Island of Echoes (13 page)

He chuckled. “And no performance marks? I’m not sure I would have the discipline.”

“You’ve chosen to embrace learning here, Rémy. Others from our party make no effort to do the same.” I sighed. “It’s all too common a thing. Most people are so preoccupied attempting to pass on what limited knowledge they have, they overlook learning and growing themselves.” He agreed and we continued to work until I stepped out to refill my coffee.

“Perhaps in the lounge,” I heard Lady Pearson’s voice ring out from the dining room. I entered and saw my companions seated around the table. Ella radiated joy when I met her gaze and my heart felt as though it was weightless within my chest. She once again donned a local blouse, crimson in color, which wonderfully complemented her chestnut locks.

“Ah, Mr. Laurence,” Lady Pearson acknowledged me. “We were just talking about you.”

“Oh? How may I be of service?”

“To be frank,” Travert rasped, the grey within his hair and beard seemingly more prominent than I remembered, “we haven’t the slightest sense of what to do.”

“I’m not sure I follow, Monsieur.”

“You and my nephew seem quite taken with this world,” the captain explained, “but I doubt two ladies, a pair of boatmen, and a priest have much to offer to a people capable of the wonders we’ve observed.”

“Particularly the priest,” Daniel muttered as he spread a thick fig paste over his bread.

“Negativity won’t help matters,” I said.

“Just take a look out there,” Daniel motioned to the city vista. “Not one crucifix, not one minaret, no religion to be seen anywhere. How am I to continue my life’s work in a land of heathens?”

“No one has asked you to give up your way of life,” I pointed out.

Daniel bit into his bread, his jaw clenching tightly as he ate.

“In any case,” Travert continued, “we would like you and Rémy to get some direct answers. What exactly do our hosts expect of us? Do you think you can do that, Mr. Laurence?”

“I shall try, Monsieur,” I promised and proceeded to the door.

I saw Ella attempt to stand from her chair, but she immediately thought better of it. A lady offering to escort a man back to the lounge would have surely been too forward. I flashed her a smile instead, which she reciprocated fully, before leaving the room.

The King did indeed arrange for me to meet him in the great library after his civil duties had finalized. Sarmia and Yawa came back to the apartments that afternoon.

“Yawa was kind enough to offer me a tutoring session,” Rémy explained. The old woman nodded pleasantly at me. I recalled our first vision of her walking up the odd cobblestone path beside the temple. Her shoulder-length gray hair and warm face were our first introduction to the Capribians.

“In the meantime, I will take you to the great library,” Sarmia informed me.

We left the glass spire of apartments and walked down one of the broad avenues of the city. It was likewise paved in thelísta, though the blocks here were gray rather than red. The enormous towers echoed every sound of the city, and a bustling city it was. The residents walked hurriedly past us and I was grateful to remain unrecognized. The Alexandrians wore the same casual clothing which I first spotted in Aleria, though the diversity in style was even more pronounced. Several people appeared to converse with small electric boxes similar to the one which had opened the dining room window in the Tower of Marble. Others busily tapped their wristwatches, which also contained the fluid screens of light on their faces.

“It is funny,” I told Sarmia. “I was in this very city less than one week ago, but how different it looks!”

She smiled and directed me to turn left. At the end of the avenue, in the heart of the city, stood a majestic building unlike any other. It was quite small compared to the apartment towers by the harbor, but it was strikingly beautiful. A square base of what appeared to be green porcelain was enclosed below a colossal four-sided cloister dome composed entirely of squares of green glass. Four smaller domes protruded from the central pyramid, extending the structure in each direction. White columns contrasted against the green backdrop at the base. The entire edifice exuded simplistic harmony.

“The Great Library of Alexandria,” Sarmia informed me.

I could scarcely utter a word. The building was legendary among historians. Every copy of every known book was once stored within its walls. It was the very heart of western knowledge.

“The original?” I stuttered.

“Oh no,” she said. “The original was lost centuries ago. This one replaced it.”

No, of course it wasn’t, I thought. The building before me looked nothing like the constructions of old; it was thoroughly modern in design. We walked up a broad set of stairs and entered into the central hall. The interior of the glass pyramid provided brilliant illumination. An intricate mosaic of the nine ancient muses formed a large circle at the center of the hall. Great trees and masses of flowers extended away from it in all directions. The glass dome functioned as a greenhouse. I spotted a raised promenade at its base. Men and women of all ages and ethnicities walked along it, admiring the city outside.

“Where do all those doors lead?” I asked, acknowledging the countless sets of bronze doorways lining the far walls of the room.

“Lecture halls, meeting rooms, dining rooms. This building is host to thousands of visitors every day.”

We passed many people in the interior garden. Some sat on the turfy down and chatted quietly. Others leaned against trees and read from electric paper, which looked much like miniatures of the wall-screens. Sarmia led me through one of the grand doorways. The room within was small and windowless, but elegantly decorated. It was illuminated from within an intricate etching in the ceiling which reminded me of a Tibetan mandala. A table of food and beverages had been set up in one corner.

King Eireas sat atop a padded cushion at a low table in the center of the room. He had changed into casual dress, though the silver laurels were ever-present on his brow. Sarmia closed the door behind us and we joined the young man at the table.

“I was just wondering,” King Eireas began, “if you’ve ever tasted this beverage before arriving on our shores.” He raised an elegant silver pot and filled a cup with dark liquid.

“Yes, we call it coffee,” I confirmed.

He nodded. “We have been serving it to you, but I did not even think to ask whether you were familiar with it.”

“What do you call it?” I asked.

“Kontrecense,” he stated, “and this presents us with a dilemma.”

“How so?” Sarmia spoke up.

“The Pharos collapsed in an earthquake on his world as it did here,” Eireas expounded, “but it was not rebuilt. However, Kontrecense was not discovered until much later, and his world likewise developed it.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I admitted.

“It has always been theorized that one event may have been enough to trigger a dramatic change in all aspects of your history. But while some events on your world occurred differently, others stayed the same. Finding this shift may not be as easy as I thought.”

“Then let us start with the Royal Republics,” I suggested. “How did they form?”

He tapped the table at which we sat and it converted into a screen like those of the wall. Only in retrospect could I discern where the wood ended and the electric screen of light began; the camouflage was extraordinary. The table lit up and I saw the outlines of the now-familiar states.

“An ancient king in this region,” Eireas indicated the great Baltic state, “was threatened by invaders from the East. He proposed an alliance with bordering nations. The terms dictated that, should any member state come under attack, all member states must come to its aid.”

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Very well,” Eireas continued. “He was attacked just as he feared, but his allies drove the eastern armies away so successfully that a similar union was soon formed by the retreating kings.”

“More and more states continued to join the alliances,” Sarmia added, “and more alliances were created. Eventually, the Royal Republics totaled fifteen states. The same fifteen we have today.”

“The alliances brought about great stability,” Eireas disclosed. “After thousands of years of unending war, the world finally knew peace for a prolonged period of time. But the threat of invasion by large forces continued to drive the nations to develop their weaponry and skills.” He entered another command into the table and a map of the entire globe appeared, with only a handful of large nations including the Royal Republics.

“Why are these areas void of any labels?” I asked, indicating the Americas, Antarctica, and Australia.

The King looked to where I pointed. “Eventually the cultures within the alliances began to homogenize. People became concerned that their ways of life may be impacted or forced to change under new rule. To avoid future conflict, and believing that all desirable land had already been claimed, the alliances signed a second similar treaty which prohibited the addition of territory to any nation.”

“Before the discovery of these landmasses,” I deduced.

“Yes,” Sarmia confirmed. “All of the unmarked lands were discovered after the signing of the treaty. By that time, the great nations could not legally claim them.”

I nodded. “Fascinating. This history is vastly different from my own.”

“Then we must examine events further back in time,” Eireas reasoned.

“We probably don’t even measure time in the same way,” I said.

Eireas squinted slightly and bit his lower lip; he appeared deep in thought. “What month is it?” he asked suddenly.

“My people call it July,” I responded. “But in Latin it is Iulius.”

“Ah! Now we are getting somewhere,” he rejoiced.

He tapped some more commands into the table and a chart appeared before us. The present day was highlighted, though the division of weeks was different from our own. The remaining months were listed in Anuprian, with the same mixture of Greek and Latin letters, but their names remained fairly unchanged from their ancient form.

“This is the Julian calendar,” the King informed me. “Now, if we go back to…”

“Wait,” I interrupted before he could tap the screen again. My eyes scanned the remainder of the year, and then the start of the next. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“What is it?” Sarmia asked, her eyes quickly perusing the chart.

“One event may indeed have been the source of our division,” I informed them.

Exactly one week after our departure from Alexandria, we were leaving it again. It was sheer coincidence that the recollection of the second parting fell within the thirteenth segment of these memoirs, but the number was apt. Long regarded as a bad omen, it symbolized my emotions after that night in the great library. The exhilaration of my research with Eireas and Sarmia had been replaced with gloom by the time I returned to my apartment that night. I had every intention of expounding the details of our research, but the more I wrote, the more I realized how lost in sorrow I had become. Not for myself or for my ship-mates, but for humanity as I knew it.

A week ago, we were thrust into a world of peace, prosperity, and advancement. We had been treated with nothing but kindness and offered boundless hospitality. I had come to terms with the impossible nature of this world, this ‘Lisispal’ as the locals called it. But my rationality had been grounded in the belief that a great event, perhaps a war or natural catastrophe, had forever separated the courses of Earth and its sister.

King Eireas had correctly discovered our use of the Julian calendar, or at least its descendant. The Roman system was changed two thousand years prior when Julius Caesar introduced the Egyptian calendar into Europe. Likewise, July had previously been called Quintilis, but was renamed in honor of Caesar. At first glance, it seemed we had discovered nothing more than an ancient parallel. Our journey in search of the historical shift would have continued had I not spotted a discrepancy in the month following.

What we know as August was listed by its original name of Sextilis on the table-screen. It, too, had been changed to honor a man: Augustus. I found it odd that the name of one month was altered when the other was not and examined the list in greater detail. I began laughing when I spotted the most obvious discrepancy of all. Where I expected to see Ianuarius, January, was the month of Cleopatris.

“This month is known by its original name on my world,” I informed my hosts. “Who renamed it here?”

“The birth months of Emperor Caesar and Empress Cleopatra were retitled during their triumphal celebrations over Parthia,” King Eireas informed me. “Their empire initiated what our historians call the Golden Age of ancient history.”

“Parthia?” I was baffled. “Caesar never made it to Parthia on my sphere. He had been assassinated.”

Sarmia manipulated the table screen to bring up a historical text of the time-period in question. With their translation, I learned that the seeds of the Royal Republics had been planted when the entire Mediterranean was connected under one rule during this Golden Age. The text was accompanied by photographs of countless statues of the imperial couple and their son.

Caesar was portrayed as a fit and finely featured man. His tight jaw and piercing gaze were marvelously captured in the stone. But Cleopatra was truly a sight to behold. She was commonly sculpted wearing a wide royal diadem or a vulture headdress. Not at all the immoral temptress which our scholars wrote about, she was a beautiful young woman with classically Greek features and intelligent eyes. With Caesar’s survival, the man we knew as Augustus had become no more than a footnote in history.

“Tell me more of their ancient empire,” I suggested. “How long did it last?”

“Not as long as the couple would have hoped,” Sarmia admitted. “Their empire flourished under their son, and his son after him. But it eventually fragmented into smaller client states. It was simply too large to manage.”

“But it made its mark on the Lisispal,” Eireas added. “It only took a few generations without violence to truly cultivate an appreciation for peace. The client states continued to govern themselves independently until the alliances began. The first alliance re-joined all of this former empire and the state borders remain fairly unchanged to this day.”

“What year did the alliances begin?” I asked.

“471,” my hosts answered in unison.

I learned that the triumph over Parthia marked year one on this sphere, equivalent to 41 B.C. on our world.  The Royal Republics of the Sea were a nation 1,464 years old.

And so it was that one event, one minor event in history, had caused a permanent rift between Earth and the Lisispal. Despite my intellectual curiosity, the more I dwelled on this knowledge, the deeper I fell into sorrow. My thoughts revolved around the countless bloodshed and quarrelling on Earth, the violent nature of humanity. It pained me to realize that a trivial change could have prevented such widespread destruction.

I did not have the heart to inform Sarmia that the people from which she descended had been all but destroyed on Earth when the new world was discovered. I could not tell my hosts of the systematic torture and execution of throngs of people in the name of religions which never came to develop on the Lisispal. Nor could I thoroughly explain the harsh divisions between nations which continue to bicker to this day back home.

The people of this world, though divided, connect philosophically with their brethren. From what I have learned and observed, there is local pride in traditions and cultural distinctions, but humanity as a whole has somehow shifted their greater ideas of connection. This became perfectly clear later in the evening, when we happened across an image of the great pyramids. Unlike on Earth, their exterior layers of white limestone had not been desecrated to build the city of Cairo and they remained smooth and polished, with gold-leafed tips. I commented on their beauty.

“They never fail to fill me with pride,” Eireas stated. “Our ancestors were truly gifted in architecture,” he added, looking to his advisor.

“I had not realized you were Egyptian,” I said, ignorant fool that I was.

He and Sarmia looked upon me as parents onto a silly child. “I am not,” he answered with some confusion.

“Forgive me,” I replied quickly. “The word ancestor must have changed meaning throughout the centuries.”

“I do not mean ancestors by blood,” he clarified, “but all of humanity is joined in spirit.” I could only gaze upon them in wonder, so foreign of a concept this was to me.

At that moment, I wished with all of my heart that I possessed the same pride for this altered humanity that it felt toward itself. The truth is, although I was filled with countless emotions, I had no such pride within me. I mourned the narrow loss of this paradise. I was jealous of the freedom and prosperity which the Lisispal enjoyed. I was also angry to be the uneducated foreigner within a land far ahead of my own. It was as such that I returned to the apartment and attempted to write of these discoveries. But what enthusiasm began, dejection overtook. My night was long and restless.

We departed Alexandria in the early morning. I sat alone in the reclining room of the royal ship, hunger suppressed by emotion. I pressed my cheek to the palm of my hand as I watched the lighthouse glide by the window. It recalled the kiss with Ella when we first spotted it, and this memory served to brighten my spirits, if only marginally. Once again, we picked up speed on the open water and the lulling of the ship provided me with the peace which I sought the previous night.

The ship had slowed its progress by the time I awoke. I stood and stretched, my mind clouded by further want of rest. I looked forward to being back in the palace apartment. Only then did I realize that I had not kept true to my word, for I had yet to ask our hosts of what was to become of us. The thought was accompanied by a tightness in my stomach. Was my euphoria wearing off? I began to fear the unknown now that my self-image had been diminished. It is incredible how differently the world appears with a shift in sense of worth.

I stepped up onto the deck and saw Daniel at the railing. Beyond him lay the shores of Capribo, the Tower of Marble gleaming in the morning light. I walked up beside the priest.

“Mr. Laurence,” he acknowledged. “Have you come to try and convert me again?”

I shook my head. “No, Father. I have not been trying to convert you.”

“No?” he replied sarcastically. “It certainly seemed so.”

“I admit, I was instantly enticed by this world and its people. My only wish was that you would discover the same wonder.”

“Mr. Laurence, do you know where I was taken while you were at the library yesterday?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“One of their people approached me, another speaker of Latin,” he stated. “He asked me if I would like to offer prayers at the local temple. Naturally, he got my attention. Perhaps there was some redemption for these people after all.”

“Did you go?” I inquired.

“Oh yes, I was taken to a beautiful temple… dedicated to one of their pagan idols,” he practically hissed the words out.

I sighed. “Do not mistake my comfort with feeling part of the whole. I am just as much a foreigner here. But unlike you, I don’t fail to see the good of this place. Peace, morality, stability, and education are qualities which this world has in abundance.”

“They live in peace,” Daniel admitted, “but at what cost? They have lost their sense of self. They live in perpetual blasphemy.”

I opened my mouth to respond when we heard voices emerging from the other side of the vessel. I perceived hushed talking in the Anuprian tongue. Daniel and I could not see the source from our vantage point, for the elegant white pillars of the deck blocked our view. We stepped around the columns, but what we observed at the other end acted as a silent restraint on my mobility.

Eireas and Rémy stood together but I was immediately put off by their actions; they behaved in an all-too-familiar fashion. I could scarcely comprehend what I was seeing before the King leaned his hand over and dug his fingers into the boatman’s blonde locks. He pulled Rémy’s face close to his own and they exchanged a passionate kiss.

I quickly stepped back behind the pillars, my face no doubt crimson at the revelation.

Daniel chuckled as he observed me, his eyes squinting menacingly. “Morality, indeed,” he mocked, and disappeared below deck.

Rémy, if you are indeed reading this as you had informed me you would like to do, I must take the time to properly apologize, for I did not defend you as I should have. You must know by now that I had begun to think of you as a brother. My reaction on deck was born solely from surprise, and not from shame. I only regret that I was witness to an act which you believed to be private. Please forgive me, my friend, and know that your happiness is as dear to me as my own.

I would have followed Daniel below deck but my eyes were averted by movement at the tip of the Tower of Marble. Several segments of the metal framework slid down in their hidden grooves and three long horns emerged from the recesses of the great cone, crowning the stately structure. They called out to us as we approached the shore, a triumphant and welcoming melody. The blast stirred countless birds from their branches throughout the forested capital and simultaneously attracted my companions to the deck.

“Oh, we are back,” Ella delightedly observed as she emerged into the light. I took her hand and guided her up the remaining stairs. She sported a ravishing purple dress trimmed in golden thread and looked to me like an ancient princess of Atlantis. Eireas and Rémy came to join us at the railing, unaware of their exposure.

We once again proceeded to the palace with the pomp of a royal procession. The citizens of Capribo greeted their ruler with uninhibited delight. A number of people shouted out to my companions and me by name, but it was clear that we were no longer the center of their attention. The man whom they elected and adored had returned home. I could only wonder how well they knew their King.

Eireas and his entourage immediately proceeded to the throne room, but Sarmia was kind enough to escort us upstairs.

“The King is a very busy man,” she explained in the lift. “He regrets not being able to spend more time with you, but he has already neglected some of his stately duties to better acquaint you with our land.”

“We understand. It is no insult,” I assured her.

Our apartment, which had begun to feel like home, waited for us just as we left it.

“Sarmia, there is an issue of some importance which I would like to discuss,” I stated. “My group is most curious as to what should become of us now.”

“A natural inquiry,” she replied. “I regret that we have not spoken of it sooner.” We settled onto the couches overlooking the gardens and the sea beyond. “You and your companions will be treated no differently than any other citizen,” she declared confidently. “We can provide you with assistance in securing work and housing, but you are expected to become contributing members of our society. You must learn our language and follow our laws, even those to which you morally object.” Her eyes diverted to Daniel, who sat at the dining table pretending not to eavesdrop.