The Island of Echoes: A Novel Page 12

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

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

  “Take a look out there,” Daniel motioned to the window. “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 gave her a quick smile instead, which she reciprocated, before leaving the room.

  Sarmia and Yawa returned to the apartments that afternoon.

  “Etia Yawa was kind enough to offer me a tutoring session,” Rémy explained. The old woman nodded to me. I recalled first seeing her walk up the cobblestone path beside the temple. Her warm face had been our first exposure to the Capribians.

  “In the meantime, I will take you to the great library,” Sarmia informed me. "The King has arranged to meet with you."

  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 were earth-colored 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.

  “I was in this very city less than one week ago," I told Sarmia. "But it may as well have been another planet."

  "In a way, it is," she replied.

  We approached another major road and turned 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. Four smaller domes protruded from the central pyramid, extending the structure in each direction. The domes were all made of small glass panels. It looked like a conservatory. White columns contrasted against the green backdrop at the base. The edifice exuded a 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 isn’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 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 doorways lining the 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. In fact, I saw no books or scrolls as we know them. Sarmia led us to one of the doorways. The room within was small and windowless, but elegantly decorated. It was illuminated from within an 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,” Eireas began, “if you’ve 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.

  “Kontresense,” he stated. "Do you know how long ago it was developed?"

  "On Earth? I believe about four or five hundred years ago."

  “Ah. And this presents us with a dilemma.”

  “How so?” Sarmia spoke up.

  “The Pharos collapsed in an earthquake on his world, just as it did here, though it was not rebuilt,” Eireas explained. "But kontresense was not discovered until much later, yet his world developed it at the same time as ours."

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

  Eireas thought for a moment. "Imagine two ships sailing single file across an ocean," he said. "There is a rock ahead of them. To avoid it, one ship moves left, the other right. Although they started in the same place, along the same path, they will eventually end up on different sides of the globe. It has often been theorized that one such event may have been enough to cause a dramatic change in all aspects of your history."

  "Ah, I see," Sarmia chimed in. "But while some events on our world occurred differently, others stayed the same hundreds of years later."

  "Exactly," the King confirmed. "Finding this shift may not be as easy as I thought. If a single event was enough to cause it at all."

  “Something which could cause such a large rift between our worlds must have been tremendous in scale,” I reasoned. “The Royal Republics don’t exist on Earth. Did they form after a great war?”

  Eireas 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 screen began; the camouflage was extraordinary. The table lit up and I saw the outlines of the now-familiar states.

  “An almost-war,” Eireas answered. “There was a king in this region,” he indicated the great Baltic state, “who was threatened by invaders from the east. He proposed an alliance with his bordering monarchs. The terms dictated that, should any member state come under attack, all other member states must come to its aid.”

  “Did this work?” I asked.

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

  “More kings joined the alliances,” Sarmia added, “and even more alliances were created. Eventually, the Royal Republics became one nation totaling fifteen states. The same fifteen we have today.”

  “Those alliances brought about great stability,” Eireas disclosed. “After thousands of years of unending war, this part of the world finally knew peace for a prolonged period of time. And although threats of invasion drove development, our borders have remained largely unchanged.” He entered another command into the table and a map of the entire globe appeared. It contained only a handful of large nations. I studie
d it for some time.

  “Why are these areas void of the same 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. And people fear change. They became concerned that their ways of life may be forced to change under new rule. To avoid future conflict, and believing that all desirable land had already been claimed, a new, albeit similar, agreement was passed amongst all the alliances. It prohibited the addition of territory to any nation.”

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

  “Yes,” Sarmia confirmed. “All the unmarked continents were discovered after the signing of the agreement. By that time, the Great Nations could not legally claim them. Allies were formed and trade routes were established, but there could be no colonization.”

  "And this unclaimed land does not breed rebellion and anarchy?" I asked.

  "It has had its share of difficulties, just as any part of the world has," Eireas admitted. "But these landmasses are now protected sanctuaries. We work with the native peoples to ensure their protection. They are important to our world and very popular tourist destinations."

  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 casually.

  My statement gave him pause. The king squinted and bit his lower lip; he appeared deep in thought.

  “What month is it?” he finally asked.

  “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. It was a calendar. 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 forms.

  “You also follow the Julian calendar,” the King said. “Now, if we go back to…”

  “Wait,” I interrupted before he could tap the screen again. There was something off about the labels. I must have become wide-eyed.

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

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

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  E xactly one week after our departure from Alexandria, we were leaving it again. While it is sheer coincidence that my recollection of this second parting fell within the thirteenth segment of these memoirs, the number is apt. Long regarded as a bad omen, it symbolizes my emotions after that night in the great library. Gloom replaced my exhilaration by the time I returned to my apartment. 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 shipmates, 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. Surely such a great divide in our history required an event which shook the very core of the human race.

  King Eireas had correctly discovered our use of the Julian calendar, or at least its descendant. Julius Caesar had introduced the Egyptian calendar to Europe more than two thousand years ago. The Roman month of Quintilis was eventually renamed Iulius in his honor. At first glance, it seemed we had discovered nothing more than an ancient parallel. Our journey in search of the great 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: Caesar's successor, 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 fell silent 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 when they celebrated their triumphs,” Eireas informed me.

  “Triumphs over whom?”

  “The Parthians. They combined the nations of Egypt and Rome and went to war with Parthia. Their resulting empire initiated what our historians call the Golden Age of ancient history.”

  “Parthia?” I was baffled. “Caesar never made it to Parthia on my world. He had been assassinated by the Senate of Rome.”

  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.

  “Please tell me more of their ancient empire,” I said. “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. “The smaller states governed themselves independently, but they continued to rely on each other for trade. The first alliance I spoke of rejoined this entire former empire and our state borders remain fairly unchanged to this day.”

  “What year did the alliance form?” I asked.

  “471,” my hosts answered in unison.

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

  And so it appeared that one event, one minor event in history, had caused a permanent rift between Earth and the Lisispal.

  Countless historians are no doubt spinning in their graves at this gross simplification of the last two thousand years, but this text is a memoir and not a historical account. The Lisispal did not evolve without its own struggles, but to recount them would take more hours than there are in the days. In the end, the result was the same: the world which I now saw around me.

  In a sense, I suppose I could have foreseen the cause of this rift. A thousand peasants could have died in ancient times without any impact on the globe. But one leader's decisions could have rippled through centuries. As segregated as the classes are today, they were even more distant from each other in years past. And we tend to forget how powerful a single voice can be. It can break apart society, but it can also mend it.

  Despite my initial curiosity, the more I dwelled on this knowledge, the deeper I fell into sorrow. My thoughts revolved around the endless bloodshed and quarreling on Earth. It pained me to realize that a trivial change could have caused such a divide. There had been no Earth-shattering calamity as I had predicted. The world didn't need a catastrophe to change its ways; the actions of a few people had changed it. Unfortunately, this knowledge brought me a sense of mourning and regret.

  I did not have the heart to inform Sarmia that the people from who
m 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 in the name of religions which had never even developed 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 evolved its sense 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 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. “My ancestors were truly gifted in the arts of architecture.”

  “I did not realize you were Egyptian,” I said, ignorant fool that I was.

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

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

  “I do not mean ancestors by blood,” he clarified, “but all of humanity is joined in spirit.”

  Coming from a world where patriotism is paramount, I could only gaze upon them in wonder, so foreign of a concept this was to me.

  At that moment, I wished with all 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.