Tomorrow and Tomorrow

have been considered a clear invitation.

She went on, “Is the name of Isaac Newton familiar to you?”

“Of course. Gravity, and the laws of motion.”

“Right. Familiar, and easy to comprehend. We agree on that. But did you know that most of his contemporaries found his work quite beyond them? He introduced notions of absolute space and time, which they found implausible. They argued, with justice, that only the separation between objects could have physical meaning. The idea of absolute coordinates, as opposed to relative distances, made no sense to them. Also, his work was most easily derived and understood employing the calculus, which to the scientists of the seventeenth century was shrouded in the paradoxes of infinitely small quantities. It took three generations to resolve the paradoxes, absorb the new world view, and work with it comfortably. The same thing happened two centuries later, when Maxwell elevated the concept of a field to central importance. Many of his contemporaries, to the end of their lives, tried to devise mechanical analogies that dispensed with the need for an electromagnetic field. And in the twentieth century, when uncertainty and undecidability assumed a dominant position in the prevailing world view, even the greatest scientist of his

time — Einstein — had trouble accepting them.”

“Are you telling me that the same thing happened again, after I entered the cryowomb?”

“Indeed it did.” Cass Leemu smiled and stroked her right nipple. It was clear that she considered her action quite empty of erotic content. Paradigm shift. Drake was tempted to ask her to have a private meal with him, and see if and where she blushed.

“It has happened not once,” she went on, “but three times. There have been three major viewpoint shifts. Our understanding of Nature differs more from the perspectives of your time, than yours differed from the Romans.”

“So I am going to be like Newton’s colleagues, unable to comprehend a new foundation.”

“I am afraid so. Unless you can master the concept of…” She paused, then smiled again at Drake, this time apologetically. “I am sorry. The word for the idea that now underpins science lacks any adequate useful paraphrase in Universal. Even the general data banks are silent. But if you really wish to study science, and learn the Science language beginning with the absolute basics, I would be willing to help you.”

“I can’t do that. Not yet.” Drake had already given up any notion of learning science for himself, but he was reluctant to say an outright no to Cass Leemu — he might need her later. “You see, Cass, I owe the next six years to Par Leon. He revived me.”

“Of course. Six years only? He is being generous. A sponsor like Par Leon, who chooses an individual in whom no one else has an interest, can set his own terms with the Resurrect.”

And there again was the paradigm shift. Cass was pointing out to Drake that the brave new world he now lived in contained other elements at least as hard to grasp as science.

After he had returned to his own spartan living quarters, he worried over the problem. Slavery did not exist. On the other hand, six years of absolute service to Par Leon was taken for granted. It was a form of slavery, but its ethical basis was never questioned. Drake could not understand that basis. He comforted himself with the thought that Henry VIII would have been appalled at wars that killed civilians, while accepting as natural a public hanging, drawing, and quartering.

As he placed his helmet over his head, he wondered what induced lesson he would receive tonight. He felt beyond surprise. Before he lost consciousness, it occurred to him that humanity was able to manage with very few absolutes. Why? Because people could live within — and apparently justify — any imaginable variation of ethics and morality.

Maybe that was why humans had survived.

Gradually, Drake became resigned to his own situation. He did not need to hurry. He had survived. Ana was safe in the Pluto cryowombs. Before he could do anything to change her status he would first have to earn his own freedom. He resolved to give Par Leon six good, solid years of effort toward the other man’s great lifetime project: the analysis of musical trends in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In any case, as a Resurrect what other option did he have?

After the first few months, the shrewdness of Leon’s act in reviving Drake was apparent. More important than any facts that he might provide were the perspectives that he could offer into the lifestyles of the late twentieth century. It was far more than just science and ethics that had changed.

Often, his information had Leon shaking his head. “It is truly astonishing. An insanity. Did man-woman relationships really play so large a part in everything in your society?”

“You know they did.” Drake was learning his way around the data banks, with no help from Leon. “Your own records show it, the ones that we were examining just two days ago.”

“Yes. They do show it, but believing it is difficult. Men and women actually appeared to hate each other in your era. Yet at the same time there was much random mating, mating on impulse. I do not mean mere sexual acts, that I can comprehend. But random mating that produced offspring, without benefit of genome maps or the most rudimentary genetic information on parents and grandparents…”

Drake started to explain, and quickly realized that it was hopeless. Here was another five-hundred-year gulf that could not be crossed. To Par Leon, mating was always dictated by the selection of desirable gene combinations. As he said, there was no other way to make sure that the children would be healthy. How could any other approach be justified?

He reacted to the idea of reproduction between comparative strangers as Drake regarded public burning at the stake.

In any case, Drake was beginning to have problems of his own. There really was no case to be made for the production of children, without thought for their future or for their physical and mental well-being. It was, as Par Leon said, “the blind mating urge of the primeval slime, deified to become religious principle and-blind dogma.”

Drake listened to those words and decided that he was beginning to view his own epoch with a new perspective. He must control that tendency, or his main value to Par Leon would disappear. For that reason, and one other, he had to remain an outsider in this century.

After six months, Drake realized that he was earning his keep and more. Leon might be the century’s foremost expert on the music of Drake’s period, but of some events and forces he knew nothing. He was endlessly fascinated by the smallest details.

“You say you knew him?” Par Leon leaned forward, eyebrows raised on his high forehead. “You met Renselm in person?”

“A score of times. I was present at the first performance of Morani’s Concerto concertante, written especially for Renselm, and I went backstage afterward. Then we went to dinner, just the three of us. I thought you already read about all this in one of my articles.”

“Oh, yes.” Par Leon made a dismissive gesture. “I certainly read it. But this is different. Tell me about his fingering, his posture at the keyboard, his strange reaction to applause. Tell me what he said to you about Adele Winterberg — she was his mistress at the time, you know.” He laughed in delight. “Tell me, if you can remember it, what you all ate for dinner.”

Only once or twice did Par Leon express dissatisfaction. And then it was because Drake had been frozen just before some event that especially interested him. “If you had only waited another three years…” he would say; but he spoke philosophically and with good humor.

It was by no means a one-way transfer of information. From his vantage point five centuries ahead, Par Leon had insights into the musical life of an earlier era that left Drake gasping. For the first time he understood where certain contemporary musical currents had been heading in his own time. Krubak, in his much-ridiculed late works, had been feeling his way toward forms that would not mature until thirty years after Drake had been frozen.

The work went on, ten to twelve hours a day. If Leon ever wondered why Drake showed no curiosity at seeing firsthand the world as it had become in the twenty-sixth century, or in making other friends, or even in learning the twists and turns of human progress over the past five centuries, he never mentioned it.

For his part, Drake had no desire to be absorbed by or become part of the current society. Yet he had to know certain subjects in great detail, far more than Par Leon could tell him. Fortunately, the general data banks permitted near-infinite cross-checking and depth of inquiry.

Drake began to satisfy his own unique information needs.