Waiting for the Olympians

“How do you know that? Anyway, this is a sci-rom, dear.” I didn’t pause to see if she reacted to the “dear”. I went right on, but not failing to notice that she hadn’t objected. “The people will be as silly as I want them to be - as long as I can make it plausible enough for the fans. But you haven’t heard the best part of it. Let’s say the Chrestian-Judaeans take their religion seriously. They don’t do anything to go against the will of their god. What Yahveh said still goes, no matter what. Do you follow? That means they aren’t at all interested in scientific discovery, for instance.”

“No, stop right there!” she ordered, suddenly indignant. “Are you trying to say that we Judaeans aren’t interested in science? That I’m not? Or my Uncle Sam? And we’re certainly Judaeans.”

“But you’re not Chrestian-Judaeans, sweet. There’s a big difference. Why? Because I say there is, Rachel, and I’m the one writing the story. So, let’s see - “ I paused for thought - “all right, let’s say the Chrestians go through a long period of intellectual stagnation, and then - “ I paused, not because I didn’t know what was coming next but to build the effect - “and then along come the Olympians!”

She gazed at me blankly. “Yes?” she asked, encouraging but vague.

“Don’t you see it? And then this Chrestian-Judaean world, drowsing along in the middle of a pre-scientific dark age - no aircraft, no electronic broadcast, not even a printing press or a hovermachine - is suddenly thrown into contact with a super-technological civilization from outer space!” She was wrinkling her forehead at me, trying to understand what I was driving at. “It’s terrible culture shock,” I explained. “And not just for the people on Earth. Maybe the Olympians come to look us over, and they see that we’re technologically backward and divided into warring nations and all that. . . and what do they do? Why, they turn right around and leave us! And . . . and that’s the end of the book!”

She pursed her lips. “But maybe that’s what they’re doing now,” she said cautiously.

“But not for that reason, certainly. See, this isn’t our world I’m talking about. It’s a what if world.”

“It sounds a little far-fetched,” she said.

I said happily, “That’s where my skills come in. You don’t understand sci-rom, sweetheart. It’s the sci-rom writer’s job to push an idea as far as it will go - to the absolute limit of credibility - to the point where if he took just one step more the whole thing would collapse into absurdity. Trust me, Rachel. I’ll make them believe it.”

She was still pursing her pretty lips, but this time I didn’t wait for her to speak. I seized the bird of opportunity on the wing. I leaned towards her and kissed those lips, as I had been wanting to do for some time. Then I said, “I’ve got to get to a scribe; I want to get all this down before I forget it. I’ll be back when I can be, and - and until then - well, here.”

And I kissed her again, gently, firmly and long; and it was quite clear early in the process that she was kissing me back.

* * * *

Being next to a rental barracks had its advantages. I found a scribe to rent at a decent price, and the rental manager even let me borrow one of their conference rooms that night to dictate in. By daybreak I had down the first two chapters and an outline of Sidewise to a Chrestian World.

Once I get that far in a book, the rest is just work. The general idea is set, the characters have announced themselves to me, it’s just a matter of closing my eyes for a moment to see what’s going to be happening and then opening them to dictate to the scribe. In this case, the scribes, plural, because the first one wore out in a few more hours and I had to employ a second, and then a third.

I didn’t sleep at all until it was all down. I think it was fifty-two straight hours, the longest I’d worked in one stretch in years. When it was all done I left it to be fair-copied. The rental agent agreed to get it down to the shipping offices by the harbour and dispatch it by fast air to Marcus in London.

Then at last I stumbled back to Rachel’s house to sleep. I was surprised to find that it was still dark, an hour or more before sunrise.

Basilius let me in, looking startled as he studied my sunken eyes and unshaved face. “Let me sleep until I wake up,” I ordered. There was a journal neatly folded beside my bed, but I didn’t look at it. I lay down, turned over once, and was gone.

When I woke up, at least twelve hours had passed. I had Basilius bring me something to eat and shave me, and when I finally got out to the atrium it was nearly sundown and Rachel was waiting for me. I told her what I’d done, and she told me about the last message from the Olympians. “Last?” I objected. “How can you be sure it’s the last?”

“Because they said so,” she told me sadly. “They said they were breaking off communications.”