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Show become a member of the Bubbleheads. Then he noticed a group of mummers going by the mullioned window beside their table. The three head Bauercrats and their Earthski Visitor were partaking of an elaborate meal in the ChapelRefectory, right on the NewOxbridge HighStreet. "Tell me," the Visitor said, "what started all this." He waved at the mummers going past the window. "Marry," Ivan said, "'tis a bonny story, indeed." He settled down further into his thickly cushioned chair as the opportunity to talk to a captive audience presented itself so propitiously. "Knowest thou, surely, that our blessed worlde was named after the astronomer, Greta Bauer..." The Visitor nodded. "...and that BauerWorlde be indeed the first planet populated in what she called the Great Auswanderung. . . " The Visitor nodded again. "Well, being the first-Isaac bless and keep us!-makes things oft times go a mite crazy, and that verily." The Visitor smiled again. It was nice to hear a BauerWorlder admit to that sort of thing. "The folk chosen at length from the group bred on the JupiterSpaceLab to come to BauerWorlde on the FirstSleeper were the Doctors," continued Ivan, "and crazy indeed they were about the OldeWorlde on Earth, e'en the two Anglican chaplains, Father and Mother DeWitt. In faith, glued to the terminals and reading screens upon screens of the olde novels and poems, playing at Archaism with broadswords and epees, restoring and creating our blessed language, swinging crosses and greeting folk with Pax-Vobiscums and Dominus-Vobiscums-all this was solely what kept the wights sane. They were so long abiding on that devilish man-made laboratory-see'st thou? - dreaming of a real worlde again, a new worlde, even the first new worlde in 65 |