There was a great deal of entertainment news. Some of it was on a new order for him. For instance, it would seem that one of the current entertainment fads involved composing poems—on your feet. That is, a contestant would be given, cold, a subject, and within only a few minutes, he was expected to deliver his poem. The judges would give him both the subject and a verse form—a sonnet, or more intricate French form such as a rondeau—and he would have to compose in that form and on that subject. There was no possible manner in which he could prepare himself beforehand. In such a contest, Julian decided, he would have considered that he’d done well if he were able to come up with anything: Cold Beer Sold Here.
It would seem that in this age, intellectual exercises were all the thing. He wondered if they still played charades. Back in the fifties, he had rather prided himself on his own abilities. If the game had become extinct, he would reintroduce charades.
He gave up on the General News and tried, in the way of an experiment, Music. In his day he had been exposed to classical music beyond the point of desire, but it was a social must. These people now seemed to live for it. A musical great was the equivalent in status of a billionaire in his own time.
Ballet followed Music. There seemed to be a ballet revival that would have given Nijinsky and Pavlova back seats. He had always liked ballet. He wondered if they ever did the old classics, such as Swan Lake.
But Scientific News was half of all news, and he was lost. Even in English on the ten-year-old level, he hadn’t the vaguest idea of what he was reading. He abruptly flicked off the set, picked up his glass and finished off his martini. He slumped back in this chair, thoroughly frustrated. He didn’t know enough in this day even to know where to begin.
He flicked the screen back on, for something had occurred to him.
He dialed information and said, “I want a resumé, in English, on an eight- to ten-year level, on the outstanding scientific breakthroughs that have taken place since the year 1970 Old Calendar.”
“Yes, Mr. West. That will take two or three minutes to compile. Did you wish an extensive report or a brief?”
He suspected that an extensive report would take him the better part of the rest of the week to wade through. “Just a brief.”
Two or three minutes. It was the first time the Internationa] Data Banks hadn’t come back with something he wanted immediately. Probably it was the first time the request had ever been made. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.
While he waited, he thought back over his conversation with Edith and Sean O’Callahan. He hadn’t really told them anything about combat. Not really. It wasn’t something easy to tell about; you almost had to witness it to understand. Oh, some of the really good writers had been able to tell it true. Wasn’t that the way Hemingway had said it, tell it true ? Something like that. But the Old Man had been there, and more than once. Papa Hemingway had been one of the few men Julian West had ever met who actually seemed to like war.
Johnny Reston came back to him now. Sergeant John Reston. They had been a team for some six months down in the Mekong Delta area. They had worked out a system, based on that of pursuit pilots. Johnny acted as the equivalent of a wing man for Julian; that is, he remained to the right and a few yards behind him when they went into action. Julian was the point man and directed his fire at the enemy. Johnny spent full time covering him, ignoring offensive action of his own, unless it involved protecting his buddy. It had worked pretty well until the day when they were wading waist deep in water, wading desperately for dry land and cover, that an exploding mortar shell hit Johnny almost dead center. A great deal of blood and gore that had been Sergeant John Reston was flung over Julian. After he had gotten to land, he had vomited his guts out.
Yes, he could have told Sean and Edith about that. But could he have told it true, as Papa had demanded? Probably not; he could never have brought home to them the reality of the thing, the nauseating horror. As he recalled, it had only been a week later that he stepped on the land mine and nearly had his leg blown off. Two months in hospital and, when he had recovered, he had two weeks’ R R in Bangkok where he picked up the only case of venereal disease he had ever experienced.
The screen lit up before him and he began to scan the developments in science since the time Doctor Herbert Pillsbury had put him into stasis.
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGHS SINCE 1970—NOT NECESSARILY IN ORDER OF DISCOVERY
1. Applications of masers and lasers for sensing, communication, measuring, heating, cutting, power transmission, mining and illumination, and other purposes.
Well, the Leetes had already told him a bit about that, although he still didn’t understand what in the hell a laser was. He vaguely remembered reading somewhere that it was a very narrow beam of light, and had the potential to be made into a death ray.
2. Very high-temperature and high-strength structural materials. New and improved fabrics such as fibers, papers, and plastics and new materials for appliances and equipment such as alloys, glasses, ceramics, intermetallics, and cermets.
3. New sources of power for fixed installations such as magnetohydrodynamic, thermoelectric, thermoionic and radioactivity, and new sources of power for transportation including improved storage batteries, fuel cells, propulsion by electric-magnetic fields and jet engines.
All right, that was to be expected. He had missed a couple of the words. What were cermets, and what was magnetohydrodynamic? He supposed he should order a dictionary from the ultra-market down in the basement. Right now that would slow him up too much, however, looking up every word he didn’t understand.
4. Worldwide use of high-altitude cameras in satellites for weather control, mapping, geological investigations, prospecting, and land use.
5. New methods of water transport, including automated cargo ships, hovercraft, submarine carriers pulled by surface tugs, and developments in container ships. Ground Effect Machines, eliminating the need to load and unload cargo at sea ports.
Nothing startling there, either. All of it had been germinating in his own time. But the next one set him back.
6. Advances in cyborg techniques such as substitutes or mechanical aids for limbs, senses, or organs.
Dr. Leete had told him that they no longer transplanted organs. Did he, Julian West, have an artificial heart in his chest?
7. New techniques and institutions for education, including chemical methods for improving learning and memory, and home education via video and computerized programmed learning.
He knew about that, too—and that it largely applied only to youth.
8. New and improved materials and equipment for buildings including variable transmission glass, heating and cooling by thermoelectric effect, and phosphorescent and electroluminescent lighting.
9. Widespread use of cryogenics.
He hadn’t any idea as to cryogenics and could only guess at electroluminescent lighting.