verne held the note Robin had attached to the arrow.
“You claim to be Sir Robin of Locksley?” he asked in nearly unaccented English.
“I am he,” Robin said. “I am delighted to meet you, sir.”
“Draw up that chair and we will talk,” Verne said.
Robin did so. “You have a nineteenth-century British accent, I would say. How do you explain that?”
Robin shrugged. “Would you understand Saxon?”
“Toucht.”
“And it’s a twentieth-century accent, by the way.” Almost before he knew it, Robin found himself telling how he’d adopted the role of Robin Hood, of his adventures and misadventures along the River as he and his men sought to right the wrongs of this new world. Verne nodded now and then, an avid listener.
“Life is indeed mostly a series of curious events,” he said. “I needed someone such as you a week ago. Indeed, I nearly died because of it.”
“What do you mean?” Robin asked.
Verne sighed and sank back on his bed, closing his eyes. Suddenly he looked tired, frail. When he spoke again it was with the voice of an old man.
“When I awakened on the River and found myself young,” he said, “it seemed almost as though God had created this world for me alone….”
Now (Verne said) I could do those things of which I had only dreamed throughout my life. All my research, all my books and writings, they had led me inexorably toward this moment.
I vowed to create a perfect society. This new civilization would be modeled on mankind’s old one, but with all its various flaws and imperfections cured. Mankind had been given a fresh chance here, I felt, and it would be up to us to make the best of it.
I was fortunate enough to be resurrected among a group consisting primarily of Frenchmen from the late nineteenth century. Also among us were Russians from
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some twenty or thirty years in our future, Chinese from yet another age (I could not pinpoint their place in history; alas, my schooling in matters Oriental was somewhat lacking), and a few others from what seemed random periods in our world’s history.
The Chinese immediately banded together and left, seeking whatever it is Chinamen seek; to my regret, we never circumvented the language barrier. The Russians, on the other hand, stayed with us. One among them, a fiery youth with an unpronounceable name who had us call him Lenin, began preaching socialism to the masses, but his voice fell on deaf ears. Most people were content to live natural lives, eating food from the metal Providers; sunning themselves on the riverbanks, eating the dreamsticks, and fornicating in a hedonistic frenzy.
Lenin was murdered his second week there. But what he’d said interested me. The idea of all men being equal is, of course, ridiculous; but the organizational system he outlined seemed workable, even practical in our current circumstances.
I combined his thoughts with my own. As I talked to my fellows, I found among them a number of engineers who were sympathetic to my new ideas. Their names would be meaningless to you, for they were in no way famous, but they were sturdy men, well schooled in their fields and not afraid of hard work.
First we moved away from the general population, to a more remote Provider in the hills. Here we began a systematic analysis of the land and its raw potential. There were deposits of iron, tin, and copper within easy reach. Trees could provide wood for fires and tools. And, I must admit, we made use of whatever human corpses came our way—bones were our first tools.
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Over the next few months, we set about creating a community based on scientific planning. As we discussed matters, we reached a general consensus that our resurrection was a test of some kind, and that to prove our species worthy we must strive to create a more perfect society from the materials available.
Needless to say, it was difficult. But as more people joined us, we found strength in numbers. Houses were erected; a stockade was built to protect us from our neighbors and whatever marauding animals this world might harbor. Soon we were smelting bronze, then iron. Sand, with some refinement, proved suitable for the crude glass you see in the Belle Dame’s windows. In three months we had a prosperous town, with every man and woman working ten hours a day toward the common good. My dream was coming true, shaping itself before my very eyes.