She took a sip of her wine and regarded him thoughtfully. “And while you slept, the knowledge explosion went on. In 1980 knowledge was thirty-two times that of 1940; by 1988 it was sixty-four; by 1996 it was one- hundred twenty-eight times greater than in 1940. And shortly, in 2004, or the year 4 New Calendar, the multiple will be two-hundred fifty-six.”
Julian shook his head wearily.
Edith continued, “Suppose we put it another way. Let us say a child was born in the year 1940 and that, given modern medicine, he lives to be ninety-six years of age, dying in an accident. That would mean in the year 2036, using the old calendar. By that time, Jule, human knowledge will be 4096 times as much as when he was born. Believe me, it even shakes us up. Way back in your day, a Julius Horwitz of the New York Department of Welfare, put it bluntly. The aged in a big city have no economic status; they have no status in the household, they have no vocational skills to pass on to the younger generation. Their special problem is survival in a society which finds their minds and bodies superfluous.”
“Well, we cherish our older people these days, as we do our children; nevertheless, the generation gap is present with a vengeance. In fact, the gap begins no more than halfway through a generation: the thirteen-year- olds show impatience with the twenty-five-year-olds.”
“What are you leading up to, Edie?” he asked.
She eyed him compassionately. “Jule, when you went into stasis, human knowledge was sixteen times what it had been in 1940. Do you remember 1940?”
“Vaguely; I was a young child.”
“When you went into stasis, to what degree were you up on the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs?”
He snorted in self-depreciation. “I had already been left far behind. Half the time I couldn’t even follow the science, medical, and space articles in
“Your studying, Jule. Oh, I admire your spirit—trying to catch up, at least to the point where you can conduct your daily life rationally in this world of the twenty-first century, as it would have been called under the old calendar. Most important, of course, is learning Interlingua, and there is no reason you can’t do that. But the magnitude of the rest of your problem is appalling.”
It was unreasonable, he knew, but nevertheless he was irritated. “Why? I’m only a bit more than a generation behind you. There is no difference between my brain and yours. I’m not stupid. I can take the same classes your young people take. I can catch up.”
She sighed. “Jule—Jule… You are going to have to start from absolute scratch. The education you had, a bachelor’s degree, is now meaningless. By the time you are through the equivalent of what you used to call grammar school, human knowledge will have doubled again. It will be 512 times what it was when you were a child in 1940.”
“I don’t want or expect to develop into a nuclear scientist. If the kids can pick up an ordinary layman’s education, I can too,” he said stubbornly. “We’ve been over this before.”
She shook her head in despair. “Even that, Jule. Today’s children take chemical and electronic stimulants— temporarily, while they are studying—to increase their intelligence quotients and receptivity.”
“Well, why can’t I take them too?”
“Because you are in your middle thirties. Actually, of course, you are pushing seventy, but physically and mentally you are a man in his thirties. You see, Jule, a person continues to grow, both mentally and physically, until he is approximately twenty-five years of age. From then on, he begins to deteriorate. We can slow down the process, but we cannot eliminate it entirely. The stimulants we utilize to increase intelligence and learning aptitude work best on youth. After the age of twenty-five, they slack off in effectiveness. Indeed, at the age of fifty or so, they are meaningless. Perhaps this will be overcome in the future, as new advances are made in the field, but for the present the use of such stimulants would not do you very much good.”
“Jesus!” Julian protested. “So even the eight-year-olds have a head start on me.”
“In more ways than one,” she agreed unhappily. “This is their world: they were born into it; they are perfectly at home in it. For you, it is as though you had landed on an alien planet. Everything is new to you; they have been assimilating their surroundings ever since they were in the cradle.”
He gazed at her for one more frustrated moment, then turned back to the auto-teacher and flicked it on. “Nevertheless,” he muttered, “I’ll stick to it at least to the point where I can order a hamburger in a restaurant.”
She frowned at his back, even as she finished her drink. “What is a hamburger?”
“I’ll never tell,” he smirked at her over his shoulder. “That’s one thing I know about that you don’t.” But then he relented. “People used to eat them, for some reason or other not quite clear to me now that I’m acquainted with present-day cuisine.”
Edith stood and went over to toss her glass into the auto-bar’s disposal chute.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your studies and go to my room to do my own.”
He blinked at her. “Your own? I thought you were out of school.”
She had to laugh, albeit somewhat ruefully. “Just to keep up with developments, I spend two hours a day at concentrated study, Jule. So does everybody else who doesn’t wish to fall by the wayside with what’s happening in the world. I’ll see you at breakfast with Mother and Father.”
He looked at her blankly. “Do they continue to study too?”
“Father puts in four hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, he is still doing medical research, and attempts to keep up with the latest.”
Chapter Two
Unlike some, Julian West seldom realized that he was dreaming while it was going on. The past usually came to him with such vivid accuracy that he thought he was actually experiencing it. To call most of them dreams was stretching a point. They were more accurately nightmares. Even under a sedative, he was unable to avoid them.
Now he was reliving an experience he’d had some years before going into stasis. It was on a trip to Tangier, Morocco, that fabulous city nestled on the Straits of Hercules and forming the link between Africa and Egypt, back when it was still an International Zone governed by eight European countries.
He landed at the Tangier airport. As usual, the administration building and its environs were swarming, mostly with men and boys. Save for a dozen or so ladies in European dress, obviously awaiting passengers on arriving flights, the handful of women were wearing the shapeless, tentlike white cotton hail which came over the head and, in combination with a veil, shielded the face completely except for the eyes, then dropped all the way to the ground so that not even the feet could be seen. The costume of the men was more diverse. Turbans of a half- dozen varieties could be observed. Some had on the fez, that rimless, red-colored hat. Still others wore wool knit hats, in such condition it seemed a self-respecting rat wouldn’t have slept in them. Almost universally, the men were garbed in the djellaba, handwoven of wool or camel hair. It was a useful garment, Julian knew, warm at night as a blanket, protection from the sun during the day, and it repelled rain. In fact, there was a hood that could be pulled up over the head in bad weather.
The airplane from Gibralter was a small craft, seating but twenty-one. When Julian disembarked, he and the other travelers were immediately surrounded by a small crowd of peddlers, hotel solicitors, money changers, and pimps. An old hand, Julian snarled at them in French, and was able to make his way toward the immigration and
