Kregen and for the dignity of humanity. As to the purposes of the Star Lords, I held hazy ideas, nebulous theories, but all was embittered by their ’treatment of me and my resentment against them for their aloof high-handedness.
When the Savapim who called himself Wolfgang had talked in Ruathytu of the problem of evolution changing the many different races set down on Kregen I had been able to talk with him and understand. Now Darwin, of Earth, was opening terrestrial eyes to this mutable genetic structure. My advertisements in search of a Savapim, an agent of the Savanti, here on Earth, proved fruitless. Doctor Quinney, filled with an excitable eagerness and blowing snuff everywhere, told me he had found a "wonderful and incredible new source of psychic powers."
Arrangements were made. I canceled a trip planned to take me to Vienna, for I found I had grown inordinately fond of the music of Johann Strauss, and thus thankfully missed the Seven Weeks War in which Prussia dealt with Austria and set herself on the course of German unification. There was another new emperor on Earth now, Kaiser Wilhelm I. The agonizing thought that my son was the grandson of an emperor, you may readily conceive, touched me with renewed longing. Every day, every single day, I longed for my Delia and for Kregen.
Before this meeting with the "new source of psychic powers" discovered by Doctor Quinney, I finally parted with Victorian scientists over many questions. They were working on the right lines, in many cases, for what they required. I had worked with chemists in stinking laboratories attempting to duplicate the gas used in the paol silver box, and had got nowhere. As to the minerals in the vaol box, simple nomenclature defeated even the first stumbling attempts. I made mental notes on rare earths and scarce minerals, trace elements as known at that time — a time of great expansion and, equally, a time of ludicrous conservatism among the ignorant — and came to the conclusion that Earth science held no help at all. I went ballooning and enjoyed it enormously, but a Kregen voller was out of any balloon’s league. And, into the bargain, my own experience as a sailor meant I already knew enough to sail my driveless fliers by means of the wind alone, as I have told you.
The date of the meeting was set. Doctor Quinney, canny old Quinney, kept his new protégé secret. I could not blame him, for I knew of the intense professional jealousy animating the people of the mystic circles and their adherents. And then, out of nowhere, came a situation which presented me with a problem I felt a sense of humanity compelled me to solve.
In our little group, among a Grub Street scribbler, a civil servant connected with the sewers, I believe, and a prosperous leather merchant who had recently lost his wife, a certain lordling attended our meetings. This young lord — I do not give his name — seemed to me a revolting example of that chinless pop-eyed, insufferable scion of an ancient noble family gone to seed. He owed his title to the dubious bedtime antics of an ancestor who had been rewarded for her exertions by being created a countess, in the name of her complaisant husband, the first earl. The young lord possessed wealth, a vicious temper and a good eye with a gun. I spoke only the necessary civil words to him. For his part, it was quite clear that plain Mr. Prescot was mere dirt beneath his feet, like all the others who did not overshadow him in nobility. Without breeding, without a lineage, a man could never enter his world. I did not wish to. There were far more important things to be accomplished than spending idle days, vapidly admiring oneself among cronies, a parasite upon the nation.
One day my landlady’s daughter, young Mary Benton, wore a red and tear-swollen face as she tidied my chambers. I chided her and soon the whole story came out. It was sickeningly familiar. As I looked at Mary, a sweet, innocent creature who worked hard from
When the Savapim who called himself Wolfgang had talked in Ruathytu of the problem of evolution changing the many different races set down on Kregen I had been able to talk with him and understand. Now Darwin, of Earth, was opening terrestrial eyes to this mutable genetic structure. My advertisements in search of a Savapim, an agent of the Savanti, here on Earth, proved fruitless. Doctor Quinney, filled with an excitable eagerness and blowing snuff everywhere, told me he had found a "wonderful and incredible new source of psychic powers."
Arrangements were made. I canceled a trip planned to take me to Vienna, for I found I had grown inordinately fond of the music of Johann Strauss, and thus thankfully missed the Seven Weeks War in which Prussia dealt with Austria and set herself on the course of German unification. There was another new emperor on Earth now, Kaiser Wilhelm I. The agonizing thought that my son was the grandson of an emperor, you may readily conceive, touched me with renewed longing. Every day, every single day, I longed for my Delia and for Kregen.
Before this meeting with the "new source of psychic powers" discovered by Doctor Quinney, I finally parted with Victorian scientists over many questions. They were working on the right lines, in many cases, for what they required. I had worked with chemists in stinking laboratories attempting to duplicate the gas used in the paol silver box, and had got nowhere. As to the minerals in the vaol box, simple nomenclature defeated even the first stumbling attempts. I made mental notes on rare earths and scarce minerals, trace elements as known at that time — a time of great expansion and, equally, a time of ludicrous conservatism among the ignorant — and came to the conclusion that Earth science held no help at all. I went ballooning and enjoyed it enormously, but a Kregen voller was out of any balloon’s league. And, into the bargain, my own experience as a sailor meant I already knew enough to sail my driveless fliers by means of the wind alone, as I have told you.
The date of the meeting was set. Doctor Quinney, canny old Quinney, kept his new protégé secret. I could not blame him, for I knew of the intense professional jealousy animating the people of the mystic circles and their adherents. And then, out of nowhere, came a situation which presented me with a problem I felt a sense of humanity compelled me to solve.
In our little group, among a Grub Street scribbler, a civil servant connected with the sewers, I believe, and a prosperous leather merchant who had recently lost his wife, a certain lordling attended our meetings. This young lord — I do not give his name — seemed to me a revolting example of that chinless pop-eyed, insufferable scion of an ancient noble family gone to seed. He owed his title to the dubious bedtime antics of an ancestor who had been rewarded for her exertions by being created a countess, in the name of her complaisant husband, the first earl. The young lord possessed wealth, a vicious temper and a good eye with a gun. I spoke only the necessary civil words to him. For his part, it was quite clear that plain Mr. Prescot was mere dirt beneath his feet, like all the others who did not overshadow him in nobility. Without breeding, without a lineage, a man could never enter his world. I did not wish to. There were far more important things to be accomplished than spending idle days, vapidly admiring oneself among cronies, a parasite upon the nation.
One day my landlady’s daughter, young Mary Benton, wore a red and tear-swollen face as she tidied my chambers. I chided her and soon the whole story came out. It was sickeningly familiar. As I looked at Mary, a sweet, innocent creature who worked hard from
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