Worlds Apart (8 page)

"Take it we've got the picture," suggested Rog.

"All right. It needed some form of power to keep this vast machine moving. Once it was steam, like our water pumps and generator, but then it wasn't such a big machine. Later it was steam, gasoline, heavy oil, electricity. But the machine got too big for any of these, or even all of them.

"It needed atomic power to run it."

June gave a little gasp. She had never thought much about atomic power, one way or the other, but she knew people didn't talk about it. Bentley put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

"If you've got power of any kind," he went on, "and you're ingenious enough, you can make it up into packages of exactly the size you want. If machines can't use your power raw, you put it into something they can use. At first all men could do with the atom was make a big bang with it, a bang that would destroy a city. But later it could be used for everything. To run your clock, bring the water to your shower, make your clothes, move the elevator, power your car, anything at all."

Bentley paused, because his thoughts ran into channels where Dick, June, and Rog couldn't possibly follow him.

People who still thought of the atom as a little black dot surrounded by little white dots drawing concentric circles round it, like the illustrations in the pocket magazines, were generally the victims of double conditioning. The atom bomb was horror, grief, misery, death; the peaceful, industrial use of radioactivity was the white hope of the future, peaches and cream for everybody, cake instead of bread, and by some quirk of rationalization -- an insurance against the atom bomb. They thought, using a curious mechanism of self-delusion, that the use of atomic power for heating, lighting, transport, and industry precluded the unleashing of atomic power for terrible destruction.

Therefore, use more and more atomic power. Convert everything to atomic power. Put all the old equipment on the junkheap. Placate the god of the atom by sacrificing everything to it.

"In a system like that," said Bentley soberly, "the scientists, who knew better, were ruled by the businessmen and clerks and milkmen who didn't. That's why I tried to give you the picture. It was no use some technician saying 'There's something wrong here -- let's hold everything while we find out what, and put it right.' The scientists learned, they advanced, but always they were a little behind, a little late. The crowd was behind them, pushing."

"Exactly what was the danger?" asked Rog bluntly.

"I can't tell you exactly what. The Inner Council still won't let me. Probably they're right -- you heard the discussion. But it was a thing called radiation. Radioactivity. You can guard against it, dispose of it harmlessly, if you're careful enough. And at first, when there was very little of it, this was done. But soon it was leaking all over the place. It did less harm than people expected. The warnings given by the early overflows of radiation, instead of slowing the rush, speeded it up. For each time the disaster was limited by brave men, who limited it with their lives. The danger became accepted. It was a part of everyday life."

"Let's stop there," said Rog. "I don't understand that bit."

"No one ever will."

"Surely . . . " Rog stopped, thinking, trying to picture it.

"The people in charge said 'Keep things running,' and told everybody there was nothing to worry about, and they themselves refused to believe there was anything to worry about. Perhaps in that world you, Rog, guessed the truth. Well, were you going to run down a hundred flights of stairs every morning? Were you going ts break up your car, and not use the shower, and stop eating food prepared by atomic power?"

"A whole world," said Dick, /couldn't/ be built on just one thing -- "

"Couldn't it? I tell you Earth was."

"But if once there was /no/ atomic power," said Dick, "surely they could have gone back -- "

"Oh, sure. But people are optimists, Dick, and like to leave things to someone else. 'Everything will come out all right.' Besides, sometimes it isn't easy to go back. You know how it is with machines. The very devil to start, sometimes, and then once they're hot and roaring you can't stop them at all unless you can cut off their power somehow. Well, nobody can stop the power of the atom."

He had a lot more to say, but they seemed to have enough to think about for the moment. He was pleased with their reaction. He had always agreed that atomic power should do its last job in taking the ship to Mundis; but he hadn't been quite so certain that the way to kill atomic power was to forbid it to the extent of stopping people talking about it. Kill it, yes; but mere legislation never killed anything.

"Anyone like some lemonade?" he asked pleasantly.

2

Mundis sneered at compasses, but that wasn't serious. The sun was seldom obscured by clouds, and never completely obscured. There was little seasonal variation. The sun rose due east and set due west, since the planet's axis was perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. And even an imbecile could travel by the stars as they were visible on Mundis.

Pertwee and Toni traveled northeast. They hadn't intended to go far, but soon they found they liked traveling. They decided they might as well go on. There was always the possibility that they would discover something of importance. Considering the Mundan colony was twenty-two years old, there had been amazingly little exploration.

"I never thought I'd be a vegetarian," Toni observed. Her eyes gleamed mischievously. "Don't you need good red meat to stay virile, Jack?"

Pertwee grinned. "Don't worry about that."

They got on amazingly well. Pertwee had had misgivings; he wasn't reckless enough to break wantonly any law of the society he lived in, except one. The rule that cut him off from women had to be broken. He was incapable of giving up women. When Toni came to him with her proposal, there had been no question of refusal. He had to go with Toni. It was automatic.

They were both a little surprised about how it worked out. Toni had wondered if Pertwee could satisfy her for long; soon, she had feared, he would begin to seem an old, tired man to her. She found, however, that Pertwee's experience really counted for something after all. He was like a veteran tennis player who made his opponent do all the running. He did things the easy way, but did them well, so that she was never conscious that she was traveling with an old man. If either helped the other, it was liable to be him helping her.

He never wasted effort. He would calculate exactly what every job needed, and put just that amount of effort into it. And he was placid, like her. Toni realized she had never before met a man whose temperament chimed with hers. They all mistook her passion for violence, They couldn't believe she was naturally contented, serene.

Neither of them talked much. They liked to walk together by day and lie together by night, silent for the most part but occasionally chuckling together at some incident -- a situation usually. The same kind of situation amused them both, so if a humorous idea occurred to either, they shared it.

There wasn't much to see. The stony parts of Mundis stood out, bleak and bare, amid the dusky green of grass and bush and forest. Mundis wasn't ugly, but it couldn't be said to have much real beauty either. Beauty needed variety of shape, color, texture; the Mundan landscape never offered more than a few variations at one time.

They found occasional streams. The first time Toni stared for hours, fascinated by the sight of so much water in motion. Sometimes the rain swept about hard ground like a flood, but when the rain stopped, the rivulets were gone. Pertwee tried to explain to her what a river was like. That gave her another purpose in making the journey. She wanted to see a river. Surely if there were streams, there must be rivers somewhere?

But though they found other streams, they were usually mere trickles of water, less impressive than the rain floods.

There was plenty of variety in the vegetation, but not in its color. Mundan plants had come to a certain tacit agreement. Where one thing grew, another could not grow. The roots were different, their needs from the soil were different, except for the water and sunlight that they all needed. When the soil no longer comfortably supported the coarse grass, a space would clear itself. In this space, within a short time, a bean plant or a bread tree or a berry bush would grow, unmolested.

Being a vegetarian on Mundis was no hardship. The Mundan blueberry was largely protein, the bread tree supplied digestible carbohydrates, and the yellow berry -- unfortunately rather rare -- was the milk of the Mundis. It had a rather stringent taste which had put the founder colonists off it but which the young Mundans relished. It contained all the essential constituents of food, and was easily digested. The founders had tended to ignore it, but the young Mundans were experimenting with it as a major crop.

Traveling as they did, Pertwee and Toni had no food problem. They never stayed long enough in one place to exhaust the supply of what was readily available. Pertwee wouldn't have liked to live for ever on the vegetable products of Mundis; but Toni didn't seem to find it a hardship at all.

Indeed, when Pertwee once mentioned going back to Lemon, not as an immediate goal but as something they would have to do eventually, Toni nodded disinterestedly. She was in no hurry.

On the twenty-seventh day -- by which time they must have covered over five hundred miles -- Toni had her wish and more.

They had been climbing slightly most of the day. The rise was so even and gradual that only when looking back could they see how high they had risen.

"It would be about fifteen hundred feet above sea level," Pertwee remarked, "if there was a sea to have a level."

Just as gradually the rise leveled out, and again they only noticed it by looking all aboxt them. The effect was that the the world had shrunk. The horizon was only about five miles away. They had a curious feeling of being at the top of the world and very much alone. They were almost afraid to go forward in case they found themselves looking over a precipice a mile high into a sea of sulfur. It was borne in on them for the first time that no human being had ever been this way before them.

But when at last they came to a drop which was very abrupt, for Mundis, and saw into the valley beyond, Toni gave a cry of delight, began to run forward, and then checked herself and waited for Pertwee, a little frightened. The entire floor of the valley was a lake. Pertwee wondered at sight of it if there were not in fact a sort of sea level on Mundis, a level far below the average land level.

The valley was vast -- it would take thousands of years yet for the vegetation to come within reasonable distance of leveling it out, if it ever did. Surrounded by ground fifteen hundred feet above the level of the plain, it dropped at least two thousand feet to the lake.

Pertwee took Toni's arm. "This settles one thing," he said contentedly. "We can go back to Lemon on our own terms, when we like. Finding a lake like this puts us in a good bargaining position."

"Is it dangerous?" asked Toni, awed, looking at the gleaming water below.

"Only if you fall in it. Come, let's go down."

They moved slowly down the hill. Pertwee would never waste energy doing a thing in five minutes less time. Toni would; several times she scampered on ahead and then changed her mind, waiting for Pertwee again. Pertwee tried to picture the reaction to this lake of fifty of the young Mundans together. He failed; it would be completely new in their experience, and they might be wildly excited or find it only mildly interesting.

They reached the waterside. Pertwee saw the bed of the lake was shingle, shelving gradually.

"Let's stop here a day or two," he said, "and I'll teach you to swim."

"SWim? What's that?"

Pertwee only had to throw off his knapsack and kick off his shoes. "This," he said.

3

Never having had any opportunity to acquire fear of water, Toni swam after a fashion almost at once. Pertwee found it impossible to keep her in shallow water. She could see that swimming in deep water was no more difficult than in the shallo -- in fact, it was better in that it cut out the risk of stubbed toes and scraped knees. Every time he headed her back she would laugh and strike out with a crude dog paddle for the deep water again.

He almost had to drag her from the water in the end, for she showed no sign of ever leaving. It was cool, but not cold enough to drive anyone of Toni's vitality from it. She protested when he made her take off her wet ket and wrapped her in a blanket.

"This is Mundis, not your old frozen Earth," she told him, laughing.

Pertwee had wrapped himself in a blanket too. They didn't have to worry about drying them afterwards; cloth was never damp for long in a climate like that.

"If you could only see yourself . . . " Tony gurgled.

"Well, I can't," said Pertwee phlegmatically. "I can only see you, and you look much better than in that cut-to-ribbons outfit of yours."

"Do I?" asked Toni, surprised. "How's that?"

The blanket was draped over one shoulder and fastened at the waist by a belt. It fell gracefully in soft folds, giving Toni a look of cool grace and repose she had never had in her life before.

"Back on Earth," said Pertwee, "that was standard dress for women, all through the centuries. There were variations, certainly. But at almost anytime in history women wore something like that."

"This?" asked Toni, holding up the skirt in distaste. It didn't seem right to her to have her legs wrapped up, as if to keep her from moving easily and quickly.

"Yes. The space flight killed it. When we started, Mary and Jessie and Marjory were younger than you. They'd always worn skirts, except for running, swimming, and playing games. But skirts weren't exactly made for free fall."

Toni grinned. "I guess not."

"It was treated as a joke at first. We whistled whenever a girl's skirt went floating up to her shoulders. But it can be a nuisance when the hem of your skirt gets in your mouth or in front of your eyes. So the skirts became slacks or trunks or shorts."