“I know,” she said. “I only wanted to make it clear in your own mind.”
“I’m going to miss you,” he told her. His words stumbled over each other. “I don’t dare think how much I’ll miss you, Ilaloa.”
“You have only known me for some few days.” “It seems longer-or shorter-I don’t know. Never mind. Forget it. I’ve no right to say some things.”
“Maybe you do,” she answered.
He turned around, looking at her, and the night was wild with the sudden clamor of his heart.
CHAPTERIV
Trevelyan Micah
‘YOU WILL GO to the Sagittarian frontier of the Stellar
Union,” the machine had said. “The planet Carsten’s Star
111, otherwise called Nerthus, is recommended as a starting
point. Thereafter-”
The directive had been general and left the agent almost complete discretion. Theoretically, he was free to refuse. But if he had been the sort to do that, Trevelyan Micah would not have been a field agent of the Stellar Union
Coordination Service in the first place.
The psychology of it was complex. The Cordy agents were in no sense swashbucklers, and they knew the fear of death often enough to realize that there was nothing glamorous about it. They believed their work to be valuable, but were not especially altruistic. Perhaps one could say that they loved the work.
His aircar went on soundless gravity beams over the western half of North America. The land was big and green
below him, forest and rivers and grass waving out to the edge of the world. Scattered homes reflected sunlight, upward, isolated houses and small village groupings. Though, in a way, all Earth was a city by now, be thought. When transportation and communication make any spot on the planet practically next door, and the whole is a socioeconomic unity, that world is a city-with half a billion people in
it!
The sky was full of aircraft, gleaming ovoids against the high blue. Trevelyan let his autopilot steer him through
the fourth-level traffic and sat back smoking a thoughtful cigarette. There was a lot of movement on and over Earth these days. Few were ever really still; you couldn’t be, if you had a job in Africa and a-probably temporary -dwelling in South America, and were planning a holiday at Arctic Resort with your Australian and Chinese friends. Even the interstellar colonists, deliberately primitive though they were, tended to scatter themselves across their planets.
There had been no economic reason for the outward surge of man when the hyperdrive was invented; the emigration was a mute revolt of people for whom civilization no longer bad any need. They wanted to be of use, wanted something greater than themselves to which they could devote their fives-if it were only providing a living for themselves and their children. Cybernetic society had taken that away from them. If you weren’t in the upper ten percent)t-a scientist, or an artist of more than second-rate talent-there was nothing you could do which a machine couldn’t do better.
So they moved out. It bad not happened overnight, nor had it fully happened yet. But the balance had shifted, both socially and genetically. And a planet, the bulk of whose population was creative, necessarily controlled the intangibles that in the long run would shape all society. There was scientific research; there was the education that directs men’s thoughts, and the art that colors them. There was above all an understanding of the whole huge turbulent process.
Trevelyan’s thoughts ended as the autopilot buzzed a signal. He was approaching the Rocky Mountains now, and Diane’s home was near.
It was a small unit perched almost on the Continental Divide. Around it, the mountains rose white and colossal, and overhead the sky was pale with cold. When Trevelyan stepped out, the chill struck like a knife through his thin garments. He ran to the door, which scanned him as he
neared and opened for him, and shivered once he was
inside.
“Diane!” he exclaimed. “You choose the damnedest places to live. Last year it was the Amazon Basin… . When are you moving to Mars?”
“When I want to multiplex it,” she said. “Hullo, Micah.”
Her casual voice was belied by the kiss she gave him. She was a small woman, with something young and wistful about