“Well, we’re going crawling,” said Adne. “And we really ought to take off right now.”
Forrester said irritably, “Wait a minute. What did they just say about Groombridge 1830?”
“They said what they’ve been saying for a week, dear Charles. That thing they spotted is only a comet. Are we going to crawl or aren’t we?”
Taiko said humorously, “Charles is still a little dazed about his new loot. But look, old buddy, some of us have got things to do.”
Forrester took his eyes from the view-wall’s star map and looked at Taiko, who winked and added, “Now that you’re on the team, you ought to learn the ropes.”
“Team?” said Forrester. “Ropes?”
“I have to do a communication for the society,” Taiko explained. “You know. What you used to call a widecast. And as you’re on the payroll now you ought to come along and see how it’s done, because frankly—” he nudged Charles— “it won’t be too long before you’re doing them yourself.”
“But first we crawl,” said Adne. “So shall we the sweat get going?”
They hustled Forrester along, muttering and abstracted as he was, until he realized that he was attracting attention to himself, and he didn’t want to do that.
It might be, thought Forrester, that the right and proper thing for him to do was to go to someone in authority—if he ever found anyone in authority in this world, except maybe the joymaker—and say, frankly and openly, “Look, sir. I seem to have done something wrong and I wish to make a statement about it. Under what I guess was hypnosis I made it possible for that Sirian to escape, thus blowing the whole security of the human race forever.” Confess the whole thing and take his medicine.
Yes, he thought, some time I probably had better do just that; but not right now.
Meanwhile, he tried to look as much like everybody else as he possibly could, and if this required him to be thrilled but casual about the danger of an invasion fleet of Sirians appearing in the sky at any moment to crush the Earth, then he would do his best to seem thrilled but casual
“Well,” he cried gaily, “we sure had a good run for our money! Best little old masters of the planet I ever saw! But may the best race win, right?”
Adne looked at him, then at Taiko, who shrugged and said, “I guess he’s still a little shook.”
Dampened, Forrester concentrated on observing what was going on around him. Taiko and the girl were bringing him to a part of Shoggo he had not previously visited, south along the shore to what looked like a leftover World’s Fair. Their cab landed and let them out in a midway, bustling with groups and couples in holiday mood, surrounded by buildings with a queer playtime flavor. Nor was the flavor confined to the buildings. The place was a carnival of joy and of what Forrester at once recognized as concupiscence. The aphrodisiac spray that individual joymakers dispensed in microgram jolts was here a mist hanging in the air. The booths and displays were shocking to Forrester, at first, until he had taken a few deep breaths of the tonic, the invigorating air. Then he began at last to enjoy himself.
“That’s better,” cried Adne, patting him. “Down this way, past the Joy Machine!”
Forrester followed along, observing his surroundings with increasing relaxation and pleasure. In addition to its other attractions, the place was a horticultural triumph. Flowers and grasses grew out of the ground he walked on and along the margins at his sides; out of elevated beds that leaned out to the midway, heavy with emerald grapes and bright red luminous berries; out of geometrical plantings that hung on the sides of the buildings. Even on the walk itself, among the happy humans, there were what looked like shrubs bearing clusters of peach- and orange-colored fruits—but they moved, walked, stumped clumsily and slowly about on rootlike legs.
“In here,” said Adne, clutching at him arm.
“Hurry up!” cried Taiko, shoving him.
They entered a building like a fort and went down a ramp surrounded by twinkling patterns of light. The concentration of joymaker spray was a dozen times stronger here than in the open air. Forrester, feeling lightheaded, began to look at Adne with more interest than he would have believed himself able to show in anything but Sirians. Adne leaned close to nibble his ear; Taiko laughed in pleasure. They were not alone, for there was a steady stream of people going down the ramp with them, fore and aft, all with flushed faces and excited.
Forrester abandoned himself to the holiday. “After all,” he shouted to Adne, “what does it matter if we’re going to be wiped out?”
“Dear Charles,” she answered, “shut up and take your clothes off.”
Surprised, but not very, Forrester saw that the whole procession was beginning to shed its outer garments. Shaggy vests and film-and-net briefs, they were tossed on the floor, where busy glittering little cleaning creatures tugged them away into disposal units. “Why not?” he laughed, and kicked his slipper at one of the cleaners, which reared back on its wheels like a kitten and caught it in midair. The crowd rolled down the ramp, shedding clothes at every step, until they were in a sort of high-vaulted lounge and the noise of laughter and talk was loud as a lynching.
And then a door behind them closed. The cloying joymaker scent whisked away. Streams of a harsher, colder essence poured in upon them; and at once they were all standing there, nearly nude and cold sober.
Charles Forrester had had something less than four decades of actual life—that is to say, of elapsed time measured by lungs that breathed and a heart that beat. The first part of that life, measured in decades, had taken place in the twentieth century. The second part, measured in days, had taken place after more than half a millennium in the freezing tanks.
Although those centuries had sped by tracelessly for Forrester, they represented real time to the world of men: each century a hundred years, every year 365 days of twenty-four hours each.
Of all that had happened during those centuries, Forrester had managed to learn only the smallest smattering. He had not learned, even yet, what powers this century could pack into a wisp of gas. Playing with the studs of his joymaker or submitting to the whims of his friends, Forrester had tasted a variety of intoxicants and euphorics, wake-up jolts and sleepy jolts. But he had never before tasted the jolt that drugged no senses but sharpened them all. Now he stood in this room, Taiko on one side of him and Adne in the circle of his arm, surrounded by half a hundred other men and women; and he was fully awake and sensing for the first time in his life.
He turned to look at Adne. Her face was scrubbed bare, her eyes were looking at him unwinkingly. “You’re nasty inside,” she said.
What she said was the exact equivalent of a slap in the face, and Forrester accepted it as such. A cleansing anger filled his mind, He growled, “You’re a trollop. I think your children are illegitimate, too.” He had not intended to say anything of the sort.
Taiko said, “Shut up and crawl.”
Over his shoulder and without passion, Forrester said, “You’re a two-bit phony without an ounce of principle or a thought in your head. Butt out, will you?”
To his surprise, Adne was nodding in agreement; but she said, “Pure kamikaze, just like the trash you come from. Vulgar and a fool.” He hesitated, and she said impatiently, “Come on, kamikaze. Let it out. You’re jealous too, right?”
Theirs was not the only argument going on; there was a bitter rumble of insult and vituperation all around them. Forrester was only marginally aware of it; his whole attention was concentrated on Adne, on the girl he had thought he might be in love with, and his best efforts were devoted to trying to hurt her. He snapped, “I bet you’re not even pregnant!”
She looked startled. “What?”
“All that talk about picking a name! You probably just wanted to trick me into marrying you.”
She stared at him blankly, then with revulsion. “Sweat! I meant our reciprocal name. Charles, you talk like an idiot.”
Taiko shrilled, “You’re both idiots! Crawl.”
Forrester spared him a glance. Curiously, Taiko was down on his knees and for the first time Forrester realized that the floor was damp—not damp, muddy. A thin gruel of softly oozing mud was pouring in from apertures in the wall. Others were getting down into the mud, too; and, for possibly the thousandth time since being taken from the freezer, Forrester found himself torn between two choices of puzzles to try to solve. What was going on here, exactly? And what the devil did Adne mean by “our” name?