The Great Escape Chapter 12, Part 3 of 10

The Great Escape
Chapter 12, Part 3 of 10

"Ladies first, is it?"

"Indulge me: I'm old-fashioned."

"All right. I've been offered a job at Celetaris. It's the chance to join an astrophysics department at a research facility, the Celetaris Institute for Science. Post-grad teaching only, and as much or as little as I want. For the rest of the time, I can do research. I can bring my team or recruit when I get there."

"I don't know Celetaris."

"It's about 170 light years from here, on a small planet with a free port on the border between the Anglosphere and Sino-Russian regions. They've enjoyed rapid wealth and technological advances and want to spend their profits on science and culture. Lots of ambitious people are moving there."

Celetaris was an affluent community, a former colonial settlement that became a self-governing dominion twenty years previously. With abundant natural resources and a prominent trade route, it prospered well and proliferated, attracting industrialists and investors. After concentrating too long solely on economic development, however, the chief residents began to miss the comforts and amenities of home. With magnificent civic pride, they set up institutions to promote Earth culture, building a university, art galleries, libraries, and even an opera house.

High wages attracted academics, scientists, artists, musicians, and architects. Beautiful plastic-steel and Perspex cities were now growing on the granite escarpments of the planet's rocky surface, replacing the low-rise fabrications that, however homely, were always intended to be temporary.

"Celetaris is wonderfully placed for onward space travel to quite promising regions of the galaxy," Danielle explained. "There's cutting-edge work to be done on hyperspace pathways.

I've gone about as far as I can in my present job. On Celetaris, we could have a good life in a young colony that wants to progress and grow. What do you think?"

"It's an amazing opportunity, Danielle. Congratulations! How come it's just appeared?"

"Well, when my latest project officially ended last week, I thought I'd look around to see what jobs were available. I got contacted the day after I put my name in the agency's books.

Recruiters work quickly, and everything for Celetaris is done at double speed. They found me in this post. I applied, and an offer came through yesterday. An old professor of mine, Hendrik Jakovs, is at Celetaris, and he recommended it to me. I didn't answer. I wanted to ask your opinion first."

"It's an amazing opportunity," he repeated. "It's just what you want, isn't it?"

"I want us both to go. I'm not going without you."

"But what could I do there?"

"I'm told there are lots of opportunities. You could teach history at the university. Also, because it's a border planet, you could teach at a Russian school. They're big on anything in the Anglosphere because our colonies fare much better than theirs. They want to know our secret."

"When would you go?"

"They want me to start in October, but I'd rather go a month early to get acquainted with the place. They're offering accommodation and assistance with the move."

"September? That's only three-and-a-bit months away."

He was silent for a minute.

"Well," she asked, "what do you think?"

"I'm not committed to staying here, though my main research is on Earth. I want to come with you."

"Are you sure? Don't you want to think some more?"

"I'm sure - but I will think more about it."

She sincerely wanted him to ponder it, however much his "yes" pleased her.

"So, what do you have to say to me?" she inquired.

"Nothing important. It can wait. It doesn't compare to your news."

"All right. I'll wait."

They sat on the bench, finishing the seed cake and enjoying the afternoon sun. After a few minutes of silence, Danielle said:

"Darling?"

"Yes, Dear?"

"Do you remember the rule we agreed on when we first got together?"

"That Friday night is oral sex night?"

"No, a different rule."

"Will you always order your dessert, not say you don't want one, and then eat half of mine?"

"No, and I never agreed to that."

"Well, then, what rule?" he asked.

"The rule that we wouldn't be like those silly romantic couples who if one of them has
something important to say, he won't say it because he thinks it will upset the other."

"Yes, all right, that rule."

"Well?"

He paused to sort out his ideas.

"I've also been offered a job, but it requires staying on Earth for six months or maybe a year."

"What's the job?"

"It's a broadcast series based on my book."

"That's brilliant!" She was genuinely pleased for him. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I only got the offer a few days ago. I was saving it up for today to surprise you."

"All right, I'm surprised. Tell me all about it."

"You know I gave a talk in Boston last week?"

"Yes, on The Three English Revolutions."

He'd practiced the lecture on her, but she remembered the title because it was the same as
his book.

"Afterward, someone from the Anglosphere Free Market Institute came to talk with me. He said he was impressed and told me about a program they run whereby academics are introduced to filmmakers and journalists to publicize their ideas. He thought my book would make an ideal broadcast series and offered to take up my cause."

"The next day, he and I had a video call with a producer. The producer liked the idea of three videos, one for each revolution, giving its background and results, with lashings of historical detail, going back to before the Magna Carta. He even suggested I might like to be the presenter."

"Gosh!" Danielle exclaimed. "I thought broadcast presenters had to be good-looking and charismatic."

"They agreed to make an exception in my case. I've no interest in being the presenter. They should use a celebrity, but they want me to test for it, anyway."

"Oh, Darling. That's wonderful! I'm so proud of you."

"Yes, but it's moot now. We're going to Celetaris."

"Not if you've got a video contract. We're staying here until you've made your film."

"But your job offers?"

"There'll be others. Every colony needs hyperspace engineers."

"Not all colonies are alike. Celetaris sounds perfect. I want to go there."

"No, you don't, Roger. Most days, you don't want to leave the university library. Could you live in a society that didn't have thousand-year-old buildings?"

"Of course, I could if I'm there with you."

"Now, who's talking romantic nonsense? I'm staying here with you."

"No, we're going to Celetaris."

"Why do you have your way and not me?"

"Because I'm the man: I'm in charge."

"Are you now?"

"Well, if you'll let me. Darling, there's no certainty my series will ever be made, but your opportunity is real. I know you think you've gone as far as you can in your present role, and my job will always be the same, whether I make a film or not, so it makes sense we both go to Celetaris."

"No, it makes sense that we compromise."

"How?"

"I go to Celetaris. You stay here to finish the video project."

"No!" he interrupted.

"Then you come and join me. That is if you want to leave Earth."

"I want us to be together. I don't care where."

"Besides," she added, "if you're worried about getting a position at Celetaris, then an Earth
historian who is also an acclaimed video series presenter would have an advantage."

"It's not even made yet, still less acclaimed."

"It will be both. So, tell me about the broadcast series."

"All right. Its main point is the difference between the English and other revolutions, best illustrated by our American Revolution."

"The third English revolution?"

"That's right. You paid attention."

"Of course I did! You argued that the American Revolution was the third in the series of
English revolutions (I forget the dates) ..."

"1642, 1689 and 1776."

"And not a new kind of revolution, because - something about ancestral rights and replacing tyranny with democracy."

"That's right, contrary to what we're taught, that our American revolution was a progressive revolution, driven by Enlightenment values, to create a new kind of society, it was a conservative revolution, driven by the old English ideals of liberty and individual rights. All the colonists asked for was the same ancient rights as native Britons, and only when the King pig-headedly refused did they take up arms."

"Since then, however, the American Revolution has inspired revolutionaries worldwide and in the outworld settlements. However, while the American Revolution successfully re-established human rights, most later revolutions were disasters and only replaced one tyrant with another, sometimes a worse tyrant. Almost every revolution in Europe, Russia, China, Africa, and the Caliphate for three centuries ended in despotism and, sometimes, even social collapse. For example, no one adopted the English or the American Bill of Rights."

"Why did they all fail?" she asked.

In answering, his voice took on a rhetorical sing-song tone.

"They destroyed the old order and tried to build a new society on new foundations. But the
American Revolution was a shining beacon of liberty and individualism, not cleansing destruction and sanctifying bloodletting. It modified the old system, re-establishing lost rights; it didn't demolish the old system. And I found a neat piece of evidence just recently from my hometown to support the continuity between England and America."

"Go on." She always encouraged his enthusiasm.

"In Boston, we're proud of a revolutionary called Paul Revere, who rode to Lexington summoning the patriots by warning them, 'The British are coming!'"

"I remember the story."

"But it's untrue. Revere was British himself, and so were the patriots. He said, 'The Regulars are coming out!' The Regulars were the army, the Redcoats."

"All right, but so what?"

"So, what is that? I researched when the change was made to public school books. It was in the twentieth century, long after the revolution. This is when we Americans were trying to invent a new history for ourselves that downplayed our attachment to the mother country."

Danielle was impressed by his passion even when she didn't fully follow his argument.

"So why is the Free-Market Institute interested in your book?"

"Because of its contemporary relevance. There's a lot of tension between some of the outworld settlements and Earth."

Danielle nodded. She knew this from her father, a diplomat in the service of the Anglosphere, who said with characteristic understatement that it was "an interesting time" in galactic politics.

"Dad says the richer Anglosphere colonies want more independence from Earth."

"They do," Roger agreed, "and most of them get it by gradually increasing self-government, evolving from colony to dominion to independent federal polity. Some others don't want such a gradual and peaceful process, however. They're the ones who are at odds with Earth and the older settlements."

"So, what's driving it?" she asked.

"Lots of things. Envy and stupidity on both sides, for instance, but the hazardous problem is from unscrupulous demagogues who gain power by pretending they're freeing oppressed people from unjust foreign rule. People like Alexander Marazon."

"Who is he?"

"Did you ever hear of a settlement called Marazonia?"

"I think so."

"It's gone back to its original name of New Exeter. It's a settlement of about 300 light-years from Earth. It was a tiny frozen world colonized about eighty years ago but never lived up to its potential. The problem was that the terraforming costs were so great that the settler company had a huge debt to recover. Then they had the bad luck that a temporary contraction in galactic trade meant products from the mines in its asteroid belt were less valuable than when the colony was founded."


To be continued