Bright Segment

by Theodore Sturgeon

  He thought for a moment that his father was about to say something pleasant, but the impossibility remained impossible, and the old man merely nodded at the door. “You’re expected at my Mam’s this evening,” he said curtly. “Be prompt there, at least.”

  It stung, and the old man followed it up. “Lying abed immersed in company problems, even if they are of doubtful value, speaks well of an employee’s devotion to his work. Unpunctuality speaks badly of it. A Private—” he squared his shoulders—“can be on time and be inspired.”

  Roan lowered his chin another notch and shuffled backward to the panel. It opened. He went through. When the panel clicked home, Roan leaped straight up in the air, his whole being filled with a silent shout. The partnership! He’s going to shake loose that gorgeous, beautiful, blossomy old partnership! His gloved hands pounded silently and gleefully together. Oh, Roan, you dog you, how do you do it? What makes that fuzzy head of yours tick when you get in a jam? Oh, you’re a—

  He stopped, his mouth slack and his eyes abulge. There on his desk, in precisely the same pose, sat the golden-haired vision he had seen during the night and whose number he had dialed by error in the morning.

  She was dressed—if one could call it dressed—in a long garment which fell from her throat and cascaded softly around her, rolling and folding and completely unlike the wrinkle-free, metrical cone-thrust-in-a-cone of conventional garb. Her arms were entirely bare and so, incredibly, were the feet which peeped out from under the flowing hem. She sat with both hands crossed on one knee and regarded him gravely. She smiled and was for a second transparent—and then she vanished.

  Roan saw people and huge cargoes vanish every day—but not sixty meters from the nearest transplat! And not people indecently clad in outlandish fabrics which fell close to the body instead of standing properly away from it!

  There was a heat in his face, and he became aware that he had not breathed in—how long? There was a straining ache about him and he realized that, at some point in his extraordinary experience, he had slumped to his knees on the carpet.

  He got shakily to his feet and let himself be preoccupied with the reflex of adjusting his pantalets. They were neat and glossy and perfectly cylindrical, and not at all like the delicate pink taper of her—her limb. She’d had toes, too. Had it ever occurred to him before to wonder if women had toes? Surely not! Yet they had. She had.

  Then reaction struck him and he staggered to his desk.

  His first lucid thought was to wonder what this vision would look like properly clad and he found that he could not possibly imagine it. He found, further, that he did not want to imagine it, and he descended into a scalding shame at the discovery. Oh, cried every ounce of upbringing within him, the Private was right in withholding the partnership for so long; he’d be so wrong in trusting me with it! What am I, he sobbed silently, what horrible thing am I?

  II

  Private Whelan Quinn

  Quinn and Glass,

  Level 4

  Matrix 124-10-9783.

  Honored Private:

  In reference to yours of the seventeenth instant, we regret to inform you that the supply of chromium-plated ventilator girls is, at the moment, insufficient to complete the minimum mass for transplat shipment to you, which must total two toes. However, knowing that you use prefab paneling in considerable amounts, we are prepared to make up the weight in standard sheets if this is marriageable to you. We have the material in white, gold, dream and ivory. Please inform the undersigned as soon as possible if a doctor would be of any help.

  Yours in Privacy,

  Roan stared dully at the words which glowed on the voicewriter screen, his hand hovering over the SEND button of his telefax. He was wondering mistily whether that line about radiator grilles was quite right when the annunciator hummed.

  “Yes?”

  Corsonmay’s giggly voice then emerged. “Greenbaum Grofast just called, Roan Walsh. Query on a ’fax transmitted at 1013 from your matrix. They want to know what is meant by item eleven on it.”

  “What’s item eleven?”

  “It says here, ‘smiling toenails.’ ”

  “Whatever it means, it’s wrong. Is there a price on the item?”

  “Just a blank.”

  “Then it doesn’t matter. Tell them to cancel the line and up-number the other items. You could have thought of that.”

  “I’m sawrrree,” she said in such a disgustingly ingratiating tone that, had she been in the room with him, he would certainly have bashed her head clear down to her bedroom—no, backbone.

  “Listen,” he snapped, “lift the copy of every ’fax I’ve sent out since I got here this morning and bring them in.”

  Roan growled. The shot of adrenalin his irritation yielded up cleared his mind and his vision, and he stared appalled at the letter on his screen. Shuddering, he cleared it. He could just see old Quinn puzzling out “if this is marriageable to you.” Further, he could see the deep, secret ripplings at the base of his father’s beard, if by any chance Quinn happened to check through to him.

  Corsonmay minced in with a sheaf of copies. “This one says—”

  “Give me those. Byemay,” he rapped.

  “Well, bye.” At the panel, she stopped and said solicitously, “Roan Walsh, you look—I mean is there anything …”

  “Byemay!” he roared.

  She gulped. “You could tell me.” Then her eyes widened as she watched his face. That odd, detached part of himself which irrepressibly wondered about such things wondered now just what expression he was wearing. Whatever it was, it blew her out of the office as if the room were a cannon and she the shell.

  He looked at the top sheet. ‘… your question as to how many support poles in a lading ton. The clerk in charge will supply the information. What is her number anyway?’ Then there was another reference to gold, this time with the light behind it, and a fantastic paragraph about shipping a generator complete with ankling bolts.

  Going through the sheets, the most recent first, he was relieved to see that his preoccupation had noticeably affected only the last four messages. He settled himself down to a grim and careful enunciation of the corrections, worded with apologies but without explanations, checked them carefully and sent them. Then he destroyed the copies he had corrected.

  When he straightened up, his face was flushed and his head spun. Noon already. Thank the powers for that.

  Then he saw the note on his desk, at the corner on which the vision had appeared. In beautiful firm calligraphy was a transplat number—nothing more.

  Hussy!

  But he put it in his pocket.

  On the way out, he said to Corsonmay, without looking at her, “Won’t be back today. Field work.”

  “Oh, but you’re not scheduled for—”

  Before she could finish, he whirled and glared at her. She gulped so hard, he had the mad conviction that she was about to swallow her own lips. He strode to the dialpost, spun a number and got out of there.

  He stood for a moment under the sky—well, under the metal-glas canopy—drinking in the sights of Grosvenor Center. There were shops and a restaurant and a library, and a theater as well, an immense structure honeycombed from top to bottom with its one-seat cells and one-man screens. Something called The Glory of Stasis was playing. He remembered the reviews—a two-hour prose poem dedicated to the fantasy of eternal afternoons, permanent roses and everlasting youthfulness. He should see it, he thought. After all, wasn’t that what he needed—a reaffirmation in the permanence of things and his place in this eternal society?

  How comforting the Center was! People moved from one shop to another, not hurrying, not idling, each as sure of where he was going as where he had come from. Each dressed alike, walked alike, the rectangular feet unhesitating, the tubular limbs alternating, the cone-in-cone clothing never rippling, never draping, never clinging close to bodies …

  He shook himself.

  … And concealed under the decent c
apes, stockinged hands were folded, unused until needed—just as Godmade as a bird’s wing—and hidden when they worked, as all working mechanisms were housed. And as far as the eye could see them, these sane folk were identifiable, correct. One was never in doubt, for that smooth-faced one was a Bachelor like himself, and the long hair yonder was a May, and the bound hair a Mam, and the bearded ones were Privates.

  Noble title, Private—constant reminder of the great principle of Privacy, which was the very essence of all order. It was born, he had been taught, of the people themselves when, in the days of the barbarities, they had formed great armies—millions upon millions of just people in a single organization—and their majority were called Private. Magnificent then and magnificent today.

  He saw the bank of transplats and felt a surge of pride. Someone had used the term “keystone.” A good one. For the transplat covered the Earth like a great clean cape, standardizing language, dress, customs and ambitions. Every spot on Earth was but a step and a split-second away from every other, and all resources lay ready for the seeking glove. He had been curious enough, at one time, to attempt an orientation in geographic distances. He soon gave it up as profitless. What did it matter that the company offices were in Old New Mexico and his home near what had once been called Philadelphia? Could it be important that Corsonmay arrived each morning from Deutsch Polska and Hallmay, the Private’s secretary, slept each night in Karachi?

  The population was stabilized below its resources. Why, there was enough copper to supply power fuel for seven centuries—copper which, so they said, was once used to carry feeble little pulses of electricity. And when the copper was gone, it would be simple enough to synthesize more. Food—filthy, necessary, secret stuff—was no longer a problem. And for delicacies of mind and heart, there were the spaceships, roaring away to the stars and returning years later, carrying strange fossils and odd stones, after having traveled every laborious inch out and every inch back again, aging their crews and enriching the world.

  Once, he knew, there had been talk of interplanetary transplat, but it was now unshakably established that the effect was possible only in a gravitic field of planetary “viscosity.” Once the immense task of establishing the dial central was finished, the system could be extended anywhere on a planet, but never between them. And a good thing, too, as his father had explained to him. What would happen to the beautifully balanced cultural structure if humanity were suddenly free to scatter through the Universe as it now scattered over the Earth? And why leave? What could there possibly be for anyone—except a crazy spaceman—off Earth?

  He had read this, too: A species which can build perfection as fast as we have done is a species capable of maintaining perfection forever. It took fifteen thousand years to populate the Earth and then explode it in a mighty war. It took half a thousand years to concentrate the few hundred thousand survivors in Africa, the only continent left in which men could live. It took the African Colony six hundred years to reach the transplat stage in its technology. But that was only a hundred and fifty years back. The transplat built cities in days, floated them on impervious bedplates and shielded them with radiation-proof domes when necessary. People could settle anywhere—and they did. People could work the Earth for its resources almost anywhere—and they did.

  Roan sighed, feeling much better. He looked away from the calm but busy Center and idly took in what could be seen of the horizon. There a snow-capped mountain hung like a cloud, and yonder was blue water as far as the eye could see. He wondered what mountain it might be, what sea; and then he laughed. It was all the same to a man, all the same to humanity.

  He paced out the Center, from one end to the other, delighted, proud. He was young and vital and marriageable—perhaps all such as he suffered from the equivalent of his blonde apparition when that time of life came upon them. Marriage, after all, held certain animal mysteries, and like those of his flower-shop, where he cleaned his body and teeth and stoked himself with food concentrates, they just could not be discussed. He would wait and see; when the time came, the mysteries would be explained, even as had all the others.

  He came out into the walkway loving everybody, even, for a moment, Granny.

  Granny! He stopped and closed his eyes, his face twisted. He’d very nearly forgotten about her. Well, she could blossom well wait. He’d had a bad time this morning and the very thought of Granny then had been unbearable. Who, in the throes of self-abasement, wanted contact with a veritable monolith of respectability? And who, having regained his respectability, needed the monolith? Either way, the visit was insupportable. He’d make his sister Valerie go. Someone from the family had to make the visit once a week. Why, he didn’t know and had never asked. Let Valerie do it. What was the use of having a sister if you couldn’t get her to do the dirty work once in a while?

  He crossed the walkway, went to the phone banks and dialed Valerie’s number after a glance at his watch. She should be back at work from noonrest by now.

  She was. As soon as she saw his face, she said, “Roan Walsh, if you’re calling up to palm that visit to Granny off on me, you have another think coming. I do my duty by the family and I’m blessed if I can see why I should do any more than my duty or why you should do any less, so don’t even say a word about it.” He opened his mouth, but before anything came out of it, she said, “And don’t be late either. And especially, don’t be early.”

  Roan opened his mouth again, but the screen went blank.

  Out in the filtered sunlight again, he let the chagrin fade and the amusement grow. It grew into something rare in Roan—an increasing glow of heady resentment and conscious command. How did these magnificent human beings get so magnificent in the first place? Why, by asking if everything was all right, or if it weren’t—and, if it weren’t, then they changed things until it was. Now everything was all right with him, except this Granny business. Then ask the question—why should he go see Granny? Because someone always had to. That was no answer. Put it another way, then—what would happen if he just didn’t go?

  He strode buoyantly down the walkway, beaming fiercely at the passersby, and the wonderful thought defeated him in exactly seven minutes, twenty seconds. Because the answer to ‘What if he just didn’t go?’ was:

  From Mam, that hurt look and then an avalanche of “understanding.”

  From Val, a silent, holier-than-thou waspishness, day after day.

  And from the Private, thunder and lightning. And no partnership. Well, buds with the partnership!

  At this point, he stopped walking. What did you do when you walked out on your family’s business?

  He’d never known anyone who had. Where did you go? What did you do?

  His other, inner self said, banteringly, Aw, come off it. Are you going to kick over the Cosmos to save yourself sixty minutes with the old woman?

  Roan said nothing to that. So the voice added, What have you got against Granny, anyway?

  “She bothers me,” Roan said aloud. He turned and went into a decorator.

  What for? demanded the inner Roan.

  “To buy something for Granny,” he replied. And the inner voice, damn its stinking stamens, chuckled and said, Know what, Roan? You’re a crawling coward.

  “Why can’t you be on my side for once?” he demanded, but its only answer was a snigger so smug that even his sister Valerie might have envied it.

  The decorator was an old bachelor with a fierce countenance. Roan bought roses and hybrid jonquils, paid for them and started out. Suddenly he went back, prodded by his weird questioning mood, and said, “What did they call a place where you buy roses before they called it a decorator?”

  The man uttered a soprano nickering which, Roan deduced, was laughter. He leaned across the counter and, looking over each of his shoulders in turn, said in a shrill whisper, “Flower shop.” He clung to the counter and twisted up his face until the tears spurted.

  Roan waited patiently until the man calmed down and then asked, “We
ll, then, why do they call the you-know-what a flower shop?”

  This seemed to sober the man. He scratched his pale, cropped head. “I don’t know. I guess because, whatever they called it before, people used to make jokes and cuss-words about it. Like now with—with Flower Shops.”

  Roan shuddered. Its motivation was beyond definition for him, but with it came a feeling of having taken a ludicrous path to a great truth, and somehow he knew he would never joke or swear about flower shops again. Or, for that matter, about whatever new name they gave the plumbing after they got through with muddying up this one. For this much he could say aloud, “There ought to be something else to curse and make jokes about.”

  The man’s fierce face yielded for a moment to puzzlement, and then he shrugged. To Roan, it was a disgusting gesture and an alarming one, the one his father had made years ago, when Roan’s tongue was a little more firmly attached to his curiosity than it had been of late. It was transplat this and transplat that, until he had suddenly asked his father how the thing worked. The Private had stopped dead, hesitated, then shrugged just that way. It was a gesture which said, “That’s how things are, that’s all.”

  On the way to the transplats, Roan stopped where people clustered. There was a shop there dealing in, according to its sign, FAD AND FASHION. Having passed through a number of engrossing fads in his life—Whirlstick and Chase and Warp and, once, a little hand loom on which he had woven a completely useless strip of material twice his length and two fingers wide—he stopped to see what people were buying.

  It was a motion-picture of white-gloved hands manipulating two thick needles and a sort of heavy thread. No one would have dared to do such a thing in the open, but the picture was acceptable, though giggle-making.

  On a shelf at waist height were many samples of the fabric which seemed to be the product of this exercise. He stepped forward until his cape covered enough of the shelf for him to pick up a piece of the material.