New America (11 page)

“But getting the contract I was after was.” He stared downward, and his free hand knotted into a fist. “I had to leave you mostly alone, and I knew it hurt you, and yet I didn’t dare explain even to you.”

She leaned over to kiss him afresh. When he could talk again, he said: “You see, machinery and engineers are scarce. The Smithy itself has none too big a supply. Any day, someone else might’ve instigated a project which’d tie everything up for years to come. And in fact, if word should leak out that we lowlanders might seriously bid, why, then chances were that somebody else
would
tie the Smithy up, and invent a project afterward. Not to suppress us or anything, but because it’s true that profits are higher here than amongst us.

“It wouldn’t’ve mattered if you, under anesthesia or whatever, if you let slip that I was quietly prospecting. I knew there’d be suspicion of that in Anchor; and what the hell, plenty of people go on such ventures, even if not quite that far afield. This other thing, though, this real aim of mine—”

“I see, I see. And you did succeed? You’re a marvel.”

“According to Tom de Smet, I’m a bastard.” He grinned. “Then after we’d talked awhile, he said I was a damn fine bastard who he was proud to call a friend, and we shook on it and have a date later today to go out and get roaring drunk.”

Puzzlement darkened her eyes. “What do you mean, Dan? First you talk about prospecting, but evidently you didn’t find your mine. Then you talk about getting this contract that you were actually after all the while. Didn’t you simply, finally, persuade Tom to give it to you?”

He shook his head. “No. I tried and tried, for lunations, and he wouldn’t agree. I grew sure he wanted to, down inside. But his silly social economic conscience insisted he stick by the dictates of economic theory. In the end, I told him I knew I’d gotten to be a bore on the subject, and I’d dog my hatch, and why not go fishing?”

“And—” she said like a word of love.

“This is a secret you and I take to our graves with us. Promise? Fine, your nod is worth more than most people’s oaths.

“I took him to a mother lode of gold I’d found on land of his. I explained that I hated, the same as him, how a gold rush would destroy the wilderness, let alone the currency, and draw effort away from things more useful. But I had a duty to my own community, I said, to my friends who’d asked me to speak for them. I offered my silence, and my fellow prospectors’—I’d picked them very carefully—I offered him that in return for his contract with us. We could write that in, as a provision not made public unless our blabbing gave him cause to cancel the deal. Take it or leave it, I said. A fair exchange is no robbery.

“He took it, and I really am convinced he was personally glad to have that excuse for helping us. Say, how about letting him and Jane foster Charlie? They’re more than willing.”

“Dan, Dan, Dan! Come here—”

He knelt by the bed and they held each other for a long while.

Eventually, calmed a little, he took his chair and she lowered herself back onto her pillows. Eyes remained with eyes.

One of hers closed in a wink. “You don’t fool me, Dan Coffin,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“That act of yours. The simple, hearty rural squire. Nobody gets to lead as many people as you do without being bloody damn shrewd.”

“Well… .” He looked a trifle smug.

“My love,” she said, barely audible, “this may be the first time in history that anyone salted a mine which the victim already owned.”

“I have my contract, which Tom de Smet will honor in word and spirit both. Further than that, deponent saith not.”

Eva cocked her head. “Have you considered, Dan, that the possibility may have occurred to Tom, and he decided not to check the facts too closely?”

“Huh?”
Seldom before had she seen or enjoyed seeing her husband rocked back hard.

But when at last he left her—for a while, only a while—he walked again like a young buccaneer. The wind outside had strengthened, a trumpet voice beneath heaven, and every autumn leaf was a banner flying in challenge.

TO PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE

The Constitutional Convention had recessed for the midwinter holidays, and Daniel Coffin returned to his house at Lake Moondance. In this part of the lowlands the season brought roaring, chill rains, winds which streaked along mountains to make forests creak and sough, dazzlements of light and hasty shadow as the cloud deck swirled apart, re-formed, and broke open again upon sun, moons, or stars. To travel by aircar was not predictably safe; thus custom was for folk to stay home, visit only near neighbors, in revelry draw closer to their kindred.

Last year he had not done so, but had been the guest of Tom and Jane de Smet in Anchor. His place had felt too big and hollow, and at the same time too full of ghosts. Soon afterward, though, his eldest granddaughter Teresa and her husband Leo Svoboda had suggested they move in with him. It was partly kindness to an old man they loved; their dwelling was no mansion like his, but it was comfortable and they were prospering. Yet there were enough mutual practical advantages—such as centralizing control over the vast family holdings, now that improved transportation made it possible—that they were not offending him with charity. He was glad to agree.

Pioneers marry young. However well tamed this region might be, the frontier was not far off, that entire planet which beckoned every lowlander on Rustum. Leo and Teresa already had two children, and a third on the way. Again the house resounded to joyous voices, again the lawns knew fleet little bodies of his own blood; and Daniel Coffin regained the happiness which is peace.

Today his household had been trimming the tree. Afterward he felt tired. He wasn’t played out, he knew. His hair might be thin and white, the broad face seamed, but his eyes needed no contacts, his stocky frame was erect as ever, and he could walk many a man half his age into the ground. Still, he had overdone it a trifle in romping with the kids. A quiet couple of hours before dinner would let him take full part in its ceremonies and cheer.

He passed slowly through rooms and halls. Much of their serene proportions, blue-gray plastering, gleaming-grained wood floors, furniture and fireplaces, had grown beneath his hands; much of the drapery was Eva’s work. Later, when the plantation commanded a large staff and most of their attention, they had hired professionals to enlarge the building. But the heart of it, he thought, would always be the heart that Eva and he had shared.

Upstairs was their suite, bedchamber, bath, and a separate study for each. At first, after she died, he had wanted to close hers off, or make a kind of shrine of it. Later he came to understand how she would have scorned that, she who always looked outward and lived in the overflowingness of tomorrow. He gave it to Teresa for her use and she could make whatever changes she wished.

His private room stayed as it had been, big desk, big leather armchair, walls lined with books as well as microtapes, book publishing having become a flourishing luxury industry well before anyone might have expected it to on an isolated colony world. French doors gave on a balcony. The panes were full of rain, wind hooted, lightning flared, thunder made drumfire which shuddered in the walls. He could barely see down a sweep of grass, trees, flowerbed-bordered paths to the great lake. Waves ran furious over its iron hue. Besides the storm, Raksh was at closest approach, raising tides across the tides of the sun.

The apartment was gloomy and a touch cold. He switched on the heater and a single fluoropanel, put Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg on the player, poured himself a small whisky and settled down with his pipe and the
Federalist Papers.

My duty to reread them, if we’re trying to work out a government which’ll stay libertarian, now that population’s reached the point where Rustum needs more than a mayor and council in Anchor,
he thought; then chuckling:
Duty, hell! I enjoy the style. They could write in those days.

What’d you have said, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, if you’d been told that someday some people would travel twenty light-years, cut themselves off from the planet that begot mankind, just to keep alive the words you lived by?

I suspect you’d say, “Don’t copy us. Learn from us—from our mistakes, what we overlooked, as well as what we got right.”

We’re trying, gentlemen.

“The erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety—”

Bop
, it said on the door. He knew that shy knock. “Come in,” he called.

His great-granddaughter entered. “Hi,” she said.

“I figured you’d be playing with the other kids, Alice,” he answered, referring more to those of the staff than to her younger brother.

“I’m tired, too.” The slight form in the crisp white frock snuggled against his trousers. “Story?”

“Calculating minx. Well, c’mon.” He helped the girl scramble to his lap. Her eyes were blue and enormous, her curls and color and odor of sunlight—if memory served, exactly like those of Mary Lochaber when she was young. No surprise, considering that Mary was also an ancestor of Alice… .

She gave him a happy sigh. “What kind of story do you want?” he asked.

” ‘Bout you an’ Eva-Granny.”

For an instant he
knew
Eva was gone, no more than three years gone, and darkness went through him in a flood. It left; he could look at her picture on the desk and think how it was good to give this flesh of her flesh what he could of what she had been and done; for then, after he himself, and later the children they had gotten together, were likewise departed, a glow of her would live on.

And it was no longer pain for him, really, it was a special kind of pleasure to hark back.

“Hm-m-m, let me see,” he murmured. He blew a series of smoke-rings, which made Alice giggle in delight and poke her finger through them as they went by. Images drifted before him, sharper and brighter than anything in this room except the girl and her warmth. Were they truly from so far in the past? That didn’t seem believable. Of course, these days time went like the wind… .

“Ah, yes,” he decided. “You recall I told you how we were explorers before we settled down, Eva-Granny and I.”

“Yes. You tol’ me ‘bout when the t-t-t-TERASAURS,” she got out triumphantly, “they went galloop, galloop ‘roun’ an’ roun’ the big rock till you made’m stop.”

“I couldn’t have done that without Eva-Granny’s help earlier, Alice. Okay, shortly afterward she got the idea of taking a boat out to some islands where nobody had ever landed, only flown over, but that looked wonderful from the air.” (The fantastic coraloid formations might give a clue to certain puzzles concerning marine ecology, which in turn were important if fisheries were to develop further. No need to throw these technicalities at the youngster—nor, actually, any truth if he did, as far as her viewpoint went; because Eva and he had really wanted to explore the marvel for its own sake. She was always seeking the new, the untried. When she became a mother and the mistress of a plantation, it had not taken the freshness from her spirit; she originated more ideas, studies, undertakings than he did, and half of his innovations had been sparked by her eagerness.) “In those days there weren’t enough motors and things to go around, no, not nearly enough. All the motorboats were being used other places. We kept a sailboat by the sea. It was the same kind, except bigger, as I have on the lake, and, in case you don’t know, that’s called a sloop.”

“Becoss it goes sloop-sloop-sloop inna water?”

Coffin laughed. “Never thought of that! Anyhow—”

The phone bonged: its “urgent tone. “‘Scuse me, sweetheart,” Coffin said, and leaned over to press the accept button.

The screen filled with the features of Dorcas Hirayama, mayor of Anchor and thus president of the Constitutional Convention. Her calm was tightly held. “Why, hello,” Coffin greeted. “Happy holidays.”

She smiled at the girl on his lap. “Happy holidays, Alice,” she said. To Coffin: “I’m afraid you’d better send her out.”

He didn’t ask the reason, knowing it would prove valid. He simply inquired, “For how long?”

“Shouldn’t take more than five minutes to tell. Then I suppose you’ll want to spend a while thinking.”

“A moment, please.” Coffin lowered Alice to the floor, rose, and clasped her hand. “Do you mind, dear?” He didn’t see any public question as worth ignoring the dignity of a child. “My Lady Hirayama has a secret. Why don’t you take this book—” she crowed in glee as he gave her a photo album from his roving days—”and go look at it in my bedroom? I’ll call you as soon as I’m through.”

When the door between was shut, he returned to the mayor. “Sorry, Dorcas.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Daniel. But this won’t wait … in spite of going back about thirty-five years.”

For several heartbeats he stood moveless. Chills chased along his spine and out to the ends of his nerves. Lightning glared, thunder exploded, rain dashed against the glass.

Thirty-five years. Rustum years. That’s about twenty of Earth’s. The time it takes light to go between Eridani and Sol.

He sat back down, crossed ankle on knee, tamped the coals in his pipe. “It’s happening, then?” he said flatly.

“It has happened. The message was, they planed to launch a colonizing fleet toward us within five years—five of their years. Unless something interfered, and that doesn’t seem likely, those ships are, at this moment, a third, maybe almost half of the way here. We may have as much as fifty years before they arrive, but no more and probably less.”

“How many aboard?”

“It’s a bigger fleet than carried our founders. The message gave an estimate of five thousand adult passengers.”

In the little death of suspended animation, that they entered dreaming of a glorious resurrection on Rustum—

“What do people have to say about this?” Coffin asked.