She flushed, laughing. “You’re telling secrets!”
Judson touched her. “It’s all right. I don’t think less of you for any of his maunderings … You must have wanted that certificate very much.”
“Yes,” she said. “Very much.”
“Could—could I ask why?”
She looked at him, in him, through him, past him. “All our lives,” she said quietly, “are safe and sure and small. This—” she waved back towards the ships—“is the only thing in our experience that’s none of those things. I could give you fifty reasons for going Out. But I think they all come down to that one.”
We were silent for a moment, and then I said, “I’ll put that in my notebook, Tween. You couldn’t be more right. Modern life gives us infinite variety in everything except the magnitude of the things we do. And that stays pretty tiny.” And, I thought, big, fat, superannuated station officials, rejected by one world and unqualified for the next. A small chore for a small mind.
“The only reason most of us do puny things and think puny thoughts,” Judson was saying, “is that Earth has too few jobs like his in these efficient times.”
“Too few men like him for jobs like his,” Tween corrected.
I blinked at them both. It was me they were talking about. I don’t think I changed expression much, but I felt as warm as the color of Tween’s eyes.
We passed through the gates, Tween first with never a thought for the barrier which did not exist for her, then Judson, waiting cautiously for my go-ahead after the inside scanning plate had examined the whorls and lines of my hand. I followed, and the great gates closed behind us.
“Want to come up to the office?” I asked Tween when we reached Central Corridor.
“Thanks, no,” she said. “I’m going to find Wold.” She turned to Judson. “You’ll be certified quickly,” she told him. “I just know. But, Judson—”
“Say it, whatever it is,” said Jud, sensing her hesitation.
“I was going to say get certified first. Don’t try to decide anything else before that. You’ll have to take my word for it, but nothing that ever happened to you is quite like the knowledge that you’re free to go through those gates any time you feel like it.”
Judson’s face assumed a slightly puzzled, slightly stubborn expression. It disappeared, and I knew it was a conscious effort for him to do it. Then he put out his hand and touched her heavy silver hair. “Thanks,” he said.
She strode off, the carriage of her head telling us that her face was eager as she went to Wold. At the turn of the corridor she waved and was gone.
“I’m going to miss that girl,” I said, and turned back to Judson. The puzzled, stubborn look was back, full force. “What’s the matter?”
“What did she mean by that sisterly advice about getting certified first? What else would I have to decide about right now?”
I swatted his shoulder. “Don’t let it bother you, Jud. She sees something in you that you can’t see yourself, yet.”
That didn’t satisfy him at all. “Like what?” When I didn’t answer, he asked, “You see it, too, don’t you?”
We started up the ramp to my office. “I like you,” I said. “I liked you the minute I laid eyes on you, years ago, when you were just a sprout.”
“You’ve changed the subject.”
“Hell, I have. Now let me save my wind for the ramp.” This was only slightly a stall. As the years went by, that ramp seemed to get steeper and steeper. Twice Coordination had offered to power it for me and I’d refused haughtily. I could see the time coming when I was going to be too heavy for my high-horse. All the same, I was glad for the chance to stall my answer to Judson’s question. The answer lay in my liking him; I knew that instinctively. But it needed thinking through. We’ve conditioned ourselves too much to analyze our dislikes and to take our likes for granted.
The outer door opened as we approached. There was a man waiting in the appointment foyer, a big fellow with a gray cape and a golden circlet around his blue-black hair. “Clinton!” I said. “How are you, son? Waiting for me?”
The inner door opened for me and I went into my office, Clinton behind me. I fell down in my specially molded chair and waved him to a relaxer. At the door Judson cleared his throat. “Shall I—uh …”
Clinton looked up swiftly, an annoyed, tense motion. He raked a blazing blue gaze across Jud, and his expression changed. “Come in, for God’s sake. Newcomer, hm? Sit down. Listen. You can’t learn enough about this project. Or these people. Or the kind of flat spin an Outbounder can get himself into.”
“Clint, this’s Judson,” I said. “Jud, Clint’s about the itchy-footedest Outbounder of them all. What is on your mind, son?”
Clinton wet his lips. “How’s about me heading Out—alone?”
I said, “Your privilege, if you think you’ll enjoy it.”
He smacked a heavy fist into his palm. “Good then.”
“Of course,” I said, looking at the overhead, “the ships are built for two. I’d personally be a bit troubled about the prospect of spending—uh—however long it might be, staring at that empty bunk across the way. Specially,” I added loudly, to interrupt what he was going to say, “if I had to spend some hours or weeks or maybe a decade with the knowledge that I was alone because I took off with a mad on.”
“This isn’t what you might call a fit of pique,” snapped Clinton. “It’s been years building—first because I had a need and recognized it; second because the need got greater when I started to work toward filling it; third because I found who and what would satisfy it; fourth because I was so wrong on point three.”
“You are wrong? Or you’re afraid you’re wrong?”
He looked at me blankly. “I don’t know,” he said, all the snap gone out of his voice. “Not for sure.”
“Well, then you’ve no real problem. All you do is ask yourself whether it’s worthwhile to take off alone because of a problem you haven’t solved. If it is, go ahead.”
He rose and went to the door. “Clinton!” My voice must have crackled; he stopped without turning, and from the corner of my eye I saw Judson sit up abruptly. I said, more quietly, “When Judson here suggested that he go away and leave us alone, why did you tell him to come in? What did you see in him that made you do it?”
Clinton’s thoughtfully slitted eyes hardly masked their blazing blue as he turned them on Judson, who squirmed like a schoolboy. Clinton said, “I think it’s because he looks as if he can be reached. And trusted. That answer you?”
“It does.” I waved him out cheerfully. Judson said, “You have an awesome way of operating.”
“On him?”
“On both of us. How do you know what you did by turning his problem back on himself? He’s likely to go straight to the launching court.”
“He won’t.”
“You’re sure.”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said flatly. “If Clinton hadn’t already decided not to take off alone—not today, anyhow—he wouldn’t have come to see me and get argued out of it.”
“What’s really bothering him?”
“I can’t say.” I wouldn’t say. Not to Judson. Not now, at least. Clinton was ripe to leave, and he was the kind to act when ready. He had found what he thought was the perfect human being for him to go with. She wasn’t ready to go. She never in all time and eternity would be ready to go.
“All right,” said Jud. “What about me? That was very embarrassing.”
I laughed at him. “Sometimes when you don’t know exactly how to phrase something for yourself, you can shock a stranger into doing it for you. Why did I like you on sight, years ago, and now, too? Why did Clinton feel you were trustworthy? Why did Tween feel free to pass you some advice—and what prompted the advice? Why did—” No. Don’t mention the most significant one of all. Leave her out of it. “—Well, there’s no point in itemizing all afternoon. Clinton said it. You can be reached. Practically anyone meeting you knows—feels,
anyhow—that you can be reached … touched … affected. We like feeling that we have an effect on someone.”
Judson closed his eyes, screwed up his brow. I knew he was digging around in his memory, thinking of close and casual acquaintances … how many of them … how much they had meant to him and he to them. He looked at me. “Should I change?”
“God, no! Only—don’t let it be too true. I think that’s what Tween was driving at when she said not to jump at any decisions until you’ve reached the comparative serenity of certification.”
“Serenity … I could use some of that,” he murmured.
“Jud.”
“Mm?”
“Did you ever try to put into one simple statement just why you came to Curbstone?”
He looked startled. Like most people, he had been living, and living ardently, without ever wondering particularly what for. And like most people, he had sooner or later had to answer the jackpot question: “What am I doing here?”
“I came because—because … no, that wouldn’t be a simple statement.”
“All right. Run it off, anyway. A simple statement will come out of it if there’s anything really important there. Any basic is simple, Jud. Every basic is important. Complicated matters may be fascinating, frightening, funny, intriguing, worrisome, educational, or what have you; but if they’re complicated, they are, by definition, not important.”
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. His hands wound tightly around one another, and his head went down.
“I came here … looking for something. Not because I thought it was here. There was just nowhere else left to look. Earth is under such strict discipline … discipline by comfort; discipline by constructive luxury. Every need is taken care of that you can name, and no one seems to understand that the needs you can’t name are the important ones. And all Earth is in a state of arrested development because of Curbstone. Everything is held in check. The status quo rules because for six thousand years it must and will. Six thousand years of physical and social evolution will be sacrificed for the single tremendous step that Curbstone makes possible. And I couldn’t find a place for myself in the static part of the plan, so the only place for me to go was to the active part.”
He was quiet so long after that, I felt I had to nudge him along. “Could it be that there is a way to make you happy on Earth, and you just haven’t been able to find it?”
“Oh, no,” he said positively. Then he raised his head and stared at me. “Wait a minute. You’re very close to the mark there. That—that simple statement is trying to crawl out.” He frowned. This time I kept my mouth shut and watched him.
“The something I’m looking for,” he said finally, in the surest tones he’d used yet, “is something I lack, or something I have that I haven’t been able to name yet. If there’s anything on Earth or here that can fill that hollow place, and if I find it, I won’t want to go Out. I won’t need to go—I shouldn’t go. But if it doesn’t exist for me here, then Out I go, as part of a big something, rather than as a something missing a part. Wait!” He chewed his lower lip. His knuckle-joints crackled as he twisted his hands together. “I’ll rephrase that and you’ll have your simple statement.”
He took a deep breath and said, “I came to Curbstone to find out … whether there’s something I haven’t had yet that belongs to me, or whether I … belong to something that hasn’t had me yet.”
“Fine,” I said. “Very damned fine. You keep looking, Jud. The answer’s here, somewhere, in some form. I’ve never heard it put better: Do you owe, or are you owed? There are three possible courses open to you no matter which way you decide.”
“There are? Three?”
I put up fingers one at a time. “Earth. Here. Out.”
“I—see.”
“And you can take the course of any one of the words you saw floating over the gate to the launching court.”
He stood up. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”
“You have.”
“But I’ve got me one hell of a blueprint.”
I just grinned at him.
“You through with me?” he asked.
“For now.”
“When do I start work for my certificate?”
“At the moment, you’re just about four-ninths through.”
“You dog!” All this has been—”
“I’m a working man, Jud. I work all the time. Now beat it. You’ll hear from me.”
“You dog,” he said again. “You old hound-dog!” But he left.
I sat back to think. I thought about Judson, of course. And Clinton and his worrisome solo ideas. The trip can be done solo, but it isn’t a good idea. The human mind’s communications equipment isn’t a convenience—it’s a vital necessity. Tween. How beautiful can a girl get? And the way she lights up when she thinks about going Out. She’s certified now. Guess she and Wold will be taking off any time now.
Then my mind spun back to Flower. Put those pieces together … something should fit. Turn it this way, back—Ah! Clinton wants Out. He’s been waiting and waiting for his girl to get certified. She hasn’t even tried. He’s not going to wait much longer. Who’s his girl now …?
Flower.
Flower, who turned all that heat on Judson.
Why Judson? There were bigger men, smarter, better-looking ones. What was special about Judson?
I filed the whole item away in my mind—with a red priority tab on it.
The days went by. A gong chimed and the number-board over my desk glowed. I didn’t have to look up the numbers to know who it was. Fort and Mariellen. Nice kids. Slipped Out during a sleep period. I thought about them, watched the chain of checking lights flicker on, one after another. Palm-patterns removed from the Gate scanner; they’d never be used there again. Ship replaced. Quarters cleared and readied. Launching time reported to Coordination. Marriage recorded. Automatic machinery calculated, filed, punched cards, activated more automatic machinery until Fort and Mariellen were only axial alignments on the molecules of a magnetic tape … names … memories … dead, perhaps; gone, certainly, for the next six thousand years.
Hold tight, Earth! Wait for them, the fifty-four per cent (I hope, I ardently hope) who will come back. Their relatives, their Earth-bound friends will be long dead, and all their children and theirs; so let the Outbounders come home at least to the same Earth, the same language, the same traditions. They will be the millennial traditions of a more-than-Earth, the source of the unthinkable spatial sphere made fingertip-available to humankind through the efforts of the Outbounders. Earth is prepaying six thousand years of progress in exchange for the ability to use stars for stepping-stones, to be able to make Mars in a minute, Antares and Betelgeuse afternoon stops in a delivery run. Six thousand years of sacred stasis buys all but a universe, conquers Time, eliminates the fractionation of humanity into ship-riding, minute-shackled fragments of diverging evolution among the stars. All the stars will be in the next room when the Outbounders return.
Six thousand times around Sol, with Sol moving in a moving galaxy, and that galaxy in flight through a fluxing universe. That all amounts to a resultant movement of Earth through nine Möllner degrees around the Universal Curve. For six thousand years Curbstone flings off its tiny ships, its monstrous power plant kicking them into space-time and the automatics holding them there until all—or until enough—are positioned. Some will materialize in the known universe and some in faintly suspected nebulae; some will appear in the empty nothingnesses beyond the galactic clusters, and some will burst into normal space inside molten suns.
But when the time comes, and the little ships are positioned in a great spherical pattern out around space, and together they become real again, they will send to each other a blaze of tight-beam energy. Like the wiring of a great switchboard, like the synapses of a brain, each beam will find its neighbors, and through them Earth.
And then, within and all through that sphere, humanity will spread, stepping fr
om rim to rim of the universe in seconds, instantaneously transmitting men and materials from and to the stars. Here a ship can be sent piecemeal and assembled, there a space station. Yonder, on some unheard-of planet of an unknown star, men light years away from Earth can assemble matter transceivers and hook them up to the great sphere, and add yet another world to those already visited.
And what of the Outbounders?
Real time, six thousand years.
Ship’s time, from second-order spatial entry to materialization—zero.
Fort and Mariellen. Nice kids. Memories now; lights on a board, one after another, until they’re all accounted for. At Curbstone, the quiet machinery says, “Next!”
Fort and Mariellen. Clinging together, they press down the launching lever. Effortlessly in their launching, they whirl away from Curbstone. In minutes there is a flicker of gray, or perhaps not even that. Strange stars surround them. They stare at one another. They are elsewhere … elsewhen. Lights glow. This one says the tight-beam has gone on, pouring out toward the neighbors and, through them, to all the others. That one cries “emergency” and Fort whips to the manual controls and does what he can to avoid a dust-cloud, a planet … perhaps an alien ship.
Fort and Mariellen (or George and Viki, or Bruce, who went Out by himself, Eleanor and Grace, or Sam and Rod—they were brothers) may materialize and die in an intolerable matter-displacement explosion so quickly that there is no time for pain. They may be holed by a meteor and watch, with glazing freezing eyes, the froth bubbling up from each other’s bursting lungs. They may survive for minutes or weeks, and then fall captive to some giant planet or unsuspected sun. They may be hunted down and killed or captured by beings undreamed of.
And some of them will survive all this and wait for the blessed contact; the strident heralding of the matter transceiver with which each ship is equipped—and the abrupt appearance of a man, sixty centuries unborn when they left Curbstone, instantly transmitted from Earth to their vessel. Back with him they’ll go, to an unchanged and ecstatic Earth, teeming with billions of trained, mature humans ready to fill the universe with human ways—the new humans who have left war and greed behind them, who have acquired a universe so huge that they need exploit no creature’s properties, so rich and available is everything they require.
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