Still Forms On Foxfield

by Joan Slonczewski

  Then she had to attend to the machinery, for the survival of the colony depended upon its function. First, the water had to go; some one had set up the emergency pump, but it was not yet pulling full strength. So she wrenched the valves and unclogged one of them, and the line sputtered and gurgled as it sucked the oil-slicked liquid away. She prayed that none of the precious die cavities would be damaged. Then she climbed to the roof to figure out which of the structural layers had given way. She had repaired some of the solar panels battered by fist-sized hail-stones last week, but had not realized how seriously the roof frame had been weakened.

  As the debris was cleared away, Allison methodically inspected the equipment to assess the damage. Noreen stopped by after an hour or so to tell her that Ruth was in fair condition at the Medical Center. Seth returned from his sojourn among the commensals.

  “How does it look?” Seth gravely asked.

  Allison leaned against the dirt-spattered wall and wiped her hands on her coveralls. “Could be worse,” she said slowly. “The die casting piston looks intact. But I can’t tell for sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “The monitor’s completely shot.”

  Noreen nodded. “The servo link with the computer complex is dead, because the circuitry is jammed at this end. If we can’t control it, it’s no use.”

  Seth crossed his arms. “What does this mean?” he asked his niece. “No more nails and screws?”

  “Or needles, or scalpels. Until it’s fixed.”

  “If it’s fixed,” Allison quietly amended.

  “You’ve fixed it before,” Seth pointed out.

  “It was never this bad, before.”

  They were silent for some time. Allison reflected yet again on the central absurdity of Foxfield—the colonists had not been expected to make it completely on their own. The original plan had called for reinforcements to be sent if the settlers survived. That fact, buried in the Records, was one which even Clifford rarely talked about.

  Noreen looked up. “Well,” she declared, “the Lord will provide. Be thankful at least that the storm’s moved out—did you ever see the like? I’ve never seen a storm disappear so fast.”

  Allison went to the window. She had not even realized that sunshine now streamed into the devastated room. Outside, there was not a cloud in the sky.

  A voice crackled. “Questor Casimir Stroem.”

  “What’s that?” Allison was startled; it sounded like the System voice, but Kyoko had left hours ago, and the transcomm was across the hill. The voice repeated, and she realized that it came from her credometer. “All right, I accept,” she said.

  “Friend Allison, we tried all day to get rid of that storm for you.” The biosphere analyst’s voice sounded contrite. “We haven’t completely solved Foxfield’s weather dynamics. It’s a shame we failed to manage the storm sooner, since I see how much damage occurred in your shop. But don’t worry about loss of function; we’ll send you any supplies you need, and eventually…”

  So they could see everything from a credometer, even outside a transcomm, Allison realized. They could have watched her ever since she got up that morning.

  In the kitchen, Allison stirred the soup and wondered why Dave was late.

  “Will you let them replace it?” Seth challenged.

  “I can’t say. We’ll ask the Meeting.” Her credometer was tucked away in another room.

  The door burst open as Dave came in. “Mom, I have to eat fast,” he gasped. “I’m missing the show—”

  “Hold on, now; what’s the rush? Feed Rufus and do your homework.”

  “Homework? But Mom, it’s nearly summer.” Dave spooned soup into his dish. “There’s this fantastic show in the transcomm, all about space ships and—”

  She turned and stared at his wrist. “David…is that what I think it is?”

  “It’s a ‘credometer.’ They gave it to me.”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Take it off.”

  “What?”

  “Just take it off, right now.”

  “Why, Mom?” he cried.

  “I said now.” She grasped his arm, pulled the band off and tossed it onto the counter.

  “Ow!” He started to sob.

  “David, you don’t know what that thing does. It lets the whole galaxy watch you at any time—”

  “So what?” Dave stamped his foot. “It’s not fair, Mom. For the first time in ages something fun comes along, and you want to squash it.”

  Seth warned, “You’d better listen to your mother, now that she’s talking sense.”

  Allison winced but added, “I’ll return the wrist-thing right now, so it doesn’t drain all your credit away.” She picked up the credometer, fetched her own from the other room and marched out of the house. Seth followed and Dave tagged behind, still protesting.

  “Open, Belshazzar!” she ordered.

  The transcomm panel opened, then shut as soon as they had entered. Bill and Noreen stood inside, but Allison could barely see them in the darkness. Her surroundings seemed to stretch out into infinite space, filled with pinpoint stars as if the spectators were floating among them.

  A silver comet plunged downward through the starry vault. It approached and grew until it seemed to halt before them, and as it did so the entire cosmic view rotated steadily. Allison saw that the object was a solid projectile with stripes of blue and gold, crisscrossed by dark lines like crackled glaze on earthenware.

  “Pleiades ship Darter-seven,” a voice announced. “Now let’s have a spot with the pilot.”

  Two luminous bubbles expanded in the darkness. The left one contained the announcer, a man who wore loose-fitting straight-cut clothes. The other inset showed a pilot in a frog-suit striped with blue and gold. He sat before an array of view screens in a control room austerely styled, similar to that of a shuttle craft.

  “We’re speaking with Ran Dadachanji, pilot Darter-seven for the Pleiades,” the announcer told the audience. “Ran, what’s your strategy? Do you head for Phobos or Deimos, at this point?”

  “Well, Jord, I can’t take chances at this point, since half my power’s knocked out, so I’ll have to head straight for Deimos…” His eyes never left the view screen.

  “Sounds tough, Ran; good thing the Archons can’t hear us. Do you think you’ll outrun them?”

  “The Archons have lost four ships, so far—three manned, one auto—that leaves three more auto limping out there somewhere, but as I see it a live pilot can outrun three auto any day.”

  “That’s the spirit, Ran; where there’s life, there’s hope, so give them a run for it. Back outside, now, I see Mars shaping up in the third octant…”

  Sure enough, a reddish brown disc was expanding below.

  “…and where planet Mars is, moon Deimos can’t be far behind. But Deimos is behind Mars yet, from this angle, and where are those Archons? Ah, there they are.”

  Three tiny “comets” appeared above the mottled Mars horizon, which now filled half the chamber and wobbled across the figures of the watching Foxfielders.

  “Looks like we’ve not seen the end yet—and what a ringside seat for the Martians! All up to you, Ran.”

  The announcer vanished, but the inset of the ship interior expanded somewhat. Now Allison could make out the tense face of the pilot as he watched his own view of darkness.

  The blue- and gold-striped vessel veered off to the right as three new ships closed in, twisting their fuel trails in a blazing dance.

  A thunderclap hit the ship interior; then another, and another, in deafening sequence. The final explosion tore apart the control board and hurled the pilot across the chamber, landing him in the foreground at a crazy angle. His form was quite still, his eyes stared, and his mouth lay ajar as though about to form sounds which never came. The surrounding debris was streaked with crimson.

  The inset winked out while a silent ball of fire engulfed the striped ship. Allison stared in shock at the conflagration. The three comet trails
turned as one, back toward Mars.

  “That’s it for the Darter,” the announcer stated. “Our last on-board recorder just gave out. But wait a minute—here’s the latest System report: Archon third automatic touched off bounds, that is, within five hundred kilometers of inhabited Martian surface, for just eighteen seconds, and therefore disqualified. The winner of the Mars Classic is—the Pleiades!”

  A brightly lit studio faded in, replacing the view of fire-stained space. The announcer sat in a chair across from a woman whose suit displayed the colors of the exploded ship. “Coach Karjanis,” he said to her, “tell us how you feel about winning the Mars Classic this year.”

  She nodded gravely. “The mix of triumph and sadness is especially hard to take, this year. We haven’t lost a whole squad in one game since seventy-two. That Dadachanji, now, he was one of the finest players I’ve seen. You saw him maneuver that Archon out of bounds, and he knew it was a sacrifice, too. Stargo always brings out the best in young citizens.”

  “True,” said the announcer, “but the attrition rate ran to twenty percent last year, overall. Is it really necessary to sustain such losses?”

  The coach leaned forward. “The fact is, Jord, that’s what draws players to the Stargo games. In the old days, brave young people could get into their coats of armor or their warplanes or whatever, and take on the ultimate test. Now that we proscribe that stuff, what’s left to risk your life for? Wasting away on Vinlandia? Policing the floaters?”

  “I see what you’re getting at.”

  She pounded her fist on an armrest. “The competitive spirit—that’s what made our species great. Competition keeps the race healthy; without it, we’d still be stuck back on one little planet for—”

  Allison shook herself. “Call-out. Call-out,” she ordered in a hoarse voice.

  The images dissolved into bluish light. Allison stared ahead, trying to make sense of what she had seen.

  At last Bill muttered something about getting back home, since it was late.

  “A wise idea,” she agreed.

  “I’ll take the night shift,” Noreen whispered.

  They straggled outside in the dim evening. Dave grabbed Allison’s arm. “Mom…he didn’t really die, did he?”

  “What do you think, David?”

  “There was blood all over.”

  She ruffled his sandy hair. “They’re light-years away, now, remember? Go on inside, and finish your supper.”

  “Aren’t you coming, too, Mom? I don’t want to be alone.”

  “We’ll be in soon.”

  The screen door clanged behind Dave as he entered the house. Allison paused on the doorstep with Seth, and a thought struck her; all nations suffered greatly, the Adjustor had said. But Mars was no Earth nation; Mars had escaped the worst of the Last War.

  They sat down together on the cold step. At the horizon Allison watched the faint sunset aurora, violet from nitrogen fluorescence. Mene, Mene, tekel, upharsin…the days of your kingdom are numbered and brought to an end. Whose kingdom, she wondered.

  “Sonnie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Because you are, Seth.”

  They embraced and held each other long after Wheelwright’s last light had died away.

  VI. Answer the Light

  Allison surveyed the familiar faces of Friends gathered for midweek worship. Lowell sat with John Poyser and his two sons; the Crain youngsters fidgeted next to their parents; Noah Rowntree, with his daughter, stared pensively into the middle distance. Her engaged nephew and cousin sat serenely together off to the right, where the side benches faced inward. Allison sat with Dave that day; Seth had departed early that morning for Coral Vale, to commune with the Dwelling, she guessed. The spectacle in the transcomm had been the last straw for him. Nonetheless, she hoped he would collect his thoughts and return soon.

  She tried to concentrate, to center down. What thoughts moved the others, today, she wondered. The Light, that inner something that guided one, that held one together, that…kept one going? Desultory images filled her mind: level farms, clattering decwriters, the people she loved, working, resting and arguing. Were those daily things what kept her going? In part, yes—but that was not the Light.

  The Hall was so still, now, that she could hear her neighbors breathing, a whispering song which rose and fell like the ocean waves. She had seen an ocean only in the video records, but that was how she had remembered it.

  In vain I send

  My soul into the dark, where never burn

  The lamps of science, nor the natural light

  Of Reason’s sun and stars.

  Those words were underlined in a book she had owned once, an old yellowed volume from her grandmother, who had sorely missed the literary world on Earth. Where was that book now? Of course—gone with the flood. Gone with Joshua…where was he, now?

  An image came to her mind, not of Joshua’s death, since they had never recovered his body, but of the stranger the night before, lying crushed and bleeding on the floor of a dying ship. Why? What right did he have to kill himself off that way?

  She always seemed to find memories painful, even after many years. The commensals were different; they never seemed to mind. Or if they did feel such pain, they never communicated it to humans.

  Perhaps it was because each Fraction had to combine so many details from so many memories, like Thiranne’s memory of the hand. Five Fractions, five memories intermingled each time they conjoined; if there were as much pain as in human memories, how could they bear it? Or did they choose to join the Dwelling when memory’s weight grew too heavy?

  No wonder they scarcely worried about “individuals” after all that. If an individual Fraction were lost, most of her essence would remain, stored in pieces, at least, among many other Fractions. But the individual who was Joshua was gone absolutely, except for the visions which haunted her still, despite her love for Seth. How could she be sure they were even accurate, now; perhaps time had twisted them as artfully as those portraits which Dave drew to infuriate his elders.

  He was gone; the Lord had seen fit to take him away. But why, Lord, why so young? Are you really there, Lord? Hello, I’m Allison Thorne; is anybody there?

  Noah was moved to speak. He rose and crossed his arms. “I’ve been thinking today about the events of the past three days,” he began, “the arrival of our guests from the stars. I feel that we must seem strange to them in some ways. They must want to ask, ‘What kind of folks are you Quakers anyway? Why do you all sit there for an hour in those funny little benches twice a week, when you could be out plowing your farms?’”

  He paused and swallowed once, then went on. “I’m not sure how to describe something which seems as basic to me as the need to breathe. And as people can only breathe a little at a time, so each individual may hold but a fraction of the Light, precious as it is.

  “But what is this Light within that we speak of? It is something close to ‘conscience’…perhaps, the other-worldly part of conscience. George Fox himself offered many names for it: the ‘Wisdom,’ the ‘Truth’s Voice,’ the ‘Love which bears all things.’ The phrase which speaks best to me is, ‘that of God in every one.’ That’s what I think of when I seek the Light.”

  He sat down.

  It occurred to Allison that she had given little thought to the way UNI citizens might perceive Friends. Perhaps they saw her people as backward, superstitious, or simply neurotic. Yet how did they manage without the Light? She herself could scarcely imagine life without Meeting.

  Edward Crain stood up and walked over to the side door. Dave and the other children rose immediately and filed out after him for classroom instruction. Their patience for stillness was not to be taxed for a whole hour.

  Anne was the next to rise. “In seeking the Light,” she said, “the crucial element is that of sharing, of putting together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As Jesus said, ‘Where two or three are
gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’ That is what a Meeting is for. John Greenleaf Whittier described a Meeting in this way:

  “The strength of mutual purpose pleads

  More earnestly our common needs;

  And from the silence multiplied

  By these still forms on either side,

  The world that time and sense have known

  Falls off and leaves us God alone.”

  Allison nodded, recalling those lines, too, from her lost volume. They connected with her own favorite image of silent worship as the purest fraction in a distillation, the most “distilled” form of communication. But how could any of this speak to someone like Kyoko, for whom “communication” was a transcomm? Or to that stranger, thrown across a doomed ship?

  Bill rose quickly, almost overeager. “Those words, written centuries ago—it just struck me how timeless they are. ‘Forms’ could mean any of us: Quakers, non-Quakers, even the ’mensals. God made all of us—and the remarkable thing is that the more we learn about science, the more science shows us just how special is this universe which He built for us.”

  Allison sighed and shut her eyes. She knew Bill well enough to know what was coming, and she did not like to hear it.

  “Consider the background temperature of the universe, which is known to be about three degrees Kelvin, barely above absolute zero. Now, why should the heat of the primeval explosion, which started the universe, have cooled down to just that amount throughout space? Well, it’s obvious that if space were hotter than the boiling point of water, living things couldn’t survive at all; in fact, if it were significantly greater than three degrees, even galaxies couldn’t have formed very well, because the gravity of all the heat radiation would have outweighed that of stellar matter. On the other hand, were it a bit colder, the primeval mass would have been too smooth to separate out and coalesce into stars. Is it just an accident that God set the thermostat just right for us?

  “Another thing: what about the ratio between the strengths of the electromagnetic and gravitational forces? It just happens to be about ten to the fortieth power—an enormous number which none of our physical theories can account for. Yet the age of the universe, about nine billion years, is also about ten to the fortieth times larger than the smallest natural time unit, namely, the time taken by light to cross a nuclear distance. Why should this incredible symmetry be so? Is it possible that the Lord is trying to tell us something?