Menagerie - Martin Day [10]
Zoe smiled confidently. 'Heddeigé postulated that two identical societies would evolve along completely different lines.' She smiled sweetly, and Jamie quickly nodded.
'Specifically, the elements will appear from the same set of possibilities — the deep resource bank — but in different orders, at different times, and the interreaction between these deep possibilities will prompt a whole new continuum of subsets. His theories were a radical expansion of Grotski's second law of cultural retrenchment and . . .'
Jamie sighed with a deep, confident honesty. 'Stop,' he said. 'I think I understood the first bit. All you're saying is that one . . . . clan . . . will be different from a clan on another planet.'
'Or even during a different age or in another region,' said the Doctor. 'Yes, you're quite right.'
'And this wee man became a professor or something for that?' Jamie looked to the Doctor for encouragement. 'That's nonsense.'
'I agree his basic conclusions are common sense,'
expanded the Doctor. 'But a great mind will amplify, clarify, investigate . . .'
'I'm happy with common sense,' stated Jamie firmly.
'Well,' said the Doctor, refusing to let go of the point he was pushing. 'Just think of how it affects common-sense individuals like yourself. Imagine that you had never seen a wheel, but that your father was an engineer specializing in long-distance communication.'
'So?'
'Well, think, Jamie. How would you look at the world?'
Jamie rubbed his chin. 'Well, wheels help you to move around easily. Without them — and maybe without horses
— you'd never see beyond your village.'
The Doctor nodded. 'And?'
'I've seen machines that allow you to talk to people hundreds and hundreds of miles away. So . . . You'd see or hear things from the other side of the world, but maybe you'd never go to the town further down the valley.'
'Well done, Jamie! You — a common-sense individual —
would have a whole host of attitudes based on a knowledge of far-off places, but no practical experience of the way of life mere miles away.'
'But could that happen?' asked Jamie. 'To have such talking-devices without something as simple as a wheel?'
'Well,' said Zoe, 'the Aztecs were a tremendously advanced culture, but they never perfected the wheel.'
'A good example,' said the Doctor. 'But that's just head-knowledge.' He smiled again. 'I feel a certain affinity towards common-sense people like Jamie. So . . .'
He operated the door control. 'Let's go and see for ourselves.'
Grand Knight Himesor massaged his greying temples.
'Do you believe that wizard?' he asked in a quiet voice.
'Grand Knight,' said Zaitabor, standing to attention at his side, 'the man is lying. I could see it in his eyes, in the nervousness of his fingers. He does have a homunculus.'
'I agree,' said Himesor, reaching for a bundle of documents from the table in front of him. His fingers toyed with the thick ribbon before finally releasing the knot.
Folded sheets of parchment spilled down onto the table in disarray. Commander Zaitabor noticed a number of seals of blue wax, the personal stamp of the Grand Knights. 'The obvious course of action is to observe Defrabax's house.'
'I'll assign Araboam to it straight away.'
'Araboam?'
'One of my youngest knights. A subtle character. He is outstripping many of his peers in terms of learning, spirituality, temperament.'
'I leave the details to you,' nodded Himesor, crushing a seal between his gauntlet-clad hands. 'I believe that the foolish Captain Oiquaquil has sought an audience with me?'
'More civilian complaints no doubt. A tedious man. I sometimes doubt his commitment to the Knights of Kuabris.'
'Deal with him as before.'
'My Lord.' Zaitabor bowed, and then marched from the room. Himesor read the letter once he was alone, a dark frown drawn across his features. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then crushed the sheet of paper into a tight ball. He hurled it into the fire, where the dry parchment burnt fiercely.
His fingers, made clumsy by the gauntlets, reached for another letter.
'Cosmae? Cosmae?'