Man of the World by Robert Gibson

27:  quincentennial fever

Ratta-ta-tum, ratta-ta-tum, swayed the train as it hurtled back towards Dranl. Midax’s head rocked from side to side on the cushiony rest. The sun-drenched prairie flowed past the window. Peace was in his soul.
    He had committed himself at last. There is nothing, he thought, like the satisfaction you get from standing up for your beliefs. Full-throttled satisfaction – I’m going to use myself up in the right way. That must be why I slept so soundly last night, in the Thilparan hotel.
    After that nourishing sleep and a breakfast fit for a happy simple soul, he had walked through warm bright streets to the station to catch the early express which was now speeding him home. Henceforth, why should he not keep the Vow during the rest of his little life? As far as love was concerned, he could live on memories. A much easier life it would be, with his ideals at last made official, in a manner which others must recognize. The Vow, in short, was his announcement, once and for all, of life-long allegiance to a vision, and an opt-out from “relationshipping”.
    Certainly there need be no regrets, since he had done right. What else could there be to live for, other than the best ideal? What could compete with the glory of the vow? Second-best “relationships” were far too sad a compromise, for anyone who had tasted the greater thing. It had to be romance or nothing. Romance Supernal, ratta-ta-tum, ratta-ta-tum… But wait a moment…
    Life-long allegiance? His?
    Not quite true…
    His memory probed, with extra-scrupulous honesty, far further back, to before those schooldays when he had met Pjerl - right back to his pre-school childhood.  Those were days before he could have ever met or heard or understood the word “romance”.
    Infrequent, this most distant kind of memory. Yet when it did come it was strong, always strong.  Strong enough, indeed, to force him now to admit a huge fact.  The vision of glory in those far-off days had already existed, but it had shone not in any beloved person but in the sunset clouds. That had been its true residence then: not in a woman’s face but in the apricot glow of clouds in a twilit sky, a tremendous beauty and grandeur beckoning him outward to some other, incomparably greater world. Such was his first romance, and occasionally he still remembered it, like, for instance, now...  though it was now a very long time since his mind had been flung into those shining fields and mountains of light.  And they glimmered more weakly with every passing decade.  Yet still, after all, they remained strong enough, while the special moment lasted, to make him forget everything that had happened since!    
    So what in heaven was love? What was it, really?  Prickles of recollection of past glory, focused on – a cloud?? Hmm...  Additional rare occasions from down the years, when the oldest vision had fleetingly returned, again returned to his mind to puzzle him now. It wasn’t a thing you could actually grasp – that primal, earliest allegiance. But evidently you couldn’t completely let go of it, either. So what was going on? All glories must be linked. Otherwise, nothing made sense.
    Midax blinked back a tear of stress and excitement and hope. He must be on the right track. His mind embarked upon a tenacious plod.  He must stick with whatever Glory was.  Whatever one might call it, it couldn’t really be argued with. The thing to do was to trust it. One must simply trust that to follow it was bound to be right. Ratta-ta-tum, ratta-ta-tum, the carriage lurched along jubilantly. He shook his head to clear it. Just then, he had received an odd impression, from beyond the window-glass.
    He opened the window, and leaned out, with the roaring wind whipping his hair into his eyes. He stared, baffled. His eyes were telling him something which could not be. He must be more stressed than he realized. What seemed to be true, but could not be true, was that the train had begun to zig and zag. Of course – he realized as he drew back and shut the window – he had really seen nothing but the same straight line of carriages, ahead and behind; there couldn’t be any zig-zags along the route of the Continental Express. The notion was absurd. No way could there be corners or junctions on the prairie; nothing existed out here which could possibly make it necessary for the train to meander. Illusion, daydream, hallucination, that’s all it was.
    He reclined, relaxing, and told himself that the cure for daft hallucinations was more rest. And the good news was that he was going to get plenty of healthful rest from now on. His entire life henceforth was going to be a restful run, shorn of stupid striving, up to his last day.
    And after that, what?
    Then he’d find out whatever there was that comes after life. Same as everyone else must do.
    That would be his door to the unknown, to the greatest adventure. In that respect, thought Midax, everyone is his own Monto deRoffa, everyone must become an explorer when faced with his last hour and the privilege it brings, to discover what has never been told…
    He sat back and managed to enjoy the rest of the journey.
    Late that evening, in his lounge back home in Dranl, there came the neighbourly knock on the door.
    “Coming for an ellipsiteen?” said the voice which, as usual, melted his heart.
    “Thanks, Jerre,” he said warmly. Might as well appreciate what’s left, he thought as he followed her. Across the corridor as usual, into her own lounge as usual.
    “Did you have a good day?”
    “A very good day. In Thilpar, no less. I went to the Shapers’ College.”
    “So!” Her face lit up with some degree of interest. He could tell, though, that most of her mind was far away.
    “And I took the Shapers’ Vow.”
    “Wow!” she said uncertainly.
    “No, not ‘wow’ – vow.”
    “Ah-hah-hah. Um – that’s a big thing, isn’t it? Er – congratulations. But – sorry to be so ignorant – what did you have to say, exactly?” While she spoke she opened the cupboard door and rooted around for the jar of ellipsiteen. Midax, aching at the sight, felt his vision blur. It was as if a thickening glass wall were tinting the space between him and her.
    “I can give you the wording,” he said, and did so: “…for every human being there is one true love per life, and the decision of romance is final.”
    She hummed, thoughtfully. “I get some of that.” She handed him his mug of drink. “Here y’are.” They went and sat down. In separate armchairs, as usual. Midax wondered: ought he perhaps to welcome her preoccupied manner? As a diversion? It was making it easier for him to report what he had done, after all. For suppose, on the contrary, she had showed enough interest to question him closely – suppose she asked him point black who his Other Half was! – what would he do then? He simply did not know.
    “Hmmm,” she continued. “I don’t quite get how it works. Can you tell me (if this isn’t too stupid a question) how people are supposed to know if someone breaks the vow?”
    “The vows are recorded.”
    “Ah.”
    “Yes, I spoke into a recording machine.”
    “But I mean, what happens from now on? You spoke a promise to be faithful – to whom?”
    “To an idea. One does not have to give a name.”
    “So – it’s up to you and no one else, to check whether you keep the Vow?”
    “Yes, so long as I stay single.”
    “Ah.”
    “The situation changes,” Midax went on helpfully, “when the ideal becomes manifest, publicly, in mutual recognition between two conscious Halves. At which point, the connection is called by its proper name, ‘Romelding’. And as such it is recorded. So there it is. I’ve satisfied your curiosity.”
    “So,” she mused again, as if unaware of the edge to his tone, “the College makes sure, that you can’t ‘romeld’ with a person who’s already ‘romelded’ with someone else…”
    “It would be meaningless.”
    “Meaningless – and not allowed.” She sounded relieved. “And the reason it’s best to take vows… can you shed light on this?” she added with a hesitant, coy smile.
    I get it. She’s about to hand herself over to someone. And of course that someone is certainly not I, and of course I know who it is.
    “Ah yes, why take vows – well, the point is, it’s a demonstration of freedom.”
    “Goodness me!”
    “Yes it is – freedom. We show we’ve got it, you see, by spending it.”
    “On – ?”
    “Commitments.”
    “Umm…”
    “We do this in little ways every day,” Midax continued. “But when it comes to making solemn vows, well, that is rather a conspicuous consumption of freedom, I admit, but then, what’s the point of wealth of you don’t splurge it once in a while?”
    “But suppose someone makes a mistake – melds with the wrong person?”
    “Then, tough. It can’t be put right in this life.”
    “Divorce –”
    “Sure, you can divorce to end a civil marriage…”
    “That I know,” she sighed.
    “…but you can’t un-romeld.”
    Jerre took a deep breath. “Guess what Inellan and I did yesterday.”
    “Congratulations, Jerre,” said Midax simply.
    “You mean you know?”
    “I’m just guessing. Tell me officially.”
    “We had our betrothal day.”
    “You fixed a date for the romelding?”
    “We fixed a date, and I have loads of questions, and I’d rather ask you them than ask him; odd, isn’t it? That’s why I’ve been talking like this.” Her eyes fell momentarily and then re-aimed, searching Midax’s face.
    The news thudded in his mind, So now it’s official. Well, what’s the difference if it’s announced today instead of tomorrow or the day after? Theoretically, no difference. But the glass wall thickened. If Jerre and Inellan were right, that they were each other’s Other Halves, then he, Midax Rale, had made a pitiful mistake. Or if he had been right, they were making the mistake. Or maybe they had both been wrong and the only rightness was his own childhood vision of the clouds… Anyhow, he did not regret taking the Vow. The elation of that Vow – the irrational trust in the move for which the universe must reward him – kept him balanced above the pit of despair.
    Besides, he’d seen this engagement coming. They obviously believed they were destined for each other as Halves, so his own hopes had been dashed anyway. That, after all, was what had pushed him off to Thilpar. Not to save a situation which was beyond saving, but to create a new situation. To affirm…
    Jerre was talking again. He strove to concentrate.
    “…Now that you’ve Vowed, what next?”
    Maybe this was her indirect way of asking, who’s your Other Half? As if she didn’t even suspect it was herself. Maybe she didn’t, at that. Just as well.
    “As a matter of fact… Skies, I’d forgotten! I’m supposed to travel to Serorn in four weeks, for an Entrants’ confirmation… That’s the weekend of your birthday. Do you remember, I had been meaning to ask you to a restaurant…”
    “It’s very sweet of you,” smiled Pjerl, “but your trip to Serorn must come first. Besides, Inellan might not like it.”
    The clarifying thing. It showed Midax well and truly where he was. And besides, his suggestion had been a useless echo of the past. Hadn’t he now taken a Vow, and hadn’t she? Meanwhile her tone brightened and she said: “Changing the subject somewhat, are you doing anything for this Quincentennial?”
    “The deRoffa celebrations? Ah yes,” Midax smiled. “I believe so. I think there’s going to be a local meeting about it tomorrow. Wadd’s asked me to attend. Sounds as though it might be interesting.”
    “Inellan will envy you,” she remarked vaguely. “He’s mad keen on the Quincentennial… Talks about it as though one of his ancestors had been on deRoffa’s voyage.”
    “So that’s a hobby-horse of his.”
    “Yep.”
    “Well, the journalists are talking about ‘deRoffa-fever’ gripping the country. Perhaps I’ll catch it too.”
    As a matter of fact he was ambivalent about the Quincentennial business.
    On the one hand, it was an unwelcome reminder of the melancholy contrast between past heroes like deRoffa and present pen-pushers like himself.
    On the other hand, any reminder of great things was like a kind of air-tube, giving oxygen of the spirit to one who would otherwise suffocate in a dead-end job such as his.
    If there had been no Quincentennial, and no Shapers’ Vow, he would have felt an urge to make some other anachronistic assertion, joining or starting some other kind of frustrated idealists’ or adventurers’ club – anything to heave a brick through the plate glass window of modern life.
    In the office, the next morning, he was shuffling papers at his desk when the perception blossomed in his mind more clearly than ever before:
    What an oddly cute business this deRoffa quincentenary was!
    He put the papers down. He hunched forward as though he were examining them, but his mind was hopping around.
    Normal life, for one of Midax’s type, meant a perpetual tug-of-war between the gold in the mind and the grey in the view. A feud that never ends. A defeat that never ends. The defeat of hope by the implacable fixtures of everyday. Career-structures, time-tables, tax-forms, office-routines. All the plonk of existence.
    Yet the funny thing was, recently, the poor beleaguered romantic imagination had found a possible ally in – of all things – the government! Spending money by the bucketful, on a huge celebration which was intended to remind the inhabitants of Dranl that their pavements had once been trod with glory –
    The Quincentennial, of course, was merely a commemoration, and therefore an admission that the real glory was gone. And of course the government was not going to alter that fact, any more than an individual could. The humdrum was far too strong. But it was oddly heartening, to have any kind of ally at all… Made one pick up funny little splinters of courage. Pricked one into thinking up a course of action.
    In the newspapers recently, quite a few times, Midax had noticed the growing habit among the small minority of Shapers of a protest called “underlining”.
    It had long been customary for the vast majority of men and women to avail themselves of the titles “Rmr.” and “Rms.” which were literally supposed to mean “Romancer” and “Romanceress”, and this was usually done without any intention of committing oneself to the strict meaning of the words. Real Shapers, for whom the titles implied adherence to a sacred vow, naturally had always resented this trivialisation of them, but they could take no action about it; nothing, in this lax age of the world, could prevent their terms being misused. Now, however, they were starting to make their point by underlining their own Rmr. and Rms. on letters and envelopes, as if to say, each time they signed, when we say it we mean it.
    Now why shouldn’t he, Midax, likewise sign his correspondence that way? For he had taken the Vow. He was fully entitled. Literally.
    His pen hovered over an internal memorandum…
    No, he couldn’t do it at this point, not precisely here – he wasn’t brave enough to allow the signature “Rmr. Midax Rale” to circulate to all departments.
    Did this mean he was a moral coward too afraid of ridicule to do what he thought right?
    Not quite, for it was not so much fear of the ridicule, as a practical doubt that his belief could hold out against it. He doubted that he could maintain his faith in the integrity of his own action while everyone was laughing at him. In short, he suspected he was plain weak. Weak in the head and in the guts. Anyhow, he did have a different option.
    A more feasible option.
    Not a memo but a letter. Something to an outside address: to a shipping company. One such document awaited his signature now. He could scrawl: Rmr. M. Rale. There – done.
    Send it off, quick. Into the out-tray it goes. Ready for despatch. And here comes the lad from the despatch department to empty the tray; off he goes, taking your letter with him; you’ve done it, Rmr.-and-I-mean-it Midax Rale.
    Now the only thing left to do is to keep your nerve.
    A few hours passed.
    Midax became discontented with himself. Deeply scornful – what was so brave about what he had done? Big deal – he had signed an underlined “Rmr.” on a letter which none of his colleagues would probably ever read.
    Admittedly a copy must be kept in his files, so his stand was on record, but the correspondence was so routine and boring and uncontroversial that no reason could be imagined for anyone to consult it. After six years it would be thrown away, probably unseen by anyone. So he could not fool himself: he had done nothing at all brave.
    He should have had the guts to underline his signature on that internal memo, instead.
    The chance soon came again. He had to send a memo to Public Relations on the subject of his page proofs for the Annual Register. This time, while the craven part of his mind squeaked protest, frantically composing disclaimers or pretences that it was all a joke, he signed, and underlined, and put the paper in the despatch tray, wondering, Will my bowels turn to water next time the internal phone rings?
    The answer to that was Probably.
    For the universe, he had noticed, didn’t let you off. Do you really think the universe is going to say, “This chap Midax Rale has done the brave thing, therefore the least I can do, as a decent universe, is to back him up and see that he doesn’t suffer”?
    Not very likely.
    So don’t rest on your laurels, hero. Let’s have none of your usual habit of letting courage dry up after the deed. You’ll have to do better this time. Time you understood that a brave act requires follow-through or it’s wasted.
    Nevertheless he hoped that there would be no reaction to what he had done. And yet why, in that case, had he done it? Didn’t he want to make waves? Wasn’t that the whole point?
    Then the internal phone did ring. Acid on the guts! Wincing, he picked up the receiver.
    It turned out that the call wasn’t from PR. No comment about his underlined signature. Routine stuff, that’s all.
    His mind lurched to the opinion that there was no point in what he had done since it wasn’t possible to make waves anyway. By lunchtime he was concluding that the world was so deaf, he might say or do what he liked, no one would listen.
    The internal phone rang again.
    “Thanks for your memo with the stats proofs for the Register,” said a girl’s voice which held – so Midax feared – a breath of irony; the voice of Sapra Hing, second-in-command at the PR desk. “All the pages are fine… I think we’ll be able to fit them all in.”
    “Great,” said Midax. “Thanks for telling me.” And that was all.
    This was the worst possible outcome. A brief exchange, with a complete absence of allusion to his Rmr. signature. Worse than a scoffing remark would have been: for then he’d have known where he stood, whereas now he must fear tones, he must spend hours wondering if he had belched out some unmentionable gaffe… and you can’t retaliate against words spoken on the phone by any efficiently sardonic eyebrow-lifting bet-hedging expression. You can’t evade embarrassment that way, on the phone.
    More time passed. He found some relief, a drugged sort of relief, in the routines of his work. Besides – he told himself philosophically – he should not be surprised at having to suffer some fear and anxiety. What else could he expect, if he was so rash as to introduce something a bit special into office life? Finally he rose from his desk. Time to get a lunch-hour sandwich at his usual bar on the street corner.
    As he emerged into the front hall of the office building his overstrained nervous system suffered another shock. By coincidence, at that very moment, coming down the stairs towards him, the moderately attractive forty-year-old blonde, with the two girls behind her, was none other than Clsarmwa Zoonth, Head of Public Relations. Clsarmwa always seemed to have a patronising fondness for Midax based on their total disparity of opinions. Midax always reciprocated. Each considered the other’s views amusingly hopeless. Today, Clsarmwa gushed:|
    “Hi, Romancer Rale! I see you’ve taken the plunge. Who’s the lucky girl?!
    And from behind her there came a trilling noise he did not like; he could not identify its source, for gigglers giggle without moving their lips much.
    “Not a plunge,” he denied. “Sticking my neck out, more like.”
    “But what moved you to stick your neck out today?”
    To avoid starting a lot of rumours he would have to think of something, fast. Not a flat denial. Nor a flat affirmation: to say “High time I stood up to be counted” would simply cause derision. He must this instant pitch a reply that would do several jobs at once. It must: provide some of the truth; leave people guessing just a little beyond the categories they were trying to box him into; and give the opposition an “out” which would allow them an honourable draw –
    His speeding thoughts skidded to a stop at what suddenly seemed just the right place.
    He replied: “Put it down to Quincentennial Fever.”
    She’s got to see the connection. The oldness and oddness of Boalo, and the oldness of deRoffa. It’s always been a joke between us, she the progressive, I the reactionary –
    “Ah,” said Clsarmwa. “One anachronism leads to another, eh? Getting into the spirit of it, I see.”
    “I try,” agreed Midax, giving a little bow.
    She laughed and walked out of the lobby, followed by her two staff, all grinning, but not too widely, he hoped.
    But you don’t feel safe just because you’ve won a skirmish. Midax felt entitled to breathe, but only on the understanding that he used this breathing-space. He must find a tenable position and secure it against… well, against whom? What exactly was the enemy?
    The enemy was anything and everything that might conduce to the miserable social defeat and humiliation of a rash man called Midax Rale, who had taken the very grave risk of seeming like a prig by adopting the ostentatiously prestigious Rmr. title in a signed memo.
    Not only that. The enemy was also anything that might turn him into a traitor in his own eyes. Anything that might frighten him into denying or abandoning his idealistic stance.
    Hence his own bumbling was part of the “enemy”. As were the incomprehension of his colleagues, the hostility of society to strict Boalonian romanticism, and the tendency of brute bad luck to spring up at the wrong moment.
    Lastly – and here he smiled to himself – his tendency to regard his own pitiful little problems as being of cosmic significance was also part of the same many-tentacled afore-mentioned Enemy, the persistent monster of crud or spoilation.
    I’m like those characters in farce who try to cover up one verbal gaffe by even more verbiage, and so get entangled in more and more coils of embarrassment. Probably, quite soon, I shall not be able to resist trying once again to prod the environment into reacting to me, simply because I can’t accept the previous outcome. And so it goes on.
    In the past few weeks several meetings had been announced on the notice boards, regarding the coming Quincentennial. The most recent declared:

    Discovery Voyage across the Zard Ocean
    The QuinCen Committee is looking
    for volunteers to man Rinka II !
    Meeting to be held in the Conference Hall.
    All available staff are invited to attend.

“Why us?” had been Midax’s naïf reaction at first. But then he remembered: the Quincentennial Committee was manned largely out of Dranl Port Authority employees. The Maritime Museum and Archives with their libraries of relevant data were owned by the Authority, which therefore had been given the Committee’s contract to build Rinka II, the replica of Monto deRoffa’s ship.
    It was all quite interesting for Midax, though not as exciting as it might have been had he been three decades younger, so as to experience all this as a boy. Life, for him, from now on, was something to sit back and watch, rather than live. His quiet love of history would always remain, but it would remain without the hot-blooded zeal of one who hopes to share his projects and dreams.
    Yet when, the next day, he entered the crowded conference hall, he felt his heart thud inexplicably. What’s this? Maybe my child self is not yet dead. He smiled to himself as he sat down next to Taz Murnat, the Commercial Director. “Do you get the impression,” he murmured to Taz, “that Wadd’s jumpy about something?”
    “Rumour has it,” replied the corpulent Taz, “that we’re going to be given first options on manning the ship… Wadd’ll confirm this, I imagine.”
    “Do you want to get on it? Shall I pull strings for you?” asked Midax with a twinkle in his eye as he imagined Taz rolling around on the deck of an ancient caravel.
    As he spoke this jest, his serious assumption was that it would be next to impossible to secure a place; but Taz’s reply showed him that he had not thought it through.
    “I doubt that much string-pulling would be necessary. They’d snap me up quick if I were daft enough to volunteer. You won’t get many people fool enough to sign up for a ceremonial voyage lasting months, without pay.” He turned a serious face to Midax and added, “But you could volunteer – if you belong to the idle rich, or the die-hard nautical enthusiast confraternity…”
    Midax held his stare for a couple of seconds, and then both men laughed, but not too loud. The meeting had begun. Rersh Wadd, up on the platform, was holding up his hands for silence.
    Wadd began, “Ladies and gentlemen, I realize that these details may not interest most of you, but our remit is to put it all to you before we take it to a wider audience, so bear with me and let’s get it over with.” He sounded rather apologetic as he went on to announce, one by one, the vacancies offered.
    The few “plum” jobs, as expected, had already been earmarked for the experts who were suited to them – and who, as Taz had pointed out, could afford to take time off for them. For example the captaincy of Rinka II was reserved for the Port Authority’s figurehead Chairman, who as an ex-actor was especially suited for this ceremonial part. Most vacancies, however, had not been taken up by anyone. And weren’t likely to be, thought Midax – at any rate not at this meeting. The jobs weren’t suitable for this crowd who were by and large not models of physical fitness or of sufficient athletic prowess to clamber up the rigging in a tempest…
    An island of certainty began to appear amid the fluctuating waves of thought in Midax’s head. A conviction that he must sit carefully and listen. Some outside speakers were making themselves heard, and they and Wadd were relapsing into the well-worn Authenticity Debate: should Rinka II rely wholly on its sails, and risk being blown off course and off schedule by the unpredictable gales of the Zard, or should the ship carry an auxiliary motor which, together with computerised navigation, would ensure that deRoffa’s original route and timing were kept?
    In other words, which kind of authenticity do you give priority to? But why are they discussing this just now? wondered Midax. Since it was vital that the ship’s arrival at Heism – its destination – must coincide with the celebrations there, the helmsman on Rinka must turn the wheel, if at all, only in accordance with instructions fed to him on a small hand-held screen which he must consult discreetly and regularly during the voyage, so that job must go to someone prepared to endure long hours standing on deck as a mere cypher. A costumed actor, a pretence, this ‘helmsman’ would watch the ship’s progress on a blip-chart and allow the silent computer-controlled motor to do his work for him the whole time, except for when the TV crew turned its attention to the wheel; then and only then would the computer allow itself to be over-ridden for a few minutes, a bit of real, showy manual control, immediately compensated for afterwards.
    The whole enterprise in fact was going to be very high-tech. The helmsman would have all the discomforts of his ancient role and none of the satisfactions, it seemed to Midax. The task would be the most boring job of the entire Quincentennial, and, not surprisingly, no one seemed to want it.
    Whether (at some level) Midax knew what he was doing, or whether he was blindly stirring the pot of circumstance, an idea came to him in pictured strength, an inner dazzle which blinded his awareness while he put up his hand. It was the precise moment of the official call for volunteers for the post of helmsman. He heard himself give his own name. A Committee official wrote down the name, looking pleased.
    Pleased to find someone mug enough to take this on, no doubt. The hall was quiet – too quiet? The meeting continued, and now it wasn’t the quiet, it was the noises, every sound awakening Midax to a stew of suspicions that boiled in his head – hesitations about his own motives, contempt for the vapourings which made him ask himself such questions at all. For heaven’s sake, he had made a decision – he had made a move and that was that. Enough! Stop chewing it over, brain!
    One consolation: he had spoken in a steady voice. Now he stared straight ahead, not wanting to see the too-straight face of Taz Murnat beside him.
    The rest of the meeting was soon over. The staff began to cluster into chatting groups. The drift canteenwards got underway – it was lunchtime.
    Midax and Tas and Silm Roh (Taz’s secretary, a blandly beautiful young woman) and Silm’s friend Haizi (plumper, kinder, but even less interesting than Silm) annexed a table. “Well, our Midax certainly surprised us all today, didn’t he?” began Haizi.
    “I surprised myself,” muttered Midax.
    “What made you do it?” wondered Silm.
    “What the heck,” said Midax, “I thought I might as well do something.”
    “Not,” remarked Taz crisply, “the sort of thing that tempts me. But why should I worry? So long as a replacement is found to do your work while you’re gone…”
    Silm glared in reproof at her boss. “We’ll worry about Midax too, won’t we? Lashed to the deck in all weathers…”
    “He evidently doesn’t care,” shrugged Taz.
    “He looks fey,” added Haizi.
    Midax looked at her in surprise. ‘Fey’ was not the sort of word he had expected this girl to know, let alone use. He suddenly, briefly wondered if he had misjudged many people.
    “I see what you mean,” said Taz. “That enigmatic smile…”
    Their teasing had small effect. But on the way home he was troubled. In discussing it all with Pjerl/Jerre, how was he going to avoid sliding into the stereotype of the mid-life-crisis man, frustrated, scatty, humiliatingly self-driven to a ludicrous adventure?
    Yet when the moment came and he was faced with her question, “How did it go at the meeting?”, it turned out that he hardly had to talk about himself at all.
    They were in her lounge drinking ellipsiteen, just like the old days, as far as outward appearances were concerned. “Oh,” he replied to her, “I did manage to get involved with the Quincentennial…”
    “Another enthusiast,” she smiled tightly. “Inellan’s off somewhere at the moment, on something to do with the Quincentennial.” She sighed. “Even on our betrothal day, you know, he left me alone for several hours while he went scooting off…”
    “No, you never told me that.”
    She nodded. “He just had to look at a lot of old artefacts in some local museum somewhere, that he’d read about a few days before. Our day-trip turned into an excuse for him to look at all this stuff.” She was almost crying. “One of deRoffa’s officers’ suits of armour, and an astrolabe and globe.”
    Midax stared unseeing, as the happy thought blew into his mind, Why worry about someone as stupid as Inellan?
    Not – he reminded himself smartly – not that the betrothal could be forgotten. She was Inellan’s, and that was that. She’s lost to me for ever, and by her own choice. But the comforting thing was, Pjerl’s complaints, about the stupid fellow who had won her, proved that she realised the truth about him. And so? How did that help matters? Well, it was just very nice to have the truth shared. Even if the sharing was tacit only.
    At his workplace, in the days and weeks that followed, Midax felt healthier in spirit. The atmosphere at work had a new tang to it: ordinary Port Authority tasks went ahead as usual but they were mingled in the broader context with extraordinary preparations both there and at various sites throughout Dranl City. Midax was required to take time off normal pen-pushing in order to undergo some hours of briefing and training, to satisfy the authorities that he would adequately perform his duties as “pilot” in the great re-enactment.
    “Not much to it,” repeated his instructor, a civil servant from the Q-Committee. Midax silently agreed: only a moron could fail in this job. He must simply stand at the wheel for hours until the relief pilot took over; then he’d eat and sleep and take his turn again. But trivial though it all was – and childish in the make-believe that he would be a real pilot – he, and others, breathed more largely in these days of preparation. Everyone’s pulse quickened at the prospect of the great international celebrations which were to take place on both the western and the eastern shores of the Zard. All of Dranl seemed devoted to the planning of the commemorative voyage and the connected activities: films, speeches, festivities, publications, lectures, manufactures of souvenirs and toy ships. Midax could not help but feel temporarily braced and sustained by the bittersweet echo of second-hand glory, especially since (for once in his life) he had the feeling that others were interested too.   
    Yes, he and the world were absorbed in something big; he and the world, for the first time, were at least partly on the same wavelength! Come to that, his volunteering as a Rinka pilot had given him a sort of excuse for his otherwise priggish insistence on signing himself "Rmr." How convenient, that his two eccentric actions had sort of cancelled each other out! He was getting away with it. He went about with more confidence, though still a largely isolated, lonely man. Keep ’em guessing; give the potential jeerers pause. Oh, they’ll say, it’s only Midax’s way of getting into the spirit of the Re-enactment. He only signs himself Rmr. in order to give things some period flavour. He’s not really a stuck-up reactionary prig.
    At least, he hoped that was what they were thinking.
    He could hardly hope for more. He could not expect anyone to understand what taking the Shapers’ Vow really meant. For he was belatedly understanding how much society had changed in the past couple of decades.
    From novels, newspapers, magazines, TV and ordinary conversation he was getting the message: vows were laughably quaint. Vows were out-of-date things. They weren’t taken seriously any more by anyone; as far as Midax could tell, the idea of them wasn’t respected even on the rare occasions when vows were still made and kept.
    Midax himself was tainted with this backsliding, insofar as he was bound to find his mental reactions swept in the tide of fashion towards the modern contempt for the Shapers’ Vow – not so far as to express contempt himself, but far enough to feel embarrassed at his own beliefs, and to sense a false note if the Vow were mentioned seriously. Old-fashioned things inevitably became incongruous, ludicrous, as if, for example, the coming Quincentennial trip were to claim (laughably) to be a real voyage of exploration…
    Besides, the ideals of the Vow weren’t working very well in real life, were they? He found it more and more easy to side openly with Pjerl as she complained to him about her Other Half’s antiquarian pursuits and neglect of herself. The idiot had been spending more and more time on various Q-Committee affairs and less and less time with his betrothed. Almost every day Midax heard amazing new details from Pjerl’s lips about the behaviour of the man who ought by rights to have been in a state of constant and attentive bliss. The idea that any man could win such a woman and not appreciate her, boggled Midax’s mind. How could anyone be so stupid?
    Then Pjerl’s worries took a turn for the worse.
    “He keeps talking about the Year Troth,” she said tearfully one evening.
    Midax looked blank.
    She prompted him, “All about staying away from your betrothed for a year.”
    “But why?” – his voice now close to unbelieving laughter.
    Her lip curled, “To prove that our love is ‘not propinquity but destiny’. If you can believe the excuse.”
    “But I thought… the Year Troth isn’t really thought of as necessary to the Vow, if, er…”
    “If the Vowers are of sufficiently mature age,” said Pjerl drily. “Or if either partner has been married before, even if only by a civil marriage. I thought Inellan knew all that as well as you or I. But during the past few days he has been praising the idea as though he were quite enthusiastic about doing it himself – in order words, leaving me for a year.”
    Midax sighed, “I just don’t understand him at all.” (He didn’t mean to say this. The risk was, if he let himself go he might say too much – )
    Then came words which seemed not to live in this world. He heard her say:
    “Don’t be alarmed, but I would have preferred someone like you, Midax, instead of all this mystification I’m getting from him.”
    “I feel that way about you too, Pjerl,” he answered simply.
    It was the first time he had used the proper form of her name since they had known each other at school.
    “It’s a pity,” she smiled, “that polygamy isn’t allowed.”
    “It certainly is.”
    Then she went serious and said hurriedly, “Of course I would never have dared to say this, if we didn’t know where we were.”
    A reminder that the decision of Romance is final. Even though Jerre had just confessed a conditional would-have-been love for him, it was Inellan whom she had vowed herself to; she and he were engaged, the romelding was for them, and that was that.
    Besides, what had she just said? “I would never have dared to say this.” Not something she would have said, if there had been any chance for Midax. Mustn’t forget that I’m out forever; that I have no chance. He knew this was still true, despite being thrilled by what he had heard her say.

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