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27

 

 

THIS is the sort of thing that is most troubling to us, Barrydihoa.

Oh, hell, Merlin, I wish you wouldn't keep interrupting. I was just getting up to speed for the dash to the finish line, and now you've made me break stride. All right; what's the troubling part, then?

You wish us to accept your view that you human persons are rational beings. That becomes even more difficult when you admit to us that all these nonrational traits exist. For example, how can you reconcile the human concept of "religion" with rationality?

Please, Merlin. Don't talk about things you don't know anything about. You may not understand why religion is important to most human beings, but it is. They need their religions. At least some of them do. The principal reason is that religion is comforting to them, I suppose, but it's more than that. It's their way of organizing a code of proper behavior.

It is not a rational way.

Oh, hell, what do you know about it? You don't understand what makes human beings tick in the first place. One of the most important human traits is that we want to know things. We're inquisitive. We want to learn everything there is to learn about everything there is.

When you keep that in mind you'll see that religious beliefs are not entirely irrational even by your own standards—well, I think so, anyway. As much as I understand what your standards are. At least, their beliefs didn't necessarily start out that way.

When religions first began they were actually more or less scientific attempts to explain the world. Those primitive people weren't stupid, Merlin. They were ignorant, yes, but they had brains. They wondered about things. They thought, quite reasonably, that there must be some reason for such phenomena as droughts and pestilences and violent storms—for all the things that threatened their lives, or even for the ones that benefited them. They wanted to understand them better, and so they formed a scientific theory to explain them.

The theory they developed was that there were supernatural beings living in every rock and river and tree, making these things happen.

All right, we know better now—about most of those things, anyway. Still, when you consider the state of human knowledge at that time, that wasn't an indefensible theory. It turned out to be wrong, sure. I'll grant you that, but so do a lot of scientific theories.

And, you know, there's still a lot out there that we don't know. We don't know exactly how the universe was born. We certainly don't know why. We don't even know if there is a why. There are a good many very logical and sensible people who still believe that there must have been some kind of god, sometime, that somehow started the whole thing going at the very beginning of tune, and who's to say they're crazy?

I know none of this means much to you, because you've never troubled yourself with any of those deep questions about things like Ultimate Causes—but don't kid yourself. That doesn't make you better than we are. The way I look at it, it makes you just a little bit worse.

 

Let me get back to the story—we're coming pretty close to the end.

Alma and I didn't stay housebound any longer than we had to. There was work to do and we were needed. Everybody was; so we reported for duty.

The person we reported to was Byram Tanner. Jimmy Queng wasn't handing out work assignments anymore, because he had been discreetly relieved of his straw-boss job. No one actually blamed him for what Tscharka and Tuchman had done, exactly, but Jimmy had been really close to them. So now Byram was the general work coordinator.

Neither Alma nor I was quite up to a whole lot of heavy lifting yet, but Byram found us work within our capabilities; he put us to driving the big-wheeled cars down to the farm plots to pick up what was being harvested. Some of the crops were dead ripe and the pickers got to them just barely in time. That was part of our general lepless labor shortage; if the new help from Buccaneer hadn't arrived when it did, a lot wouldn't have been worth picking. Driving the cars there and back wasn't hard work, and we were content to go right on doing it indefinitely. Alma liked it because she got to see something of the countryside. I liked it because Alma liked it, but also for another reason.

I kept being hopeful that somehow Geronimo might show up somewhere along the way.

I didn't have any convincing evidence, but I was still optimistic enough to think it was possible that maybe, just maybe, Geronimo would have finished his phase change and just might be lurking around somewhere in my vicinity. Not willing to go so far as to pursue me into town, no. But with enough of our friendship left to—perhaps—want to get a look to see how I was doing.

I began carrying hard candies in my pockets again. I even formed the habit, when we were away from the town, of strolling off into the brush and leaving a few candies here and there, to show Geronimo—if he really was anywhere around—that I was still thinking of him.

That wasn't the total of my ambitions. Sooner or later, I was firmly determined, I would get back to the lep nest somehow and try to straighten things out, but not right then. It would have to wait awhile, because physically I still wasn't quite up to it . . . and the other people in Freehold just weren't interested.

That was a symptom of injured pride, I think.

Everybody in Freehold missed our lep helpers, sure. Nobody would have denied that. But with the new blood from Buccaneer, and especially now that it seemed to have been firmly decided that, yes, we would go ahead with the plan to reenergize the factory orbiter, morale in the colony was surging higher every day. People even began talking about that other scheme, of moving Freehold to some more hospitable spot on Pava, where we wouldn't have those damned earthquakes bothering us all the time.

Do you understand what I mean by "morale"? I don't know if leps have anything of that sort, but it's a fact that human beings can do wonders when they see a chance of something really good coming out of it. People were even smiling again.

I guess the whole colony had been through a kind of shock therapy. They say that in the old days, when some machine just obstinately refused to work, the old-timers would sometimes try a simple cure.

They would haul back and give their recalcitrant sump pump or lawn mower or Model T a good, hard kick. As often as not that would jolt the thing into working again.

I think that might be a true story. I even think something like that began happening with the Pava colony, after the shock of seeing Tscharka and Tuchman come so scarily close to genocide. There was hope again. Maybe the best news came from the factory orbiter, because about the first thing Captain Bennetton did when Buccaneer was in parking orbit was to send a party over to check it out, and, yes, they reported that the antimatter power systems were intact.

Well, I'd wanted to do that myself, but the important thing was that it had been done. We were in business as soon as the transfers could be arranged, and the signs were visible. Overhead in the evenings, when the light from Delta Pavonis struck them just right, we could see the glints of reflection from dead Corsair and its shepherd, Buccaneer, high in the sky as Captain Bennetton slowly towed the old ship toward the factory and its destiny as scrap.

 

I haven't said much about Captain Vernon Bennetton of the interstellar ship Buccaneer, but he was a good man. Alma assured me of that, because she owed him: He'd immediately made a place for her in his deep-freeze as soon as she told him her story. So I owed him, too.

When, one day at supper, he sat down across from us and said, "Mind if I join you?"—well, Alma almost reached over and kissed him.

After we'd shaken hands, I said, "I thought you'd be busy jockeying Corsair into position."

"I am—I mean we are. I'll go back up for the docking, but the ship's in good hands for now. I left Jillen Iglesias and my number two, Martine Grossman, in charge. They're both fully qualified, and I wanted to come down to talk to you."

"Ah," I said. "About Jillen, you mean." I had been wondering when her name would come up.

"Well, partly about Jillen. You know she's in Buccaneer now—"

"Yes." Everybody knew that. Jillen hadn't come out of the business entirely unscarred. There were a lot of people in Freehold who had wanted her locked up with Tscharka and the reverend, and when Bennetton mentioned he could use another hand on Buccaneer she'd jumped at the chance to get out of everybody's way.

"Well, Jillen's decided she doesn't want to stay here. She wants to go back with me and raise her baby on Earth."

"Probably that would be the best thing," I agreed.

"For her, yes. What's the best thing for the colony? You people are going to need pilots."

"For transshipping the fuel to the factory?"

Captain Bennetton shook his head. "After that. For the short-haul spaceship. It'll be a sort of a combination of explorer, and asteroid-spotter, and tug. They'll be using it to mine the asteroid belt, after the metals from salvaging Corsair run out."

I stared at him. "When did the colony decide to build that?"

"Well, they haven't yet, because they haven't had a meeting, but they will. It's the only thing that makes sense. The only problem is that Martine doesn't really want to stay here, either." He cleared his throat, studying me appraisingly, and added, "I understand you used to be a spotter-ship pilot in the Belt."

"Well, hell," I said, surprised that he'd even bother to ask, "of course I'll—"

Then I stopped, looking at Alma.

Staying on in Freehold wasn't entirely my decision to make anymore, I thought. I was remembering what life in the Belt had been like: getting into the suit, living in it for weeks at a time, all by yourself. That kind of existence tended to get lonesome, even there.

Here around Delta Pavonis it would be even more so. When I went out it wouldn't be for just a matter of weeks. Delta Pavonis's Belt wouldn't have any central smelter station to return to after a spotter flight, with all the (actually, fairly spartan) comforts the central station could provide. The only base for operations would be Pava itself, and if I were that ship's pilot I would be gone for months at a time.

Gone, that is to say, from the company of my lost and unbelievably restored love.

I thought about what that would mean. I would miss Alma, there was no doubt of that. Of course, missing her for a short period—even a period of months—would be a good deal easier to take than the kind of missing her that had been dampening my mood for all the months when I thought I'd never see her again.

On the other hand, how would Alma feel about that?

I felt Alma's hand closing over mine, as though she were thinking the same thoughts in parallel. Probably she was. I sighed. "Can I think it over?" I asked.

Bennetton grinned at me—he was in no doubt which way I would decide, I could see that. "Take all the time you like," he said generously, "only if you decide to do it you probably ought to get in some practice now. Take a few turns as copilot, with me or Jillen, or Marline Grossman."

I'd met Marline, Bennetton's second-in-command; she was a sharp, middle-aged lady who seemed to know what she was doing. "That makes sense," I agreed, carefully staying on the safe side of an outright promise.

"And we probably ought to try to train one or two other pilots while we're here. The way the designs look, the tug would take a crew of two, anyway."

"Ah," I said stupidly, "oh. Right." For I had been thinking in terms of the way it had been in the Belt, and the thought of a two-person spacecraft had never occurred to me.

Alma began lo laugh. "Damn you, Vernon," she said, "why didn't you say thag in the first place? I think I'd make a fine copilot. I volunteer. We both do."

 

Well, Merlin, I guess we're coming pretty close to the end now, aren't we? I've said just about everything I can say. I hope it's enough. Now it's just a matter of filling in some of the details.

Like about the town meeting, for instance. I'm sure I should tell you about that, although, speaking for myself personally, what happened at the meeting wasn't as important as what happened on the way to it. That's when Alma stopped me on the way there and looked up into my face and said, "Am I taking too much for granted, Barry?"

"Like what?"

"Well . . ." She looked a little uncomfortable. "I sort of jumped in for both of us. We haven't really talked much about plans for the future, have we? And if you wanted to back out or anything—"

"Not a bit of it," I said immediately and look a deep breath. Then it all came out al once: "I love you, Alma. I've loved you for a long lime. I've been afraid lo say it, but what I want to do is get married. Soon as we can. Here."

It was astonishing how easy the impossible turned out to be, once I'd made up my mind to say it. Alma didn't hesitate. She said crossly, "Well, what the hell took you so long? I accept your proposal!"

I held up my hand. "It's not that easy. I don't want lo be unfair to you, Alma. What about children?"

"What about them? We'll have them." She let me hang there for a minute, before she added, "Did you forget that I've studied up on the subject? And then before I left the Moon I spent a lot of time with Helga—you remember Helga? Your doctor at Lederman? Well, she explained what we'll have to do all over again. She gave me all the datafiles and I've already turned them over to Dr. Goethe. I know," she said, "you're not too crazy about him, but all the procedures are in the files. Anybody could follow them. He says it's no problem. We can have all the babies we want, and we can be sure they won't inherit any nasties. So all we need to do," she finished, "is set a date for the wedding."

I said, "How about tonight?"

"Tonight's good," she said. "Right after the town meeting would be fine. Now, who do we get to do the job for us?"

So we had a word with Byram Tanner before the meeting began—neither of us wanted a religious ceremony, and he was just about Freehold's chief magistrate. There was no problem there. "I would be pleased and honored to perform the ceremony," he said agreeably, "especially if I get to kiss the bride. We'll do it right after the meeting, so let's gel started—"

But there was a little delay there. Before Byram could call the meeting to order Jacky Schottke came fluttering up, waving his hands at us. He had news. "I just brought dinner over for Tscharka and Tucnman, and they weren't mere. They've gone AWOL!"

Byram swore.

"But where in the world could they go?" Alma asked.

"That's just it," Jacky cried. "There isn't anywhere. They can probably stay alive wherever they are, I guess—there's food to be found in the woods, and if they went far enough away they could probably find leps who never heard of them, and maybe the leps would help. But they're definitely gone."

Byram thought fast. "The hell with them," he decided. "There's nothing they can do but disappear or die, and either way we're well rid of them. Let's get on with the meeting."

When he announced that the two had broken their house arrest, there were groans and catcalls from me audience, but as there was nothing to be done no one demanded we do anything. Then the meeting went really swiftly.

There wasn't really much to decide. Most of the questions had been voted on already: Recharge the factory with antimatter fuel from Corsair and Buccaneer, use what was left of Corsair for feedstock, start building a space tug to check out the asteroids. A few people raised objections—mostly on the grounds that we really shouldn't be making long-range plans, since we had no guarantee that Earth would continue funding us—but they were howled down by the majority, and then Captain Bennetton got up and settled it.

"Don't worry about the Budget Congress," he said. "They'll give you whatever you need."

Dabney Albright called sourly, "That's easy to say, but they never have."

"That was then," Bennetton said. "This is now. Things have changed. Barry here saved all their lives, remember, so they owe you now—they don't know that they do yet, but I give you my word they will. I'll tell them. And, trust me, I'll make sure they listen."

After that it was just a matter of voting, and then it was time for Alma and me to do our thing.

It was a nice wedding. Captain Bennetton gave the bride away. Jacky Schottke was my best man, and Madeleine Hartly's great-granddaughter stood up for Alma as maid of honor, and most of the colony joined in the extemporaneous party that formed around us afterward. The only thing we left out was going on a honeymoon. There wasn't really anyplace for honeymooners to go, and besides we'd pretty much had it already.

So the next morning Alma and I went back to hauling crops from the farm plots. Everything was just the way it had been before, except that now we were married. I think I was grinning a lot, all day long.

And at the end of the day Alma and I checked the place where I'd left a couple of hard candies.

The candies were gone.

There was no doubt in my mind about that. I'd left them in plain sight on the stump of a storm-killed tree. Now the stump was bare.

Of course, that didn't prove that Geronimo had been there. It was perfectly possible, I told myself, that some other creature with a sweet tooth had come by—

"Ugh," Alma said. "What's that thing?"

She was pointing to the ground at the base of the stump, and what she was pointing at was the crumpled corpse of a small flying rat.

 

That was enough for me. There was only one person on Pava who would have left that particular token for me.

I climbed up on the narrow stump and peered around. There wasn't any sign of Geronimo, but then I hadn't really expected there would be. I funneled my hands and called, "Geronimo?"

Alma stood quiet, watching; I didn't have to explain to her what was going on. I listened for an answer. There was no sound but the usual distant chirps and shrills, and an occasional unintelligible word coming up from the fields as one farm worker called to another. I tried again: "Geronimo, please talk to me."

Nothing but more nothing, but I was determined. I called, "Geronimo, I'm sure you're there. Come out, will you? I want you to meet my, uh, wife."

I stammered over that because it was almost the first time I'd said it. It felt good. And a moment later there was movement inside the hollow trunk of an old strangler tree, and a lep slid out. The colors were a little different than I remembered, and the shape was longer and slimmer, but I was in no doubt. This fourth-instar lep was Geronimo, all right.

He slid right up to Alma and raised his body to full elevation to study her. Then he said, "Hello, wife of Barrydihoa."

He was the first lep Alma had seen. I wondered for a moment if she would be able to understand what he was saying in that breathy, hissy lep voice, but she was equal to the challenge. "Hello, Geronimo," she said, unfazed. "I've been looking forward to meeting you." And she shook his tiny hand.

By then I had hopped down from the stump for my turn, but I wasn't willing to settle for a handshake. I caught him at full elevation, and I put my arms around him for a hug.

Hugging, of course, is not a lep custom. I took him by surprise. He made a little gaspy squawk and started to shrink away, but then he changed his mind. As best he could, with what his lep anatomy had provided him for arms, he actually hugged me back.

"I've missed you," I told him. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

"Yes," he said, and this time he did shrink back down. He even retreated a few steps.

I thought there might be more to come of that, but there wasn't. So I went on: "I need to talk to you—all of you. Please? I know what Becky Khaim-Novello did. There's no excuse for it, but it shouldn't poison our relations forever. I'd like to try to straighten things out."

That didn't produce any reaction at all. Geronimo just rocked slowly back and forth, regarding me with those enormous eyes. I persevered. "You don't have to worry about Becky. She won't be here anymore. She's going back to Earth, and—Do you know who Captain Tscharka and Reverend Tuchman are?"

"The God persons. Yes."

"Well, they were just as bad as she—No. They were a hell of a lot worse than Becky ever was, but they're probably going to be sent away too. Matter of fact, they're hiding in the woods somewhere right now. So I'm asking for a favor. I'd like you to take me back to the lep nest so we can talk it over.' *

He rocked silently for a moment. Then, "You are human," he pointed out. "Humans have behaved in unacceptable ways."

"Not all of us!"

"Some are too many."

I couldn't argue with that. I just said, "Please, Geronimo. I'd like to try to see if we can work things out at least."

No answer to that. He just shrank back down a little farther, turned, and began to slide away. I called after him. "At least you and I can see each other now and then, can't we? Geronimo? Don't let them make you stop that."

He didn't answer that one, either. He just kept on squirming away for a couple more meters. Then he paused. "The two God persons are at the place of their retreat," he called, and was gone.

 

 

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