Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (5 page)

"Bobby,"
he said to his son, "we call this pool the Home of the Spirit. Perhaps
there are those who would say that no spirit exists, but we know better."

The boy gurgled gleefully,
paying no attention.

Keith
filled his pipe with one hand and lit it with his lighter. "It won't be
many years, Bobby, before you will be meeting other men and women before this
pool—mariners from Acosta by the northern sea, industrialists from
Wlan
,
Mepas
, and
Carin
, great hunters from
Peuklor
,
people from far
Equete
, where space flight is already
a dream. You will be dancing with them, and singing with them, and sharing
ideas with them. You will be one of the participants from the first generation
of men to live on Venus. You will meet the others who are growing up on this
world, meet them in peace because that will be your way of life, and
together .
..
what's
that, Bobby?"

Bobby burped genially.

Keith laughed. "You won't understand
what I'm saying,

son
.
Not yet. But one day you will understand. One day—" He felt a hand on his
shoulder.

"Getting pretty melodramatic for an old
man, aren't you?" asked Carrie, kissing his ear and sitting down at his
side.

"Well, I sure wasn't
bowling Bobby over with my profundity," Keith admitted. "He's bored."

"Give
him a few years, darling."

Keith looked at his wife in the
cloudlight
. Her blue eyes were brighter than they had ever
been on Earth. Sitting there by him, so small in the night, she was filled with
a relaxed happiness that made him feel good just to be around her.

"In a few years Bobby
will have a robot for an old man," he said. "I know."

The cool breeze that had swept in after the
rains faded to
a sluggish
warmth. A horde of hungry
insects flew into the plaza, intent upon demonstrating the digestibility of
human blood. All the people had been injected to keep the pests off, but they
were a humming nuisance just the same.

The three of them walked away from the pool
under the glowing clouds and went inside.

Eight Earth-months had passed.

Outside, in the plaza surrounding the Home of
the Spirit, the drums throbbed rhythmically and a ritual chant filled the air.
The robot humanoids were conducting another in the round of sacred
ceremonies, while the children of the village crowded around the pool raptly,
absorbing the words and music and sentiments that were fast becoming their own.

Inside, in the pleasant center room of their
wooden house, Keith and Carrie sat on a
barkcloth
mat
and listened. Across from them were Ruth and Bill Knudsen.

"One thing about being human," Bill said, "you can let
the robots do all the work, at least until the kids grow up enough to wonder
why we're not out there yelling and stomping with the rest."

"What
made you come out here, anyway?" asked Keith.

Bill
shrugged. "Ruth tricked me into it."

His wife, a rather plain woman with a deep strength that made her
attractive, nodded. "Too many pretty gals back home. I figured Bill was
safer here."

Bill and Ruth seldom talked seriously about
themselves. Keith wondered whether it was a symptom of the age they lived in,
or if men had always been reticent about the things that really counted.

"It's been wonderful having you and
Carrie with us," Ruth said. "We'll miss you when you go."

"You
may not feel that way four months from now."

"I think we all need a little ceremonial
drink," Bill boomed. "This joint is getting maudlin."

Keith turned to Carrie. "What
say,
high
priestess?"

"As long as it's purely ceremonial," Carrie said, "it
would seem to be our duty."

"By a strange coincidence," Bill
informed them, "I happen to have some good stuff concealed in my
quarters."

"Go, boy," Keith said.

Bill ducked through the connecting tunnel,
his bare feet thumping on the boards, and returned with a fifth of bourbon.
Carrie produced four clay drinking utensils and a pot of water.

They drank up, gratefully. Much as they all
loved
Halaja
and what it stood for, it was still not
their village. They were all playing parts, and once in a while it felt good to
get away.

From the plaza came the thudding of the drums
and the undulating chants of the robot elders of
Halaja
.
The children were very quiet.

'What we need are a few ceremonial toasts," Bill said.

"(
:
lieck
," said Keith.

They drank one to Old Man
Vandervort.

They drank one to Earth. They drank a few
more on general principles. By the time the fifth was gone, they were all
feeling
prelly
good.

"I guess," Carrie said finally, "that this is as good a
time as any to spring the glad tidings."

"Um-m-m," said Keith. "Spring
away."

Carrie brushed a strand of her blond hair out
of her eyes. 'To be unutterably crude," she said, "I'm
pregnant."

Keith found himself on his feet. Suddenly aware that his mouth was open,
he closed it and sat down again.

Bill and Ruth laughed their congratulations.

Carrie looked thoroughly pleased with
herself.

"We'll have to hurry up and get out of here," Keith said.
"Get back to Earth, hospitals—" He stopped, catching the expression
on his wife's face.

"Easy does it," Carrie said.
"No hot water needed yet."

"Sorry," Keith subsided.

"Darling," she said slowly, "do
we have to go back? Do you really want your child to be born on Earth?"

The drums stopped and the singing died to a lonely humming in the plaza
by the Home of the Spirit.

Keith smiled. "It's up to you,
Carrie," he said. "
Its
up to you."

IV.

They stayed where they
were.

One year later, after their son had been born
and named in the naming ceremony of
Halaja
, Keith got
a message from the Old Man. Mark flew it out to him, and it read:

MY DEAR KEITH: IT PAINS ME
TO STATE THAT I AM UNHAPPY ABOUT YOUR REPORTS ON OUR PROJECT. I HAVE FOUND
THEM SKIMPY AND UNINFOR-

MATIVE.
PLEASE MAKE THEM MUCH MORE DETAILED IN THE FUTURE. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT I
KNOW EVERYTHING THAT TRANSPIRES IN OUR COLONIES. REPEAT: IMPERATIVE. HOW IS THE
CEREMONIAL FRAMEWORK SHAPING UP? ARE THE INDUSTRIES OF WLEN AND MEPAS AND CARIN
PROPERLY INTEGRATED WITH THE SPECULATIONS OF THE EQUETE SPACE PHILOSOPHERS? HOW
ABOUT THE INDIVIDUALISTIC ATTITUDES OF THE PUEKLOR HUNTERS? I MUST KNOW
EVERYTHING. HOW MUCH LONGER WILL YOU STAY? HOW ARE THE ROBOTS WORKING OUT? WHEN
WILL THE FIRST DEATHS OCCUR?
SOME SLIGHT AGITATION HERE.
RUMOR THAT ONE OF OUR SHIPS REPORTED IN TAKE-OFF.
RUMOR OF INVESTIGATION.
BUT I CAN HANDLE GOVERNMENT.
FOUNDATION STILL GOING SMOOTHLY AND MORE CHILDREN ON THE WAY.
MUST KNOW COMPLETE RESULTS OF ALL NEW DEVELOPMENTS.
UNDERSTAND YOU NOW HAVE SON. PLEASE MAKE ALL REPORTS MORE THOROUGH IN FUTURE.
(SIGNED) JAMES MURRAY VANDERVORT.

The message worried Keith, and he did not
show it to Carrie. The rather crotchety demands for fuller information were
typical enough for Van, but the hints of possible suspicions on the part of the
government were disquieting.

Despite the Old Man's power and influence, he
did not run Earth.
Undynamic
as the world government
might be, it still could not be ignored.

Peace on Earth had been won at the price of
conformity. The era of plenty was founded on a stable system where people
thought alike, believed alike, talked alike. The dream of mankind through
centuries of war and hate and fear had been achieved. Man had what he had
always wanted, and he was in no hurry to change. His motto was simple:

DON'T
ROCK THE BOAT.

Well, the Venus colonies were rocking the boat.

They
were blowing up a storm.

It was true that they were not exactly illegal; there were no laws
against fresh cultures on Venus. No one had ever thought about them—there
quite, literally were no legal precedents.

They
were
outside
the law.

But if they were discovered the game was up,
Their
entire effectiveness depended upon secrecy. The colonies had to have time to
grow up and develop and charge their life-ways with life and vigor. They had to
contact Earth—not the other way around.

Once, to Keith, it had all been an unusually
interesting scientific experiment; nothing more than that. He had not, of
course, been worried about the outcome. There was absolutely no danger that the
new
culures
might flower only to bring war back to a
peaceful Earth. The colonies were planned so that war was impossible.

The early
socioculturists
had made a science
out of the primitive social disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology,
and economics. The Venus colonies were products of that science.

One thing about a science: it works.

If an engineer knows his business, his bridge
does not fall down.

If a socioculturist knows
his
business, his culture does what he wants it to.

Keith, in a way, had been building a bridge. True, it was a bridge on
the grand scale, but still it was a bridge. He had not been too emotionally
involved in it.

That
was before he had come to Venus.

That was before he had lived in
Halaja
.

That was before he had known that his own son
would have to walk across the bridge he was building.

He
did not want anything to happen to that bridge.

And, holding the message in his hand, the old
question nagged at his mind. He could see the Old Man as he had last seen him—a
flushed, bearded gnome,
pad-padding
across the rug in his
stifling, incredible room, the fanatical blue eyes that peered into the dark
and shadowed corners—

This
was the Old Man's bridge, too.

He was the one who had
insisted that it be built, knowing he could not live to see it, or benefit by
it. Keith's question came back, insistently:
Why?

The years drifted by, and for Keith and
Carrie they were supremely happy years.

They raised their two sons—Bobby, the adopted
one, and Keith, their own child. They watched them grow, strong and straight,
and they never regretted depriving them of Earth. Each child loves the culture
into which he is
bom
, and for Keith and Bobby
Halaja
was home.

The days were long and filled with work and
laughter. The
Sirau
-fruit flowered in the cleared
jungle fields and the great
hawklike
birds splashed
vivid colors across the rolling gray clouds of the sky. In the field by the
slow blue water of the Smoke River games were played with the fierce intensity
of a World Series on Earth—and, in fact, one of the games played was baseball.
It was strange to hear the clean crack of a bat singing through the humid
Venusian
air-There were expeditions through the jungles,
encounters with strange animals, the perfumed smell of tropical flowers.

And always, endlessly, the rituals and
ceremonies that were to be
Halaja's
contribution to
the emerging pattern of life on Venus.

There were the great torrential rains that
swept through the log houses of the village—rain that drummed on the plank
passageways and churned the water in the little circular pool in the center of
the plaza. At night, the clouds glowed with the soft silver of an ageless
enchantment, and Keith and Carrie knew what it was to fall in love again.