Bright Segment (21 page)

He wondered what all this had to do with the subject at hand. As if she had heard him wonder, she said, “Now you wanted to
know what the next step up might be, in case anybody was interested. Well, that’s it.”

“I can’t see that as a step upward,” he said, respectfully but positively. “We already do move things—speak over distances—all those things you mentioned. We even know what’s going to happen next. Everything is arranged that way. What good would it be?”

“What good would it be to move the operators off the transplats?”

“Oh, that’s an economy.”

“What would you call it if telekinesis and teleportation moved goods and people without the transplat?”

“Without the transplat?”
he almost shouted. “But you—but we—”

“We’d all be in the same boat with those operators you’re replacing.”

“The op—I never thought about them!”

She nodded.

Shaken, he mused, “I wonder why the Private never thought of that when I told him about it this morning.”

There was a dry, delighted sound from deep in the old chest. “He wouldn’t. He never did understand how anything works. He just rides it.”

Roan controlled himself. One did not listen to criticism of one’s parents. But this was Great Mam herself. The effort for control helped bring the whole strange conversation into perspective and he laughed weakly. “Well, I hardly think we’re going to have any such—economy—as that.”

She raised her eyebrows. “This progress we were talking about. You know, even in my time most folks had the idea that humans planned human progress. But when you come to think of it, the first human who walked upright didn’t do it because he wanted to. He did it because he already could.” When she saw no response on his face, she added, “What I mean is that
if
the old-timers were right and progress
can’t
be corked up, then it’s just going to bust loose. And if it busts loose, it’s going to do it whether you’re the head of J. & D. Walsh or a slag-mucker, whether you’re happy about it or not.”

“Well, I don’t think it will happen.”

“Haven’t you been listening to me? It’s
always
been with us.”

“Then why didn’t they—why should it show up now and not a thousand years from now?”

“We never stopped progressing before—not like this,” she said, with a sweeping glance at the walls and ceiling which clearly indicated the entire planet.

“Granny, do you
want
this to happen?
You?
”

“What I want doesn’t matter. There’ve always been people who had—powers. All I’m suggesting is that now, of all times, is the moment for them to develop—now that we don’t develop in any other way.”

He was persistent. “You think it’s a good thing, then?”

She hesitated. “Look at me, how old I am. Is that a good thing? It doesn’t matter—it happened—it had to happen.”

“Why have you told me this?” he whispered.

“Because you asked me what was occupying me,” she said, “and I figured to tell you, for a change. Frighten you?”

Sheepishly, he nodded.

She did, too, and laughed. “Do you good. In my day, we were frightened a whole lot. It took us a long way.”

He shook his head.
Do you good?
He failed to see what good could come of any so-called “progress” that threatened the transplat. Why, what would happen to things? What would happen to their very way of life—to privacy itself, if anyone could—what was it, teleport?—teleport into a man’s office or cubicle …

“Look, boy, you don’t have to wait until it’s your turn, to come chat with your old Granny, you know. Come over anytime you have something to talk about. Just let me know first, that’s all.”

There was nothing in life he wanted less than another session like this one, but he remembered to thank her. “Byemam.”

“Byeboy.”

He rushed out to the dialpost and feverishly got the number of his home. He stepped up on the platform and the last he saw of Granny’s face through the open panel was her expression of—was it pity?

Or perhaps compassion was a better name for it.

IV

He went straight to his cubicle, brushing past his sister as she stood at the edge of the court. He thought she was going to speak, but deliberately showed his back and quickened his stride. Her kind of smugness, her endless, placid recitations of her day’s occupations, were the prime thing he could do without at the moment. He needed privacy, lots of it, and right now.

He leaned back against the panel when it closed. His head spun. It was a head which had the ability to thrust indigestible ideas into compartments, there to seal them off from one another until he had time to ruminate. This was how he was able to handle so many concurrent business affairs. It was also how he had been able to get through this extraordinary day—till then. But the compartments were full; nothing else must happen.

He had awakened before daylight to see, in the soft glow of the walls, a girl in a flowing garment who regarded him gravely. Her hair had been golden and her hands were clasped over one knee. He had not been able to see her feet—not then.

He had stepped on the ’plat to get to the office and had arrived, instead, in an unmentionable place containing drapes and this same girl. She had spoken to him.

He had seen her again, perched on his desk.

He had lost two hours in an unwonted self-examination, which had left him bewildered and unsure of himself, and had gone most respectably to see his most respectable grandmother, who had filled him full of the most frightening conjectures he had ever experienced—including the one which brought this mad business full circle. For she had suggested to him that, by a force called tele-something-or-other, certain people might appear just anywhere, transplat or no transplat.

He snorted. You didn’t need a transplat to have a dream! He had dreamed the girl here and in the draped court. He had dreamed her in the office. “There!” he said to himself. “Feel better?”

No
.

Anyone who had dreams like that had to be off his ’plat.

All right: they
weren’t
dreams.

In which case, Granny was right; someone had something so much better than a transplat that the world—his world—would come to an end. If only this were a technological development, it could be stopped, banned, to maintain the Stasis. But it wasn’t—it was some weird, illogical, uncontrollable mystery known to only certain people
and he, Roan, wasn’t one of them
.

It was unthinkable, insupportable. Indecent!

Going into his flower shop, he reached for his dinner ration. He grunted in surprise, for instead of the usual four tablets and tumbler of vitabroth, his hand fell on something hot, slightly greasy and fibrous. He lifted it, turned it over. It was like nothing edible he had ever seen before. On the other hand, there had been innovations from time to time, as the Nutrient Service saw fit to allow for this or that change in the environment, the isolation of mutated bacteria and their antibiotics, the results of their perpetual inventory of sample basals.

But this thing was far too big to be swallowed. Maybe, he thought suddenly, it was a combination of nutrients and roughage.

His teeth sank readily into it. Hot, reddish juice dribbled down his chin and a flavor excruciatingly delectable filled his mouth and throat, his nostrils and, it seemed, his very eyes. It was so good, it made his jaw-hinges ache.

He demolished the entire portion before it had a chance to get cold, then heaved a marveling sigh. He fumbled about the food-shelf in the vain hope of finding more—but that was all, except for the usual broth. He lifted the cup, then turned and carefully poured it down the sink. Nothing was going to wash that incredible flavor out of his mouth as long as he could help it.

He slipped into his dressing shield and changed rapidly. As he transferred his wallet, he paused to glance into it to see if it needed replenishing.

He grunted with the impact of memory. As he had left the Private’s office, he had come face to face with his—with that—well, dream or no, there she had been. And had disappeared. And on the
corner of his desk, just where she had sat, had been the ’plat number
—this
number, here in his hand.

Like the dream she was—wasn’t she?—the girl had not spoken to him here in his cubicle or in the office. But in the draped court she had. That episode, improbable as it seemed, could hardly have been a dream. He had dialed that transplat to get there. He might have misdialed, but he had been wide awake when he did it.

She must be one of those—those next-step-upward monsters Granny was talking about, he decided. He had to know, had to speak to her again. Not because of her hair, of course, or the brazen garment. It was because of the transplat, because of the hard-won Stasis that held society together. It was a citizen’s simple duty to his higher pink toes. No, his higher self.

He adjusted a fresh pair of gloves and strode out to the court. Valerie was still there, looking wistful.

“Roan!”

“Later,” he barked, already spinning the dial.

“
Please!
Only a minute!”

“I haven’t got a minute,” he snapped and stepped up on the platform. The flicker of blackness cut off her pleading.

He stepped down from his arrival platform and stopped dead.

No drapes! No perfume! No—oh, holy Private in Heaven!

“Roan
Walsh!
” squeaked Corsonmay. The secretary’s eyeballs all but stood out on her dry cheekbones. Under them, her hands—decently gloved, thank the powers—were pressed, and in her hair obscenely hung a comb which, he deduced, he had interrupted in midstroke. He saw instantly what had happened, and a coruscation of fury and embarrassment spun dazzlingly inside him.

She must have seen him throw away the number she had written down for him and supplied him with another. And he had had to go and assume that it was … oh, to expect the drapes, the arms, the—and all that—and to come face to face with
this!

“Private!” she shrilled.
“Mam! Mam!”
Calling her parents. Well, of course. Any decent girl would.

He dived for the dialpost. So did she, but he got there first.

“Don’t go, Roan Walsh,” she panted. “Corsonmam and my father, they’re not here, they would have been if only I’d known, they’ll be back soon, so
please
don’t go.”

“Look,” he said. “I found the number on my desk and I thought Grig Labine had left it there. I was supposed to see him and I’m late now. I’m sorry I invaded your privacy, but it was a mistake, see? Just a mistake.”

The eagerness faded from her almost-wrinkled face and homely hot eyes. She seemed to shrink two inches in a tenth of a second. Her mouth pouted, wet and pathetic, and quivering puckers appeared at its sides.
Oh, you stinker, what did she ever do to you?
he said to himself.

“Be serene,” he blurted. He dialed his home.

“Oh-h-h-h …” her wail was cut off by the transplat.

He stood where he was, his eyes squeezed closed on his embarrassment, and breathed hard.

And then he became aware of a whimpering “Please …” and, for one awful moment, thought Corsonmay’s transplat had not operated. He opened his eyes cautiously and then sighed and stepped down. He was home. It was Valerie who was whimpering.

“Well, what’s the matter with you?” he asked.

“Roan,” she wept, “
please
don’t be angry with me. I know I was a beast. It was just—oh, I meant it, but I didn’t have to be so …”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you called about wanting me to go to Granny’s.”

That seemed so long ago and so completely trivial. “Forget it, Val. You were absolutely right. I went, so forget it.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Of course I’m not.”

“Well, I’m glad, because I want to talk to you. Can I?” she begged.

This was unusual. “What about?”

“Can we go out, Roan?”

“Where are the parents?”

“In the Family Room. We can be right back. Please, Roan,” she pleaded.

He yielded. In his cosmos, Val was merely a perennial and harmless
irritation; this was probably the first time he had consciously realized that she might be a person, too, with personal problems.

“Grosvenor Center?” he asked.

She nodded. He dialed it and stepped up on the platform and down again at Grosvenor. It was still daylight there and he wondered vaguely where on Earth it might be. The sea on one side was an evening blue, the moutaintop a glory.

Val appeared on the transplat and stepped down. They walked silently past the decorator and the Fad and Fashion and the restaurant until they reached the park. They sat down side by side on a bench, with its shoulder-high partitions between each seat, and looked at the fountain.

She was very pale and her shoulders were moving under the cape, a complex motion that was partly stifled sobs and partly the kneading of hands.

He said, as gently as he could, “What’s up?”

“You don’t like me.”

“Aw, sure I do. You’re all right.”

“No, please don’t like me. I don’t
want
you to. I came to you because you don’t like me.”

This was completely incomprehensible to Roan. He decided that listening might extract more data than talking.

Valerie said in a low voice, “I’ve got to tell you something that would make you hate me if you didn’t already, so that’s why. Oh, Roan, I’m no
good!”

He opened his mouth to deny this, but closed it silently. He had the wit not to agree with her, either.

“There’s somebody I—saw. I have to see him again, talk with him. He’s—I want—Oh!” she cried, and burst into tears.

Roan fumbled for a clean handkerchief and passed it deftly around the front of the partition, down low. He felt it taken from his fingers.

“A May’s supposed to wait,” she said brokenly, “and one day her Private will come looking for her, and he will be her Private, and she will be his help and service until the end. But I don’t want to be help and service to the Private who comes. Who knows, one might come
any minute. I want
this
one to come!”