And, as usual after battle, when the normal postcombat nausea set in, several of the young ones lost their breakfast as well.
It was going to be hard to clean up the mess, living and dead, with barely enough water to keep them alive for another few weeks. There was plenty of ships biscuit, salt pork and dried peas, but precious, precious little water.
They had been digging a well into the hill ever since their arrival. After all, if the trees were alive, they must be getting water from somewhere. They were down a hundred feet and still going through dry dirt, the walls shored up with logs.
Melville smelled the reek from his own troops and looked out at the stinking heaps of their dead attackers. How were they going to clean up this filth, and return things to shipshape navy fashion? Somehow the books never talked about this. Did I miss a class at the academy?
Actually, on his first day at the academy they told him this might happen. “Adventure,” they called it. “A rendezvous with destiny.”
Captain (retired) Ben James, Dean of the Department of History had lectured them on their first day. Five foot, eight inches tall, well over two hundred pounds, he looked like he would tire just combing his hair, deadly only with a red pencil . . . until you got a look at the ribbons on his dress uniform, and then you learned to pay attention to him. He was indeed a history professor full of surprises.
“Cadets,” he began, looking at them with steely intensity, “you are on the first day of an adventure that, if you stick with it, will ultimately see you in command of ships sailing the shoreless seas of two-space. When you enter into two-space, you’ll truly understand why our culture and society is the way it is.
“Most of you are from here on Westerness, and have never even traveled in two-space, or ‘Flatland’ as it’s often called.” Young cadet Melville puffed up his chest and felt very superior upon hearing this. He had served for several years as a ship’s boy before being selected for the academy. On his first day at the academy he was happy to embrace any comforting source of superiority.
“In this strange environment any complex or advanced technology can’t exist. What builds and prospers our empire are wooden ships . . . and iron men. We depend on the relatively crude technology of our ships, similar to eighteenth-century Napoleonic-era sailing ships. Even simple block-and-tackle pulleys tend to decay quickly, and there is no need for jibs or stay sails, so the rigging is very simple.
“Even simple weapons technology, such as muzzle-loading muskets, require daily maintenance in this environment. Thus we are back to Napoleonic-era weapons. Namely cannons, swords, rifled muskets, and bayonets.
“But never forget that you are warriors, and the most formidable weapon in two-space lies between one’s ears! ‘This is the law: The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.’ So says Steinbeck, and so . . . say . . . I.”
Melville was sitting, reflecting on all the advantages his prior service would give him here at the academy. Visions of academic glory were unfolding before him when Captain James brought him crashing back down to earth.
He was just envisioning himself as the Brigade Captain in his fourth year when Captain James singled him out, “Mr. Melville . . .” Boom. His heart began to pound in his chest and all eyes were suddenly on him. The cunning old sea dog knew when someone wasn’t paying attention, and he wasn’t about to tolerate it. “When did our ancestors make the first landing on Westerness?”
Okay, this was easy. This was the year 422, and the years were tracked from the founding of Westerness. “Four hundred and twenty-two years ago, sir!”
A disappointed sigh and condescending look came from his tormenter. “Wrong, Mr. Melville. I thought you had some prior experience with the Navy. Didn’t you ever get around to learning that in the Navy we track all dates by Earth years? You, of all people should have known that. Gig yourself. Ten demerits.”
Oh good. Just great. The very first demerits handed out, and they were to him, “mister prior service.” For a few seconds there was a roaring in his ears and tunnel vision shut out everything but his tormentor’s face. But he never again made the mistake of not paying attention to Captain James, and he vividly remembered every word the crusty old sailor said that day.
“I want you never to forget that mankind made it into two-space on its own, without the aid of any foreign planet and with our own science and technology, in 2104. However, we were a while learning how to survive in that strange environment.
“When that great innovator and researcher, Kenny Muraray, created the first Pier, he was amazed to see it disappear up into nothing. Like Aladdin’s rope or Jacob’s ladder. Perhaps it had happened before, perhaps this is the source of these legends. Soon, Moss grew on the Keel and they went up and studied two-space.
“Westerness was colonized by the men of Old Earth, four hundred eighteen Earth years ago, in the year 2210. This was almost a century after mankind’s first, disastrous entry into Flatland, when the computers came back from the two-space with the Elder King’s Gift. This was a devastating virus that brought about the Crash, a complete and irrecoverable collapse of their worldwide Info-Net. But still the Pier was there, and those early pioneers went from the equivalent of the dugout canoe to the mighty frigates of today in just a few centuries.
“Over the following centuries the vast majority of human colonies emanated from Westerness, with our vast, ancient forests of Nimbrell trees. Earth’s high technology couldn’t be exported across two-space. Since no technology can exist in Flatland, technology can’t be transported between worlds. A computer program, printed out on paper, can be a full cargo for a ship—and that’s the only way such a program can be moved between worlds! Indeed, any bio-technology, nano-technology, gene manipulation, or artificial organs in a body will result in a rapid, horrible death if brought into Flatland. On major, starfaring worlds there is little need for technology beyond Victorian levels, so we simply don’t bother with it.
“On a few high-tech worlds, like Earth, the citizens have decided to embrace nano- and bio-technology, which gives them long lives. But the price they pay is that they can’t travel beyond their world! The poor, poor bastards are trapped on their world. They gained a few extra decades of life in their old age, but they lost the universe.” He said that with such sincere sadness, disgust and disdain that the cadets couldn’t help but be influenced.
“On Earth, only the very young, at great risk, will dare to travel off-world. The result is that within two hundred years of our colonization they lost control of their empire. Westerness, supported by other low-tech, retroculture worlds, took over. Gentlemen, we . . . are . . . determined not to let that happen to us,” he said with a pointed finger and intense fierceness.
“Since the demands of maintaining a two-space empire drives our train, and since the allure of high tech can destroy our empire, as happened to Earth, we chose to stay at a basic technological level. ‘Retroculture’ is the name for what we’ve done, a term first coined by a man named Bill Lind in the late twentieth century, when the backlash against their toxic modern culture began to spontaneously spawn organizations like the Society for Creative Anachronism, the ‘Victorian’ craze in women’s culture, the antiques craze, old house renovations, and Renaissance festivals. The result is that today we live in a hodgepodge of Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian technology. That is, generally the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. The homes and communities of sailors, those ultimate conservatives, are some of the most dogmatic about keeping low tech.”
Then the old sailor’s face smiled gently and lovingly. “In the Navy this is reinforced by our veneration of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and the extensive biographies of great sailors such as Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey.”
Suddenly glowering out at them from beneath his bushy eyebrows he added, “And, I will say right now, that I won’t tolerate any young wiseacre who wants to espouse the errant belief that the narratives of these great sailors, who have been such an inspiration to us, were actually fiction.”
Having made his point, he relaxed and continued. “Thus we live in a world of intentional, creative anachronism. We’ve established a true retroculture, reaching back into our past to build the best community we can. The people of Earth, when they deign to come off their planet, sometimes refer to us as ‘Hokas.’ It’s quite appropriate to challenge them to a duel and to kill them without mercy or pity for such an insult.” Suddenly the steel in this seemingly roly-poly old navy officer was coming through in his voice. “As though any earthworm would risk his sad, dull, centuries-long life by participating in a duel. Thus social ostracism is the only acceptable response if no duel or abject apology is forthcoming.” The cadets in the classroom found themselves leaning back in their seats as they looked into the feral eyes of a man who had meted out death in duels and combat.