“Yes, but the fact is I’ve lost faith, Martha.”
Her sister-in-law said nothing, so she went on quickly. “It began a long time ago, I think, before the Sixth Settlement even. I never did have the kind of faith that the Crains do—they’d stake their lives on the Lord. And now it just seems gone, altogether…I could never tell this to Anne; she wouldn’t understand. Maybe you don’t, either.”
“Allison,” Martha suddenly asked, “you’re a scientist, aren’t you?”
“I guess so. I try to be, sometimes. Not that that’s any excuse; great scientists have always been religious, like Newton, or Einstein. But then, I’m no Einstein, either.”
“Allison, I won’t speak for Anne, but myself, I’ve always been amazed to think how much faith a true scientist must have.”
A puzzled frown crossed her face.
“Let me ask you something. Do you believe the sun will make it over the horizon tomorrow morning?”
“Of course. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re absolutely sure, then?”
“Well, no, if you press it, like the commensals do. There’s always Heisenberg. But the chance of the sun simply hopping to another galaxy, say, without invoking a SLIT or something, is pretty small; considerably less than the reciprocal lifetime of the universe.”
“Why?”
“Because…well, we assume the laws of the universe are everywhere invariant.”
“If you can make that assumption for the outer world,” Martha asked, “for parts of the universe billions of light-years away, then why not assume the same for the inner life?”
“It’s different,” Allison muttered. “You can’t test the ‘inner life’ at all.” She looked quizzically at Martha as the fading sunlight from the window cast shadows across her square cheeks and the pools of her eyes.
“The life of the Light is always within us, yet always just beyond our reach,” Martha explained. “One can test it only by living it. Faith means insisting on living the way of the Lord, no matter how little evidence is revealed in the outer world—because life without the Lord is just another form of death. Am I reaching you?”
Allison heard the words but still did not understand.
Martha leaned forward suddenly and clasped her hands together. “Even the smallest amount of this kind of faith is a miracle,” she whispered, “At times in my life I have wished that I could know even a fraction of the faith you hold in your outer universe.”
Then Allison saw the creases at the banks of the gray pools, the eyes she had long felt to be pillars of strength. “I think,” she began slowly, “that you’re telling me we’re all in the same boat and I can’t get out.”
“It is not easy to live ‘in the world but not of it.’ I can’t carry your Light for you, Allison, any more than you can carry mine.”
X. Commensal Watch
Days passed and turned into a week. Allison saw the shuttle come to and from the Center hill as though weaving an invisible fabric across the sky, or a spider web, she thought at times, depending on her mood.
On Thursday she looked out on the silvery pylons which had sprung up for a new power station—just a test model, Kyoko had said. Allison reminded herself to read up on it in the transcomm, some time. She might try that new hypno-process, too, though the description of it alone made her head ache. Her thoughts wandered.
“You look serious today,” Kyoko remarked.
Allison shook herself. “An old book I’ve been reading. I don’t read books much since Grandma Ruth died; it’s too distracting. But Martha recommended this one: The Stranger, by Albert Camus.” She recalled Ed Crain’s words, if our heart opens not to the stranger…
“Ah, yes,” said Kyoko. “Premillennial Westerran classic.”
Allison frowned. “Why do you always frame them off that way, ‘Westerran’ works? As if they’re foreign, somehow, and irrelevant.”
“Sorry, I meant no offense—”
“You never do,” she observed dryly.
“It is true that Westerran culture has receded since the Last War.”
Allison shrugged. “Are you coming to Meeting this afternoon?”
“I think so, if Michiko and Keiko can manage to hold still. They love to come down here, you know, after months of being cramped on board.”
Cramped quarters? More room by far than the Plowshare, and that had lasted nine years, subjective time. But the girls seemed nice enough. And now that school was out, Dave enjoyed having yujin on his occasional days off from work on the Crain farm. Yujin, a word she’d picked up from Kyoko, meant “friend” or “companion.” Japanese, like Transac, had no explicit plurals. But yujin had a good ring to it, like “Three Musketeers.”
“Will your husband come today?” Kyoko asked.
Allison started, then she relaxed. “You mean Seth. We’re not married.”
“Oh, I thought—” The citizen flushed.
Allison had never seen Oriental features redden before. The effect was interesting. “Dave was Joshua’s son.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Marriage is a very special commitment. For life, hopefully.”
“Yes, I know. In any case, I was about to invite you both to our Midsummer Lantern Festival in the ship Garden, next week.”
“Oh—well, thank you. Is it ‘midsummer’ by current reckoning?”
“More or less; it coincides with UNI Day, now. The festival tradition stems from a midsummer Buddhist observance in old Japan. They hung lamps outdoors and floated them in boats down the river at night, to bear away the spirits of the dead. The holiday is purely secular, now, just a big party, really.”
“I see. Well, maybe Noreen and some of the young folks’ll be interested. Which reminds me, we’d better round up the kids if we’re going to Meeting.” She pressed her credometer. “David Thorne. David?”
“Call rejected.”
“What? Call direct, then.”
There were sounds of scuffling and crackling undergrowth. “Keep quiet,” a faint voice called, dissolving in laughter and unidentifiable sounds.
“Directional finder,” said Kyoko. With a few commands, her wrist began to beep, and she followed its intensity across the hill.
They found them behind the house. The smaller girl ran forward, her sandals flapping, as she shrieked in Japanese. Dave and Michiko were tugging at a net which contained a writhing mass.
“She says they caught a creature,” Kyoko explained.
“But she sniffed it, out for us.” Dave pointed to the commensal Lherin, who stood complacently nearby.
The trapped creature looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Don’t think you’re going to keep it,” Allison warned.
“Aw, Mom.” Dave’s hair flew in tangles as he clung to the net.
“What is that thing, anyway?” Allison peered closer as it twisted and flailed its stubby legs. “A stickwort? Get away from it this instant.”
“But Mom, Michiko’s going to build a cage.”
“Posit, Friend Thorne-san,” said the girl, “a commodious enclosure with permaplast life support—”
“It’s poisonous.”
“But Mom,” Dave insisted, “the stingers aren’t out yet; Lherin said—”
“The hell with Lherin.”
Kyoko spoke to them.
“Come away, Keiko, Michiko,” translated Allison’s credometer in Kyoko’s voice. “Remember your maturity indicators.”
“Mama, mama,” whined Keiko, as Michiko reluctantly dropped the net.
Dave said, “Why can’t we, Mom?”
“Suppose it got out and stung Rufus one night. Then how would you feel?”
“Well…”
The stickwort tore itself free and crawled off hastily, though it left several leg stubs behind. The crestfallen youngsters went off to the house to clean up for Meeting.
Allison turned to the commensal who stretched her fronds to soak in the sunlight. “You be ashamed,” she signa
led. “Foolish to endanger our Splints.”
“Danger?” replied Lherin. “Danger insignificant above universal noise-level.” With that, she flowed away over the thickening matrix of ground moss.
“So Lherin’s back,” Allison muttered to Kyoko. “Yshrin always did like to play tricks on me.”
Allison lay back on the warm hillside and watched the clouds chase the anti-eve sun. On the northern horizon towered rough masses which detached into scattered medallions like fallen leaves on a pond, as viewed from the watery depths.
“Sonnie.” Seth lay beside her.
“Mm?”
“I’ve found a convergence, a hundred kilometers north.”
“You mean, Fractions conjoining?”
“They’ve just started.”
“So what else is new?”
“Your friend wanted to see it,” he reminded her.
“My friend? You mean Casimir?” Allison stretched her arms. “Fine. Call him and set off tomorrow.”
“Martha did. He’s bringing the frog-suit doctor, so we need Doc Frances, too.”
“I thought you said it was safe.”
“Not with a frog-suit doctor around.”
“Seth, that’s not nice. You don’t have to wear a credo, but you should try to be civil at least.”
He said nothing, but grasped pensively at the moss fibers.
“Anyhow, Doc’s too busy for nonsense. We’ll spare Bill, if you like.”
“You, too.”
“Why should I go?”
“It was all your idea.”
“The devil it was.”
“I won’t go, if you don’t.”
“What? Seth, you’re impossible.”
For answer he pulled her over across his chest. She laughed as her hair fell between their faces. Their lips met at last, and the moss settled quietly beneath them.
The Deltron terminals hummed and clattered. Allison said, “Noreen—could you spare an hour with Kyoko this morning?”
Noreen looked up from the decwriter. “I think so.”
“She wants to go over the power line proposal, you know. Sorry to leave you in the lurch, but—”
“I’ll manage. I’ve been studying it through the hypno-process; I really think I’m getting the hang of that thing.”
“You’ll steal my job yet,” Allison warned.
“Go on. It’s UNI that’s stealing all our jobs, so far.”
“That reminds me. Call Bill Daniels,” she told her credometer. “Bill, you in yet? Come over a minute, please.”
In a few minutes the machinist arrived. “What’s up, boss?”
“Bill, you’re the paramedic. You’re joining the ‘commensal watch’ today.”
“But there’s a whole load of circuits due.”
“Never mind. UNI will ship ten thousand chips in by the end of the week.”
Bill’s jaw dropped.
“That’s right,” she said. “Would have been sooner, too, except they had trouble duplicating our antique design.”
“But Allison, a whole year’s supply?”
“Why, yes, Bill,” said Noreen. “Don’t you think it’s just marvelous, all that new technology?”
“Okay, okay,” said Allison. “There’s more to the world than circuit chips. For today, Bill, let’s go watch the Fractions conjoin.”
The expedition assembled on the hill. Casimir and Rissa arrived in a sleek electrograv vehicle that looked more like a space cruiser than a surface car. Dave wandered over to gape at it before setting off for the farm.
Seth demanded, “What’s wrong with the jeep?”
“Heavy equipment,” said Casimir.
“Fully sealable environment,” said the doctor. “The shuttle would be better still—”
“No.” Seth shuddered. “That thing drives the Fractions crazy. You’d land on them, like as not.”
“Are you all protected?” Rissa asked. Both citizens wore frog-suit uniforms.
“I think so,” said Allison. “We have filter masks, and our skin is treated. Bill, you’ve got the kit, and the air sampler?”
“Right here.” He tapped the black box and grinned. “Also some of life’s other necessities.”
“I’ll bet. I guess that’s it, then.”
They piled into the vehicle. The seats were not in rows, but faced inward in a spacious oval.
“Now,” said Casimir, “let’s settle directions—”
“Oh, dear,” said Allison, seeing Dave’s wurraburra climb in and head for the biosphere analyst as usual.
“Too bad, Rufus,” Casimir said, “you and your seven eyes can’t come with us today.” He stopped and frowned. “Seven? Do I need memory boosters already?”
“No, it’s grown a couple, that’s all. One more, and it’ll split in two. Dav-ie!”
“Here, Mom.”
She grabbed the squealing wurraburra and hurled it out to her son, who caught it expertly.
Casimir chuckled. “Binary fission. Poor fellow misses all the fun.”
A glassy bubble slid down to enclose the passengers. The vehicle lifted half a meter and raced off down the hill.
“Whoa, there, folks. Keep to the road, okay?” Allison called, uncertain who was driving. The vehicle slowed a bit.
When the directions were settled, Casimir opened an air vent. The rich fruity scent of the northern bushlands slipped in. “Beautiful countryside,” he rhapsodized. “Never seen anything like it.”
The vehicle streaked across the moss-field expanse where Foxfielders had dug a rough travel road. At times the path penetrated clumps of stubbly forest where the dense plants seemed to strangle one another in their passion for the vital sunshine.
Bill ventured, “I missed your remark about Rufus. What strikes you about our local ‘fauna’?”
“Or ‘flora,’ perhaps?” said Casimir. “Hard to tell around here.”
They rounded a sharp bend, but Allison felt no accelerative force; the scenery simply turned, as it would in the transcomm. It felt disconcerting.
“It’s always amazed me,” Casimir was saying, “how many different forms sexual reproduction can take. On Terra, ‘true’ plants tend to be the most promiscuous, you know, spreading their pollen to the wind.”
“True,” Bill agreed. “But then, they don’t have much fun either, without a nervous system.”
“Well, I’ve never asked a plant, myself. But animals do all right. Lions, for instance, spend all day at it, coupling every fifteen minutes when in heat. Though they bear surprisingly few offspring.”
“That sounds a lot closer to humans.”
“Lizards, now, are most curious,” Casimir went on. “Male lizards each possess a double set of ejaculatory organs. They can only use one at a time, however.”
“What a decision to make,” said Bill.
Rissa spoke up. “Would you prefer no choice at all? In some fish species the male members exist only as new ‘sperm,’ which after ‘birth’ go directly to fertilize the females again.”
Casimir groaned. “You Ultrafeminist.”
Allison laughed. “Sounds like those females know how to run things.”
“Well, how do you like that?” Bill exclaimed. “You’d feel pretty lost without a couple of males I know.”
“Perhaps,” Rissa suggested, “she prefers ‘sisters.’”
A brilliant shower of copterflies engulfed their view. The vehicle raced on, unperturbed.
“Homosexual behavior,” said Casimir, “is hardly confined to Homo sapiens. Numerous species of birds and higher mammals indulge, including chimpanzees and dolphins—”
“A mark of intelligence?” asked Bill.
“I’ve always wondered,” said Allison, “how dolphins and other sea-dwelling mammals managed to survive at all, much less copulate underwater. What an alien environment for mammals—but then, I know nothing about oceans, even on Foxfield.”
Casimir nodded. “Dolphins manage, all right. They have tremendous lung capacity. They
also enjoy lots of foreplay.”
“Well, there’s one choice the ’mensals don’t have.”
“What, foreplay?”
“No; homo or hetero. Their ‘foreplay’ lasts for hours, though.”
“Days,” Seth corrected.
Seth observed the air sampler. “All right,” he said, “close enough.”
The vehicle slowed to a halt just outside a bush forest. Seth pointed out something in the distance, half a kilometer away, Allison estimated.
Casimir said, “Can we get closer? The car really doesn’t need a road, and we can seal off the interior, as Rissa mentioned.”
Seth looked as if he would have a heart attack.
“No,” Allison explained, “the north lands are thick with seedling Splints.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
The glass bubble peeled back. Bill pulled out his old binoculars.
“Surely we may walk closer,” said Rissa, “if we’re careful.”
Seth nodded. “I’ll guide you.” He put on his filter mask.
“Good,” said Casimir. “Let’s get out the bio-scans.”
The rear compartment opened, and three pieces of equipment rolled out. Casimir’s pink face and Rissa’s sepia both disappeared under their goggles. They all waded off clumsily over the rubbery moss, following Seth like a troupe of robots. Allison fought back her giggles until they were out of earshot.
“Allison?”
“Yes, Bill?” She already had her calculator out to figure some ore assays.
“How about a hand of gin?”
She looked up. “Is that a ‘game of chance’?”
“I guess so. Picked it up from the System.”
“Hm. Seems to me the Ninth Query might apply here.”
“Aw, come on—just for pennies. Not credits; the System takes a percentage.”
Allison paused. “How does it go?”
Bill pulled a deck of cards out of his box.
Wheelwright’s sun rolled steadily down the sky. Clouds gathered and rain began to fall, but the droplets parted and fell aside above the vehicle, deflected by its rain screen.
“Questor Casimir Stroem,” squeaked her credometer.
“Accept.” She slapped down a card.
“Allison, I left an infrascan attachment in the car. Would you mind bringing it out for us?”
Still Forms On Foxfield Page 14
