He passed slowly through rooms and halls. Much of their serene proportions, blue-gray plastering, gleaming-grained wood floors, furniture and fireplaces, had grown beneath his hands; much of the drapery was Eva’s work. Later, when the plantation commanded a large staff and most of their attention, they had hired professionals to enlarge the building. But the heart of it, he thought, would always be the heart that Eva and he had shared.
Upstairs was their suite, bedchamber, bath, and a separate study for each. At first, after she died, he had wanted to close hers off, or make a kind of shrine of it. Later he came to understand how she would have scorned that, she who always looked outward and lived in the overflowingness of tomorrow. He gave it to Teresa for her use and she could make whatever changes she wished.
His private room stayed as it had been, big desk, big leather armchair, walls lined with books as well as microtapes, book publishing having become a flourishing luxury industry well before anyone might have expected it to on an isolated colony world. French doors gave on a balcony. The panes were full of rain, wind hooted, lightning flared, thunder made drumfire which shuddered in the walls. He could barely see down a sweep of grass, trees, flowerbed-bordered paths to the great lake. Waves ran furious over its iron hue. Besides the storm, Raksh was at closest approach, raising tides across the tides of the sun.
The apartment was gloomy and a touch cold. He switched on the heater and a single fluoropanel, put Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg on the player, poured himself a small whisky and settled down with his pipe and the Federalist Papers.
My duty to reread them, if we’re trying to work out a government which’ll stay libertarian, now that population’s reached the point where Rustum needs more than a mayor and council in Anchor, he thought; then chuckling: Duty, hell! I enjoy the style. They could write in those days.
What’d you have said, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, if you’d been told that someday some people would travel twenty light-years, cut themselves off from the planet that begot mankind, just to keep alive the words you lived by?
I suspect you’d say, “Don’t copy us. Learn from us—from our mistakes, what we overlooked, as well as what we got right.”
We’re trying, gentlemen.
“The erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety—”
Bop, it said on the door. He knew that shy knock. “Come in,” he called.
His great-granddaughter entered. “Hi,” she said.
“I figured you’d be playing with the other kids, Alice,” he answered, referring more to those of the staff than to her younger brother.
“I’m tired, too.” The slight form in the crisp white frock snuggled against his trousers. “Story?”
“Calculating minx. Well, c’mon.” He helped the girl scramble to his lap. Her eyes were blue and enormous, her curls and color and odor of sunlight—if memory served, exactly like those of Mary Lochaber when she was young. No surprise, considering that Mary was also an ancestor of Alice….
She gave him a happy sigh. “What kind of story do you want?” he asked.
” ‘Bout you an’ Eva-Granny.”
For an instant he knew Eva was gone, no more than three years gone, and darkness went through him in a flood. It left; he could look at her picture on the desk and think how it was good to give this flesh of her flesh what he could of what she had been and done; for then, after he himself, and later the children they had gotten together, were likewise departed, a glow of her would live on.
And it was no longer pain for him, really, it was a special kind of pleasure to hark back.
“Hm-m-m, let me see,” he murmured. He blew a series of smoke-rings, which made Alice giggle in delight and poke her finger through them as they went by. Images drifted before him, sharper and brighter than anything in this room except the girl and her warmth. Were they truly from so far in the past? That didn’t seem believable. Of course, these days time went like the wind….
“Ah, yes,” he decided. “You recall I told you how we were explorers before we settled down, Eva-Granny and I.”
“Yes. You tol’ me ‘bout when the t-t-t-TERASAURS,” she got out triumphantly, “they went galloop, galloop ‘roun’ an’ roun’ the big rock till you made’m stop.”
“I couldn’t have done that without Eva-Granny’s help earlier, Alice. Okay, shortly afterward she got the idea of taking a boat out to some islands where nobody had ever landed, only flown over, but that looked wonderful from the air.” (The fantastic coraloid formations might give a clue to certain puzzles concerning marine ecology, which in turn were important if fisheries were to develop further. No need to throw these technicalities at the youngster—nor, actually, any truth if he did, as far as her viewpoint went; because Eva and he had really wanted to explore the marvel for its own sake. She was always seeking the new, the untried. When she became a mother and the mistress of a plantation, it had not taken the freshness from her spirit; she originated more ideas, studies, undertakings than he did, and half of his innovations had been sparked by her eagerness.) “In those days there weren’t enough motors and things to go around, no, not nearly enough. All the motorboats were being used other places. We kept a sailboat by the sea. It was the same kind, except bigger, as I have on the lake, and, in case you don’t know, that’s called a sloop.”
“Becoss it goes sloop-sloop-sloop inna water?”
Coffin laughed. “Never thought of that! Anyhow—”
The phone bonged: its “urgent tone. “‘Scuse me, sweetheart,” Coffin said, and leaned over to press the accept button.
The screen filled with the features of Dorcas Hirayama, mayor of Anchor and thus president of the Constitutional Convention. Her calm was tightly held. “Why, hello,” Coffin greeted. “Happy holidays.”
She smiled at the girl on his lap. “Happy holidays, Alice,” she said. To Coffin: “I’m afraid you’d better send her out.”
He didn’t ask the reason, knowing it would prove valid. He simply inquired, “For how long?”
“Shouldn’t take more than five minutes to tell. Then I suppose you’ll want to spend a while thinking.”
“A moment, please.” Coffin lowered Alice to the floor, rose, and clasped her hand. “Do you mind, dear?” He didn’t see any public question as worth ignoring the dignity of a child. “My Lady Hirayama has a secret. Why don’t you take this book—” she crowed in glee as he gave her a photo album from his roving days—”and go look at it in my bedroom? I’ll call you as soon as I’m through.”
When the door between was shut, he returned to the mayor. “Sorry, Dorcas.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Daniel. But this won’t wait… in spite of going back about thirty-five years.”
For several heartbeats he stood moveless. Chills chased along his spine and out to the ends of his nerves. Lightning glared, thunder exploded, rain dashed against the glass.
Thirty-five years. Rustum years. That’s about twenty of Earth’s. The time it takes light to go between Eridani and Sol.
He sat back down, crossed ankle on knee, tamped the coals in his pipe. “It’s happening, then?” he said flatly.
“It has happened. The message was, they planed to launch a colonizing fleet toward us within five years—five of their years. Unless something interfered, and that doesn’t seem likely, those ships are, at this moment, a third, maybe almost half of the way here. We may have as much as fifty years before they arrive, but no more and probably less.”
“How many aboard?”
“It’s a bigger fleet than carried our founders. The message gave an estimate of five thousand adult passengers.”
In the little death of suspended animation, that they entered dreaming of a glorious resurrection on Rustum—
“What do people have to say about this?” Coffin asked.
“The man who read the tape had the sense to come straight to me, thank God. I swore him
to silence. You’re the first I’ve talked to.”
“Why me?”
Hirayama smiled again, wryly this time. “False modesty never did become you, Daniel. You know how I respect your judgment, and I’m hardly alone in that. Besides, you’re the convention delegate from the Moondance region, its leader at home and its spokesman in Anchor, and it’s the largest and wealthiest in the lowlands, which makes you the most powerful person off High America and comparable in influence to anybody on it. Furthermore, you know your folk better than a highlander like me, who can’t come down among them without a helmet, ever will. Must I continue spelling it out?”
“No need. I’d blush too hard. Okay, Dorcas, what can I do for you?”
“First, give me your opinion. We can’t sit on the news more than a few days, but meanwhile we can lay plans and rally our forces. Offhand, what do you suppose the lowland reaction will be?”
Coffin shrugged. “Mildly favorable, because of glamour and excitement and the rest. No more than that. We’re so busy overrunning the planet. Nor do five thousand immigrants mean a thing to us, as regards crowding or competition, when we don’t yet total a lot more ourselves.”
“You confirm my guess, then.”
“Besides,” Coffin said, not happily, “very few of the newcomers will be able to live down here anyway.”
“Doubtless true. The devil’s about to break loose on High America, you realize that, don’t you?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Suggestions?”
Coffin pondered before he said: “Let me think at leisure, as you predicted I’d want to. I’ll call you back after sleeptime. Agreeable?”
“It’s got to be. Well, happy holidays.”
“Same to you. Don’t let this spoil your fun, Dorcas. You and I won’t have to cope with the arrival.”
“No. That girl of yours will.”
“Right. We’ll have to decide on her account. I only hope we’re able to. Good-bye.”
Coffin switched off, crossed the room, and knocked on the inner door. “All done, Alice,” he said. “Shall we continue our story?”
A calm spell, predicted to last a while, enabled Coffin to flit about by aircar, visiting chosen households throughout that huge, loosely defined territory which looked to him for guidance in its common affairs. He could have phoned instead, but the instrument made too many nuances impossible. Nobody objected to his breaking the custom of the season. They were glad to return some of the hospitality he and Eva had shown them.
Thus he went for a horseback ride with George Stein, who farmed part of the estate whereon he lived but mainly was the owner of the single steel mill in the lowlands, hence a man of weight. Stein knew that Coffin’s real desire was to speak privately. Yet the outing was worthwhile in its own right.
The Cyrus Valley was lower and warmer than Lake Moondance. Here many trees and shrubs— goldwood, soartop, fakepine, gnome—kept their foliage the year around. The blue-green “grasses” of summer had given way to russet muscoid, whose softness muffled hoofbeats. This was open woodland, where groves stood well apart. Between them could be seen an upward leap of mountains, which lost themselves in pearl-gray cloud deck. The air was mild and damp, blowing a little, laden with odors of humus. Afar whistled a syrinx bird.
When Coffin had finished his tale, Stein was quiet for a space. Saddle leather squeaked, muscles moved soothingly between thighs. A good land, Coffin thought, not for the first or the hundredth time. How glad I am that, having conquered it, we made our peace with it May there always be this kind of restraining wisdom on Rustum.
“Well, not altogether unexpected, hey?” Stein said at length. “I mean, ever since radio contact was established, it’s seemed more and more as if this colony wasn’t a dying-gasp attempt after all. Earth’s made some resumption of a space effort. And they may have a few expeditions out looking for new habitable planets, as they claim; but they know for certain that ours is.”
“On the highlands,” Coffin answered redundantly. “I doubt that this lot they’re shipping to us, I doubt it contains a bigger percentage than the original settlers had, of persons able to tolerate lowland air pressure. And… the highlands are pretty well filled up.”
“What? You’re not serious, Dan.”
“Never more so, my friend. There isn’t much real estate that far aloft, and High America contains nearly the whole of what’s desirable. Most has been claimed, under the Homestead Rule, and you can bet your nose that the rest soon will be, after this news breaks.”
“Why? Who has to worry about getting crowded? The lowlands can feed a hundred High Americas if we expand cultivation. Let them industrialize the whole plateau if need be.” Stein lifted a hand. “Oh, yes, I remember past rivalry. But that was before you got some industry started down here. Now we don’t have to fear economic domination. Anytime they overcharge us, we can build new facilities and undersell them. Therefore it makes perfectly good sense to specialize along geographical lines.”
“The trouble is,” Coffin said, “that prospect is exactly what’s worrying the more thoughtful High Americans. Has been for quite a while. They’ve been raised in the same tradition of elbow room and ample unspoiled nature as we have, George. They want to keep it for their descendants; and the area available to those descendants will be limited for a long time, historically speaking, until at last the pressure-tolerant genes have crowded the older kind out of man on Rustum.
“For instance, take my sometime partner Tom de Smet. He’s spent a fairish part of his life buying out land claims in the wilderness, as he got the money to do it. He’s created a really gigantic preserve. He’ll deed it to the public, if we write into the Constitution an article making its preservation perpetual, and certain other provisions he wants as regards the general environment. Failing that, his family intends to keep it. On a smaller scale, similar things have been happening— similar baronies have been growing—everywhere on High America. People have not forgotten what overpopulation did to Earth, and they don’t aim to let their personal descendants get caught in the same bind.”
“But—oh, Lord!” Stein exclaimed. “How many immigrants did you say? Five thousand? Well, I grant you even forty years hence, or whenever they arrive, even then they’ll be a substantial addition. Nevertheless, a minority group. And no matter how they breed, they won’t speed population increase enough to make any important difference.”
“They will, though,” Coffin replied, “having no land available to them for the reasons I just gave you—they will be a damned significant augmentation of one class of people we’re already beginning to get a few of.”
“Who?”
“The proletariat.”
“What’s that?”
“Not everybody on High America succeeded in becoming an independent farmer, a technical expert, or an entrepreneur. There are also those who, however worthy, have no special talents. Laborers, clerks, servants, routine maintenance men, et cetera. Those who have jobs, whatever jobs they happen to get, rather than careers. Those whose jobs get automated out from under them when employees acquire the means to build the machinery—unless they accept low wages and sink to the bottom of the social pyramid.”
“What about them?” Stein asked.
“You’ve not been keeping in touch with developments on High America over the years. I have. Mind you, I’m not scoffing at the people I’m talking about. Mostly they’re perfectly decent, conscientious human beings. They were absolutely vital in the early days.
“The point is, the early days are behind us. The frontier on High America is gone. We have a planetful of frontier in the lowlands, but that’s no help to men and women who can’t breathe here without getting sick.
“Anchor hasn’t got a real city proletariat yet, nor has its countryside got a rural one. Nevertheless, the tendency exits. It’s becoming noticeable, as increasing numbers of machines and workers end the chronic labor shortage we used to have.
“If something isn’t done,
Rustum will repeat Earth’s miserable history. Poverty-stricken masses. Concentration on wealth and power. The growth of collectivism. Later, demagogues preaching revolution, and many of the well-off applauding, because they no longer have roots either, in a depersonalized society. Upheavals which can only lead to tyranny. Everything which we were supposed to escape by coming to Rustum!”
Stein frowned. “Sounds farfetched.”
“Oh, it is farfetched in the lowlands,” Coffin admitted. “A territory this big won’t stifle in a hurry. But High America is a different case.”
“What do they plan to do to head off this, uh, proletariat?”
Coffin smiled, not merrily. “That’s a good question. Especially when the whole idea of the Constitutional Convention is to secure individual rights—close the loopholes through which they got shot down in the republics of Earth—limit the government strictly to keeping public order and protecting the general environment—because, thank God, we don’t have to worry about foreign enemies.” Somberly: “Unless we generate our own. Societies have been known to polarize themselves. Civil wars are common in history.”
“On the one hand, then, you don’t want a government able to take hold of things; on the other hand, you don’t dare let things drift,” Stein complained. “What do you propose, then?”
“Nobody has a neat solution,” Coffin said. “Besides, we hope to avoid imposing any ideology, unless you count freedom itself. However—official policies could maybe encourage an organic development. For instance, under the ‘public order’ heading, government might create incentives for employers to treat their employees as human beings, individual human beings, not just interchangeable machines or a faceless organized mass. Better conditions could be maintained for the growth of small than big businesses; a strict hard-money rule ought to help there, if it includes some provision for persons down on their luck. On the larger scale, under ‘environmental protection,’ maybe agreements can be reached which’ll distribute economic activity in such ways that everybody will have a chance to get ahead, no matter where he lives. Voluntary agreements, of course, with a profit motive behind them, but entered into under the advice of scholars who see more than just the immediate profit.”
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