To The Stars

Jan was led from the room by the men, still carrying their guns. The weapons were all old and worn, museum pieces. They entered another room in the house, a bedroom where small black children sat on the patched quilts of a bed. They and an old and white-haired woman followed their passage in staring silence. There was an exit here, a rough-edged hole that had been chopped through the wall. It led into a covered passage to another house. When they had passed through four separate dwellings in this manner Jan realized that the houses must all be connected like this, making one extended building. They finally came to a closed door on which Willy knocked lightly.

“Come in,” a voice called out. Jan was hustled through the door into an extensive, book-lined room. The difference from the other quarters he had seen was striking. This could well have been his old tutor’s study at university, resembling it in more ways than one. The desk was thick with paper and opened books, there were framed drawings on the walls, and even a globe of the world. Soft chairs and there, behind the desk, the tutor himself slumped back comfortably in his chair. A black man, just like all the others.

“Thank you, Willy,” he said. “I gonna talk to this here Jan by m’self.”

“You be all right…”

“Sure will. Jus leave a man outside so’s I can give a shout needs be.”

When the door had closed the man rose to shake hands with Jan. He was middle-aged with a full beard and long hair, both shot through with gray. His clothing was dark and conservative, well suited to the clerical dog collar.

“I’m Reverend Montour, Mr. Kulozik. It is my very great pleasure to welcome you here.”

Jan shook his hand and could only nod his thanks. All traces of patois had vanished and the Reverend spoke with an easy and cultivated voice.

“Sit down, please do. May I offer you a glass of sherry? It’s a local wine and I think that you will find it enjoyable.”

Jan sipped the sherry; it was quite good, and looked around the room.

“You’ll pardon me for staring,” he said. “But it’s been years since I have been in a room like this. I admire your library.”

“Thank you. Most of the volumes are centuries old and quite rare. Every page has been absorption preserved.”

“Wrecker books, really? May I? Thank you.” He put his glass down and stepped up to the shelves. The bindings were worn and heavily repaired, and many of the titles obliterated. Reaching up, he took down what looked like the soundest one and opened it carefully to the title page. It was entitled The Middle Ages 395-1500. He turned the page carefully and on the back read “Copyright, 1942.”

When he spoke he had trouble keeping the reverence out of his voice. “This book… it’s over five hundred years old. I didn’t know anything like this existed.”

“They do, I assure you, and there are many more like it. But I can understand your feelings. You are British, I take it?”

Jan nodded.

“I thought so. The accent and that term, the Wreckers. I understand it is in common usage in your country.

You must understand that I have these books because of the varying paths that were followed during the period that historians call the Retrocession. At that time the different countries and areas of the world suffered the same declining fate, but they accommodated to it in different ways, usually following the existing social divisions. Great Britain, traditionally a class-orientated society, utilized its historical class system to consolidate the rigid societal structure that still exists today. The ruling elite had never been happy with education for the masses and were only too relieved when physical circumstances did away with that necessity. But restriction of education and information, once begun, has no end. I understand that most British citizens today have no idea of the true nature of history or even of the world they live in. Is that true?”

“Very much so. My accidental discovery of this fact was the beginning of a chain of events that, well, brought me to this room.”

“I understand. Conformity must be most intellectually oppressive under a system such as yours. History followed a completely different course here, since there are many roads to tyranny. America, without a class system, has traditionally substituted a system of vertical mobility based for the most part on money. It was always a truism here that it was not your lineage but your bank account that determined your status. With the exception, of course, of the physically visible minorities. Irish, Polish, Jews, traditionally rejected minorities, were assimilated after the first few generations because their racial types permitted them to merge with the general population. Not so the dark-skinned races who, once firmly planted at the bottom of society, were forced to stay there by the repeated cycles of physical and educational deprivation. This was the situation existing when the Retrocession began, and it ended with this country as you see it now.”