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Show choir over the beehive of NewOxbridge, setting the bewildered Techs' ears to ringing and their minds into something like scrambled eggs. The settlers had regressed to animal power by choice, deliberately slowing down in lifestyle to suit the primitive landscape they had settled into. A total of twelve yearly festivals covered everything from the MidSummerMusicFest, celebrating Greta Bauer's birthday, to the Needlesmith Oceanic-in all truth, a nationwide fish fry honoring Ida and Isaac. Minstrels, mummers, jugglers, and acrobats were kept busy; even during BauerWorlde's Midwinter's ChristmasTide and the season's bonecracking cold, adding color and authenticity to these revelries, their ranks filled for the most part by Second-, Third-, and FourthSleeper romantics taking a SevenDay or a Month or a TwelveMonth off from their assigned duties. All but a very few of the aircars and shuttles were gathering cobwebs and rust in the City of Caves. The NewOxbridge complex, comprising both city and university, had become a gothic conglomeration of soaring arches and vaulted walkways, cobblestone streets and gabled shops. Blocks and blocks of walled-in cloisters, gardens, and pleached walks comprised the the Anglican seminary and NewOxbridge student quarters, this last wherein all members of the population abided for a ThreeMonth each round of seasons, studying-amongst other things-BauerWorlde's prescriptive period grammar. Even the computer centers and bubble libraries-those bastions of BauerWorlde Science-were disguised behind rosestone spires. Lanterns flared in the streets at night. Saloons were called alehouses. Folk used candles. "My God!" exclaimed one technician, gripped by abject terror. "We've lost a whole ten centuries!" Well, no, they hadn't actually lost ten centuries, as the kindly 69 |
