Methuselah's Children (25 page)

Lazarus waved his hands. "No! I want to see Mary Sperling who looks like an Earthman-like me!"

The native hesitated. ". . . follow me, then . . ."

Lazarus found her a long way from the camp; it was obvious that she had been avoiding the other colonists. "Mary!"

She answered him mind to mind: ". . . I am sorry to see you troubled . . . Mary Sperling is gone except in that she is part of us . . ."

"Oh, come off it, Mary! Don't give me that stuff! Don't you know me?"

". . . of course I know you, Lazarus . . . it is you who do not know
me
. . . do not trouble your soul or grieve your heart with the sight of this body in front of you . . . I am not one of your kind . . . I am native to this planet . . ."

"Mary," he insisted, "you've got to undo this. You've got to come out of there!"

She shook her head, an oddly human gesture, for the face no longer held any trace of human expression; it was a mask of otherness: ". . . that is impossible . . . Mary Sperling is gone . . . the one who speaks with you is inextricably
myself
and not of your kind . ." The creature who had been Mary Sperling turned and walked away.

"Mary!"
he cried. His heart leapt across the span of centuries to the night his mother had died. He covered his face with his hands and wept the unconsolable grief of a child.

5

Lazarus found both King and Barstow waiting for him when he returned. King looked at his face. "I could have told you," he said soberly, "but you wouldn't wait."

"Forget it," Lazarus said harshly. "What now?"

"Lazarus, there is something else you have to see before we discuss anything," Zaccur Barstow answered.

"Okay. What?"

"Just come and see." They led him to a compartment in the ship's boat which was used as a headquarters. Contrary to Families' custom it was locked; King let them in. There was a woman inside, who, when she saw the three, quietly withdrew, locking the door again as she went out.

"Take a look at that." directed Barstow.

It was a living creature in an incubator-a child, but no such child as had ever been seen before. Lazarus stared at it, then said angrily, "What the devil is it?"

"See for yourself. Pick it up. You won't hurt it."

Lazarus did so, gingerly at first, then without shrinking from the contact as his curiosity increased. What it was, he could not say. It was not human; it was just as certainly not offspring of the Little People. Did this planet, like the last, contain some previously unsuspected race? It was manlike, yet certainly not a man child. It lacked even the button nose of a baby, nor were there evident external ears. There were organs in the usual locations of each but flush with the skull and protected with bony ridges. Its hands had too many fingers and there was an extra large one near each wrist which ended in a cluster of pink worms.

There was something odd about the torso of the infant which Lazarus could not define. But two other gross facts were evident: the legs ended not in human feet but in horny, toeless pediments-hoofs. And the creature was hermaphroditic-not in deformity but in healthy development, an androgyne.

"What is it?" he repeated, his mind filled with lively suspicion.

"That," said Zaccur, "is Marion Schmidt, born three weeks ago."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"It means that the Little People are just as clever in manipulating us as they are in manipulating plants."

"What? But they agreed to leave us alone!"

"Don't blame them too quickly. We let ourselves in for it. The original idea was simply a few improvements."

" 'Improvements!' That thing's an obscenity."

"Yes and no. My stomach turns whenever I have to look at it . . . but actually-well, it's sort of a superman. Its body architecture has been redesigned for greater efficiency, our useless simian hangovers have been left out, and its organs have been rearranged in a more sensible fashion. You can't say it's not human, for it
is
. . . an improved model. Take that extra appendage at the wrist. That's another hand, a miniature one . . . backed up by a microscopic eye. You can see how useful that would be, once you get used to the idea." Barstow stared at it "But it looks horrid, to me."

"It'd look horrid to anybody," Lazarus stated. "It may be an improvement, but damn it, I say it ain't human."

"In any case it creates a problem."

"I'll say it does!" Lazarus looked at it again. "You say it has a second set of eyes in those tiny hands? That doesn't seem possible."

Barstow shrugged. "I'm no biologist. But every cell in the body contains a full bundle of chromosomes. I suppose that you could grow eyes, or bones, or anything you liked anywhere, if you knew how to manipulate the genes in the chromosomes. And they know."

"I don't want to be manipulated!"

"Neither do I."

Lazarus stood on the bank and stared out over the broad beach at a full meeting of the Families. "I am-" he started formally, then looked puzzled. "Come here a moment, Andy." He whispered to Libby, Libby looked pained and whispered back. Lazarus looked exasperated and whispered again. Finally he straightened up and started over.

"I am two hundred and forty-one years old-at least," he stated. "Is there anyone here who is older?" It was empty formality; he knew that he was the eldest; he felt twice that old. "The meeting is opened," he went on, his big voice rumbling on down the beach assisted by speaker systems from the ship's boats. "Who is your chairman?"

"Get on with it," someone called from the crowd.

"Very well," said Lazarus. "Zaccur Barstow!"

Behind Lazarus a technician aimed a directional pickup at Barstow. "Zaccur Barstow," his voice boomed out, "speaking for myself. Some of us have come to believe that this planet, pleasant as it is, is not the place for us. You all know about Mary Sperling, you've seen stereos of Marion Schmidt; there have been other things and I won't elaborate. But emigrating again poses another question, the question of where? Lazarus Long proposes that we return to Earth. In such a-" His words were drowned by noise from the crowd.

Lazarus shouted them down. "Nobody is going to be forced to leave. But if enough of us want to leave to justify taking the ship, then we can. I say go back to Earth. Some say look for another planet. That'll have to be decided. But first-how many of you think as I do about leaving here?"

"I do!" The shout was echoed by many others. Lazarus peered toward the first man to answer, tried to spot him, glanced over his shoulder at the tech, then pointed. "Go ahead, bud," he ruled. "The rest of you pipe down."

"Name of Oliver Schmidt. I've been waiting for months for somebody to suggest this. I thought I was the only sorehead in the Families. I haven't any real reason for leaving- I'm not scared out by the Mary Sperling matter, nor Marion Schmidt. Anybody who likes such things is welcome to them-live and let live. But I've got a deep-down urge to see Cincinnati again. I'm fed up with this place. I'm tired of being a lotus eater. Damn it, I want to
work
for my living! According to the Families' geneticists I ought to be good for another century at least. I can't see spending that much time lying in the sun and daydreaming."

When he shut up, at least a thousand more tried to get the floor. "Easy! Easy!" bellowed Lazarus. "If everybody wants to talk, I'm going to have to channel it through your Family representatives. But let's get a sample here and there." He picked out another man, told him to sound off.

"I won't take long," the new speaker said, "as I agree with Oliver Schmidt. I just wanted to mention my own reason. Do any of you miss the Moon? Back home I used to sit out on my balcony on warm summer nights and smoke and look at the Moon. I didn't know it was important to me, but it is. I want a planet with a moon."

The next speaker said only, "This case of Mary Sperling has given me a case of nerves. I get nightmares that I've gone over myself."

The arguments went on and on. Somebody pointed out that they had been chased off Earth; what made anybody think that they would be allowed to return? Lazarus answered that himself. "We learned a lot from the Jockaira and now we've learned a lot more from the Little People-things that put us way out ahead of anything scientists back on Earth had even dreamed of. We can go back to Earth loaded for bear. We'll be in shape to demand our rights, strong enough to defend them."

"Lazarus Long-" came another voice.

"Yes," acknowledged Lazarus. "You over there, go ahead."

"I am too old to make any more jumps from star to star and much too old to fight at the end of such a jump. Whatever the rest of you do, I'm staying."

"In that case," said Lazarus, "there is no need to discuss it, is there?"

"I am entitled to speak."

"All right, you've spoken. Now give someone else a chance."

The sun set and the stars came out and still the talk went on. Lazarus knew that it would never end unless he moved to end it. "All right," he shouted, ignoring the many who still wanted to speak. "Maybe we'll have to turn this back to the Family councils, but let's take a trial vote and see where we are. Everybody who wants to go back to Earth move way over to my right. Everybody who wants to stay here move down the beach to my left. Everybody who wants to go exploring for still another planet gather right here in front of me." He dropped back and said to the sound tech, "Give them some music to speed 'em up."

The tech nodded and the homesick strains of
Valse Triste
sighed over the beach. It was followed by
The Green Hills of Earth.
Zaccur Barstow turned toward Lazarus. "You picked that music."

"Me?" Lazarus answered with bland innocence. "You know I ain't musical, Zack."

Even with music the separation took a long time. The last movement of the immortal Fifth had died away long before they at last had sorted themselves into three crowds.

On the left about a tenth of the total number were gathered, showing thereby their intention of staying. They were mostly the old and the tired, whose sands had run low. With them were a few youngsters who had never seen Earth, plus a bare sprinkling of other ages.

In the center was a very small group, not over three hundred, mostly men and a few younger women, who voted thereby for still newer frontiers.

But the great mass was on Lazarus' right. He looked at them and saw new animation in their faces; it lifted his heart, for he had been bitterly afraid that he was almost alone in his wish to leave.

He looked back at the small group nearest him. "It looks like you're outvoted," he said to them alone, his voice unamplified. "But never mind, there always comes another day." He waited.

Slowly the group in the middle began to break up. By ones and twos and threes they moved away. A very few drifted over to join those who were staying; most of them merged with the group on the right.

When this secondary division was complete Lazarus spoke to the smaller group on his left. "All right," he said very gently, "You . . . you old folks might as well go back up to the meadows and get your sleep. The rest of us have plans to make."

Lazarus then gave Libby the floor and let him explain to the majority crowd that the trip home would not be the weary journey the flight from Earth had been, nor even the tedious second jump. Libby placed all of the credit where most of it belonged, with the Little People. They had straightened him out with his difficulties in dealing with the problem of speeds which appeared to exceed the speed of light. If the Little People knew what they were talking about-and Libby was sure that they did-there appeared to be no limits to what Libby chose to call "para-acceleration" -"para-" because, like Libby's own light-pressure drive, it acted on the whole mass uniformly and could no more be perceived by the senses than can gravitation, and "para-" also because the ship would not go "through" but rather around or "beside" normal space. "It is not so much a matter of driving the ship as it is a selection of appropriate potential level in an n-dimensional hyperplenum of n-plus-one possible-"

Lazarus firmly cut him off. "That's your department, son, and everybody trusts you in it. We ain't qualified to discuss the fine points."

"I was only going to add-"

"I know. But you were already out of the world when I stopped you."

Someone from the crowd shouted one more question. "When do we get there?"

"I don't know," Libby admitted, thinking of the question the way Nancy Weatheral had put it to him long ago. "I can't say what year it will be . . . but it will seem like about three weeks from now."

The preparations consumed days simply because many round trips of the ship's boats were necessary to embark them. There was a marked lack of ceremonious farewell because those remaining behind tended to avoid those who were leaving. Coolness had sprung up between the two groups; the division on the beach had split friendships, had even broken up contemporary marriages, had caused many hurt feelings, unresolvable bitterness. Perhaps the only desirable aspect of the division was that the parents of the mutant Marion Schmidt had elected to remain behind.

Lazarus was in charge of the last boat to leave. Shortly before he planned to boost he felt a touch at his elbow. "Excuse me," a young man said. "My name's Hubert Johnson. I want to go along but I've had to stay back with the other crowd to keep my mother from throwing fits. If I show up at the last minute, can I still go along?"

Lazarus looked him over. "You look old enough to decide without asking me."

"You don't understand. I'm an only child and my mother tags me around. I've got to sneak back before she misses me. How much longer-"

"I'm not holding this boat for anybody. And you'll never break away any younger. Get into the boat."

"But-"

"Git!" The young man did so, with one worried backward glance at the bank. There was a lot, thought Lazarus, to be said for ectogenesis.

Once inboard the
New Frontiers
Lazarus reported to Captain King in the control room. "All inboard?" asked King.