“But you can’t guarantee that such a second-best project would enlist enough support to—”
“No more can you guarantee that we have as much time as you need for your version! According to the latest reports, there’s a real risk of a major meteorite strike within not more than—”
“Stop! Stop!” Chybee shouted, horrified at her temerity but unable to prevent herself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, either of you!”
Fraij tried to silence her, but, oddly enough, both Wam and Ugant looked at her with serious attention.
“Let her explain,” the former said at length.
Thus challenged, Chybee strove to fill her mantle for a proper answer, but could not. She merely husked, “You keep assuming that everybody else is going to fall in with your ideas, whichever of you wins the argument. It doesn’t work that way! The people I’ve met at my home—my parents themselves—are too crazy to listen! I know! Oh, I’m sure it’s wonderful to dream of other planets and other civilizations, but I don’t believe they exist! Why not? Because of what you and other scientists have taught me! Of course, it’s folk like you that my parents call crazy,” she appended in an ironical tone. “One thing I am sure of, though, is what I said before. You don’t know what you’re talking about … or at any rate you aren’t talking about what most other people are prepared to do!”
There was dead silence for a while. Fraij seemed prepared to pitch Chybee bodily out of the house, and she herself cringed at her audacity. But, at long last, Wam and Ugant curved into identical smiles.
“Out of the mantles of young’uns…” Ugant said, invoking a classical quotation. “Wam, I’ve often felt the same way. Now I have an idea. If she’s willing, could we not make good use of someone who has impeccable family connections with a psychoplanetary cult, yet who believes in my views instead of theirs?”
“Whose?”—with a disdainful curl.
“Mine, or yours, or both! You’d rather tolerate my victory than theirs, and I’d rather tolerate yours! Don’t argue! For all we know, ours may be the only life-bearing planet in the universe, and it’s in danger!”
“I see what you mean,” Wam muttered, just as the long-threatened rain began to drum on the roof. “Very well, it’s worth a try.”
III
For a good while Chybee paid little or no attention to what was being said. The rushing sound of the rain soothed her as it flowed over the tight-folded leaves of the house and found its way through countless internal and external channels not only to the roots of its bravetrees but also to the elegant little reservoirs disposed here and there to supply its luminants and food-plants … and sundry other secondary growths whose purpose she had no inkling of.
Maybe, she thought, if her parents had enjoyed more of this sort of luxury they would not have gone out of their minds. Maybe it was bitterness at the failure of every venture they attempted which had ultimately persuaded them to spurn the real world in favor of vain and empty imaginings. Yet she and her sibs had shared their hardships, and clung nonetheless to the conviction that plans must be made, projects put into effect, to prevent life itself from being wiped out when the sun and its attendant planets entered the vast and threatening Major Cluster.
Then, quite suddenly, normal alertness returned thanks to the food she had eaten, and memory of what Wam and Ugant had proposed came real to her. She could not suppress a faint cry. At once they broke off and glanced at her.
“Of course, if you’re unwilling to help…” Wam said in a huffy tone.
“But you’re drafting a scheme for my life without consulting me!” Chybee countered.
“A very fair comment!” Ugant chuckled. “Forgive us, please. But you must admit that you haven’t vouchsafed much about yourself. So far we know your name and your parents’, and the fact that you’ve run away from them. Having got here, have you changed your mind? Are you planning on returning home?”
“I wouldn’t dare!”
“Would your parents want it noised abroad that their budling—? One moment: do they have others?”