THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

She broke off. Chybee had slumped against Ugant.

“Does she need help?” Hyge demanded. “I can send an aide to fetch—”

At the same tune making it clear by her exudates that this would be an unwarrantable interference with her immediate preoccupations.

“No need to worry,” Ugant said softly, comforting the girl with touch after gentle touch of her claws. “She’s a bit distraught, that’s all. Wam and I are at fault; on the way here we should have explained more clearly what we were going to show her.”

“Yes, I’m all right,” Chybee whispered, forcing herself back to an upright posture, though lower than normal. “I just decided that all your efforts mustn’t go to waste. So I’m willing and eager to do what Ugant wants.”

“What’s that?” Hyge inquired with a twist of curiosity as her assistants started to arrive with the first of the non-remote readings.

“You’ll find out,” Ugant promised. “And with luck it may make the future safe for sanity. If it does, of course—well, then, the name of Chybee will be famous!”

VI

Here, houses and food-plants alike were neglected and ill-doing, surviving as best they could on what garbage was thrown to rot at their roots. Many rain-channels were blocked and nobody had bothered to clear them, allowing precious growths to die off. Even a heavy storm might not suffice to wash away all the stoppages; several were sprouting weeds whose interlocking tendrils would hold against any but the most violent onslaught of water. There were scores of people in sight, most of them young, but with few exceptions they were thin and slack, and their mantles were patched with old or the scars of disease.

Chybee almost cried out in dismay. She had thought things bad enough at Hulgrapuk, but in that far smaller city there was no district which had been so completely taken over by the psychoplanetarists. How could anybody bear to live here, let alone come sight-seeing as that well-fed couple yonder were obviously doing?

She caught a snatch of their conversation. “It’s a different life-style,” the woman was saying. “Simpler, nearer to nature, independent of things like nervograps and scudders and luxury imports. You have to admire the underlying principle.”

Preening a little as he noticed Chybee looking at him, the man retorted, “If living the simple life means you have to put up with all sorts of loathsome diseases, I’d rather settle for the modern way.”

“Come now, you must admit that it’s a devastatingly attractive notion…”

Still arguing, they drifted on along the branchways.

But the woman was right. There was something subtly alluring about this run-down quarter of Slah, and the reason for it was all around them. The air was permeated with the pheromones of people experiencing utter certainty. A single breath was enough to convey the message. Here, the aroma indicated, one might find refuge from constant warnings about how any dark or bright might bring just such another meteorite as had carried an ocean-going city far inland to create the foundations of modern Slah. (How deep underpad were those foundations now? Some of the oldest houses’ roots were alleged to stretch for padlonglaqs, though of course not directly downward …)

And, inevitably, the path to that sense of security lay through hunger. Why should anyone worry about tending foot-plants, then? Why should anyone care if the rain-channels got stopped up? Why should anyone object if a patch of mold started growing on her or his mantle? It all liberated precious dreams which could be recounted to innumerably eager listeners. It all helped to reduce the intolerable burden of reality.

Moreover, there was an extra benefit to be gained from moving to this squalid district. It was the lowest-lying part of Slah, sheltered by thickly vegetated hills, and the prevailing wind rarely did more than stir the pool of air it trapped. Little by little, the pheromone density was building up to the point where feedback could set in. Some tune soon now its inhabitants might conceivably cease to argue about the content of their visions. No longer would there be endless disputes about the shape and language of the folk in Stumpalong. Gradually the chemical signals they were receiving would unify their mental patterns. And then: mass collective insanity…

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