I had been thinking of them as boys since I was over forty and they averaged about twenty. “Young men” would have been a better term.
Watching them leave, I felt a lot of admiration for them. I’ve worked with many groups of men in my life, most of the time as their leader. For the last ten years, most of my subordinates have been very competent people, degreed engineers and skilled tradesmen, mostly. But I swear that I have never worked with an entire group of people before who were all as exceptionally intelligent, outstandingly eager, unflaggingly hardworking, and uniformly lighthearted as these young men all were. I tell you, it was like working with a totally different kind of humanity, a better kind.
I’ve heard that the Japanese average about ten points higher on IQ tests than white Americans. It is difficult to write an accurate interracial or cross-cultural test, but if the data are true, I suspect that it might be because, for a thousand years, a Japanese Samurai was morally required to immediately decapitate any commoner who didn’t “act in the manner expected.” Since the Japanese had an extremely complicated code of behavior, it must have taken a fairly intelligent person to always know just what “the manner expected” was, in any given situation. I think perhaps that the Japanese were not only selecting for people who were well mannered, but also for those who were intelligent, or at least smart enough so as to have been able to learn all the rules.
The policy of reducing the population by selectively sterilizing the less successful members of their society must have done the same thing for the people of the Western Isles, only much more so, since it was systematic. I can’t say that I approve of the method, but I can certainly admire the results.
* * *
Adam was walking the next day, albeit a bit unsteadily. We figured that swimming was just the exercise he needed, so he took the eight new kids into Avalon Bay in the morning while I had the old- timers chipping and prying coral. His crew joined mine in the afternoon, and I let him run the show from then on.
I had to get the genset up and running as well as the diesel engine that powered the SCUBA tank compressor. It took me the better part of two hours to partially disassemble both rigs, and to repair the damage caused by the dunking they got when the boat was sinking. Then I was over an hour figuring out a way to get diesel fuel from the big tanks built into the boat, which was on its side, to the small tanks on the small engines.
Once I had the diesel engines producing both pneumatic and electrical power, I started filling the SCUBA tanks. Then I put the batteries Adam’s men had extracted from The Brick Royal to charging, since we had exhausted them in trying to bail her out during the storm. Scrounging around, I found some of our electric lights and set them up, ready to switch on, come dark.
About that time, some of the warlock’s men came by with all of the electronic gear that had been taken from us by him for safekeeping. They brought a letter from him saying that we might as well keep everything together, and could I please see what could be done about generating some power for them. I answered his question by switching on the lights for his men. It would have been more dramatic had it been dark, but they acted impressed, anyway.
I set up the satellite dish just outside of the cave, and soon got its automatic tracker going. The guards stared bug-eyed and nervous at the dish, never having seen an inanimate object move before. Culture shock all over the floor.
After that, I got antenna wire, data lines, and power cables to the computer, the television, and the VCR before deciding that the system needed a more thorough test and that I wanted a break, anyway. I was just getting into a tape of Star Wars when Adam and his dripping-wet crew came in. The boys were enthralled.
I stopped the tape and set it to rewinding.
“Gentlemen, this entertainment is best seen from the beginning. Before we start, I want to mention that one of the highest art forms practiced in the outside world is called science fiction. It exists mostly in the form of written stories and in theatrical presentations like the one you are about to enjoy. In this art form, the writer creates not only the characters and all of the things that happen to them, but also the very universe that all of the action takes place in. Thus, he is absolutely free of all constraints, and may exercise his art to the limits of his creativity. Done properly, this fictional world is as internally consistent as the real world around us, so that it becomes easy for the reader or viewer to suspend his disbelief and become thoroughly immersed in the story.
“I tell you this because to you, the real world outside of your island might seem to you to have some of the aspects of science fiction. Out there, they have many devices and forms of communication and transportation that you are not yet familiar with. Please remember that they do not have ships that can travel between the stars, or robots that can talk and think like human beings, or weapons that can destroy entire planets, although they are working on it. Anyway, the following is fiction, it has no purpose but to stretch your mind while you are enjoying yourself, and I wish you a pleasant few hours.”
Then I turned the set back on and let them watch those marvelous opening scenes. Judging from their comments, they seemed to be able to follow the plot reasonably well, despite their lack of proficiency in English. It was dark when I sent them home. They had missed supper, except for some junk food I’d broken out of stores, but they didn’t seem to mind. They’d just seen their second totally new world in two days.
TWENTY-SIX
“Your Grace has heard of the entertainments now being proffered by the outsiders? Brutal tales, where men are shot down in the hundreds, where entire planets are blown up and destroyed, and where even the hero and heroine perform the entire play without ever going to church, or even once dedicating themselves to God?” The archbishop was shaking in his rage.
“I heard that the boys who are spending their days working underwater to keep the rest of us afloat saw one of those `movies’ we’ve been hearing about for the last fifty years. By all counts, they completely enjoyed themselves. And as to the lack of religious content in the thing, well, Phillias, would you really have been happier if the hero had been worshiping the God of the Jews, or perhaps one of the many Hindu Gods?”
“No, I suppose not, Your Grace. Still, there is great danger in these entertainments. They will have to be controlled.”
“I suppose that you are right. Did you know that almost every political body in the outside world makes some efforts to control the sort of entertainments available to its citizens? Some of those nations are so haphazard that it boggles the mind to try to think of what it is that they could possibly find offensive. Indeed, I’m not sure that I want to know.”
“You would doubtless be much happier in your ignorance, Your Grace. I take it that you agree that any new outside influences will have to be carefully controlled?”
“I’ll agree with that in principle, although the details of how it is done and what precisely will be forbidden will have to be worked out. It is too early yet to do anything definite.”
“But not too early to at least think about it. Thank you, Your Grace,” the archbishop said as he left the royal chamber.
* * *
* * *
The next morning, I was getting ready to go back to the warehouse, eager to get to work, when Roxanna reminded me, rather coldly, that this was Sunday. Working on anything but absolutely necessary tasks was improper, and anyway, we had to go to mass.
Adam was right again. There wasn’t any point in getting married, since I could get plenty of nagging without having to go through the bother of the ceremony. I gritted my teeth and wasted half the morning sitting with a room full of other equally bored people, listening to some fool in a fancy outfit spout off about something or another that I neither cared about at the time nor ever remembered afterward.
In the afternoon, we joined Adam and the Pelitier sisters and went to the beach. The girls had heard about snorkeling, and had to try it. It was a busman’s holiday for two men who had just spent two days under water, but what can you do? Furthermore, the scenery at an American beach is much better than the beach scenery on the island, what with their use of long johns instead of bikinis or less. The girls fell in love with the face masks, the flippers, and the snorkeling rigs, but I’d been spending enough time underwater lately.