Breaking from the window view, Ben places the history book with his others. He hefts and carefully opens his calculus book. Like all the books, it’s old thin pages crackle instead of bending in his fingers. Individual cellulose fibers fly into the thin cold air. His breath freezes the microscopic shards against the old wavy window glass. Monsoon moisture worked deep into window crevices now form a thick autumn frost between the second and third panes. He carefully turns the pages to the front, to check the print date there: 327 YSS. It’s seventy years old. He knows YSS means ‘Year of the Star-Sword’, but beyond that it holds no meaning. There is no star nor sword hidden among the snow dusted firs and larches leaning in the wind.
Ben turns to the checkout list inside the back cover. Here, he can plainly see the names of previous students, as often written by their mothers as themselves using all four proper family names.
He’d always been forewarned about inbreeding, but he didn’t understand why they kept such meticulous track of great grandparents. They’re all dead. Generations had read this book, including his maternal-paternal great grandfather. His name is at the top of the page. The book is special to him for that reason, not for the information it holds. He evaluates his own position on the contents and reconsiders his friend’s point.
“Maybe you’re right, Jonah. This math book implies a longer history. These names, Euler, Newton, Leibniz, we don’t have any of these names on Winterhaven. They came from somewhere. But there are none here, and everyone is required to have at least two children with four spouses by law. It still feels like fiction; men flying across the stars. Wars with Xanadians. We can’t cross a big river unless it’s frozen solid. Bridge timbers are too short and can’t withstand the summer mudflows. Besides how much dirtier could their sky be than this?”
He said ‘a history’ as his language has diverged. The soft consonants get hard pronunciation as a Darwinian response to yelling through the harsh winds of Winterhaven.
Jonah says nothing for now. Winning an argument against a friend and half-brother by father is a double edged sword. They look through the frozen window onto a wintry sky streaked here and there with the black soot of chimneys burning wet wood. Most stoves double-burn the creosote out of the natural tars by drafting the smoke over an iron re-burn plate. Jonah had wire-brushed his mother’s ashy re-burn plate as part of his weekly chores. “Smoke only shows where there’s tar. All the fires make carbon dioxide. I wonder if we’re repeating their mistakes too. I just wish we knew more about them.”
“Maybe we can. Your friend, Wallace? The one that works in the library. Do you think he could find anybody named Newton?”
The library is a massive building of old construction in the core of town both under and inside the ring of greenhouses. You can spot the old multi-storied buildings by the straight lines and square corners of concrete and brick. The newer are cheap field stone and mortar and lie outside the greenhouses.
“Maybe there is another library inside we haven’t been told about. One that tells if not about Earth, at least tells of a time before 400 years ago.”
{ 0 comments… add one now }