As we returned to the main living quarters, Tom stopped by the message center. He came out looking enormously pleased and excited.
"Beth!" he said. "Why didn't you tell me?" He waved a message slip at me. "This is from Stanford—approving an early start to your sabbatical, so you can work in the L-5 Colony. It says that if you decide to stay here, as you hinted, you would be asked to serve as an extramural professor for as long as you choose."
I winced at the pleasure in his voice. This would make it harder yet.
"Tom, I don't know if I want to be a colonist here. I do want to spend a year here, at least, trying to help out, and I think it will take at least that long. That's why I sent my message. I didn't expect such a fast reply, or I'd have talked with you before."
"You think you've got the solution to our problem here?"
"Not a solution. All I've got is an explanation."
He looked relieved. "Hell, don't worry about that, Beth. We've solved every other problem that Nature's been able to throw at us up here. If you can tell us the cause of it, well find a fix."
"I hope you're right. I wish I was that confident." I thought for a few seconds, then mentally shrugged. I had to get it over with, the sooner the better.
"Tom, I could say this a hundred ways, but none of them are graceful. I'll say it flat out: we don't belong here."
He frowned, then laughed uneasily. "Beth, you'll have to say more than that. I don't know what you're trying to tell me."
I leaned forward and took his hands, thin and bony, in mine. "Look, you know my thought processes as well as anybody in the world—or out of it. I'll tell you exactly how I got to where I am, and you can tell me if you spot any error in the logic."
"All right." He nodded. His face was troubled. "What's the bad news?"
"All that I knew when I came up here," I said, "was that the children in the Colony were feeling terribly lost and unhappy. That was obvious from the things they were writing in school. Then, even before we got here, I noticed an odd thing. You never called them the children—it was always the 'space-borns.' And when I got here I found that the other adult colonists used the same expression."
"Well, Beth, they are space-born—all of them."
"Of course they are, but more than that they are your children. It's not as if some of the children had been born on Earth, and you needed to separate the two types for some reason. They were all born here. Oh, I know there's plenty of love and affection, it's not that. I've seen the teachers working with the children, and I've been impressed by them. But I still found it odd that you would refer to them by a different name. I wondered at first if it were their odd appearance—that was the only explanation that I could think of."
I thought back to that appearance, and to the aerial ballet of the children's activities, the movement of those delicate, graceful bodies with their smooth skin and scanty hair.
"When I got here, I went to hear the classes that were being taught. They were excellent. I can't recall hearing anything better on Earth. Well presented, by teachers who loved the children and their work. I seemed to be stuck. I went back to my room, locked myself in, and re-read the school reports and the medical records.
"Tom, you know the methods I use in my work. I tried to imagine myself inside the head of one of the space-borns, seeing the world through the child's eyes. It wasn't easy, because the cultural referents are so different—but when I got it, it was a revelation. Remember, not one of the children here has ever been to Earth—not even to the Moon. This, the Colony, is the world. The only real world, the only one that matters."
"We tell them all about Earth, and the Moon too, Beth. They will all visit them, in due course."
"I know you tell them of Earth and Moon—too much. Tom, all your teaching is done by adults, born and raised on Earth, and it has a single viewpoint—a geocentric one. We can't see the world any other way. But try and see it now as an outsider would. You try to get the children to live in the high-gravity parts of the Colony, the ones most like Earth—when all the time they would rather live in zero gee, up near the Hub. You plan elaborate exercise programs for them, designed to prevent calcium loss and to keep their muscles strong. They hate it, they don't need those muscles or that strong bone structure. They don't see any point in running on the treadmill—that's the way they see you, in the Red Queen's Race and getting nowhere. You even promote standards of beauty based on Earth physique—which must make them all feel like freaks.
"Do you wonder that they feel alienated from the adults?"
I paused for breath. Tom was looking unconvinced, and a little stubborn.
"Beth, of course we try and get them to exercise in the higher gravity parts of the Colony. Surely you understand why. We don't want them to feel they're on a treadmill, but if they don't build their bodies they'll never be able to go to Earth at all—it will be closed to them."
"Sure it will." I held to my purpose and pressed on. "Just the way that a trip to Jupiter is closed to you and me. Do we worry about that? Of course not. It isn't home.
"Tom, this is big news. The Colony here is a total success. It can run itself indefinitely. There's only one thing out of place in the Colony. Us. We don't belong here. We're clumsy in the low gravity, we need special measures to keep fit, and we never can learn some of the zero-gee skills of the space children. As for them, they're miserable and self-destructive for one good reason—people they love are telling them they should be something they are not, something they don't want to be. That gets drummed into them, day after day. Do you wonder that they seek happiness away with their own kind, or that they are thoroughly miserable and confused with us?"
Tom was looking crushed and miserable, his eyes full of self-doubt, but I had to finish.
"The children could run this Colony, Tom, today—with a minimum of advice and assistance from us. This is their home. Earth is an alien place, a remote, unreal ornament in the sky. As for us, we've served our purpose. We were just the transition team, essential to getting the place started. Now, we do more harm than good."
I was done. I watched in silence as Tom grappled with what I had said, watched as the despair mounted in his face.
"Beth, if that's it, why can't we see it?" His voice was anguished.
"You are too close to it—you devoted your life to this Colony, all of you. It needed somebody from the outside to take a close look."
"But Beth, you're saying we'd harm the space-borns—the children," he corrected himself quickly. "We'd never do that."
"You wouldn't harm them, knowingly. You've harmed them, just the same. Don't you see, somehow to you they aren't real children. You watch them, all of you, waiting for the magic day when they will change to human children and be like you. That won't happen, ever. They are right for space. Compared to them, we are clumsy, poorly-coordinated. We aren't right for life up here."
Tom had never been self-deluding, and he had never been a coward. He was fighting to find a flaw in what I said, but on his face was dawning a pained and yearning look, the mask of Moses, learning that he might see but could never live in the Promised Land. I wondered if I could ever soothe away part of that loss.
"Beth." He roused himself, and looked at me, trying one last hope. "If what you say is true, if the children don't need us or want us here—then why do you plan to come and live here, yourself? What use will you be as a behavioral specialist, if you don't even try and influence the children's attitudes? You'll have no work to do here."
I leaned forward and took Tom in my arms, cradling his head on my breast.
"I'll have work, Tom, more work than I've ever had in my whole life. People here will need help to adjust, tremendous help. But not the children. Everyone but the children."
Afterword.
To me, the most interesting parts of the Skylab experiments were the biomedical results. The astronauts adjusted to free fall after a few days, so they didn't feel nauseated all the time. But soon after they went up their bodies
began to excrete calcium, and that loss continued the whole time they were up there. Most significantly, the rate of loss was constant, as high at the end of the flight as near the beginning.
The possible implications of that are obvious. Lose calcium for a long enough period, and you won't have a bone structure left that can stand Earth's gravity. That leaves you with two possible conclusions: mankind can't take a low-gee environment—men and women would die if they were up there long enough. Or mankind would adapt to space, becoming a life-form that was not suited to existence on the surface of a planet. Take your pick—the evidence is not in yet.
Last year, the Russians had astronauts up in orbit for a much longer period—a hundred and fifty-nine days. They survived all right, and the use of special pressure suits helped solve some earlier problems with blood pressure and blood circulation. But I haven't seen any reports yet on their calcium loss. The only reports so far released to the West have not said anything about it. Maybe in the next six months we'll have news from Russia that tells if this story is a prediction or an obsolete worry.
BOUNDED IN A NUTSHELL
The books were piled high on the desk and overflowed into a heap on the floor. Merle Walters paused, dropped his shapeless hat onto a chair and picked up one of the books. It was heavy and blue-jacketed, and entitled Advances In Parapsychology. He looked in surprise at the secretary, half-hidden behind the piles of volumes.
"What's going on here, Franny? Has Tolly started seances in there?"
"Good morning, Mr. Walters. Go right on in, Mr. Suomi's expecting you."
Walters shrugged and limped through into the inner office. Tolly Suomi, neatly groomed as always, looked up at his entrance and pushed a pile of yellow file cards away from him on the desk. He shook his head, a fraction of an inch left and right, and sat tapping one remaining card held between thumb and forefinger.
"That was quick action, Merle. I thought it might take you a while to break loose after Franny called you."
Merle Walters sat down, favoring his left leg. "Loose, from nothing. There's a special Hell for people put out to pasture, and I'm in it."
Suomi looked at him keenly, assessing the eyes, complexion, and posture. "Maybe, Merle, but it seems to agree with you. You look a good deal healthier than you did six months ago. Healthy enough for you to get a bit more trouble from me." He leaned back in his chair. "You know, there's another special Hell for company presidents who don't believe the reports they get from their purchasing departments. Merle, what are your views on telepathy?"
Walters looked perplexed. He leaned back also, the fingers of his right hand automatically reaching over in a habitual gesture to massage the shoulder of his empty left sleeve. After a few moments he shook his head.
"Telepathy? It's bunk, Tolly. Now, if you'd asked me that forty years ago, I'd have said it was the most exciting thing in the world. Back when Rhine started his work, I thought there was really something there. Since then, it's gone nowhere. Christ, there's been any amount of talk, lots of horseshit, no real evidence, and nothing for progress. So now, I say it's bunk—or else we've been going about it all wrong. What's it got to do with WAWD Corporation?"
Suomi sighed. "An unfavorable review. That's just about what I thought you'd say. I would have expressed it differently, but after looking at that lot—" He jerked his thumb at the stack of books on the credenza behind him "—I tend to the same view. I was hoping you might feel otherwise, and persuade me. You see, we've got a problem." He pushed the pile of purchasing file cards toward Walters. "What do you do if your head of purchasing comes in and says that the competition is using telepathy on Government surplus buys?"
"Depends who it is. Either you send him to have his head examined, or you send somebody out to the sales with him to get a second opinion."
"Right. You send somebody really solid with him, like Jack Tukey, right? Somebody who has his head screwed on the right way around. I agree, that's exactly what you do. So now take a look at these. Jack's comments are on top, the others are underneath."
Merle Walters rubbed his finger across the bridge of his broad, blunt nose, and scowled. "You're a bastard, Tolly. I should know you better by now. I let you set me up for that. What's the story, then, as you see it?" He leaned forward and pulled the cards toward him. "Is it worth getting my glasses out to read these damned things, or can you summarize for me?
"Take them away with you and read them over later. They flesh out the details, but I can give you a summary easily enough." Suomi reached across his desk and pushed the intercom button. "Franny, bring me the file on Kirkwood Research, will you?" He looked at Walters. "No, you never heard of them. They are only an eight-man outfit, based in Arlington. Four years old, privately owned. I've had trouble getting information on them, but I can show you a copy of their 129 for DOD procurements. Maybe I should back up a bit. Did you know the Government has been holding a bunch of simultaneous auctions on the sale of war surplus equipment?"
Walters nodded. "I heard about that through the CBD. Four auctions in four different places. I suppose the idea is to stop price fixing and get better prices. It sounded half-assed to me when I first heard about it."
"Maybe. Anyway, it's not working very well—but not for the reasons you might think. We've been to six of those sales in the past two months, and we've bought a fair amount of surplus electronics equipment. Prices were good—but Jim Spurling noticed that the reps from Kirkwood Research were using a curious bid pattern."
"How do you mean, curious?"
"Well, sometimes they would bid hard, and sometimes they'd start strong and then stop suddenly. When Jim got back here he looked up the complete list of final sales prices, from all four auction centers. He found Kirkwood had a rep at each one, and had bought at all of them."
"Nothing strange in that, Tolly. Didn't you do the same? You get your bargains that way, if you happen to be the only ones interested in making a bid on something."
"Sure we did. That's not the odd part. When Jim analyzed Kirkwood's bidding, he noticed something he couldn't explain. Kirkwood seemed to know exactly what was happening, all the time at all the auctions."
"That's hard for me to swallow, Tolly. Why did Jim happen to pick out Kirkwood—why didn't he have his eye on Lectron, or Ajax, or one of the other big specialists in surplus equipment?"
"According to Jim they drew attention to themselves. He sat next to one of the Kirkwood men at the first sale, and at first he thought the man was stoned or sick. He sat there, spaced out, and he only seemed in touch with things about half the time. But he bid exactly right, and he stopped bidding—this is the heart of it—when Kirkwood had bought similar equipment, at very good prices, at one of the other auctions."
"Was Jim able to compare the times at each sale?"
"He tried to, afterwards, and he decided that it had to match within a few minutes, at the most. You see the pattern? A buy in one place, a stopped bid everywhere else—consistently."
"How about two-way radios? That would do it."
"That was Jack Tukey's first thought, when he took a look at what Jim had found. Two-way radios are banned at the auctions, but it seemed like a good guess. Next time, he went to one auction and Jim went to another. They both watched the Kirkwood men, and they swear there was no sign of a radio—not even of something small, like a throat mike. How does it sound, Merle?"
Walters was hunched in his seat, bald brow furrowed and eyes far away. "Interesting. And fishy. But not tied down. How close were those times you talked about?"
"Jim Spurling and Jack synchronized watches before the sales and compared notes afterwards. Kirkwood stopped bidding at each auction exactly when they had bought what they wanted at one of the others—only then.
"There's one other thing, Merle. Jim claims that it's not just telepathy—there are other mysteries, too."
Walters grimaced. "One thing at a time, Tolly. Did Jim or Jack get a good look at several different Kirkwood reps?"
"Ye
s. They all have the same, spaced-out expression, and they all seem to cut in and out—like turning themselves on and off."
"That doesn't mean supernatural powers, Tolly."
"No, but how about this, then. Some of the auctioned equipment was made up into mixed lots. The Government does it to get rid of some of the junky stuff."
"I've been through that. To get one or two things that you really want, you have to buy a great random mass of stuff, sometimes."
"So everybody sat there with their pocket calculators, trying to estimate the value of the mixture of items on the block, and it can get very hairy, because you need to know the quantity and value of each item, and some of the lots aren't advertised in advance. The Kirkwood reps didn't have any calculators."
"But they bought anyway?"
"Right. They just sat there, bidding as though they were half-asleep—or not bidding, when it suited them. Jim went over the lists afterwards, and calculated how well Kirkwood had done. In every case, even on the most complex mixed lots, they bid only on the right side of the value. You see what that means?"
"Supermen. Lightning calculators, as well as telepaths. I don't like that one either, Tolly." Walters drummed his fingers on the desk top and stared at the Flower of Repose hanging behind Suomi. "Mind you, I've not heard anything yet that suggests this whole thing is hurting WAWD's business."
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