Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn Volume II (48 page)

"Surely the race—stumbling and floundering in a deadly biological morass—deserves more than this mote, this snippet of aid? Doesn't the next, the smaller generation, deserve the best of the previous, the larger generation, whatever custom may whine and morality may squeak to the contrary? We don't preach sexual monopoly: we preach sexual salvation! And I say to you—"

"Oh, Dodson, please take him out!" the Ambassador begged. "I have to think, and these grammar school recitations are giving me a headache!"

At the door, Groppus abruptly slid from his dizzy forensic heights and landed springily on his feet. "So you won't allow them to extradite me, Your Excellency? You won't relinquish me to the justice of these primitives?"

"I haven't decided one way or the other. There's more at stake than your person. I have to consider the matter carefully."

"
Consider?
Are you for light or for darkness? Are you for the future or the past? What is there to consider? I am a spiritual citizen, a philosophical forefather of 2219 AD. I have the
right
to sanctuary here—I
demand
that you give me asylum!"

The Ambassador stared at him calmly. "Neither spiritual citizenship nor philosophical forebears are included in the category of duties for which I am responsible. And I would like to point out to you, Mr. Groppus, that under international law—from which the body of extratemporal law is derived—a fugitive's rights of asylum are never implicit, but are dependent entirely upon the determination of the state to which he flees or the embassy of refuge
in each separate case
."

Dodson closed the door on the bearded man's dawning expression of consternation.

When he returned, having deposited Groppus with guards who were going to be very self-consciously uncommunicative, the Ambassador told him of the threat contained in the Secretary of State's last comment.

The young man swallowed. "That seems to imply that—that shortly after we're served with extradition papers, sir, a forcible entry of the Embassy will be made in order to remove the prisoner. But that's unheard of!"

"It may be the sort of thing that isn't talked about much, but it certainly isn't unheard of. It would mean, of course, that the Temporal Embassy would be permanently withdrawn from the United States of this era."

"Would they risk
that
, sir? After all, it's their link with the future! We can't give them all the information they want, but we do give them whatever knowledge the Temporal Embassies in our own time say is safe. And we take nothing in return. It would be idiotic for them to break relations."

The Ambassador studied a page in the gray-bound book on his desk.

"Nothing which
must
be done is idiotic," he said, largely to himself. "Precedent after precedent. A matter of finding the right kind of spurious legality in which to cloak such action. And who is to say what is spurious or not about the reasons a sovereign state gives for taking drastic measures, if it believes that the measures are essential to its survival? A case like this, so intricately involved with mass frustration and the most basic problems of individual male egos.

Dodson was watching him closely. "So we give up the fugitive? I thought we would have to from the very beginning, if you'll pardon me for saying so, sir. He is a criminal, no doubt about it. But it
is
going to be an uncomfortable business, very much like turning in a forefather, at that. He thinks so much like us."

The young man rubbed a hand reflectively against a clean-shaven chin. "Even looks like us—I mean the way we looked back home in 2219, before we were anachronized for the Embassy in this period. It's amazing in how many petty and minor ways, as well as large and important ones, Groppus has anticipated our age."

His Excellency stood up and stretched at great length. "Nonsense, Dodson, nonsense! Don't confuse cause with effect and real history with dramatic personalities. Henry Groppus didn't grow whiskers because he envisioned the possibility that every man in our time will—that's not the way it works at all. We go about bearded because our entire civilization is based on the Genetic File. And the concept of the Genetic File had its roots among the ideas of the twenty-second-century Mendelists—a maladjusted anti-social bunch who wore whiskers in a non-whiskered time as part of their general protest.

"Put the Utopian babblings of Henry Groppus up against the hard, workaday facts on the Genetic File in our age—do you see any real correspondence? Here and there, clumsily—as in Groppus advocating compulsory polygamy, or genetic aristocrats, and in our society allowing an occasional, gifted man, under special circumstances, to take more than one wife. The sad truth about political saints of any given past is that nobody but a scholar will take the trouble to read their complete works and try to see them whole. But all this to one side: the Mendelists
are
political saints in our time and we can't turn one of them in."

"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir," Dodson objected. "You said just a moment ago that the present-day United States government felt so strongly about this matter that it was prepared to recover fugitives by force, even at the cost of breaking diplomatic relations with our time. Well, sir? And then there's paragraph 16a of the Temporal Embassy By-laws:
'...and above all the duty of respecting the laws, the customs and the mores peculiar to the time in which an Embassy is accredited and of giving no offense whatsoever thereto'
."

The Ambassador from 2219 AD began emptying his desk, explaining gently over his shoulder: "By-laws are one thing, Dodson. Natural laws are another. And the first and most fundamental natural law of a public servant is this: don't bite the hand that feeds you. Don't offend the sensibilities of the government officials who employ you. And above all, don't offend the sensibilities of the public who employs
them
. If I turned Groppus in, I would receive the heartfelt appreciation of this period—and never get another diplomatic appointment from 2219 AD. That's the basis on which I finally made my decision.

"So we simplify things. We close down the Embassy before even the extradition warrant arrives, and we leave, with all our personnel, papers and our precious fugitive, through the emergency chrondromos in the basement. Back in our time, we make the necessary explanations, they make the necessary apologies to this period, and, after a necessary interval has elapsed and memories have dimmed a bit, a new Temporal Ambassador from 2219 AD is appointed—one who will swear upon his arrival that he would absolutely never dream of obstructing justice. Everyone's face is saved."

He chucklingly prodded the astonished First Secretary in the ribs with the gray-bound Casebook of Extratemporal Law. "Jump, my boy, jump! The Embassy has to be ready to move out of here in an hour. And Havemeyer has to check out the scientific problems involved in bringing Henry Groppus into the future! And you have to write out a visa for him."

Three weeks later—or, to be exact, one hundred years and three weeks later—Dodson called on the Ambassador, who was packing busily, having just been appointed to the Embassy on Ganymede. Both men scratched from time to time at newly sprouted hair on their faces.

"Have you heard, sir? About Groppus? He finally did it!"

"Did what, my boy? The last I heard, he was going from triumph to triumph. Adoring crowds everywhere. A speech at the Monument to the Mendelist Martyrs. Another speech on the steps of the North American Genetic File, tearfully hailing the concrete reality of a dream hallowed in blood—or some such moist metaphor."

The young man shook his head excitedly. "That's what I mean. After the speech on the steps of the North American Genetic File last week, he went inside with a flourish and made out an application for a fatherhood certificate—just in case, he explained, he ran into a woman he wanted to marry. Well, this morning the Genetic File completed its regulation chromosome survey on him—
and he was turned down!
Too many unstable patterns, said the voucher. But that's nothing, sir, nothing! What do you think he did fifteen minutes ago?"

"I don't know." The Ambassador shrugged. "Blew up the Genetic File?"

"That's
exactly
what he did! He made up the explosive himself, he said. He claimed he had to free mankind from the tyranny of eugenic red tape. He destroyed the File completely, sir!"

He sat down heavily.

The Ambassador's face had gone white. "But," he whispered, "but—the Genetic
File
! The only complete genetic record of every individual in North America! The basis of our civilization!"

"Isn't it—Isn't it—" Dodson gave up trying to express the calamity in words. He clenched his fists. "He's under heavy guard. But I can tell you this, sir, and I'm not the only one who feels that way—he'll never live to face sentence. Not if I know 2219 AD!"

—|—

The cry was in a deep voice, a breathless, badly frightened voice. Hoarse and urgent, it rose above the roar of the distant mob, above the rattle of traffic; it flung itself into the spacious office on the third floor of the Embassy and demanded immediate attention.

His Excellency, the Ambassador from 2319 AD—the sole occupant of that office—was a man of tense bearing and an extremely strained face. His eyes transmitted the unvarying message that all things were essentially complex—and might be further complicated. It was, therefore, not at all remarkable how that cry from the grounds below made him look suddenly uncertain.

He rose and moved to the window with his usual haste. A tall, bearded man, whose clothes were torn and whose body was badly bruised, had just leaped onto the Embassy lawn from the surrounding high fence. The bearded man pointed the forefingers of both hands at the third-floor office of the Ambassador from 2319 AD and shrieked again:

"Sanctuary!"

A century ago, any American could have described Thomas Jefferson quite easily. He was above all one of the great Founding Fathers, pretty much a secular saint. Today he's still a Founding Father, of course, but many see him as a libertine and a bit of a hypocrite, especially with regard to slavery.

And take the great African-American statesman and writer, W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1900, most white Americans who knew of him would have described him as a vicious troublemaker, if not an out-and-out revolutionary. A century later, he's seen as a courageous visionary and an important leader.

Sitting Bull? Victoria Woodhull? During my adolescence, I read about them as terrifying or comical figures. Now, in my elder years, I see them as anything but.

It was such metamorphoses in viewpoint, as one era succeeds another, that have always fascinated me and that led to "Sanctuary." It also led me to coin the term "temporal provincialism" in my first anthology,
Children of Wonder
, in 1953.

But "Sanctuary" has an even more specific accent. It seems to be about the governmental organization of time travel, but it's actually quite nakedly about history. It's my belief that all good science fiction, from H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley to Cliff Simak, Brian Aldiss, and Connie Willis, is about history—past history, future history, or alternate history—even when it
seems
to be about developments in technology, theology, or information management.

In other words, the
science
in science fiction is actually history. Nothing more and nothing other.

Written 1956——Published 1957

"Don't you think you might look up from that comic book long enough to get interested in a last-minute briefing on the greatest adventure undertaken by man? After all, it's your noodle neck that's going to be risked." Professor Ruddle throbbed his annoyance clear up to his thin white hair.

McCarthy shifted his quid and pursed his lips. He stared dreamily at an enameled wash-basin fifteen feet from the huge, box-like coil of wire and transparencies on which the Professor had been working. Suddenly, a long brown stream leaped from his mouth and struck the brass cold-water faucet with a loud
ping
.

The professor jumped. McCarthy smiled.

"Name ain't Noodleneck," he drawled. "It's Gooseneck. Known and respected in every county jail of the U.S.A., including here in North Carolina. 'Gooseneck McCarthy, ten days for vagrancy' is the way it goes, or 'Gooseneck McCarthy, drunk and disorderly, twenty days.'
Never
Noodleneck." He paused, sighted, and the cold-water faucet
pinged
again. "Looky, Bub, all I asked was a cup of coffee and maybe a piece of breakfast. Time machine's your notion."

"Doesn't it mean anything that you will shortly be one hundred and ten million years in the past, a past in which no recognizable ancestors of man existed?"

"Nope. It don't mean anything."

The former chairman of the physics department at Brindlesham Business College grimaced disgustedly. He stared through thick lenses at the stringy, wind-hardened derelict whom he was forced to trust with his life's work. A chipped-granite head set on a remarkably long, thin neck; a narrow body whose limbs were equally extended; clothes limited to a faded khaki turtleneck sweater, patched brown corduroy pants and a worn-out pair of once-heavy brogans. He sighed.

"And the fate of human knowledge and progress depends on you! When you wandered up the mountain to my shack two days ago, you were broke and hungry. You didn't have a dime—"

"Had a dime. Only had a hole in my pocket, too. Somewhere around here in this room, that dime is."

"All right. All right. So you
had
had a dime. I took you in, gave you a good, hot meal and offered to pay you one hundred dollars to take my time machine on its maiden voyage. Don't you think—"

Ping!
This time it was the hot-water faucet.

"—that the very least you could do," the little physicist's voice was rising hysterically, "the very least would be to pay enough attention to the facts I make available to insure that the experiment will be a success? Do you realize what fantastic disruption you might cause in the time stream by one careless slip?"