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seriously, but he also has an obligation to almost a hundred generations of ancestors, to hand his country
intact down to his successor. He takes that duty very seriously as well. Any more nonsense out of you
and you could spend the rest of your life under house arrest! Understood?"
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"Good. Don't forget it."
The warlock followed the rest of the group to the beach, and I sat back down and put my head in my
hands, wondering just how badly I had screwed the whole thing up this time.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Roxanna came up behind me and started rubbing my neck and shoulders. "My lord, it is not that bad.
The duke is a very wise and understanding man. He knows all about the social customs of your country,
and you have not seriously offended him by telling him again about them. Come. You have yet to show
me the wonders of your television and your VCR. Show me something light and amusing."
A truly marvelous woman. I resolved to propose marriage to her again, and this time with all the
formalities.
Roxanna's English wasn't up to understanding the verbal byplay of most comedies, so I found a pair of
old silent films, Harold Lloyd'sHis Royal Slyness and then hisHaunted Spooks . And by the end, I was
laughing as much as the ladies, apprentices, and servants, or perhaps a bit harder.
The duke returned with his crowd as I was rewinding the tape. Adam kept the whole thing in hand,
starting with giving the boys back their equipment. He put one of them in charge, and told them to get to
work without us.
Adam started at the far end of the warehouse with some of the navigation equipment, displaying a laser
ROM disk that contained charts of every sea, coastline, and harbor in the world. Then there was the
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Global Positioning System, that could locate us to within ten meters of our actual position. Combining
these two, it was possible to navigate in complete darkness, without radar or sonar, through most of the
channels, coral reefs, and harbors of the world. Providing, of course, that you didn't hit something that
wasn't on the electronic charts. Another ship, for example.
He talked about how the radar and sonar worked, but couldn't actually demonstrate them with the ship
being where it was. Then there were the radios. An all-band receiver and two marine-band transceivers.
The duke was familiar with shortwave. Indeed, it had been his main source of information about the
outside world. The satellite phone system really surprised him, however.
"Do you mean to tell me that it is possible to contact any single person anywhere in the world?
Instantly?"
"Anyone who has a telephone, Your Grace, which is most people in the civilized world. And almost
instantly. There's a half-second delay. Watch. I'll demonstrate. It's been too long since I called my
mother, anyway. She worries about me, you know," Adam said.
And with that, he picked up the handset, dialed up her number, and put the phone on speaker mode, so
everyone could listen in.
"Hello?"
"Good morning, Ma. It's Adam."
"Adam! Where are you? You haven't called in months! I was getting worried that you got shipwrecked
or injured or something horrible like that."
"I'm just fine, Ma. I'm in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We had a little trouble with our satellite phone
and I couldn't call, but we got it fixed now. The good news is that I met this girl, or rather these two girls.
They're sisters, and each of them is as good a woman asyour mother was. I just might get serious about
them, as soon as I can figure out which one I want."
"Then Adam, if either one of them will take you, you should marry her right now before the poor girl
comes to her senses! If you are ever going to get me any grandchildren, you'd better start soon, because
you're already almost too old."
"Forty-six is not too old to get married, and I'll keep you posted on the ladies. Got to run now."
"Good. About the nice girls you've met, I mean. You call me every two weeks from now on, you hear?"
"Yes, Ma. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Adam."
The line went dead.
"You see, Your Grace. It's that easy."
"Remarkable. Those buttons you pushed before you contacted her, they were some sort of instructions
for the machine?"
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"Yes, Your Grace. It's called a phone number. They have books listing them, or if you know where a
person lives, and that person has not given instructions that they wish their number to be kept a secret, an
operator, a person who works for the phone company, will give you their number."
"I see. So if a person wishes privacy, he is granted it."
"Yes. Privacy is very important in our culture. If there had been an emergency, however, the police
would be able to contact anyone who needed contacting," Adam explained.
"So your people don't have privacy from their government."
"Well, yes and no, Your Grace. Sometimes it's difficult to know exactly where to draw the line, if you
get my meaning."
"Indeed, I do. Another thing. I just observed you telling your mother a lie. Two lies. You were both
shipwrecked and seriously injured. Do you often tell her lies?"
"Your Grace, had I told her that I had been in a shipwreck, that I had broken five bones, and that I
nearly drowned, she would have been upset for months. There's nothing that she can do about it, and all
the danger's over, so why should I make her worry? So to answer your question, yes, of course I lie to
my mother. In fact, I do it fairly often."
The duke thought about it a moment, then shook his head, declining comment.
The next item was a personal computer, and explaining everything it could do took a half hour. The only
surprise for me was when Adam produced a CD-ROM that had theEncyclopaedia Britannica on it. I
hadn't known that we had such a thing, but then most people never use an encyclopedia anyway. It's just
important tohave one.
That left the entertainment equipment. After the stereo, there was only the TV and the VCR. Some of
the duke's party wanted something religious and others wanted an adventure story, so Adam put onBen
Hur .
All four hours of it.
It was well past dark when the last tape finally started to rewind, and I was eager to get home and in
bed with Roxanna.
People were actually getting up to leave when Adam said, "Your Grace, were you aware of the various
news channels available to us?"
And so we watched CNN until midnight, which left not nearly enough time for properly loving Roxanna.
Sometimes Adam blows it, too.
* * *
Entirely too early in the morning, five more of the warlock's subordinates were waiting for us. Three were
scholars who wanted to do research with our computerized encyclopedia, one was to watch the news
channel and take notes for the bulletin boards, the local equivalent of a newspaper, and the fifth, who was
to take us on the warlock's promised tour of the islands, was Journeyman Judah ben Salomen ha-Cohen.
"A remarkable name for a Christian," I said.
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"I chose it myself," he said. "You see, my father was a chevalier, a great-grandson of the old duke. As a
great-great-grandson, I of course am a commoner. But if every descendent of the ducal line kept the
family name of Alberigo, well, there wouldn't be much left but Alberigos in the entire country. Because of
this, the custom is for those in my position to chose our own names. I wanted something different."
"You certainly got it," Adam said.
It took only a few minutes to get the reporter and the researchers set up and familiar with the controls of
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