“Over here, Allison.”
She pushed aside the branches and ran straight into an ocean which roared as the waves rushed past her. She cried out in fright; but of course, there was no water, only an illusion which she could neither feel nor touch, though the waves’ “surface” foamed and eddied about her waist. Farther out she saw lithe blue sea-creatures dancing impossibly on their tails.
With one final crash, the waves dissolved and receded into the surrounding foliage.
“How do you like it?” Casimir stood with Kyoko on an arched bridge above. He shone in gold from head to toe, and raised a golden glass.
“What do you think?” he asked. “The ocean, I mean.”
“Oh, it’s…dramatic, thank you,” she called up at him. “Were those dolphins?”
Then her eye fixed on Kyoko’s robe. The line was straight like a kimono, but the material swirled with colored patterns, a hypnotic kaleidoscope. How could that work, she wondered; liquid crystals, or…
Casimir was saying, “They look just like people when they do that, don’t they? Legend has it they used to throw themselves onto the shore, hoping to become men.”
“Is that right? I thought it was the other way round.”
A flock of fairies sailed by overhead, leaving behind a trail of glitter.
Kyoko said, “Why don’t you come up, Allison?” She pointed out the foot of the bridge.
Allison climbed carefully and held on to the rail, for she was still unaccustomed to the weak ship “gravity”; it made her feel as though she might take off with the fairies. Rissa’s pills did seem to take care of the oxygen problem, at least.
“A drink, Allison?” Kyoko offered. “Some ginger ale, perhaps?”
“Thank you.” She gazed at the robe as its colors flowed and disappeared around Kyoko’s slim form.
“Do you like it?” Kyoko asked. “I picked it out from my daughter’s last shipment of ‘audiovisuals.’ It reminds me of Foxfield auroras.”
“Oh, yes, you’re right.”
Casimir shook his head. “I know something better than ginger ale, much better, to celebrate New Year UNI 89. Something Westerrans used to drink for their New Year. Ever had eggnog?”
“Egg what?”
“Eggnog. Lots of eggs in it,” he promised.
“And what else?”
“Oh, good spirits, milk and cream, touch of—what’s wrong?”
“Milk? You mean a mother’s milk?”
Kyoko laughed like a bell. “She thinks you mean human milk, Cas. No, it’s all cultured,” she said.
“Bovine formula, originally,” he added, “with a few enzymes thrown in to take care of lactose and other irritants.” He handed Allison another golden glass.
She swirled the creamy substance on her tongue. It tasted surprisingly good, she thought.
Explosions and crackling noises filled the air as the space above filled with fireworks. The bridge allowed a good view of the people below as they laughed and cheered, vanished and reappeared.
Several partygoers straggled toward the bridge. “Casimir,” called one, “we’ve found you at last. You must come settle this question. I say it’s a yellow chrysanthemum, but they say it can’t be a Terran plant because—”
“It’s a Vinlandia ‘plantoid,’ isn’t it?” called another.
“‘Plantoid’ is not a word,” replied the first.
Casimir’s metallic features creased apologetically. “Excuse me, Allison; glad to see you here.” He left the bridge and went off with them.
“Sunspirals,” murmured Kyoko.
“What?” Allison was feeling lightheaded, from sensory overload, she thought.
“They’re called sunspirals. I know them well.”
“Oh, the Vinlandia flowers. Let’s walk a bit, I feel dizzy up here.”
Kyoko nodded, and they walked slowly down to the path. Allison watched the shadows of her face and her sleek, black hair. A sister on Vinlandia…
“She wasn’t really your ‘sister,’ was she?”
Kyoko flushed deeply. “You understand, then.”
“I think so,” said Allison. “Yes, I do.”
“Forty years ago we tried to settle Vinlandia. Nothing would grow, people kept dying; we just couldn’t make it work. Iva was among the last to go. I saved her genes for my children; perhaps that was foolish—”
“No, I would have done the same. It is something, for one to have…a continuum.”
“But you kept your planet, as well. Vinlandia was thermolyzed to be seeded with Terran forms; only specimens were kept for—I’m sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t distress you—”
“No, believe me, I do understand,” said Allison. “I remember with Joshua, how many times I wished it had been myself instead.”
“Yes, that’s just how it is.”
They walked on in silence. Allison heard more fireworks muted in the distance. Then she tripped over a low branch, and Kyoko caught her arm to steady her.
“Your bone structure is unique,” Kyoko observed. “All of you who have grown for generations on Foxfield seem to have firm, solid limbs, like unglazed earthenware.”
Allison turned and looked her over. “Earth people seem to come in all different forms. You look like crystal.”
Kyoko laughed again; it was an irresistible sound. “You have such a refreshing way of putting things. It is true, among our millions you must find bewildering variety. Yet even from that perspective, Foxfield is unique.” She paused and grew serious again. “Allison, I’m so glad to know you, and to know that people may learn to keep a place like Foxfield, somehow, without…”
“Yes,” said Allison, “we’ve been fortunate. Now that you’re here, your System may help make our existence less precarious than it has been.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
Then Allison found herself embracing the citizen, and their lips pressed together. Allison felt something hot rise within her, then flow away. Slowly she drew back.
With a shudder, she turned and broke away. The lanterns flashed by overhead as she stumbled back down the path.
XII. The House Divided
Allison sat in the transcomm Sunday afternoon and stared at the white wall peppered with equations. She tried to grasp the essence of these abstruse hieroglyphs. The universe was but a sheet, a “Shimuri sheet” which twisted and folded about itself and through itself, in another dimension or in infinite dimensions? And where the folds met, yet did not seem to meet…“One is visible and tangible and our senses find it, the other is invisible…but close to us as breathing…”
She shook herself. Friend Rufus Jones had had something quite different in mind, a different set of worlds.
A hand tapped her shoulder.
“Oh!” She started violently.
“Scared you, huh?” said Dave.
“Don’t creep up on me,” she snapped. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
His muddy footprints faded away on the self-cleaning floor, as efficiently as had that shattered glass on Silva’s table three weeks ago.
“Hey, what’s eating you?” Dave complained. “You’ve been cross ever since that weird party that you won’t say a word about. Bill talked enough, though.” He smiled slyly. “I bet you made out with some neat guy up there and are scared to death about when Seth finds out.”
“David, you really are getting to be too much. What a thing to say about your mother.”
“Okay, it was someone you knew already. Of course; that Martial fellow, the one that looks like a kewpie doll.”
“Martian,” she corrected, and shrugged. “Go ahead, make up stories.”
“Why shouldn’t you like him? Rufus does. Anyhow, I promise not to tell—if you let me see this program now, that Michiko told me about.”
“Michiko, eh?”
“She says we’re all in it, Mom! Isn’t that fantastic?”
“What else is new?” Allison dryly observed. “Our ‘Lost
Colony’ is the talk of the galactic town, these days.”
“This is different, Mom. It’s a ‘documentary;’ that’s a genuine scientific study, right?”
Allison’s interest pricked up. “A ‘documentary’ program on us?”
“On Foxfield,” Dave said.
She was sick of Shimuri, anyway. “Call-out,” she ordered.
“Oh boy! Call-in Social Newsviews, number zero-one-six-four-three.”
“Program two minutes in progress,” said the System.
A gray-robed narrator appeared. “—societal phenomena of interest and importance to all citizens,” she was saying. “Today we visit a cohort which evolved for one hundred and three years, subjective time, completely isolated from the mainstream of civilization. These people call themselves the Foxfield Religious Society of Friends. The title of our feature is—Foxfield: Pastoral Passivists in Transition.”
An open moss field faded in around them, the “landing strip” near Georgeville. From somewhere, a squeaky chorus sang:
’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free.
’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be…
“Mom,” Dave whispered, “that’s our Sunday class.”
“This,” said the narrator with a sweep of the hand, “is Foxfield, the fertile, tranquil planet sustained by Tau Ceti, a sun slightly cooler than Sol, twelve light-years distant from Terra. And here…”
The scene shifted to Georgeville Road, before house number four, home of Jeremiah Crain, tailor. Number five, Cliff and Martha’s place, was just visible down the road.
“…is Georgeville, the capital of Foxfield, both named incidentally after George Fox, the founder of the Quaker system of supernatural belief over five hundred years ago. The planet was, of course, settled toward the end of the Age of Uncertainty. Note the delightful styling of the townhouses and the quaint solar-paneled roof tops, a major energy resource during that period.
“What sort of people are these Quakers? Why did they leave Terra during the ‘stone age’ of space travel, and how did they survive on an alien, albeit hospitable, planet? To answer these questions…”
“‘Tranquil’ and ‘hospitable,’ indeed,” Allison grumbled. “She ought to fry down south one antinight—”
“Sh, Mom,” Dave whispered.
“…a brief look at the Terran roots of Quaker supernatural belief.”
A gray Meeting House interior appeared, full of “worshipers” in black hats and bonnets.
“We are speaking with William Penn, leader of the Quaker Preservation Society, registered, which resettled in the Pennsylvania Desert after postwar decontamination. William, what can you tell us about the early Quakers?”
Allison exclaimed, “Not the ‘Quaker apples’ again—”
“Sh, Mom, you’re embarrassing me.”
“…an offshoot of Westerran Christocentric mythology,” the sanguine “Quaker” was saying. “The key feature of Quakerism was that every individual possessed equal access to the divine will or ‘message.’ This personal ‘gateway to the supernatural,’ as it were, enabled each person to minister unto his fellows to some degree. In the earliest Meetings for Worship this ministry was often accompanied by violent trembling—hence the term ‘Quaker,’ invented by outsiders.”
“William,” the narrator asked, “the Quakers had a hard time fitting into the rest of society. Why was that so?”
“Maya, the curious thing was that all of those individual messages seemed to agree upon principles of behavior which clashed with the prevailing social codes of that time. Examples include simplicity, meaning abstinence from alcohol, ornamental attire and the arts; and pacifism, a form of peace-worship, which means denial of war and warlike needs. Such principles did lead Quakers to free slaves and found mental hospitals, but these services were not then recognized as socially useful behavior.”
“But later, William, Quakers found their niche as prosperous capitalists, did they not?”
The broad-hatted head nodded. “They settled into Quietism.”
“Also known as passivism,” said the narrator. “Thank you, William Penn, of the Quaker Preservation Society.”
The Meeting House vanished.
“Then, in the year UNI minus one hundred six, the world changed.”
The horizon exploded in a blinding mushroom cloud. Allison let out a cry and covered her ears until the roar died away.
“Hiroshima,” the narrator calmly continued, “ushered in the Age of Uncertainty, an age in which men developed the capacity to destroy the biomass of an entire solar system. This feat was prevented ultimately by the Ultrafeminist uprising which followed the partial catastrophe of the Last War.
“Since Quakers failed to foresee this fortunate turn of events, some grew fanatical in their peace-worship. One group from Philadelphia launched a discarded United Nations Ramscoop vessel to settle at Tau Ceti. Without SLIT it was a desperate mission, for even astronomer Wheelwright, who had detected and studied Tau Ceti’s planets, gave the star but one chance in ten of possessing a planet habitable by humans.”
“Gee, Mom,” said Dave, “we sure lucked out, didn’t we?”
“So did they.”
Foxfield returned: a level brown farmland, etched in infinite rows. Two commensals were spreading fertilizer, and a human farmer drove by on a tractor just behind the ubiquitous narrator.
“Here we see a typical Foxfield farmer, plowing her field. We also see two of those bovine native creatures called commensals, whose discovery made human survival possible on this planet. Commensals generate essential nutrients for humans, much as cattle and other domesticated animals once produced milk and meat for—”
“What the hell—”
Dave stamped his foot. “Mom, I can’t hear a thing!”
The narrator said, “Other typical occupations include mining and parentcorporal maintenance. Parentcorps average three point four children per woman; Foxfielders still practice in vivo foetal development, as do other noncitizens. Nonetheless, an even sex ratio was maintained for ‘religious’ reasons, despite the obvious sexual disparity in survival value.
“System monitoring of the twenty-three current credo-wearers suggests that the average Foxfielder spends eighty percent of her time on survival needs, ten percent on formal education, and most of the remainder on religious ritual. The religious center of life is also the political center, the Meeting House, where Quakers conduct both government and religious ritual.
“How does Quaker government function? Let us find out.”
The main room of the Georgeville Meeting House appeared, with people milling about socially. In the foreground stood Clifford, Anne and Celia, sipping tea with the narrator.
“Friend Clifford Fuller. You are the principal Foxfield historian, are you not?”
Clifford nodded. “In between stuffing kids’ minds and chickens’ gullets.”
A couple of youngsters ran screaming past the narrator as they played chase among the bench rows.
“Is it true,” the narrator asked, “that all Quaker decisions are made by consensus?”
“Of course,” said Clifford. “How else can you find the real truth of the matter?”
“So everyone has to agree on the ‘real truth’ before taking action?”
“That’s right.”
“You must have long meetings.”
“Too long,” Clifford groaned.
“What happens when a strong disagreement arises?”
Celia spoke up. “The Meeting is like Balaam’s Ass,” she said with a glint in her eye. “It may see truth’s sword outstretched in the path ahead, when an individual who would lead it is blind.”
“What a colorful image,” noted the narrator. “I take it you’re saying that peer pressure intervenes…”
“Not necessarily,” said Anne. “It is possible for one person at a given moment to see a much greater fraction of the Light than anyone else in the Meeting. When that happens, the force
of the individual vision may become the will of the Meeting.”
“A supernatural leading, I see. Tell me, Friend Clifford, do you foresee any difficulties in reconciling your tradition with UNI System voting?”
“No,” he said, “so long as we continue to run our own affairs according to the Light within.”
“Thank you, Friends of Foxfield.”
The room vanished, along with the narrator’s teacup.
“As you see, Friends show initial resistance to the concept of UNI Systemization, as have other populations. But change is coming to Foxfield. Just twenty-four days ago, or twenty-eight ‘half-days’ local time, Adjustor Silva Maio of the Board flagship UNIS-11 reestablished contact with the colony.”
The initial landing scene appeared. Allison stared into the crowd of Foxfielders, as viewed from the shuttle. Even then, the credos had been watching.
The scene dissolved, and the narrator stood with the Adjustor. “Adjustor Maio is best known for her adjustment of the neofascist movement on Titan.”
Silva nodded. “Avery different task.”
“At this point in time, how do you assess Foxfield?”
“Foxfield is unique in that the colonists have no experience of System evolution up to today. That is why the Board enacted the Foxfield Special Status Act. I think that reintegration is progressing well. The fact that a number of Foxfielders already have accepted credometers and are active, voting citizens speaks for itself.”
“Do you foresee any significant change in the Friends’ way of life resulting from reintegration?”
“UNI maintains that all humans have the same basic set of physiological and social needs, and equal right to fulfillment of those needs. The Board of Adjustors will uphold that right for all citizens.”
“Thank you, Adjustor Silva Maio, of the UNIS-11 stationed at Foxfield. Foxfield: Pastoral Passivists in Transition has been a feature of Social Newsviews zero-one-six-four-three; your host, Maya Wotumbu. Join us again next week as we present, The Floating-World Subculture: Fact or Fiction? See you then.” The narrator winked out.
Allison stared off in thought.
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