“In time,” Belsnor said, clamping his long, expert fingers around Seth’s upper arm. “When the right time comes–”
“It never will,” Seth Morley said, moving back a step. “They’ll die without knowing.”
Maybe, Belsnor thought, it would be better that way. Better if all men, wherever they are, were to die without knowing who did it or why.
Squatting down, Russell turned Susie Smart over; he gazed down at her and said, “She certainly was a pretty girl.”
“Pretty,” Belsnor said harshly, “but batty. She had an overactive sex drive: she had to sleep with every man she came across. We can do without her.”
“You bastard,” Seth Morley said, his tone fierce. Belsnor lifted his empty hands and said, “What do you want me to say? That we can’t get along without her? That this is the end?”
Morley did not answer.
To Maggie Walsh, Belsnor said, “Say a prayer.” It was time for the ceremony of death, the rituals so firmly attached to it that even he himself could not imagine a death without it.
“Give me a few minutes,” Maggie Walsh said huskily. “I– just can’t talk now.” She retreated and turned her back; he heard her sobbing.
“I’ll say it,” Beisnor said, with savage fury.
Seth Morley said, “I’d like permission to go on an exploratory trip outside the settlement. Russell wants to come along.”
“Why?” Belsnor said.
Morley said in a low, steady voice, “I’ve seen the miniaturized version of the Building. I think it’s time to confront the real thing.”
“Take someone with you,” Belsnor said. “Someone who knows their way around out there.”
“I’ll go with them,” Betty J0 Berm spoke up.
“There should be another man with them,” Belsnor said. But, he thought, it’s a mistake for us not to stay together; death comes when one of us is off by himself. “Take Frazer and Thugg, both of them, with you,” he decided. “As well as B.J.” That would split the group, but neither Roberta Rockingham nor Bert Kosler were physically able to make such a journey. Neither had as yet left the camp. “I’ll stay here with the rest of them,” he said.
“I think we should be armed,” Wade Frazer said.
“Nobody is going to be armed,” Belsnor said. “We’re in a bad enough situation already. If you’re armed you’ll kill one another, either accidentally or intentionally.” He did not know why he felt this, but intuitively he knew himself to be correct. Susie Smart, he thought. Maybe you were killed by one of us. . . one who is an agent of Terra and General Treaton.
As in my dream, he thought. The enemy within. Age, deterioration and death. Despite the field-barrier surrounding the settlement. That’s what my dream was trying to tell me.
Rubbing at her grief-reddened eyes, Maggie Walsh said, “I’d like to go along with them.”
“Why?” Belsnor said. “Why does everyone want to leave the settlement? We’re safer here.” But his knowledge, his awareness of the untruth of what he was saying, found its way into his voice; he heard his own insincerity. “Okay,” he said. “And good luck.” To Seth Morley he said, “Try and bring back one of those singing flies. Unless you find something better.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” Seth Morley said. Turning, he moved away from Belsnor. Those who were going with him started away, too.
They’ll never come back, Belsnor said to himself. He watched them go and, within him, his heart struck heavy, muffled blows, as if the pendulum of the cosmic clock were swinging back and forth, back and forth, within his hollow chest.
The pendulum of death.
The seven of them trudged along the edge of a low ridge, their attention fixed on each object that they saw. They said very little.
Unfamiliar hazy hills spread out, lost in billowing dust. Green lichens grew everywhere; the soil was a tangled floor of growing plants. The air smelled of intricate organic life here. A rich, complex odor, nothing like any of them had smelled before. Off in the distance great columns of steam rose up, geysers of boiling water forcing its way through the rocks to the surface. An ocean lay far off, pounding invisibly in the drifting curtain of dust and moisture.
They came to a damp place. Warm slime, compounded from water, dissolved minerals and fungoid pulp, lapped at their shoes. The remains of lichens and protozoa colored and thickened the scum of moisture dripping everywhere, over the wet rocks and sponge-like shrubbery.
Bending down, Wade Frazer picked up a snail-like unipedular organism. “It’s not fake–this is alive. It’s genuine.”
Thugg was holding a sponge which he had fished from a small, warm pool. “This is artificial. But there are legitimate sponges like this on Delmak-O. And these are fakes, too.” From the water Thugg grabbed a wriggling snake-like creature with short, stubby legs that thrashed furiously. Swiftly, Thugg removed the head; the head came off and the creature stopped moving. “A totally mechanical contraption–you can see the wiring.” He restored the head; once more the creature began flopping. Thugg tossed it back in the water and it swam happily off.
“Where’s the Building?” Mary Morley said.
Maggie Walsh said, “It–seems to change locations. The last time anyone encountered it it was along this ridge and past the geysers. But it probably won’t be next time.”
“We can use this as a starting stage,” Betty Jo Berm said. “When we get to the spot where it last was we can fan out in various directions.” She added, “It’s a shame we don’t have intercoms with us. They would be a lot of help.”
“That’s Belsnor’s fault,” Thugg said. “He’s our elected leader; he’s supposed to think of technical details like that.” To Seth Morley, Betty Jo Berm said, “Do you like it out here?”
“I don’t know yet.” Perhaps because of Susie Smart’s death he felt repelled by everything he saw. He did not like the mixture of artificial life forms with the real ones: the mixing together of them made him sense the whole landscape as false . . . as if, he thought, those hills in the background, and that great plateau to the right, are a painted backdrop. As if all this, and ourselves, and the settlement–all are contained in a geodetic dome. And above us Treaton’s research men, like entirely deformed scientists of pulp fiction, are peering down at us as we walk, tiny-creature-wise, along our humble way.
“Let’s stop and rest,” Maggie Walsh said, her face grim and elongated still; the shock of Susie’s death had, for her, not worn off in the slightest. “I’m tired. I didn’t have any breakfast, and we didn’t bring any food with us. This whole trip should have been carefully planned out in advance.”
“None of us were thinking clearly,” Betty J0 Berm said with sympathy. She brought a bottle out of her skirt pocket, opened it, sorted among the pills and at last found one that was satisfactory.
“Can you swallow those without water?” Russell asked her. “Yes,” she said, and smiled. “A pillhead can swallow a pill under any circumstances.”
Seth Morley said to Russell, “For B.J. it’s pills.” He eyed Russell, wondering about him. Like the others, did this new member also have a weak link in his character? And if so, what was it?
“I think I know what Mr. Russell’s fondness is for,” Wade Frazer said in his somewhat nasty, baiting voice. “He has, I believe, from what I’ve observed about him, a cleaning fetish.”
“Really?” Mary Morley said.
“I’m afraid so,” Russell said and smiled to show perfect, white teeth, like the teeth of an actor.
They continued on and came, at last, to a river. It seemed too wide to cross; there they halted.
“We’ll have to follow the river,” Thugg said. He scowled. “I’ve been in this area, but I didn’t see any river before.”
Frazer giggled and said, “It’s for you, Morley. Because you’re a marine biologist.”
Maggie Walsh said, “That’s a strange remark. Do you mean the landscape alters according to our expectation?”
“I was making a joke,” Frazer said insultingly.
“But what a strange idea,” Maggie Walsh said. “You know, Specktowsky speaks about us being ‘prisoners of our own preconceptions and expectations.’ And that one of the conditions of the Curse is to remain mired in the quasi-reality of those proclivities. Without ever seeing reality as it actually is.,’
“Nobody sees reality as it actually is,” Frazer said. “As Kant proved. Space and time are modes of perception, for example. Did you know that?” He poked at Seth Morley. “Did you know that, mister marine biologist?”
“Yes,” he answered, although in point of fact he had never even heard of Kant, much less read him.
“Specktowsky says that ultimately we can see reality as it is,” Maggie Walsh said. “When the Intercessor releases us from our world and condition. When the Curse is lifted from us, through him.”