Bast's Record

By Vassar Smith

A sequel of sorts to Smith’s 2012 science fiction/social satire/thriller MICHAEL REMEMBERS, this somewhat longer, still deeply thoughful, but exponentially funnier novel expands the author’s wry but gratifying view of life on our planet (and several others) some 400 years in the future.

The initial segment is a “recovered” notebook by the late Michael Talock, recounting succinctly the last three decades of his long life (150 years), especially the details concerning Sebastus (“Bast”) Tadlock, the youngest and brightest but also most wayward of his grandchildren. Bast is a chip off the old block in that, like his grandfather, he nearly ruins his life through acts of bad judgment in his youth, but then wises up and, given a second chance, more than redeems himself. In fact he literally helps save several worlds when our solar system is attacked by an amphibian race of predatory aliens in 2453.

Although the immediate attack is thwarted by the intervention of a race of large, handsome humans called the Scidron, it becomes Bast’s task (as a high-ranking officer of the Martian Space Corps) to determine whether the Scidron are really as friendly and benevolent as they maintain, or whether they in fact harbor sinister ulterior designs for the future of Earth and Mars. An epic friendship develops between Bast and Weden, captain of the Scidron battle cruiser Heorot, and many exciting, often quite funny adventures ensue. BAST’S RECORD transcends most science fiction works with its wry, alternative perspective on modem human history, its subtle but sustained literary tribute to Karel Capek and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and one of the most apt, poetically just, and utterly hilarious endings in modem literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vassar Smith
• Release date: May 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310244919

Vassar Smith

V. W. Smith was born in Memphis, Tennessee and has lived most of his adult life in California. He earned and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has been internationally published as a poet and humorist as well as a serious scholar and translator or Russian literature. His published translations include the novels BAD DREAMS and CONSOLATION by F. K. Sologub, and numerous poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Sologub, Blok, and other Russian masters. Collections of Smith's original poetry include: BYZANTINES AMOK (1990), UNDER THE LIMERICK TREE (1991), THE OVEN-BIRD CHORUS (1993), and THE CALIPATRIA TRIOLETS (2008). BAST'S ASSIGNMENT is the third in a series of exciting, original novels that employ elements both of future fantasy and of social satire. Its story begins some three Earth years after the ending of the second book. That novel, BAST'S RECORD, is a sequel to Smith's uproarious satirical novel MICHAEL REMEMBERS, published by Midnight Express Books in 2012.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The Recovered Notebook of Michael Tadlock’s Memoirs

Foreword: A Note by Michael Tadlock II

Fate enjoys her little jokes. Like everyone else, I thought my grandfather Michael Tadlock had concluded his memoirs in the year 2416. He certainly left behind a fascinating account of the first 115 years of his life. Naturally, we wondered why he did not continue his autobiography beyond that point especially since he lived for 35 more years Maybe he was mindful of Emerson’s adage that (if the story goes on long enough) ultimately every hero becomes a bore.

As far as I know, my grandfather never committed that offense. Indeed, for the span of years that they encompass, my grandfather s memoirs are remarkably succinct. An important aspect to telling a good story is knowing where to end it. So, perhaps Grand Michael felt that in 2416 he had found both closure and—to the basic pattern of his life—clear perspective.

That’s what we all assumed.

Then—ironically, after the publication of my grandfather’s memoirs—a notebook on the later years of his life was found. It turned up in one of the desks that belonged to Grand Michael. These pages had somehow fallen out of a drawer and lodged behind it. The paper had yellowed with age, but the ink had not faded, and the handwriting was unquestionably my grandfather’s. My wonderful wife Laura found this document when she finally decided to devote a day to cleaning and refinishing my grandfather’s antique oak desk.

I don’t know why this material was not entered into the computer files. Or maybe it was, then subsequently deleted. In any event, we never found any copy of this material. I have transcribed it faithfully here, exactly as my grandfather wrote it, with nothing either added or deleted.

MICHAEL TADLOCK’S LAST NOTEBOOK OF MEMOIRS

(August 15, 2422—April 30, 2449)

Chapter 1

I thought that my tale was told. For the most part it has been.

But no man’s story is exclusively his own. That is to say not just that every individual’s story belongs to the entire human race (and vice versa), but also that, without significant characters in addition to ourselves, all our stories would diminish substantially in value and even more in interest.

Looking at me today, a stranger unfamiliar with my identity would never in a million years believe that I am a grandfather, a professor of history at Burroughs University, and over 100 years old. Thanks to my third Retrogression Procedure (to which I was vindictively, involuntarily, and illegally subjected in 2386) in all external aspects I am indistinguishable from a normal, healthy eleven-year-old boy. My body shows no sign of ever maturing again nor even of reaching adolescence.

I was 85 when I got retrogressed for the third time. I won’t go into the details of the case itself here except to say that the first two times I got retrogressed, respectively at the ages of 25 and 50 (and both times for horrendous financial manipulation and fraud), I deserved the punishment that I received. The third time I did not. You see, fairly early in my second retrogression some light suddenly came on at last, some link dropped into place, completing a circuit of moral awareness and firm conduct rules that heretofore had been not entirely inoperative, but sketchy at best. Whether this moral maturation was an innate but incredibly slow development in my character, or whether it was catalyzed under the firm but fair and loving influence of my adoptive parents—Alexander and Patricia Farrell and, subsequently her sister, my Aunt Xana—the indisputable point is that moral maturation in me finally did occur.

And it stuck. I inherited a fortune after the Farrells’ lamentable and untimely death. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to have returned to the dissolute paths I had chosen before I started listening to what Lincoln called the angels of our better nature. Over the next thirty years I surpassed all my expectations in achieving worthwhile goals: I earned and received my Ph.D. in history from Stanford, obtained an academic position in which I distinguished myself as professor of history at Burroughs University on terraformed Mars, and finally, I moved, lived, and breathed with the incomparable joy and serenity that come from happy marriage to a beautiful, compatible, loving wife—my Sophia—and with fatherhood to the three wonderful sons that she bore me: Mark, David, and Billy.

Yet, none of this counted for anything in the eyes of the State of California and certainly didn’t matter to its prosecuting attorney on the case. Upon my return to Earth and California in 2386 (for what was supposed to have been a brief visit), I was arrested on an ex post facto law, tried by a kangaroo court, wrongfully convicted and consequently retrogressed for the third time. Although I was chronologically 85 years old, because of my two previous Retrogression Procedures (RPs), I neither looked nor felt any older than forty.

Both physically and psychologically I was truly a man in his prime. Then, after the third RP, I awoke to find myself again in the body that I had had as an eight-year-old child.

I did grow and develop normally again after that, though only for the next three years. For that small blessing I am grateful. The average eleven-year-old may be only a head taller than the average eight-year-old, but even that amount of growth was a substantial improvement over my original post-Procedure condition. Still, if not at eleven, then certainly by twelve or thirteen, most boys are at least on the threshold of adolescence and the gradual transformation to manhood. No such development awaited me now, neither in the present nor in the future. Never again, in fact. After that last Procedure, my pituitary gland could and did do whatever it did that was essential to keep me alive, but it was now irreparably damaged and useless as far as facilitating my physical growth and development beyond the last stage of late childhood.

Nevertheless, over the next ten years I found both old friends and new allies, and, at last, by an elaborate ruse, I was able to escape from Earth back to Mars, where I was welcomed as a hero and restored to my family, home, and profession. Next to recognizing and accepting the permanency of my retrogressed state, the biggest psychological adjustment was coming to terms with the reality that in 2390 Sophia, despairing of my ever returning, and liberally interpreting an earlier message from me, had legally terminated our marriage. She then took a new husband, a somewhat older gentleman named Tom Harding.

I do not use that term flippantly or ironically, either. Tom was as kind and decent a fellow as one could find this side of Heaven.

All three of my sons loved and respected him greatly. Ultimately, what could have become an exceedingly tense and uncomfortable situation was resolved equitably and amicably. Whereas I could and did resume my place as professor, father, and citizen, I had the wisdom to recognize that I simply could not function any longer as a husband.

It was enough to know that both Tom and Sophia regarded me with genuine respect and affection; that they welcomed my return to Mars and to the Tadlock family home; and, finally, that during my absence they had done everything possible to protect my personal property and had enhanced my financial assets considerably. How could one not appreciate them? So, I gave Tom and Sophia my acknowledgment and blessing as husband and wife; they in turn assured me of my restored and unchallenged status as paterfamilias in chez Tadlock.

Yes, I genuinely liked Tom, and I never stopped loving Sophia, although that love had to assume a more platonic, less physical aspect. Their hugs, their smiles, their laughter and companionship were enough for me. Indeed, they as a couple were an integral part of my life for 24 years. Never when with others, but often when I’m alone, it’s easy to forget that they’re not still alive.

They both died peacefully of natural causes in the same year, 2420. Tom died in midsummer, Sophia just after Christmas. Words can’t adequately express how much I miss them both.

Yet, as they say, life goes on. Early in 2421 my youngest son, Billy, now a distinguished ophthalmologist, and his (usually) very attractive and affable wife Andrea moved back into the family mansion. Certainly there was not just room, but rooms enough for everyone to live comfortably there.

The truth is, before my youngest son moved back in, bringing his wife and two small children with him (little Tommy and Sonya), the house seemed impossibly large and grossly underutilized, even with the presence of my son Mark, his wife Anna,and their sons Mike and Mark Jr. (then respectively 8 and 7 years old) to share it with me. With nine of us living here, the house definitely seemed a home again rather than a museum or mausoleum. The following year Billy and Andrea presented me with my seventh grandchild, their third child, a boy whom they named Sebastus. For me he was to prove a source both of consummate joy and of heartache verging on despair. But for the time being, that is, for the next few years, our home resonated with happiness and high hopes.

Chapter 2

I still don’t know just how or why they chose such a name for the boy. My son Billy, whom everyone except me now calls Bill, was an excellent student and had the benefit of a classical education. Still, though he acquired a great appreciation of language and literature in general, it was his wife Andrea who was obsessed with obscure literary works, rare words, and out of town names. The Sunday afternoon when Andrea, radiant, announced to me that she and Billy had decided to name their soon-to-be-born third child Sebastus, I was immediately compelled to ask: Sebastus? Don’t you mean Sebastian?

No, she answered resolutely, I mean Sebastus. It means ‘holy majesty’ in Greek. It’s the equivalent of Augustus in Latin.

I know what it means. It’s also highly irregular as a name nowadays, and a bit vainglorious, to say the least. Why not go with the equally elegant but less pretentious name Sebastian?

At that she huffed: Pretentious? Pretentious, you say? Well, I’m sorry that you think so, Professor Tadlock. (I knew that she was extremely disgruntled whenever she addressed me as Professor Tadlock instead of Michael.) But, she continued, our decision stands: We’re naming the boy Sebastus. The name Sebastian is just too time-worn and too... derivative.

I don’t know what she meant by that, and I’m not sure that she did either. Likewise, she was neither swayed nor even impressed when I raised the additional point that Sebastian is the name of a great Christian saint, whereas Sebastus is not. The child could receive powerful inspiration from such a patron saint, one of the greatest martyrs of Christendom. This point was totally lost upon her.

When the boy was born, he was named Sebastus and christened such a month later. Andrea and I reconciled our differences of opinion.

We both liked the nickname Bast, which Billy suggested for the boy.

Chapter 3

The next few years flew by, as relatively problem-free times often do. In 2426 (40 M.C.) I retired from my professorship at Burroughs University. Some of the students thought it incredible that the little kid who had been teaching them Earth’s history was actually 67 years old. And that’s in Martian chronology—in Earth years I was 125!

The University honored me with a lavish farewell dinner. The main course, I remember, was chicken Kiev. The distinguished guests attending included the Martian Federation’s Head of State, Pres. Pinney himself. It was all quite seemly and gratifying, but by then I was more than ready to retire to a more leisurely and private life.

Four more years passed. Bast was now eight (in Earth years) and an amazing boy indeed: smart as a whip; gifted in both vocal and instrumental music; years ahead of his classmates in math; and able to win most chess games that he played, even when his opponent was an adult.

On the first day of the third grade Bast got sent home from school for fighting. When we questioned him seriously but sympathetically, to get him to tell us in his own words what happened, he explained that some obnoxious kids—one in particular—had repeatedly made fun of his name. Finally, Bast lost his temper and punched his erstwhile tormentor.

There had been no Russian children among Bast’s classmates in earlier grades. This class included a half dozen Russian boys, and, unfortunately, they were not from the better element. That is to say, their families were not what we call people of quality. When their patriarch (and I do not mean the term in any religious sense) had hit the jackpot in two Toonol casinos, the whole clan had bought real estate in Wells and then moved here. From their tenement in Tomi, a poor, rough town on the Gulf of Toonol. Cultured Martians of Russian descent uncomplimentarily compared Tomi to Murmansk, despite the Martian town’s considerably milder climate. Anyhow, with their new-found wealth the Zhopin-Yazykov family resolved to leave Tomi forever for the good life in Wells. When I reflected upon this development, it occurred to me with some amusement that, in all Sophia’s seemingly boundless store of Russian proverbs, there was nothing quite equivalent to the old Twentieth-Century American adage: You can take the trash out of the trailer, but you can’t take the trailer out of the trash!

On that first school day of the third grade, each child, when his (or her) turn came, had to stand up and briefly introduce himself (or herself) to the rest of the class, i.e. tell the others at the very least the name (or nickname) by which he (or she) wished to be known by as well as his (or her) family name.. Things went awry almost as soon as Bast stood up and began to speak. More than half the children in the class had already taken their turns, and nobody had been heckled or interrupted so far. But as soon as Bast had told the class his name, Igor Zhopin demanded mockingly:

Bast? What kind of name is Bast? You made out of birch bark or something?

Igor’s fraternal twin brother Kirill (Cyrill) and their four Yazykov cousins immediately joined in a chorus of derisive laughter.

What in the solar system are you talking about? Bast asked in response.

Is funny that they name you Bast, Igor persisted. Bast is material made from birch bark. Shoes, sandals, mats, and lots of other things. Is good stuff—almost as strong as leather—but very strange for a person’s name. You say you never heard of bast before? Are you or your parents stupid or something?

Igor, watch your language! You’re being rude. Don’t talk to Bast or anyone else like that! Mrs. Charles, the teacher, intervened.

Bast still replied to Igor in front of the teacher and class:

Two of my grandparents were professors at Burroughs University. My father’s an eye doctor. One of my uncles is a teacher, the other an engineer. There are no stupid people in my family.

More attuned to the strong feelings aroused in Bast than to the import of his words, Igor hooted: How about we call you ‘birch- bark boy’ from now on?

How about we call you ‘Dead Fat Glob’? Bast retorted and, succumbing to rage, lit into Igor, who must have outweighed him by 15 kg.

There’s no telling what might have happened if Mrs. Charles had not separated them. I must confess, when I heard the details of this incident I became extremely apprehensive about Bast’s safety, especially if he and those six Russian boys were to remain in the same classroom at school.

Fortunately, my concerns, though justifiable, turned out to be needless. Unlike the tragedy that befell my foster brother Simon in a school yard many decades ago, this crisis was quickly and felicitously resolved. When he returned to school the following day, Bast, fully expecting to encounter some lingering hostility from the Zhopin-Yazykov boys, instead was amazed to find them, if not exactly amicable, certainly apologetic, almost deferential in their demeanor toward him now.

The Zhopin-Yazykov clan may not have given a rap, i.e. they may have known little and cared less about me and any other Tadlocks.

But the adults in the Zhopin and Yazykov families were neither so dense nor so besotted that, at the mention of the name Tadlock, they couldn’t quickly figure out that Bast was the grandson of Professor Sophia Rozanov Tadlock (a luminary in all the planet’s Russian communities) and, moreover, the great-great grandson of Senator Gavrila Arkhangelsky, one of the founding fathers of the Martian Federation, in other words a national hero.

Igor’s father, hearing of the school incident, could have given his son a whipping. He didn’t. But the words he uttered probably stung more. In effect he told him that by insulting and antagonizing Bast instead of cultivating his friendship, Igor had exhibited almost unparalleled dimensions of stupidity. Mr. Zhopin warned his sons and nephews that henceforth Bast was categorically off limits to any aggressive