Four for Tomorrow Part 10

As she kicked off her shoes he reached out for a gla.s.s on the floating tray above his left shoulder. He drained it and replaced it.

"Tastes like someone's watering the drinks."

"Set must be economizing," she said.

Moore saw Unger then, gla.s.s in hand, standing at the edge of the floor watching them.

"I see Unger.

"So do I. He's swaying."

"So are we," he laughed.

The fat bard's hair was a snowy chaos and his left eye was swollen nearly shut. He collapsed with a bubbling murmur, spilling his drink. No one moved to help him.

"I believe he's over indulged himself again."

83."Alas, poor Unger," she said without expression, "I knew him well."

The rain continued to fall and the dancers moved about the floor like the figures in some amateur puppet show.

"They're coming!" cried a non-Setman, crimson cloak flapping. "They're coming down!"

The water streamed into their eyes as-every conscious head in the Party Dome was turned upward. Three silver zeppelins grew in the cloudless green.

"They're coming for us," observed Moore.

61 "They're going to make it!"

The music had paused momentarily, like a pendulum at the end of its arc. It began again.

"Good night, ladies, played die band, good night, la- dies . . .

"We're going to live!"

"We'll go to Utah," he told her, eyes moist, "where they don't have seaquakes and tidal waves."

Good night ladies . . .

"We're going to live!" .

She squeezed his hand.

"Merrily we roll along," the voices sang, "roll along..."

"'Roll along,'" she said.

" 'Merrily,' " he answered.

"O'er the deep blue sea!"

A Set-month after the nearest thing to a Set disaster on recordthat is to say, in the year of Our Lord and President Cambert 2019, twelve years after the quake), Setman Moore and Leotane Lachesis) stood outside the Hall of Sleep on Bermuda Island. It was almost morning.

"I believe I love you," he mentioned.

"Fortunately, love does not require an act of faith," she 84.noted, accepting a light for her cigar, "because I don't believe in anything."

"Twenty years ago I saw a lovely woman at a Party and I danced with her."

"Five weeks ago," she amended.

"I wondered then if she would ever consider quitting the Set and going human again, and being heir to mortal ills."

"I have often wondered that myself," she said, "in idle moments. But she won't do it. Not until she is old and ugly."

"That means forever," he smiled sadly.

"You are n.o.ble." She blew smoke at the stars, touched the cold wall of the building. "Someday, when people no longer look at her, except for purposes of comparison with some fluffy child of the far future-or when the world's standards of beauty have changed-then she'll 62 transfer from the express run to the local and let the rest of the world go by."

"Whatever the station, she will be all alone in- a strange town," said Moore. "Every day, it seems, they remodel the world. I met a fraternity brother at that dinner last night-pardon me, last year-and he treated me as if he were my father. His every other word was 'son' or 'boy' or 'kid,' and he wasn't trying to be funny.

He was responding to what he saw. My appet.i.te was considerably diminished.

"Do you realize we're going?" he asked the back of her head as she turned away to look out over the gardens of sleeping flowers. "Away! That's where. We can never go back! The world moves on while we sleep."

"Refres.h.i.+ng, isn't it?" she finally said. "And stimulat- ing, and awe-inspiring. Not being bound, I mean. Every- thing burning. Us remaining. Neither time nor s.p.a.ce can hold us, unless we consent.

"And I do not consent to being bound," she declared.

85."To anything?"

"To anything."

"Supposing it's all a big Joke."

"What?"

"The world. -Supposing every man, woman, and child died last year in an invasion by creatures from Alpha Centauri, everyone but the frozen Set. Supposing it was a totally effective virus attack. . . ."

"There are no creatures in the Centauri System. I read that the other day."

"Okay, someplace else then. Supposing all the remains and all the traces of chaos were cleaned up, and then one creature gestured with a flipper at this building."

Moore slapped the wall. "The creature said: 'Hey! There are some live ones inside, on ice. Ask one of the sociolo- gists whether they're worth keeping, or if we should open the refrigerator door and let them spoil.' Then one of the sociolgists came and looked at us, all in our coffins of ice, and he said: "They might be worth a few laughs and a dozen pages in an obscure periodical. So let's fool them into thinking that everything is going on Just as it was before the invasion. All their movements, according to these schedules, are preplanned, so it shouldn't be too difficult. We'll fill their Parties with human simulacra packed with recording machinery and we'll itemize their behavior patterns. We'll vary their circ.u.mstances and they'll attribute it to progress. We can watch them perform in all sorts of situations that way.

Then, when we're finished, we can always break their bunktimers and let them sleep on-or open their doors and watch them spoil.'

63 "So they agreed to do it," finished Moore, "and here we are, the last people alive on Earth, cavorting before machines operated by inhuman creatures who are watch- ing us for incomprehensible reasons."

86."Then we'll give them a good show," she replied, "and maybe they'll applaud us once before we spoil."

She snubbed out her cigar and kissed him good night.

They returned to their refrigerators.

It was twelve weeks before Moore felt the need for a rest from the Party circuit. He was beginning to grow fearful. Leota had spent nonfunctional decades of her time vacationing with him, and she had recently been showing signs of sullenness, apparently regretting these expenditures on his behalf. So he decided to see something real, to take a stroll in the year 2078. After all, he was over a hundred years old.

The Queen Will Live Forever, said the faded clipping that hung in the main corridor of the Hall of sleep. Be- neath the bannerline was the old/recent story of the con- quest of the final remaining problems of Multiple Sclero- sis, and the medical ransom of one of its most notable victims. Moore had not seen the Doyenne since the day of his interview. He did not care whether he ever saw her again.

He donned a suit from his casualware style locker and strolled through the gardens and out to the airfield. There were no people about.

He did not really know where he wanted to go until he stood before a ticket booth and the speaker asked him, "Destination, please."

"Uh-Oahu. Akwa Labs, if they have a landing field of their own."

"Yes, they do. That will have to be a private charter though, for the final fifty-six miles-"

"Give me a private charter all the way, both ways."

"Insert your card, please."

He did.

After five minutes the card popped back into his wait- ing hand. He dropped it into his pocket.

87."What time will I arrive?" he asked.

"Nine hundred thirty-two, if you leave on Dart Nine six minutes from now. Have you any luggage?"

"No."

64 "In that case, your Dart awaits you in area A-ll."

Moore crossed the field to the VTO Dart numbered "Nine." It flew by tape. The flight pattern, since it was a specially chartered run, had bee'i worked out back at the booth, within milliseconds of Moore's naming his destination. It was then broadcast-transferred to a blank tape inside Dart Nine; an auto-alternation brain per- mitted the Dart to correct its course in the face of un- foreseen contingencies and later recorrect itself, landing precisely where it was scheduled to come down.

Moore mounted the ramp and stopped to slip his card into the slot beside the hatchway. The hatch swung open and he collected his card and entered. He selected a seat beside a port and snapped its belt around his mid- dle. At this, the hatchwday swung itself shut.

After a few minutes the belt unfastened itself and vanished into the arms of his seat. The Dart was cruising smoothly now.

"Do you wish to have the lights dimmed? Or would you prefer to have them brighter?" asked a voice at his side.

"They're fine just the way they are," he told the in- visible ent.i.ty.

"Would you care for something to eat? Or something to drink?"

"I'll have a Martini."

There was a sliding sound, followed by a muted click.

A tiny compartment opened in the wall beside him. His Martini rested within.

He removed it and sipped a sip.

Beyond the port and toward the rear of the Dart, a faint blue nimbus arose from the sideplates.

88."Would you care for anything else?" Pause. "Shall I read you an article on the subject of your choice?" Pause.

"Or fiction?" Pause. "Or poetry?" Pause. "Would you care to view the catalog?" Pause. "Or perhaps you would prefer music?"

"Poetry?" repeated Moore.

"Yes, I have many of-"

"I know a poet," he remembered. "Have you anything by Wayne Unger?"

There followed a brief mechanical meditation, then: "Wayne Unger. Yes," answered the voice. "On call are his Paradise Unwanted, Fungi of Steel, and Chisel in the Sky."

65 "Which is his most recent work?" asked Moore.

"Chisel in the Sky."

"Read it to me."

The voice began by reading him all the publis.h.i.+ng data and copyright information. To Moore's protests it answered that it was a matter of law and cited a prece- dent case. Moore asked for another Martini and waited.

Finally, " 'Our Wintered Way Through Evening, and Burning Bushes Along It,'" said the voice.

"Huh?"

"That is the t.i.tle of the first poem."

"Oh, read on."

" '(Where only the evergreens whiten...) Winterflaked ashes heighten in towers of blizzard.

Silhouettes unseal an outline.

Darkness, like an absence of faces, pours from the opened home; it seeps through shattered pine and fiows the fractured maple.

89.Perhaps it is the essence senescent, dreamculled from the sleepers, t1wt soaks upon this road in weather-born excess.

Or perhaps the great Anti-Life learns to paint with a vengeance, to run an icicle down the gargoyle's eye.

For properly speaking, though no one can confront himself in toto, J see your falling sky, gone G.o.ds, as in a smoke-filled dream of ancient statues burning, soundlessly, down to the ground.

(. . . and never the everwhite's green.)'"

There was a ten-second pause, then: "The next poem is ent.i.tled-"