grammar – somewhat simplified for the benefit of Anglophonic users of this lingua
franca.
At a later time Lazarus told me that Spanglish had been adopted as the official
language for space pilots back at the time of the Space Precautionary Ad, when all
licensed space pilots were employees of Spaceways Ltd, or some other Harriman
Industries subsidiary. He told me that Galacta was still recognisably the same
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language as Spanglish centuries, millennia, later – although with a much amplified
vocabulary – much the same way and for the same reasons that the Latin of the
Caesars had been conserved and augmented for thousands of years by the Church of
Rome. Each language filled a need that kept it alive and growing.
`I always wanted to live in a world designed by Maxfield Parrish – and now I do!’
These words open a journal I started to write, early in my rejuvenation, to keep my
thoughts straight in the face of the culture shock I felt in being lifted bodily out
of the Crazy Years of Tellus Prime – and plunked down in the almost Apollonian
culture of Tellus Tertius.
Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) was a romantic artist of my time and place who used a
realistic style and technique to paint a world more beautiful than any ever seen – a
world of cloud-capped towers and gorgeous girls and breath-stopping mountain peaks.
If ‘Maxfield Parrish blue’ means nothing to you, go to the museum of BIT and enjoy
the MP collection there, `stolen’ by means of a replicating pantograph from
twentieth century museums on the east coast of North America (and one painting in
the lobby of the Broadmoor) by a Time Corps private mission paid for by the Senior,
Lazarus Long – a birthday present to his mother on her one hundred and twenty-fifth
birthday to celebrate the silver anniversary of their marriage.
Yes, my naughty-boy son Woodrow married me, sandbagged into it by his co-wives and
brother husbands, as a result of their having sandbagged me into it – a working
majority of them; Woodrow had three of his wives with him, his twin clone-sisters
and Elizabeth who used to be Andrew Libby before his reincarnation as a woman.
At that time (Galactic 4324) the Long family had seven adults in residence: Ira
Weatheral, Galahad, Justin Foote, Hamadryad, Tamara, Ishtar, and Minerva. Galahad,
Justin, Ishtar, and Tamara you have met; Ira Weatheral was the executive of such
government as Boondock had (not much); Hamadryad was his daughter who had obviously
made a pact with the Devil; Minerva was a slender, long-haired brunette who had had
a career of more than two centuries as an administrative computer before getting
Ishtar’s assistance in becoming flesh and blood through an assembled-clone
technique.
They picked Galahad and Tamara to propose to me.
I had no plans to get married. I had married once ’till death do us part’ – and it
had turned out not to be that durable. I was most happy to be living in Boondock, my
cup overflowed at growing young again, and I was looking forward with almost
unbearable delight at the expectation of being again in Theodore’s arms. But
marriage? Why take vows that are usually broken?
Galahad said, ‘Mama Maureen, these vows will not be broken. We simply promise each
other to share in taking care of our children – support them and spank them and love
them and teach them, whatever it takes. Now believe me, this is how to do it. Marry
us now; settle it with Lazarus later. We love him – but we know him. In an emergency
Lazarus is the fastest gun in the Galaxy. But hand him a simple little social
problem and he’ll dither about it, trying to see all sides to arrive at the perfect
answer. So the only way to win an argument with Lazarus is to present him with an
accomplished fact. He’ll be home now in a few weeks – Ishtar knows the exact hour.
If he finds you married into the family and already pregnant, he will simply shut up
and marry you himself. If you will have him: