Afterward, I found out that, in honor of the guy who came up with the wine at a wedding feast, the bars were all closed on Sundays. Grumble.
I spent the next morning getting the rest of our electronic equipment going. I started without very high hopes. Our equipment had all been through a shipwreck, with all the mechanical shock, saltwater immersion, and other trauma that implies. It had been dismantled by clumsy if well-meaning hands, hauled all the way up to the warlock’s chambers and there inspected by who knows how many less than competent people. It had then been hauled back down to the warehouse, and left on the floor, where I was trying to get it all back together again. Some of it, like the navigation gear, had been built to withstand the rigors of a nautical environment, but much of the rest, like the stereo equipment, was only built to the usual, shoddy commercial standards.
Most of the nautical gear had originally been mounted in the aft cockpit, but that was on its side now along with the rest of the ship, so I set all the gear out on top of garbage bag covered cases of who-knew-what and started wiring it up with cables I’d scrounged from the boat. I gave myself even odds that I could get maybe seventy percent of it going again in three days, but I surprised myself.
By noon, I had every single piece of equipment up and running. Every single one of the radios, transmitters, telephones, fax machines, stereos, navigation gadgets, and computers worked. Not to mention the refrigerator and the microwave from the galley. Amazing! Even the radar and sonar equipment checked out, though of course they weren’t actually working, the radar dome and sonar transponders still being affixed to The Brick Royal, which was on dry land and in a stone warehouse.
When they had gotten back to their barracks last Saturday night, the boys had naturally told all of their friends about the wonders of television and Star Wars. By noon, Sunday or not, word of these wonders had filtered all the way up to the warlock and the duke himself.
Modern people in the outside world keep in touch mostly through the television and radio news programs. Without these conveniences (or curses, depending on your point of view), people keep in touch mostly by talking to one another.
On the islands, they do what people must have been doing throughout the history of mankind, until recently. Everybody knew everything because of constant gossiping. It is a remarkably efficient system, and I have had things that I told to people as I was leaving the warehouse repeated back to me within minutes of my arrival home.
And while television or radio news will let you know, in general, what is happening to the nation at large, gossip can be, and often is, personalized. Each bit of information actually tends to direct itself to those people most concerned. The case in point was that one of our workers told Adam that the duke was coming over. He’d heard about it through a string of nine people starting with his grace’s chamberlain.
Think about that. Since people tend to talk about what their listeners want to hear about, the information steered itself through increasingly more interested people until it got to us!
The modern world lost a lot when we traded gossip for the news, although we just might be getting some of it back with the internet. Time will tell.
* * *
Not that knowing about the duke’s visit made me any happier. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting the duke, or the archbishop either, for that matter, for the very same reason that I have never looked forward to meeting any other governmental figure.
Governments are essentially negative organizations. Their whole function in life seems to be to tell you to not do the things that you want to do. Since you naturally don’t want to not do the things that you want to do, they then take great pleasure in causing you as much pain as possible when you do them anyway. (Think of it as a cryptogram.)
They’ll kill you or throw you in jail unless they think that you can make more money for them to steal if you are on the outside. If you’ve ever wondered why the rich hardly ever go to jail, well, that’s the reason. It’s not that they have undue influence with the courts. They don’t. Judges and juries don’t like rich people either. It’s that when a rich man is free, he can make more money than a poor man can for the government to plunder. Now you know.
Oh, governments also tell you not to do the things that you don’t want to do, too, but that doesn’t count, since you can generally ignore such rules and not get into too much trouble. The fact is that they have so many laws that it is impossible for anyone, including the numberless and nameless people who work for the government, to know exactly what all those rules are.
To get on in this world, your best bet is to do what you want, to do it in as quiet a way as possible, and to avoid governments whenever you can. It’s the only way to get anything done. One of the quickest ways to spot a nonachiever is to see if he starts out on a project by asking somebody’s permission. The shakers and the movers of this world just go ahead and do things, and the best ones try hard not to be noticed by anyone. The people who show up in the news and on talk shows are mostly phonies.
* * *
The ladies had again provided an excellent seafood dinner, I had some Mozart going on the stereo, and Adam and the boys were eating with us when a gaudily dressed herald stepped in and announced that His Royal Grace Duke Guilhem Alberigo XXI was here, along with Thomas Strong, E.E., Warlock of the Western Islands. The dozen or so people who were with them were not announced, and therefore must have been flunkies.
I felt a moment of panic, not knowing what to do. Then everyone else stood and bowed deeply, which made me feel better. Now I knew what one did when the duke interrupted your lunch. You stood up and then bent over.
Thinking about it, bowing is just like what baboons do when approached by a superior male. The subordinate male bends over and the boss mounts him, just as if he were a willing female. Which shows that “the powers that be” have been fucking us since before we were people.
* * *
The duke was a tall, athletic-looking man, and looked to be in his mid-fifties, though his white hair and white full beard suggested a greater age. His clothing was vaguely Elizabethan, like that worn by everyone else on the islands, except that his was richer in texture, and the embroidery was much finer. When he came close, you could see that the needlework was so tiny that it gave the impression of being photographic lithography, rather than being done by hand. He wore a simple, unpretentious crown made of gold wire that was not much thicker than a man’s wedding ring, but it was his bearing that hit you first and hardest. Here was a man who was born and bred for leadership, and no one who saw him could possibly doubt it. All told, he was pretty impressive, having nothing in common with the typical American politician.
“Welcome, Your Grace,” I said in my best Westronese. I hoped “your grace” was right.
“Yes, welcome, Your Grace and Your Excellency. Could we offer to share our poor dinner fare with you?” Adam seconded.
“Why, thank you, yes,” the duke said in English that had the slight Oxford accent favored by announcers on the BBC. “I’ve heard a great deal about the excellent preserved food that you brought with you, and I’d rather enjoy trying some.”
“With pleasure, Your Grace,” I said as I went to the cases of canned food we had there.
I picked up at least one of everything, plus four cans of the absurdly popular Spam. Back in Bay City, I would have been embarrassed serving Spam to my lowest minimum-wage employee, but here, well, if the duke wanted Spam, he would get Spam. I was but a stranger in a strange land.
The table was full, with as many people as chairs, but with the speed and precision of a crack drill team, the apprentices picked up their plates, glasses, and silverware, left the table, and went back by the wall, to picnic there on the floor, out of the way. The ladies and their servants quickly cleaned up where the boys had been eating, spread a new tablecloth that appeared as if by real magic, and put out new table settings fresh from the packing cases. By the time the duke, the warlock, and both of their entourages had walked the length of the warehouse, their places at the table were ready, almost as if we had planned it that way.