Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (23 page)

       She wriggled to get loose. "Snow," she said. "It's snow."

       "It's a man," he said sharply.

       She looked at him in bewilderment and glanced at the figure again. Then she shook her head. One by one he held other small children up to see. All they saw was snow.

       Barry and his brothers talked to their younger brothers about it later that day, and the younger doctors were impatient at what was clearly, to them, a trifle.

       "So the younger children can't see that it's supposed to be the figure of a man. What does it matter?" Andrew asked.

       "I don't know," Barry said slowly. And he didn't know why it was important, only that it was.

       During the afternoon the sun melted the snow a bit, and overnight it froze solid once more. By morning when the sun hit the statue, it was blinding. Barry went out to look at it several times that day. That night someone, or a group, went out and toppled it and stamped it into the ground.

       Two days later four groups of boys reported the disappearance of their mats. They searched Mark's room, other places where he might have hidden them, and came up with nothing. Mark started a new sculpture, this time a woman, presumably a companion piece to the man, and this time the statue remained until spring, long after it was no longer identifiable, but was simply a mound of snow that had melted, frozen, melted repeatedly.

       The next incident happened soon after the New Year celebration. Barry was awakened from a deep sleep by an insistent hand on his shoulder.

       He sat up feeling groggy and disoriented, as if he had been pulled a long way to find himself in his bed, cold, stupid, blinking without recognition at the younger man standing over him.

       "Barry, snap out of it! Wake up!" Anthony's voice registered first, then his face. The other brothers were waking up now.

       "What's wrong?" Suddenly Barry was thoroughly awake.

       "A breakdown in the computer section. We need you." Stephen and Stuart were already tearing down the computer when Barry and his brothers got to the laboratory. Several younger brothers were busy disconnecting tubes from the terminal in order to regulate the flow manually. Other young doctors were making a tank-by-tank check of the dials. The scene was of orderly chaos, Barry thought, if there could be such a thing. A dozen people were moving about quickly, each intent on his own job, but each out of place there. The aisles became cluttered when more than two people tried to move among the tanks, and now there were a dozen, and more coming every minute.

       Andrew had taken charge, Barry noted with satisfaction. All the newcomers were assigned sections immediately, and he found himself monitoring a row of embryos seven weeks old. There were ninety babies in the tanks at various stages of development. Two groups could be removed and finished in the premature ward, but their chances of survival would be drastically reduced. His group seemed all right, but he could hear Bruce muttering at the other end of the same aisle and he knew there was trouble there. The potassium salts had been increased. The embryos had been poisoned.

       The scientists were spoiled, he thought. So used to the computer analysis of the amniotic fluids, they had let their own skills deteriorate. Now trial and error was too slow to save the embryos. The survivor of that group was turned off. No more solitaires. Members of another group had suffered, but this time only four were overdosed. The six survivors were allowed to continue.

       Throughout the night they monitored the fluids, added salts as they were needed, diluted the fluids if salt started to build, kept a temperature check and oxygen count, and by dawn Barry felt as if he were swimming through an ocean of congealed amniotic fluids himself. The computer was not yet functioning. The checks would have to be continued around the clock.

       The crisis lasted four days, and during that time they lost thirty-four babies, and forty-nine animals. When Barry finally fell into bed exhausted, he knew the loss of the animals was the more grievous. They had depended on those animals for the glandular secretions, for the chemicals they extracted from their bone marrow and blood. Later, he thought, sinking down into the fog of sleep, later he would worry about the implications of the loss.

       "The new paddle-wheel boats will be ready by summer," Lawrence said. "If a road crew can get out early enough to make certain the bypass is open . . ."

       Barry stopped listening. It was snowing again. Large lazy flakes of snow drifted, in no hurry to get to earth, wafted this way and that. He could not see past the first dormitory, only twenty yards from the window he looked through. The children were in school, absorbing everything being presented to them. The laboratory conditions had been stabilized again. It would work out, he told himself. Four years wasn't too long to hold out, and if they could have four years they would be over the line from experimental to proven.

       The snow drifted, and he mused at the individuality of each snowflake. Like millions of others before him, he thought, awed by the complexities of nature. He wondered suddenly if Andrew, the self he had been at thirty, had ever felt bemused by the complexities of nature. He wondered if any of the younger children knew each snowflake was different. If they were told that it was so, were ordered to examine the snowflakes as a project, would they see the difference? Would they think it marvelous? Or would they accept it as another of the endless lessons they were expected to learn, and so learn it obediently and derive no pleasure or satisfaction from the new knowledge?

       He felt chilled, and turned his attention back to the meeting. But the thoughts would not stop there. They learned everything they were taught, he realized, everything. They could duplicate what had gone before, but they originated nothing. And they couldn't even see the magnificent snow sculpture Mark had created.

       After the meeting he walked with Lawrence to inspect the new paddlewheel boats. "Everything's top priority," he said. "Without exception."

       "Trouble is," Lawrence said, "they're right. Everything really is top priority. It's a fragile structure we have here, Barry. Very fragile indeed."

       Barry nodded. Without the computers they would have to close down all but a couple dozen of the tanks. Without the parts for the generator, they would have to cut down on electricity, start burning wood for warmth, to cook with, read by tallow candles. Without the boats they could not travel to the cities, where their supplies were rotting away more each season. Without the new supply of workers and explorers they could not maintain the bypass road around the falls, maintain the rivers so that the paddle boats could navigate them . . .

       "You ever read that poem about the want of a nail?" he asked.

       "No," Lawrence said, and looked at him questioningly. Barry shook his head.

       They watched the crew working on the boat for a few minutes, and then Barry said, "Lawrence, how good are the younger brothers at boat building?"

       "The best," Lawrence said promptly.

       "I don't mean just following orders. I mean, has one of the younger brothers come up with an idea you could use?"

       Lawrence turned to study him again. "What's bothering you, Barry?"

       "Have they?"

       Lawrence frowned and was silent for what seemed a long time. Finally he shrugged. "I don't think so. I can't remember. But then, Lewis has such clear ideas of what it has to be, I doubt if anyone would even think of contradicting him, or adding to anything he has planned."

       Barry nodded. "I thought so," he said, and walked away on the snow-cleared path, edged on either side by a white fence as high as his head. "And it never used to snow this much, either," he said to himself. There. He had said it aloud. He thought he probably was the first one of the inhabitants to say that. It never used to snow this much.

       Later that day he sent for Mark, and when the boy stood before him, he asked, "What are the woods like in the winter, when there's snow like now?"

       Mark looked guilty for a moment. He shrugged.

       "I know you've managed to learn to walk with snowshoes," Barry said. "And you ski. I've seen your trail leading up into the woods. What is it like?"

       Now Mark's eyes seemed to glow with blue fires, and a smile formed, then left. He ducked his head. "Not like summer," he said. "Stiller. And it's pretty." Suddenly he blushed and became

silent.

"More dangerous?" Barry asked.

       "I guess so. You can't see dips, they fill up with snow, and sometimes snow hangs on ridges so you can't be real sure where the land ends. You could go over an edge that way. I guess, if you didn't know about it."

       "I want to train our children in getting around on snowshoes and skis. They might have to be in the woods in winter. They have to have some training. Can they find enough material to make fires?"

       Mark nodded.

       "We'll start them on making snowshoes tomorrow," Barry said decisively. He stood up. "I'll need your help. I've never seen a pair of snowshoes. I don't know how to begin." He opened the door and before Mark left he asked, "How did you learn to make them?"

       "I saw them in a book."

       "What book?"

       "Just a book," Mark said. "It's gone now."

       In the old house, Barry understood. What other books were in the old house? He knew he had to find out. That night when he met with his brothers they talked long and soberly about the conclusions he had drawn.

       "We'll have to teach them everything they might ever need," Barry said, and felt a new weariness settle over him.

       "The hardest thing we'll have to do," Bruce said thoughtfully after a moment, "will be to convince others that this is so. We'll have to test it, make certain we are right, then prove it. This will put a terrible burden on the teachers, on the older brothers and sisters."

       They didn't question his conclusions. Each of them, given his direct observations, would have come up with the same conclusions.

       "I think we can devise a few simple tests," Barry said. "I made some sketches this afternoon." He showed them: a stick figure of a man running, climbing stairs, sitting down; a sun symbol, a circle with rays extending from it; a tree symbol, a cone with a stick in the base; a house made of four lines, two parallel, an angle for the roof; a disc moon; a bowl with steam rising from it in wavy lines . . .

       "We could have them finish a story," Bruce said. "Keep it as

simple as the drawings. A three- or four-line story without an ending, which they must supply."

       Barry nodded. They knew what he was after. If the children lacked the imagination to abstract, to fantasize, to generalize, they had to know it now and try to compensate. Within a week their fears were realized. The children under nine or ten could not identify the line drawings, could not complete a simple story, could not generalize a particular situation to a new situation.

       "So we teach them everything they'll need to know to survive," Barry said harshly. "And be grateful they seem able to learn whatever we teach."

       They would need different lesson material, he knew. Material from the old books in the farmhouse, lessons in survival, in how to build simple lean-tos, how to make fires, how to substitute what was at hand for what was missing . . .

       Barry and his brothers went to the old farmhouse with crowbars and hammers, ripped off the boarding at the front entrance, and went inside. While the others examined the yellowed, crumbly books in the library, Barry climbed the stairs to Molly's old rooms. Inside, he stopped and took a deep breath.

       There were the paintings, as he remembered them, and more, there were small objects made out of clay. There were wood carvings, a head that had to be Molly, done in walnut, done cleanly, expertly, like but unlike the Miriam sisters. Barry couldn't explain how it differed, but knew it was not like them, and was like Molly. There were works done in sandstone, in limestone, some of them complete, most of them rough, as if he had started them and lost interest. Barry touched the carved likeness of Molly and for no reason he could name, he felt tears forming. He turned abruptly and left the room, closing the door carefully behind him.

       He didn't tell his brothers, and he didn't understand the reason for not telling them any more than he had understood the tears he had shed over a piece of wood hacked out by a child. Later that night when images of the head kept intruding when he tried to sleep, he thought he knew why he hadn't told. They would be forced to find and seal off the secret entrance Mark used to enter the house. And Barry knew he couldn't do that.

       The paddle-wheel boat was bedecked with bright ribbons and flowers; it dazzled under the early morning sun. Even the wood pile was decorated. The steam engine gleamed. The troops of young people filed aboard with much laughter and gaiety. Ten of these, eight of those, sixty-five in all. The boat crew stood apart from the young explorer-foragers, watching them warily, as if afraid the carnival spirit of the morning might damage the boat somehow.

       And indeed the infectious exuberance of the young people was dangerous in its spontaneity, drawing into itself the onlookers ashore. The gloom of the past expeditions was forgotten as the boat made ready to churn its way downriver. This was different, the mood cried, these young people had been specially bred and trained for this mission. It was their life fulfillment they sought. Who had a better right to rejoice at seeing life's goal within reach?