“But I understand that your Westronese is coming along quite well, Treet,” he said in Westronese.
“I think they call it total immersion. But look. Could you answer just a few questions for me?”
“Certainly, mate, in a few minutes. First though, what was your profession? I mean, you seem to be an educated man, but what did you do with yourself?”
“I was an engineer, working in the special machine tool trade in Michigan. My partner and I owned our own company, and we mostly designed and built special machines for the auto companies.”
“Special machines? That’s like lathes and drill presses?”
“Hardly. Most of the machines we built were completely automated, without any workers at all. They did things like assembling automatic transmissions or rebuilding used crankshafts.”
“Humph. Not much call for that sort of thing around here, I’m afraid. Your friend Adam Kulczynski was also an engineer?”
“Yes, we were partners. Mostly, he took care of the shop and I took care of sales, although we each filled in wherever needed.”
“Pity. Well now, I’ll answer your questions then. Within reason, of course.”
“Thank you. First, could you please tell me just where in the hell we are, and just how someplace as obviously impossible as this island can seem to exist?”
“Now that takes quite a long answer. I don’t imagine that there’s any chance that you brought any tobacco with you, is there?”
“Sorry. I used to smoke, but everybody back home is quitting it now, since the habit was proved to cause long-term damage to one’s health. We’ve got some Foster’s beer stored somewhere, though, if you could see fit to answer my questions.”
“Bribery, I see. Very well, then. I’ll expect a few cases tomorrow. To answer your question, I suppose that the story starts some fifty thousand years ago, during the last ice age. So much water was tied up in the ice caps that covered half of Europe, Asia and North America that the sea level was down several hundred yards, and most of the world’s continental shelves were exposed.
“A series of volcanoes erupted in an area that was then dry land, but is now a hundred miles off the west coast of France.
“Now, most volcanoes come in one of three varieties. They spit out either lava, or dust, or mud, or sometimes all three. But there is a very rare sort where the lava is glassy and has just the right amount of gasses absorbed in it. When this sort of lava oozes out slowly, the absorbed gasses come out of solution and form bubbles in the lava. There’s one like that in Hawaii, they tell me, and when the molten rock flows out on the ocean, the fluffy stuff just floats away. Well, the lava from our ice-age volcanoes didn’t float away just then because it was a hundred miles from the ocean. It just kept on oozing and solidifying, and piling higher, wider, and deeper.
“When the ice age ended, the sea level rose and our volcanoes became a collection of islands. Now they didn’t float away because they were stuck quite firmly to the continental shelf, and there they sat for the next forty-nine thousand years or so.
“In time they were discovered by people. It happened quite early, we think. While we have no records of the first landings, there are written records on this island that go back to 2754 B.C., and since they used to have five times our current land area, there were about as many people then as now. The old histories make fascinating reading. You might have that lady friend of yours check out some of our early books from the library, when your reading skills pick up, that is.
“For the most part, due to their remote location, the Western Isles were spared the invasions and empires that have wracked Europe from the earliest times. We have tended to be a fairly peaceful people, at least compared to the other European nations. Oh, we’ve had our wars, rebellions, and assassinations, but they were fewer in number and lower in ferocity than the average.
“Also, we were the first nation in the world to become Christians. You’ve heard of the apostle, Doubting Thomas? Well, about in the middle of the first century he came to our islands, and converted us from paganism without much fuss and bother at all. St. Thomas became our first bishop, and the church he founded has been the only one here ever since.
“I gather from your expression that you’re not very religious, but you have to realize that Christianity is a powerful force hereabouts, and has been for almost two thousand years. Aside from our unique geology, it’s been the dominant molding force both for the culture and technology of the islands.”
“Christianity is responsible for your low level of technology?” I said.
“No, mate. It has been responsible for the high level of our technology. We both know that on the mainland, there has always been a tension between science and religion. It’s not that way here, the current political differences between me and the archbishop notwithstanding.
“Think about the stories that you’ve heard concerning Doubting Thomas. He wouldn’t believe that Christ had arisen, even after he had personally seen Him himself. He insisted on positive proof, putting his fingers into Christ’s nail holes, and his arm into the spear wound in Christ’s side.
“Can you understand that such an attitude was just what was needed to foster the scientific method? St. Thomas always insisted that one should always examine everything for one’s self, and never trust to dogma or unsubstantiated folk tales. As a result, there has been a formal scientific organization here for over eighteen hundred years. The whole scientific revolution started here fifteen hundred years before it caught hold in Europe.”
“And you are the current head of this scientific organization?” I asked.
“Right. The Wizards. Oh, the titles and all are a bit archaic, but that’s to be expected with so old an organization. We’ve been carrying on our scientific researches for almost two millennia.”
“Then why are you so far behind the rest of the world?” I said.
“First off, we’re not as backward as we might appear to be. True, our clothing styles haven’t changed much in the last five hundred years, but that’s because of some of our high technology, not because of any lack of imagination on our part. When any article of apparel can be expected to last several hundred years, there is very little incentive to make much new clothing. We have no group of garment manufacturers here eager to increase their sales by making last year’s fashions obsolete. What little new clothing we need to make is done as a hobby by the women here. They like to compete with each other on their embroidery, but if they changed the basic styles, everything they inherited from their grandmothers would be obsolete. A change in style would make them poorer, not richer.
“Then too, as you well know, in certain fields, horticulture, for example, and the study of ocean currents and weather patterns, we’re considerably ahead of the rest of you.
“But for the rest, there are several obvious reasons why we’re presently behind. You know that we have always been in a really dismal state when it comes to raw materials. We have no ores, no fossil fuels, and almost no minerals at all. Furthermore, there are damn few of us. There are only about twelve thousand people on all of the islands together, compared to upwards of six billion of you in the outside world.
“You can’t expect us to stay ahead of the rest when we’re outnumbered by a half million to one!”
TWENTY
“But we’re getting sidetracked, and you asked for a history lesson,” the Australian warlock said.
“So, for a thousand years after the coming of St. Thomas, the Western Isles prospered. While we avoided most of the invasions that plagued Europe, and managed to beat off three major Viking attacks, we did stay in touch to a certain extent. The Romans never got around to invading us, but we did enjoy a lively trade with them until the Germans took over the western half of Roman Empire. Luckily for us, the Germans never were much good with boats, so we stayed free. Still, there was a certain commerce going on in goods, and pilgrims, and ideas.”
“Then why didn’t your islands show up on the maps that the ancient Romans made?” I asked.
“I suppose that they did. The curious thing is that not one single authentic ancient Roman map managed to survive into the modern world. We have Ptolemy’s text on how to draw a map properly, but none of his maps themselves. The only thing approaching them, outside of our libraries here, of course, are some highly distorted medieval copies. The Western Isles show up on them, of course. On the famous tenth-century Beatus map, they are clearly shown right where they are supposed to be, south of England and west of France. Your modern scholars have decided that they must represent Scotland, of all things, though what Scotland is doing as a separate island and south of England is left unexplained.”