Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  Roddy's hate for Serrengia was greater than any desire they could induce in him to live. With ease, he conquered all the miracle drugs Dr. Babbit lavished from the colony's restricted store. He died on the sixth night after Boggs' visit.

  * * * * *

  The funeral was held in the little community church built when the colonists first laid out Maintown. Mark and Bonnie Jorden were almost oblivious to the words spoken over the body of Roddy by the Reverend Wagner, who had come as the colonists' spiritual adviser.

  Bonnie's hands were folded on her lap, and she kept her eyes down throughout the service. She was aware of the agony within Mark Jorden. It was a real agony, and its strength almost frightened her, for she had never before seen such a response in any man who had gone through the test this far. They were men concerned only with themselves, incapable of the love that Jorden could feel for a son.

  He reached out and took one of her hands in his own. She could feel the emotion within him, the tightening and trembling of his big, hard-muscled arm.

  Ashby was watching. Over the private communication system that linked them he murmured, "Cry, Bonnie! Make it real. Make him hate himself and everything he's done since he decided to become a colonist--if you can! This is where we've got to find out whether he can crack or not--and why."

  "You can't break him," said Bonnie. "He's the strongest man I've ever known. If you find his breaking point it will be when you destroy him utterly. You've got to quit before you reach that point!"

  "All that we've done will be useless if we quit now, Bonnie. Just a few more hours and then it will all be over--"

  As if his words had touched a hidden trigger, she did begin to cry with a deep but almost inaudible sound and a heavy movement of her shoulders. Mark Jorden put his arm about her as if to force away her grief.

  "I know, Bonnie," said Ashby softly. "I can see in your face what's happened to you. It's going to be all right. Everything doesn't end for you when the test is over."

  "Oh, shut up!" said Bonnie in a sudden rage that made her tears come faster. "If I ever work on another of your damned experiments it will be when I've lost my senses entirely! You don't know what this does to people. I didn't know either--because I didn't care. But now I know--"

  "You know that no harm results after we've erased and corrected all inadequate reactions at the end of the test. You're letting your feelings cover up your full awareness of what we're doing."

  "Yes, and I suppose that when it's over I had better submit to a little erasing myself. Then Bonnie can go back to work as a little iced steel probe for some more of your guinea pigs!"

  "Bonnie--!"

  She made no answer to Ashby, but lay her head on Jorden's shoulder while her sobbing subsided. How did it happen? she asked herself. It wasn't anything she had wanted. It had just happened. It had happened that first day when he came in from the field at the beginning of the experiment with all of the planted background that made him think he was meeting Bonnie for the thousandth time instead of the first.

  She was supposed to be an actress and receive his husbandly kiss with all the skilled mimicry that made her so valuable to the lab. But it hadn't been like that. She had played sister, mother, daughter, wife--a hundred roles to as many other tested applicants. For the first time she saw one as a human being instead of a sociological specimen. That's the way it was when she met Mark Jorden.

  There was no answer to it, she thought bitterly as she rested her face against his shoulder. Ashby was right--just a few more hours and it would all be over. All Jorden's feeling for her as his wife was induced by the postulates of the test, just as were his feelings for Roddy. His subjective reactions were real enough, but they would vanish when their stimulus was removed with the test postulates. He would look upon the restored Roddy as just another little boy--and upon Bonnie, the Doctor in Sociology, as just another misemployed female.

  She raised her head and dried her eyes as she sensed that the service was ending. Actually, Ashby was right, of course. They had to go on, and the sooner it came to an end the better it would be for her. She would submit to alteration of her own personal data after the test, she thought. She would let them erase all feelings and sentiments she held for Mark Jorden, and then she would be as good as new. After all, if a sociologist couldn't handle his own reactions in a situation of this kind he wasn't of much value in his profession!

  * * * * *

  The sun was hot as they returned from the little burial ground near the church. There were quite a number of other graves besides Roddy's, but his was the loneliest, Jorden thought. He had never forgiven them for robbing him of his home and the only world in which he could live.

  He felt the growing coldness of Bonnie as they came up to their shabby cabin that had once looked so brave to him. Serrengia had cost him Bonnie, too. Even before Roddy. She had remained only because it was her duty.

  He took her hand as she put a foot on the doorstep. "Bonnie--"

  She looked at him bitterly, her eyes searching his face as if to find something of the quality that once drew her to him. "Don't try to say it, Mark--there's nothing left to say."

  He let her go, and the two children followed past him into the house. He sat down on the step and looked out over the fields that edged the river bank. His mind felt numbed by Roddy's passing. Bonnie's insistent blame made him live it over and over again.

  The light from the green of the fields was like a caress to his eyes. I should hate it, he thought. I should hate the whole damned planet for what it's taken from me. But that's not right--Serrengia hasn't taken anything. It's only that Bonnie and I can't live in the same world, or live the same kind of lives. Roddy was like her. But I didn't know then. I didn't know how either of them were.

  We have to go on. There's no going back. Maybe if I'd known, I would have made it different for all of us. I can't now, and it would be crazy to start hating Serrengia for the faults that are in us. Who could do anything but love this fresh, wild planet of ours--?

  He ought to go down and take a look at the field, he thought. He rose to go in and tell Bonnie. The crops hadn't had water since Roddy took sick.

  He found Bonnie in the bedroom with the drawers of their cabinets open and their trunk in the middle of the floor, its lid thrown back. Clothes lay strewn on the bed.

  He felt a slow tightening of his scalp and of the skin along the back of his neck. "Bonnie--"

  She straightened and looked into his face with cold, distant eyes. "I'm packing, Mark," she said. "I'm leaving. I'm going home. The girls are going with me. You can stay until they dig your grave beside Roddy's, but I'm going home."

  Jorden's face went white. He strode forward and caught her by the arms. "Bonnie--you know there's no way to go home. There won't be a ship for six years. This is home, Bonnie. There's no other place to go."

  For a moment the set expression of her face seemed to melt. She frowned as if he had told her some mystery she could not fathom. Then her countenance cleared and its blank determination returned. "I'm going home," she repeated. "You can't stop me. I've done all a wife can be expected to do. I've given my son as the price of your foolishness. You can't ask for more."

  He had to get out. He felt that if he remained another instant just then something inside him would explode under the pressure of his grief. He went to the front door and stood leaning against it while he looked over the landscape that almost seemed to reach out for him in hate as it had for Roddy. So you want her, too! he cried inside himself.

  Alice came up and tugged at his hand as he stood there. "What's the matter, Daddy? What's the matter with Mama?"

  He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "Nothing, honey. You go and play for a moment while I help Mother."

  "I want to help, too!"

  "Please, Alice--"

  He moved back to the bedroom. Bonnie was carefully examining each item of apparel she packed in the big trunk. She didn't look up as he came in.

  "Bonnie," he said
in a low voice, "are you going to leave me?"

  She put down the dress she was holding and looked up at him. "Yes I'm leaving you," she said. "You've got what you wanted--all you've ever wanted." She looked out towards the fields, shimmering in the heat of the day.

  "That's not true, Bonnie. You know it isn't. I've always loved you and needed you, and it's grown greater every hour we've been together."

  "Then you'll have to prove it! Give up this hell-world you want us to call home, and give us back our Earth. If you love me, you can prove it."

  "It's no test of love to make a man give up the goal that means his life to him. You'd despise me forever if I let you do that to me. I'd rather you went away from me now with the feeling you have at this time, because I'd know I had your love--"

  Bonnie remained still and unmoving in his arms, her face averted from his. He put his hand to her chin and turned her face to him. "You do love me, Bonnie? That hasn't changed, has it?"

  She put her head against his chest and rocked from side to side as if in some agony. "Oh, no--Mark! That will never change. Damn you, Ashby, damn you--"

  * * * * *

  In the control room Ashby and Miller groaned aloud to each other, and a technician looked at them questioningly, his hand on a switch. Ashby shook his head and stared at the scene before him.

  Jorden shook Bonnie gently in his arms. "Ashby?" he said. "Who's Ashby?"

  Bonnie looked up, the blank despair on her face again. "I don't remember--" she said haltingly. "Someone I used to--know--"

  "It makes no difference," Jorden said. "What matters is that you love me and you're going to stay with me. Let's put these things away now, darling. I know how you've felt the past week, but we've got to put it behind us and look forward to the future. Roddy would want it that way."

  "There's no future to look forward to," said Bonnie dully. "Nothing here on Serrengia. There's no meaning to any of us being here. I'm going back to Earth."

  "It does have a meaning! If I could only make you see it. If you could only understand why I had to come--"

  "Then tell me if you know! You've never tried to tell me. You live as if you know something so deep and secret you can live by it every hour of your life and find meaning in it. But I can only guess at what it is you've chosen for your god. If it's anything but some illusion, put it into words and make me know it, too!"

  "I've never tried," said Jorden hesitantly. "I've never tried to put it into words. It's something I didn't know was in me until I heard of the chance to colonize Serrengia. And then I knew I had to come.

  "It's like a growing that you feel in every cell. It's a growing out and away, and it's what you have to do. You're a sperm--an ovum--and if you don't leave the parent body you die. You don't have to hate what you leave behind as James and Boggs and so many of the others do. It gave you life, and for that you're grateful. But you've got to have a life of your own.

  "It's what I was born to do, Bonnie. I didn't know it was there, but now I've found it I can't kill it."

  "You have to kill it--or me."

  "You don't mean that. You're part of me. You've been a part of me so long you feel what I feel. You're lying, Bonnie, when you say you're going away. You don't want to go. You want to go on with me, but something's holding you back. What is it, Bonnie? Tell me what it is that holds you back!"

  Her eyes went wide. For a moment she thought he was talking out of the real situation, not the make-believe of the test. Then she recognized the impossibility of this. Her eyes cast a pleading glance in the direction of the observation tubes.

  Ashby spoke fiercely: "Go on, Bonnie! Don't lose the tension. Push him. We've got to know. He's almost there!"

  She moved slowly to the dresser where she had laid Jorden's hunting knife previously, as if with no particular intent. Now, out of sight of Jorden, her hand touched it. She picked it up.

  Ashby's voice came again. "Bonnie--move!"

  She murmured, "Lost--"

  And then she whirled about, knife in hand. She cried aloud. "I can't go on any further! Can't you see this is enough? Stop it! Stop it--"

  Jorden leaped for the knife.

  In the observation room a technician touched a switch.

  * * * * *

  Ashby felt the subdued elation of success reached after a long and strenuous effort. Bonnie was seated across the desk from him, but he sat at an angle so that he could see the four hulls out of the corner of his eye. One and Two had made their test flights and the others would not be far behind. The expedition would be a success, too. There was no longer any doubt of that, because he knew now where to look for adequate personnel.

  "I'm glad I didn't foul up your test completely, anyway," said Bonnie slowly. "Even if what you say about Mark shouldn't turn out to be true."

  Ashby moved his chair around to face her directly. She was rested, and had gone through a mental re-orientation which had removed some of the tension from her face.

  "You didn't foul it up at all," he said. "We went far enough to learn that he would have survived even your suicide, and would have continued in his determination to carry the colony forward. Nothing but his own death will stand in his way if he actually sets out on such a project. Are you completely sure you want to be tied to such a single purposed man as Mark Jorden is?"

  "There's no doubt of that! But I just don't feel as if I can face him now--with his knowing.... How can I ever be sure his feeling for me was not merely induced by the test experience, and might change as time goes on? You should have wiped it all out, and let us start over from scratch. It would have been easier that way."

  "There isn't time enough before the ships leave. But why should we have erased it all? We took away the postulates of the test and left Bonnie in his memory. His love for you didn't vanish when the test postulates went. As long as he has a memory of you he will love you. So why make him fall in love with you twice? No use wasting so much important time at your age. Here he comes--"

  Bonnie felt she couldn't possibly turn around as the door opened behind her. She heard Mark's moment of hesitation, his slow steps on the carpet. Ashby was smiling a little and nodding. Then she felt the hard grip of Mark's hands on her shoulders. He drew her up and turned her to face him. Her eyes were wet.

  "Bonnie--" he said softly.

  * * * * *

  Ashby turned to the window again. The gantry cranes were hoisting machinery in Hull Three. Maybe he had been wrong about there not being enough time between now and takeoff for Mark and Bonnie to discover each other all over again. They worked pretty fast. But then, as he had mentioned, why waste time at their age?

  They were smiling, holding tight to each other as Ashby turned back from the window.

  "They tell me I passed," said Jorden. "I'm sorry about taking your best Social Examiner away from you--but as you told me in the beginning this colonization business is a family affair."

  "Yes--that happens to be one of the few things I was right about." Ashby motioned them to the chairs. "Through you we located our major error. It was our identifying rebellion with colonization ability. Colonization is not a matter of rebellion at all. The two factors merely happen to accompany each other at times. But the essence of colonization is a growth factor--of the kind you so very accurately described when Bonnie pushed you into digging up some insight on the matter. It is so often associated with rebellion because rebellion is or has been, historically, necessary to the exercise of this growth factor.

  "The American Colonists, for example, were rebels only incidentally. As a group, they possessed a growth factor forcing them beyond the confines of the culture in which they lived. It gave them the strength for rebellion and successful colonization. And it is so easy to confuse colonists of that type with mere cutthroats, thugs, and misfits. The latter may or may not have a sufficiently high growth factor. In any case, their primary drive is hate and fear, which are wholly inadequate motives for successful colonization.

  "The ideal colonist does not b
reak with the parent body, nor does he merely extend it. He creates a new nucleus capable of interchange with the parent body, but not controlled by it. He wants to build beyond the current society, and the latter is not strong enough to pull him back into it. Colonization may take everything else of value in life and give nothing but itself in return, but the colonists' desire for new life and growth is great enough to make this sufficient. It is not a mere transplant of an old life. It is conception and gestation and birth.

  "Our present society allows almost unlimited exercise of the growth factor in individuals, regardless of how powerful it may be. That is why we have failed to colonize the planets. They offer no motive or satisfaction sufficient to outweigh the satisfactions already available. As a result we've had virtually no applicants coming to us because of hampered growth. You are one of the very few who might come under our present approach. And even a very slight change of occupational conditions would have kept you from coming. You didn't want the department leadership offered you, because it would limit the personally creative functions you enjoyed. That one slim, hairbreadth factor brought you in."

  "But how do you expect now to get any substantial number of colonists?" exclaimed Jorden.

  "We'll put on a recruiting campaign. We'll go to the creative groups--the engineers, the planners, the artists--we'll show that opportunity for creative functioning and growth will be far greater in the work of building colonial outposts than in any activity they now enjoy. And we won't have to exaggerate, either. It's true.

  "We'll be able to send out a colony of whom we can be certain. In the past, colonies have invariably failed when they consisted only of members fleeing from something, without possessing an adequate growth factor.

  "When this becomes thoroughly understood in my field, I shall probably never live down my initial error of assuming that a colonist had to hate or fear what he left behind in order to leave it forever. The exact opposite is true. Successful colonization of the Universe by Earthmen will occur only when there is a love and respect for the Homeland--and a capacity for complete independence from it."