by Chad Oliver
Keith kept his voice even. “If you understand what Venus means, you’ll never tell them. You know and I know that Earth may never go back into space on her own—it’s too late. I can’t put this into words, Captain. But I know what made you go into space even when space was almost forgotten. I know. Have you forgotten?”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“O.K. I’m asking for a month.”
Captain Nostrand sat down and sipped his coffee. He listened to the rain roaring down outside. He looked at Mark Kamoto, who remained silent.
“You make a mean speech, friend,” Nostrand said finally. “I can see your month. It had better be good.”
Keith was exhausted but confident.
“Pal,” he said, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Beyond the station house, the warm rain fell into the thick jungles and the long gray afternoon began to fade into evening.
V
At the northernmost extremity of the one inhabited continent of Venus, a brown peninsula thrust out into the swells of a vast gray-green sea.
In the copter that hovered just under the cloud masses that roofed the world, too far away to be seen with the naked eye, Ralph Nostrand brought his viewer into focus and looked into it intently.
“So that’s Acosta,” he said.
“Yes,” Keith said. “Watch off the coast there—see those ships coming in? They’re whalers.”
“Whalers?”
“Not really whales, of course. They’re true fish, not mammals. But they’re plenty big enough—and they hunt them with hand harpoons.”
“Funny looking place.”
The viewer showed a small settlement of perhaps one hundred gabled stone houses, placed on a shelf of rock overlooking the tossing sea. Most of the men and boys were out in the boats, but the women of the town were clearly visible in the streets.
“There,” Keith said. “The near boat crew is beaching one.”
In the viewer, the men and boys leaped out of their sturdy canoes into shallow water. They all grabbed a line from the near ship and ran with it up onto the beach. They formed a row and heaved.
An enormous black shadow-shape slid out of the sea and was hauled up on the rocks, its great tail still bobbing in the gray-green water. It rolled over, white belly upwards, and the men began to dance around it, chanting.
“Whew,” said Nostrand. “That’s quite a baby.”
“Acosta is a pretty rugged place,” Keith said. “It’s a colony of maritime adventurers, as I told you. It’s a people who will have a long tradition behind them of dangerous voyages.”
Ralph Nostrand eyed him. “Shrewd.”
“I know my racket.”
The captain returned to his viewer and watched for a long time. Finally he nodded. “Next,” he said.
Mark took the copter up higher to hit a favorable wind belt, and they flew through the warm clouds above the jungles, moving inland. In four hours, they went down again.
The first of the Three Cities was spread out on the viewer.
“Wlan?” asked Nostrand.
“That’s right.”
Wlan was a far cry from the seaside settlement of Acosta. This was a genuine small city, with a population of perhaps five thousand people. It was neatly arranged into squares, with snug modern houses, and it was dominated by two large buildings that could only be factories.
“The Three Cities are our industrialists,” Keith said. “Of course, they’re not turning much out yet, and the economy is highly artificial at present, but they’ve got the basic techniques down pat. We’ve set up an embryonic technological culture, and the kids have been brought up to appreciate what that means. We’ve given them enough leads so that they’ll have aircraft within a century.”
Nostrand nodded. “One thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Keith.”
“Shoot.”
“Is it really fair to bring these kids up here and determine their lives for them? It seems—sort of wrong, somehow.”
The copter veered toward the southeast, rising again into the clouds.
“I know what you mean,” Keith said. “It seems to deny them their free will. That’s not true, though—you know that yourself, if you’ll just stop a bit and think. After all, a child is always born into a culture he has not built himself; that’s a characteristic of human beings. In that sense, a kid’s future is always determined for him. What he does with the materials of his culture, though, is up to him. So long as he has the stuff, he’ll make out O.K. anywhere. Don’t forget that to the kid this is his culture; it’s home. He’s never known anything else, and he’d fight to stay there. And don’t forget, too, that those kids were abandoned by their own parents on Earth. This beats a Foundation orphanage, believe me.”
“I surrender.” Nostrand grinned.
“Excuse the sermon, Ralph. It’s hell to really have faith in something again. We’re not used to it, back on Earth.”
The copter paused briefly at Mepas and Carin, the other two nearby industrial towns, and then flew southwest across the continent. They set the copter on automatic, caught what sleep they could, and in sixteen hours were high above the skin tents of Pueklor. The gray sky and the massed oceans of the clouds had not changed—and there were still eight Earth-days left before the coming of the pale Venusian night.
“Looks like an Indian tribe,” commented Nostrand, looking closely into the viewer. “I remember seeing some old photographs somewhere.”
Keith nodded. “They’re modeled on the ancient Plains Indians of North America,” he said. “You’ll notice how different the country is here—tall grass instead of jungle. Pueklor has a basically hunting culture; they go after an animal not too unlike the old bison, but much slower. They hunt ’em on foot.”
Far below, the skin tents of Pueklor stood in a large ring in the grassy fields of the southwestern plains. Curls of smoke drifted up into the still air and a group of children were running races along the banks of a sluggish river.
“You’ll catch it more clearly when you see some of them in Halaja,” Keith said. “Pueklor is an extremely proud culture—filled with the joy of living, if I can put it that way. They’ll lend a very real esprit de corps to the continental culture that will be here a century from now.”
The copter swung eastward through thick sheets of rain, and by the time they reached Equete in the southeastern hills the three men were bone tired. Nevertheless, the sight of Equete nestled in a rocky valley picked them up.
Equete was a series of low, rounded rock structures that harmonized beautifully with the rugged grandeur of its surroundings. It blended browns and pinks and greens into a pleasing pattern that accentuated the banded colors of the land.
“That’s your baby, Ralph.”
Nostrand looked down at its image in the viewer and tried to see in Equete what he was supposed to see,
“Not much visible from here,” he said.
Keith smiled wearily. “The business of Equete is ethics—ethics and elaborate social complexities. In addition, this is where the basic research is being done that will one day lead to the independent development of space flight on Venus. See that tall, domed structure over there? We’ve given them enough hints so that they’ll develop a cloud-piercing telescope before too many years have gone by. Philosophically, we’ve already provided them with a logical picture of the universe—and their ethics demand space flight as the first great step in the fulfillment of man’s destiny.”
“Sounds good,” Ralph said.
“It is good,” Mark corrected.
“It’s all so complicated,” Ralph Nostrand said tiredly. “I try to see it the way you do—but it isn’t easy. All these new cultures, growing up independently of Earth, groping toward space travel in a hundred years or so. Don’t forget what Earth is like these days—what if these people come swooping down and smash it to pieces?”
“When you see the ceremony at Halaja,” Keith said, “you won’t worry about that.”
Captain Nostrand was unconvinced, but he held his tongue. The copter lifted again into the clouds and flew northward, back to the hidden receiving station where the great Space Security ship still waited in the late morning fog.
Keith closed his burning eyes and tried to relax. He knew that Nostrand was an unusual man—he had to be or he would never have gone into space in this century of stability and easy living. But could he see Venus as they saw Venus? Could he see Venus as the cradle of a new and vigorous culture that would jolt Earth from the rut into which it had fallen?
If the Coming Together at Halaja failed to move him, they were through.
And this was the first of the vast ceremonies to be conducted almost entirely by the children who were now young men and women. The old robot humanoids would stay strictly in the background. Surely their teaching had been effective; it had to be.
But when Keith dozed off into a troubled sleep, his dreams were as gray and cheerless as the wet clouds above his head.
It was the time of the Coming Together at Halaja.
Five Earth-days were left out of the month that Keith had asked for.
With his wife and Captain Nostrand he stood in the doorway of his log home and waited for the ceremony to begin.
It was night, and the soft silver cloudlight glinted in the Home of the Spirit and touched the central plaza of Halaja with pale and enchanted fingers. Great orange fires blazed inside the ring of the wooden houses and passageways, throwing black, twisted shadows on the walls.
Drums beat with a slow rhythm and the mixed voices of low, insistent chants drifted up to the roof of the world and lost themselves in the glowing mists of night.
For many days and many nights the people had come across the swamps and jungles of the great continent to Halaja. They had come as they had always come, as their fathers had come, and as their fathers’ fathers before them.
Or so they believed—for had not their own fathers told them so, throughout the whole of their lives?
From far Acosta by the northern sea they had come, and from the three cities of Wlan, Mepas, and Carin. They had walked from the swaying fields of Pueklor and from the rocky hills of Equete.
It was the time of the Coming Together.
Not all came, of course. These were only selected delegates who made the jungle trek and who would then return to their people as they had always done.
The orange fires crackled and the drums throbbed.
A new chant began.
“Oh friends from far and near, we come together as we have always come—”
And the answering chants came back, from the men and women of Acosta and the Three Cities and Pueklor and Equete:
“Always come, always come …”
“We come together, all different, all the same, in peace for all men are brothers—”
“All men are brothers, all are brothers …”
Side by side they sat—rough seamen and happy industrialists, proud hunters and serious philosophers from far Equete.
The drums beat faster.
The orange fires painted shadow-dances along the walls.
It was the time of the Coming Together.
Keith felt his heart beating with fierce pride in his chest, and he held his wife close by his side. Here in the night under an alien sky that glowed with the light of a million moons—here, at last, was a dream that could not die.
Ralph Nostrand was silent, watching.
The old people—it was hard to think of them as robots, for they had been fathers and mothers and friends—stayed in the rear circles, in the shadows, watching the children they had led through life.
It was impossible to believe that they were not proud.
For many long hours the ceremony went on through the long, long night. There was feasting and singing—and a little gay romancing among the young men and women from faraway lands, for these people were not saints.
Fifty hours after the Coming Together had begun, the old, old chant was started by the pool that was the Home of the Spirit. The words were mysterious and strange, but did not the gods say that one day they would be filled with meaning?
Keith saw his two sons singing by the pool.
He felt his wife proud and happy by his side.
“Beyond the clouds that roof our world, beyond the rains that cool our skies—”
“Beyond the clouds, beyond the rain …”
“Beyond our skies lie other skies—”
“Other skies, other skies …”
“Beyond the great sea where floats our world, beyond our sea floats another shore—”
“Another shore, another shore …”
“And there in the great beyond the green Earth waits for us, waits for the coming of our silver arrows—”
“Silver arrows into beyond, beyond…”
“The green Earth waits in the great beyond, and there our far brothers dance under a clean blue sky—”
“Silver arrows into beyond, beyond…”
“Oh, our brothers of Earth are waiting for us in the great beyond—”
“Waiting, waiting for the Coming Together!”
“Beyond the clouds that roof our world, beyond the rains that cool our skies—”
“Waiting, waiting for the Coming Together!”
The drums stopped and there was a silver silence.
A light rain fell from the glowing clouds and sprinkled the plaza with cool, sweet water.
Keith could not speak. He held his wife’s hand and shared her deep understanding. No matter what happened, he was glad that they had come to Venus, glad even if they failed, for it was better to fail than never to have tried at all.
He turned slowly and looked at Captain Nostrand.
Nostrand stood very straight, the firelight touching the old shadows on his face.
His eyes saw far beyond the village of Halaja.
He smiled and held out his hand to Keith. He nodded firmly.
Around the plaza, the drums rolled and the singing began again.
VI
Five years after Ralph Nostrand had left for Earth, the village of Halaja still lay peacefully by the slow blue water of the Smoke River.
Half the old robots had died and been buried, and Bill and Ruth Knudsen had gone home to a small farm in Michigan.
It was time for the Venus colonies to strike off on their own. It was time for the men and women who had guided the new world to return to the old world.
“I wish we could stay, Keith,” Carrie said.
“Me, too. But this isn’t our world, and we’re not needed any more.”
“I never thought that it would be harder to leave than it was to come.”
“I never thought we’d be here nineteen years, either.”
“I’m glad we won’t have to say good-by to our boys.”
“It’ll be rough enough as it is, Carrie. We’ll just bring our old reasonable facsimiles in and let ’em die. I hate to do that to the boys, but they mustn’t suspect anything.”
They walked down the jungle pathway toward Halaja, arm in arm, already trying to remember the world they had to leave. Fortunately, the two robots that had originally been designed to replace them when they went back to Earth were still waiting at the station clearing.
Robots had infinite patience.
They would go to Halaja when Keith and Carrie slipped away, and there they would sicken and die. They would be buried with the rest in the clearing by the Smoke River, where one day their sons, too, would lie—
“I still wish we could stay, Keith.”
He kissed her and ruffled her blond hair. “It’s our turn now, baby. We mustn’t rock the boat.”
Still, they postponed it as long as they could.
They found excuses to stay in Halaja with their sons.
It took the message from Nostrand to make them leave. It came one night and Mark flew it out in the last station copter. It read:
KEITH: OLD MAN VANDERVORT VERY ILL AND NOT EXPECTED TO
LIVE. HE WANTS TO SEE YOU IF YOU CAN COME IN TIME. SHIP ON WAY TO YOU NOW. ALL O.K. AT THIS END. WHAT’RE YOU DOING UP THERE—GOING NATIVE? (SIGNED) RALPH.
“Well,” Carrie said, “he couldn’t live forever.”
“He took a stab at it, though,” Keith said.
“We’ll have to go.”
“Yes. We’ll have to go.”
They left the village that had been their home one night in the rain, while their sons slept. The two robot humanoids who were their identical twins climbed into the bed that was still warm from their bodies.
Keith and Carrie walked together through the plaza of Halaja, past the Home of the Spirit, and out the gate. The rain was cold in their faces. They walked along the pathway through the Sirau-fruit to the damp athletic field to the west of the village.
They did not look back.
The copter lifted them into the silver clouds for the last time and carried them east to the station clearing. They said good-by to Mark Kamoto, who would follow them a year later on the voyage of no return.
The ship that had carried them from Earth nineteen years ago waited now in the rain to carry them back again.
They looked one last time at the gray-green wall of the jungle and the yellow light spilling out from the domed station house. They looked one last time at the banks of luminous clouds that flowed like a sea of moons through the sky.
They looked one last time westward into the night, toward the sleeping village of Halaja.
They boarded the ship.
Ahead of them was Earth, and a dying man. Ahead of them, lost now in the immensities that swam between the worlds, was an old, old man with a white beard and nervous blue eyes that darted through the shadows of a too-hot room.
Ahead of them was James Murray Vandervort and a final question.
Why?
The land was crisp and hot and clean under the Arizona sun. The air was charged with a fresh golden tang that made you want to stand in the wonderful sand and fill your lungs over and over again.
The sky was blue and cloudless. The greens of the desert plants were as bright and vivid as if they had been newly painted.
Like flowers, Keith and Carrie lifted their faces to the wind and sought the sun.
It was good to be back.
