Clifford and Hazel seated themselves at that wall and leaned against the glass. “Shall we dance?” he asked.
“No, not just yet.” A girl, swimming on the other side of the wall, glided down toward them and blew bubbles against the glass. Hazel followed the girl’s nose with her forefinger, tracing against the glass. The swimmer grinned, she smiled back. “I think I’d like a dip, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
“Join me?”
“No, thanks.”
After she had gone he wandered around aimlessly for a few minutes. The recreations at hand left him cold; he was searching half-heartedly for a niche in which he could be alone to nurse his own melancholy and, perhaps, a drink as well. But couples-not melancholy! — had had the same idea; the smaller hideaways were populated. He gave up and entered a medium-sized lounge, already occupied by a stag group of half a dozen or so. They were engaged in the ancient sport of liquidating world problems in liquid.
He hesitated at the door, elevated his brows in query, received casual gracious consent from one who caught his eye, came on in and found a seat. The hot-air session went on.
“Suppose they do release the field?” one of the men present was saying. “What will it amount to? What will it contain? Some artifacts possibly, perhaps some records of the period in which it was set up. But nothing more than that. The notion that life could be preserved in it, unchanged, in absolute stasis, for several centuries is preposterous.”
“How do you know? It’s certain that they thought they had found a way of suspending, uh, shall we say freezing entropy. The instructions with the field are perfectly plain.”
Monroe-Alpha began to understand what they were talking about. It was the so-called Adirondack stasis field. It had been a three-day wonder when it was discovered, a generation earlier, in a remote part of the mountain from which it got its name. Not that the field itself was spectacular-it was simply an impenetrable area of total reflection, a cubical mirror. Perhaps not impenetrable, for no real effort had been made to penetrate it-because of the plaque of instructions found with it. The plaque stated quite simply that the field contained living specimens of the year 1926 (old style, of course) which could be released by the means given below-but there was nothing below.
Since the field had not been passed down in the custody of recognized institutions there was a strong tendency to regard the whole matter as a hoax. Nevertheless, attempts had been made to guess the secret of that blank plaque.
Monroe-Alpha had heard that it had at last been read, but he had not paid much attention. The newscasts were always full of wonders which amounted to little in the long run. He did not even recall how the inscription had been read-a reflected image, using polarized light, or something equally trivial.
“That isn’t the matter of real interest,” spoke up a third man. “Let us consider the purely intellectual problem of the hypothetical man who might thus be passed down to us, out of the Dark Ages.” He was a slender, youngish man-in his late twenties, Clifford judged-and was dressed in a turquoise blue satin which brought out the pallor of his face. He spoke with slow intensity. “What would he think of this world in which he suddenly finds himself? What have we to offer him in exchange for that which he has left behind?”
“What have we to offer him! Everything! Look around you.”
The young man answered with a superior smile. “Yes-look around you. Gadgets-but what need has he for gadgets? He comes from an earlier, braver world. A world of independence and dignity. Each man tilled his own plot of ground with his woman by his side. He raised his own children, straight and strong, and taught them to wrest their food from Mother Earth. He had no artificial lights, but he had no need for them. He was up with the dawn and busy with his serious, fundamental affairs. At sundown he was tired and welcomed the rest of night. If his body was sweaty and dusty with honest labor, he took a dip in his own brook. He needed no fancy swimming baths. He was based, rock solid, on primitive essentials.”