one around to hear his parting speech.
The public address system announced dinner for passengers. Mouse
turned back. “Feel up to it?”
BenRabi nodded. Though it had ached miserably seconds ago, the
tracer was not bothering him at all now.
Somebody was trying to impress them. The meal was superb. It was
the kind Navy put on when important civilians came aboard.
Everything was hydroponics and recycle, yet supremely palatable.
Each mouthful reminded benRabi of the horrors of a Navy mess six
months out, after the fresh and frozen stores were gone. From some
angles the mission had begun to show promise.
He looked for the Seiner girl, Amy, but did not see her.
Lazy days followed. There was little to do in transit. He stayed
in his cabin most of the time, loafing, toying with
Jerusalem
, and
trying not to remember too much. Mouse, and a few others he had
met, occasionally came to visit, play chess, or just bullshit about
common interests.
The landsmen began to settle in, to get acquainted. The
unattached singles started pairing off. Mouse, never inclined to
celibacy, found himself a girl the second day. Already she wanted
to move in with him.
Individual quarters had been assigned everyone but the married
couples. There was room. The ship had been prepared to haul a
thousand people.
Mouse immediately established himself as a character and leader
among the landsmen. His notion of a chess club, while no fad,
caught on.
One of the joiners was the Seiner who had striven to rattle them
at Blake City.
His name was Jarl Kindervoort. He did not hide the fact that he
ranked high in
Danion
’s police department.
BenRabi marveled again at the size of the harvestship. A vessel
so huge that it had a regular police agency, complete with
detectives and plainclothes
operatives . . . Just incredible.
They called themselves Internal Security. BenRabi saw nothing in
what he learned of their structure to remind him of a security unit
in the intelligence sense. The function was doubtless there,
cobbled on in response to the arrival of outsiders, but the agency
look was that of a metropolitan police force.
Mouse’s club inspired a general movement. Half a dozen
others coalesced. Each was Archaicist-oriented.
In an age when nothing seemed as permanent as the morning dew,
people who needed permanence had to turn to the past.
BenRabi looked on the whole Archaicist movement with studied
contempt. He saw it as the refuge of the weak, of moral cowards
unwilling to face the Now without the strategic hamlets of
yesterday to run to when the pressure heightened.
Archaicism could be damned funny. BenRabi remembered a holocast
of pot-bellied old men stamping through modern New York outfitted
as Assyrian soldiery off for a sham battle with the legions of the
Pharaoh of New Jersey.
Or it could be grim. Sometimes they started
believing . . . He still shuddered whenever he
recalled the raid on the temple of the Aztec Revivalists in Mexico
City.
One morning he asked Mouse to read the working draft of his
story. He had managed to push it all the way to an unsatisfactory
ending.
Mouse frowned a lot. He finally said, “I guess it’s
all right. I don’t know anything about non-objective
art.”
“I guess that means it isn’t working. I’d
better get on it and do it right. Even if you can’t figure
out what the hell it’s about, it should affect
you.”
“Oh, it does, Moyshe.”
His tone conveyed more message than did his words. It said that
he thought benRabi was wasting his time.
Moyshe wanted to cry. The story meant so damned much to him.
----
----
Six: 3047 AD
The Olden Days, Luna Command
He waited patiently in the line outside Decontamination. When
his turn came he went to Cubicle R. No one else had done so. A sign
saying OUT OF SERVICE clung to the door beneath the R.
That sign had been there more than twenty years. It was old and
dirty and lopsided. Everyone in Luna Command knew that door R did
not open on a standard
The public address system announced dinner for passengers. Mouse
turned back. “Feel up to it?”
BenRabi nodded. Though it had ached miserably seconds ago, the
tracer was not bothering him at all now.
Somebody was trying to impress them. The meal was superb. It was
the kind Navy put on when important civilians came aboard.
Everything was hydroponics and recycle, yet supremely palatable.
Each mouthful reminded benRabi of the horrors of a Navy mess six
months out, after the fresh and frozen stores were gone. From some
angles the mission had begun to show promise.
He looked for the Seiner girl, Amy, but did not see her.
Lazy days followed. There was little to do in transit. He stayed
in his cabin most of the time, loafing, toying with
Jerusalem
, and
trying not to remember too much. Mouse, and a few others he had
met, occasionally came to visit, play chess, or just bullshit about
common interests.
The landsmen began to settle in, to get acquainted. The
unattached singles started pairing off. Mouse, never inclined to
celibacy, found himself a girl the second day. Already she wanted
to move in with him.
Individual quarters had been assigned everyone but the married
couples. There was room. The ship had been prepared to haul a
thousand people.
Mouse immediately established himself as a character and leader
among the landsmen. His notion of a chess club, while no fad,
caught on.
One of the joiners was the Seiner who had striven to rattle them
at Blake City.
His name was Jarl Kindervoort. He did not hide the fact that he
ranked high in
Danion
’s police department.
BenRabi marveled again at the size of the harvestship. A vessel
so huge that it had a regular police agency, complete with
detectives and plainclothes
operatives . . . Just incredible.
They called themselves Internal Security. BenRabi saw nothing in
what he learned of their structure to remind him of a security unit
in the intelligence sense. The function was doubtless there,
cobbled on in response to the arrival of outsiders, but the agency
look was that of a metropolitan police force.
Mouse’s club inspired a general movement. Half a dozen
others coalesced. Each was Archaicist-oriented.
In an age when nothing seemed as permanent as the morning dew,
people who needed permanence had to turn to the past.
BenRabi looked on the whole Archaicist movement with studied
contempt. He saw it as the refuge of the weak, of moral cowards
unwilling to face the Now without the strategic hamlets of
yesterday to run to when the pressure heightened.
Archaicism could be damned funny. BenRabi remembered a holocast
of pot-bellied old men stamping through modern New York outfitted
as Assyrian soldiery off for a sham battle with the legions of the
Pharaoh of New Jersey.
Or it could be grim. Sometimes they started
believing . . . He still shuddered whenever he
recalled the raid on the temple of the Aztec Revivalists in Mexico
City.
One morning he asked Mouse to read the working draft of his
story. He had managed to push it all the way to an unsatisfactory
ending.
Mouse frowned a lot. He finally said, “I guess it’s
all right. I don’t know anything about non-objective
art.”
“I guess that means it isn’t working. I’d
better get on it and do it right. Even if you can’t figure
out what the hell it’s about, it should affect
you.”
“Oh, it does, Moyshe.”
His tone conveyed more message than did his words. It said that
he thought benRabi was wasting his time.
Moyshe wanted to cry. The story meant so damned much to him.
----
----
Six: 3047 AD
The Olden Days, Luna Command
He waited patiently in the line outside Decontamination. When
his turn came he went to Cubicle R. No one else had done so. A sign
saying OUT OF SERVICE clung to the door beneath the R.
That sign had been there more than twenty years. It was old and
dirty and lopsided. Everyone in Luna Command knew that door R did
not open on a standard
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