To Climates Unknown: An Alternate History of a World Without America

Morning, July 2 (Julian), 1985

Munkhaven

For most of Neema’s adult life, convincing representatives from every colonized region of the world to gather in one place and exchange proposals for their liberation had sounded like an impossible dream. When she walked, announced with praises and received with applause, into the austere but spacious hall the Novadanians had built and furnished for that purpose, she silently thanked her father for the extended absences she’d resented as a child. The road to that day had been prepared laboriously, with small, careful moves, every time Paulo Farnana had visited an imperial province, met with each clandestine independence movement, and discussed the idea of an international union. She thanked him for not abandoning the cause during the many years it had taken to build the network of ties that had made that day possible.

The excitement of the reception made her heart strain to beat faster, and she almost fainted as she forced her feet to keep moving toward the center of the stage. She hadn’t yet turned sixty, but she felt half again as old. Despite her lifelong precautions, her work was gradually killing her.

When she reached the podium, she grabbed it to keep herself standing. She searched in her coat pocket and took out her speech. The pallor of her hands distracted her as she unfolded the paper. She closed her eyes to refocus. Her health was not the issue of the day. It didn’t matter next to the bigger problems they were gathered to talk about. She glanced at the sound recorder on the podium, connected to amplifiers all over the room, and smiled. Then she noticed the artificial lights on the ceiling. The sight brought fond memories; it had been her students who had learned to tame lightning a generation before. Of the powerful nations, Novadania had been the most open to the fruits of the Likasi Renaissance, even at the cost of foreign relations. Iberian authorities were livid that there weren’t enough Inquisitors to eliminate the impious profusion of ideas that had spawned from under their noses.

The thought of so much effort ending in vain brought her mind back to her duties. She put on her eyeglasses and started reading, “It is customary to introduce this kind of event by repeating a premade phrase, such as ‘good morning.’ But I cannot say that. None of us can. The reasons that have brought us here are anything but good. Our reasons for meeting here are sad, and horrific, and soul-crushing, and outrageous.”

Her assistant, Gilberto, had deemed that opening too dark for the occasion, which she’d taken as being precisely the endorsement it needed. As the translators spread her words through the audience, she confirmed she was getting the desired effect.

“I am old, but I hadn’t been born when the Peace of Rome was signed. Even my parents were still children. When I talked to people who lived through those times, they told me the same thing: life seemed to have come to a halt. The three great empires no longer faced the problem of butchering each other, and since then they’ve turned their eyes and their whips more intensely on us. Since then, the established world order became ossified. For the better part of this century, history took residence at a horrible place and has refused to move from there.”