Four for Tomorrow Part 9

The million-first barrel splashed forth. > . .

76.They left Alvin Moore surrounded by china dogs.

Two of the walls were shelved, floor to ceiling. The shelves were lined with blue, green, pink, russetnot to mention ochre, vermilion, mauve, and saffron) dogs, mainly glazedalthough some were dry-rubbed primi- 55 tives ), ranging from the size of a largish c.o.c.kroach up to that of a pigmy warthog. Across the room a veritable Hades of a wood fire roared its metaphysical challenge into the hot July of Bermuda.

Set above it was a mantelpiece bearing more dogs.

Set beside the h.e.l.lplace was a desk, at which was seated Mary Maude Mullen, wrapped in a green and black tartan. She studied Moore's file, which lay open on the blotter. When she spoke to him she did not look up.

Moore stood beside the chair which had not been offered him and pretended to study the dogs and the heaps of Georgian kindling that filled the room to over- flowing.

While not overly fond of live dogs, Moore bore them no malice. But when he closed his eyes for a moment he experienced a feeling of claustrophobia.

These were not dogs. There were the unblinking aliens staring through the bars of the last Earthman's cage.

Moore promised himself that he would say nothing com- plimentary about the garish rainbow of a houndpack (fit, perhaps, for stalking a jade stag the size of a Chi- huahua); he decided it could only have sprung from the mental crook of a monomaniac, or one possessed of a very feeble imagination and small respect for dogs.

After verifying all the generalities listed on his peti- tion, Mrs. Mullen raised her pale eyes to his.

"How do you like my doggies?" she asked him.

She sat there, a narrow-faced, wrinkled woman with flaming hair, a snub nose, an innocent expression, and the lingering twist of the question lurking her thin lips.

Moore quickly played back his last thoughts and de- 77.cided to maintain his integrity in regards china dogs by answering objectively.

"They'le quite colorful," he noted.

This was the wrong answer, he felt, as soon as he said it. The question had been too abrupt. He had entered the study ready to he about anything but china dogs. So he smiled.

"There are a dreadful lot of them about. But of course they don't bark or bite or shed, or do other things. . . ."

She smiled back.

"My deai little, colorful little b.i.t.c.hes and sons of b.i.t.c.hes," she said. "They don't do anything. They're sort of symbolic. That's why I collect them too.

56 "Sit down"-she gestured-"and pretend you're comfor- table."

"Thanks."

"It says here that you rose only recently from the happy ranks of anonymity to achieve some sort of eso- teric distinction in the sciences. Why do you wish to resign it now?"

"I wanted money and prestige, both of which I was given to understand would be helpful to a Set candi- date."

"Aha! Then they were a means rather than an end?"

"That is correct."

"Then tell me why you want to join the Set."

He had written out the answer to that one months ago. It had been bake-ovened into his brain, so that he could speak it with natural inflections. The words began forming themselves in his throat, but he let them die there. He had planned them for what he had thought would be maximum appeal to a fan of Tennyson's. Now he was not so sure.

Still . . . He broke down the argument and picked a neutral point-the part about following knowledge like a sinking star.

78."There will be a lot of changes over the next several decades. I'd like to see them-with a young man's eyes."

"As a member of the Set you will exist more to be seen than to see," she replied, making a note in his file. ". . .

And I think we'll have to dye your hair if we accept you."

"The h.e.l.l you say! -Pardon me, that slipped out."

"Good." She made another note. "We can't have them too inhibited-nor too uninhibited, for that matter. Your reaction was rather quaint." She looked up again.

"Why do you want so badly to see the future?"

H He felt uneasy. It seemed as though she knew he was pying.

I- "Plain human curiosity," he answered weakly, "as well '{*as some professional interest. Being an engineer-"

^ "We're not running a seminar," she observed. "You'd "not be wasting much time outside of attending Parties if you wanted to last very long with the Set. In twenty years-no, ten-you'll be back in kindergarten so far as engineering is concerned. It will all be hieroglyphics to you. You don't read hieroglyphics, do you?"

He shook his head.

57 "Good," she continued, "I have an inept comparison.

-Yes, it will all be hieroglyphics, and if you should leave the Set you would be an unskilled draftsman-not that you'd have need to work. But if you were to want to work, you would have to be self-employed-which grows more and more difficult, almost too difficult to attempt, as time moves on. You would doubtless lose money."

He shrugged and raised his palms. He hod been think- ing of doing that. Fifty years, he had told himself, and we could kick the Set, be rich, and I could take refresher courses and try for a consultants.h.i.+p in marine engineer- ing.

"I'd know enough to appreciate things, even if I couldn't partic.i.p.ate," he explained.

79."You'd be satisfied just to observe?"

"I think so," he lied.

"I doubt it." Her eyes nailed him again. "Do you think you are in love with Leota Mason? She nominated you, but of course that is her privilege."

"I don't know," he finally said. "I thought so at first, two years ago. . . ."

"Infatuation is fine," she told him. "It makes for good gossip. Love, on the other hand, I will not tolerate. Purge yourself of such notions. Nothing is so boring and ungay at a Set affair. It does not make for gossip; it makes for snickers.

"So is it infatuation or love?"

"Infatuation," he decided.

She glanced into the fire, glanced at her hands.

"You will have to develop a Buddhist's att.i.tude toward the world around you. That world will change from day to day. Whenever you stop to look at it, it will be a different world-unreal."

He nodded.

"Therefore, if you are to maintain your stability, the Set must be the center of all things. Wherever your heart lies, there also shall reside your soul."

He nodded again.

". . . And if you should happen not to like the future, whenever you do stop to take a look at it, remember you cannot come back. Don't just think about that, feel it!"

He felt it.

She began jotting. Her right hand began suddenly to 58 tremble. She dropped the pen and too carefully drew her hand back within the shawl.

"You are not so colorful as most candidates," she told him, too naturally, "but then, we're short on the soulful type at present. Contrast adds depth and texture to our displays. Go view all the tapes of our past Parties."

80."I already have."

". . . And you can give your soul to that, or a significant part thereof?"

"Wherever my heart lies . . ."

"In that case, you may return to your lodgings. Mister Moore. You will receive our decision today."

Moore stood. There were so many questions he had not been asked, so many things he had wanted to say, had forgotten, or had not had opportunity to say, . . .

Had she already decided to reject him? he wondered.

Was that why the interview had been so brief? Still, her final remarks had been encouraging.

He escaped from the fragile kennel, all his pores feel- ing like fresh nail holes.

He lolled about the hotel pool all afternoon, and in the evening he moved into the bar. He did not eat dinner.

When he received the news that he had been accepted, he was also informed by the messenger that a small gift to his inquisitor was a thing of custom. Moore laughed drunkenly, foreseeing the nature of the gift.

Mary Maude Mullen received her first Pacificware dog from Oahu with a small, sad shrug that almost turned to a shudder. She began to tremble then, nearly dropping it from her fingers. Quickly, she placed it on the bottommost shelf behind her desk and reached for her pills; later, the flames caused it to crack.

They were dancing. The sea was an evergreengold sky above the dome. The day was strangely young.

Tired remnants of the Party's sixteen hours, they clung to one another, feet aching, shoulders sloped. There were eight couples still moving on the floor, and the weary musicians fed them the slowest music they could make. Sprawled at the edges of the world, where the green bowl of the sky joined with the blue tiles of the Earth, some five hundred people, garments loosened, 81.59 mouths open, stared like goldfish on a tabletop at the water behind the wall.

"Think it'll rain?" he asked her.

"Yes," she answered.

"So do I. So much for the weather. Now, about that week on the moon-?"

"What's wrong with good old mother Earth?" she smiled.

Someone screamed. The sound of a slap occurred al- most simultaneously. The sci earning stopped.

"I've never been to the moon," he replied.

She seemed faintly anr-sed.

"I have. I don't like it."

"Why?"

"It's the cold, crazy lights outside the dome," she said, "and the dark, dead roc1 s evpryw' re around the dome,"

she winced. "They make it seem like a cemetery at the end of Time. . . ."

"Okay," he said, "forget it."

".,. . And the feeling of disembodied lightness as you move abo'"t inside the dome-"

"All right!"

"I'm sorry." She brushed his neck with her lips. He touched her forehead with his. "The Set has lost its shel- lac," she smiled.

"We're not on tape anymore. It doesn't matter now."

A woman began sobbing somewhere near the giant sea- horse that had been the refreshment table. The musi- cians played more loudly. The sky was full of luminiscent starfish, swimming moistly on their tractor beams. One of the starfish dripped salty water on them as it pa.s.sed overhead.

"We'll leave tomorrow," he said.

"Yes, tomorrow," she said.

"How about Spain?" he said. "This is the season of the 82.sherries. There'll be the Juegos Florales de la Vendimia Jerezana. It may be the last."

"Too noisy," she said, "with all those fireworks."

"But gay."

"Gay," she sighed with a crooked mouth. "Let's go to 60 Switzerland and pretend we're old, or dying of some- thing romantic."

"Necrophilist," he grinned, slipping on a patch of mois- ture and regaining his balance. "Better it be a quiet loch in the Highlands, where you can have your fog and miasma and I can have my milk and honeydew un- blended."

"Nay," she said, above a quick babble of drunken voices, "let's go to New Hamps.h.i.+re."

"What's wrong with Scotland?"

"I've never been to New Hamps.h.i.+re."

"I have, and I don't like it. It looks like your descrip- tion of the moon."

A moth brus.h.i.+ng against a candle flame, the tremor.

The frozen bolt of black lightning lengthened slowly in the green heavens. A sprinkling of soft rain began.