The Discovery of the Old New World

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The Inca discovered Europe in a year when Europe was otherwise occupied discovering how much of its neighbor belonged to it.

Having concluded the Mummy Wars, the emperor marched north, conquered Cuba, and built an armada. His grandfather approved the expedition. Grandfather had been dead eighty years, which gave his opinions considerable weight and spared him the inconvenience of revising them.

I accompanied the fleet as historian, a profession requiring good handwriting and a poor memory whenever the emperor lost a battle.

We carried maps of a hemisphere already ancient: Adena earthworks, great river settlements, and the kingdoms of Chavín, Moche, and Nasca. Our ancestors had hunted enormous beasts with spear-throwers before anyone thought to invent a customs office.

Nevertheless, we intended to call Europe the New World. A place becomes new the instant a foreign gentleman arrives with sufficient ships.

Our first cathedral contained a saint’s finger, two sacred teeth, and a bishop who assured us all three had assisted in recent military victories.

The admiral was delighted.

“Relations!” he cried.

He explained that our dead kings possessed estates, servants, and political opinions. The bishop explained that his saints received petitions and interceded in affairs of state.

Each congratulated the other upon having escaped superstition.

Europe proved to be thickly populated with influential corpses. Every town had one; prosperous towns had several. A king prayed before a relic for victory over another king praying before another relic. The ensuing slaughter settled which dead gentleman had understood the situation.

“Their Mummy Wars are still going,” I wrote. “They have merely improved the upholstery.”

In Rome we found marble stairs, golden ceilings, and enough holy bones to establish a second population beneath the first.

The admiral whispered that perhaps Jesus himself sat somewhere below the Vatican, issuing instructions.

Our interpreter put the question to a cardinal.

The cardinal said this was an outrageous misunderstanding and requested a private interview to discuss our gold.

Among our company was an Aymara priest whose village held its land in common. He had survived lightning, and the sailors credited him with surviving it twice.

“Here,” he observed, “the land belongs to men who never touch it.”

“An advanced arrangement,” I said. “We must study it before somebody studies ours.”

We raised the emperor’s banner and announced that Europe had been discovered.

A Portuguese gentleman objected that people already lived there.

This was entered in the record as evidence of his deficient education.

That evening Grandfather was consulted. His keeper reported that he favored annexation.

I could not hear the old fellow say it myself, but by then I had visited enough European courts to understand that this was no obstacle to government.