“Why not?” he demanded. “Can’t we talk while we work?”
“We don’t,” she whispered, looking agonizedly toward the returning workers.
“But I do,” he said, smiling.
The three returning children stopped in the doorway, scandalized. The boy in the kilts of the People’s Republic called menacingly, “I will report this!”
Viktor shrugged. “What is there to report, Vandot? I am simply talking; I have not been ordered to be silent, after all. If you don’t want to listen, then don’t listen. But I’ve been on Earth, and I am going to talk about what Earth was like, long ago, when I was young . . .”
And he did, shoveling the dung, while the mushroom cutters and beetle collectors lingered near him at their work. They glanced at each other diffidently, conscious that they were certainly bending the rules, if not breaking them outright; Mordi, the Great Transporter girl, was particularly uneasy, because she was the one from Viktor’s own commune. But they were listening, all right. How could they help it? For Viktor was telling them about the traffic jams in the cities, the surf at Malibu, about flying in supersonic jets that crossed oceans in an hour. And about the experience of flying from star to star, when Mayflower was whole and mighty. And about life on the colony when Mayflower landed, and sailing across Great Ocean in warm sunshine, and walking in the sun on a green meadow . . .
And by and by they began to talk, too. After all, they were only children.
Even slaves have to eat, and finally Vandot announced that the workday was done. Because Mordi had an errand to run Viktor followed the little girl, Mooni-bet, back through the tunnels to the caverns of the Great Transporters. She was nervous there, among the hostile black-shrouded enemies of her people. She was glad to abandon him at the entrance to the grown-up dining hall, disappearing to hurry to her own tunnels; and when Viktor entered he found his supervisor, Mirian, just coming in. The man looked glum. That didn’t discourage Viktor; it seemed to be Mirian’s normal expression. Viktor turned to face him. “I’ve been asking about that bright spot you called the universe,” he said, “but the kids I work with don’t seem to know much about it. Can I ask—”
He didn’t finish, because Mirian gave him an unfriendly look. “No,” Mirian said, crossing himself.
“No what?” Viktor asked plaintively.
“No, we do not discuss that subject here. I know nothing about it. I wish to know nothing about it.”
“All right,” Viktor said, suddenly angry, “then tell me what you do know about. When can my wife and I have a room of our own?”
Mirian stared at him belligerently. “A room of your own!” he repeated, raising his voice sarcastically so others could hear. “He wants a room of his own!”
“But I have a right to that much!” Viktor protested. “I don’t even know where Reesa is—”
“She is housed with the Moslems in Allahabad, since they are not on overload just now,” Mirian informed him.
“Of course, I know that, but what I want to know—”
“What you want to know is none of your business! In any case, I don’t want to talk to you about it—not until the Four-Power Council issues its orders, certainly.”
“Why do you have to be so nasty?”
“What right do you have to complain?” Mirian snapped angrily. “You owe us your life! And I am paying for my charity in reviving you!”
Viktor was puzzled. “Paying how?” he asked.
“I should be up on that ship, doing my proper work! But because they blame me for reviving you, they sent me back down to this miserable—” He stopped there, looking around to see if anyone had heard his complaints. Then he closed his mouth with a snap and turned away. He squeezed between two others on a bench, conspicuously leaving no room for Viktor to join him.
When Viktor sat down at another table the strangers next to him were equally unwilling to talk. Viktor sighed and devoted himself to his stew of corn and beans. At least, he reflected, the children had given him a pretty good idea of the polity and customs of this new Newmanhome. The four sects did work together on common needs. The chambers of the Four-Power Council were common and kept separate from the living quarters of the sects. So were the food-producing caves, or most of them—Allahabad insisted on growing its chickens and gerbils separately, for dietary reasons, and the People’s Republic chose not to share the grain and bean fields of the others. (They weren’t really “fields,” of course. They were stretches of tunnels where artificial light fed plants that were hydroponically grown; and the austere diet of the Peeps was even less varied, and even less tasty, than the meals of the other three communities.) The freezer caves, where they had long before stored the animals they could no longer afford to keep alive, were also common, though there wasn’t much food in them anymore. (The children didn’t want to talk about the freezers, for reasons Viktor didn’t at first understand.) The geothermal power plant was common, along with the datastores. All four communities shared their benefits and their responsibilities—though there weren’t many responsibilities, since the original builders had done good work. The four factions had no choice about maintaining their common possessions, of course; if the power plant failed they would all be dead in a day.
But for most of their lives the sects stayed firmly apart. Great Transporters married Great Transporters, Moslems Moslems. The citizens of the People’s Republic married no one, because they didn’t believe in marriage, but they made love (on occasions directed by their leaders) only with their own. And all four communities tried their best not to have too many babies, all in their own ways, because there was barely food enough and heat enough and living space enough for the twenty-two hundred human beings already alive on (or, rather, under the surface of) Newmanhome.
Of course, their ways of keeping the population down differed from community to community. When Viktor found out about them he was startled, not to say repelled. The Reformers and the Moslems practiced nonprocreative sex—frequently homosex. The People’s Republic did their best at abstinence, with males and females housed firmly apart except on designated nights, when a couple who had deserved well of the state were allowed to dwell with each other. And the Great Transporters, so to speak, attacked the problem from the other end. Their religion forbade them to take life—well, except in war, of course. For that reason they didn’t use contraception, nor did they practice abortion; they had babies, lots of babies, and when they pruned their populations it was among the adults—at least, mostly among the near adults, anyway; if a Great Transporter child managed to survive his rebellious adolescence he had a fair chance of a natural death, sixty or seventy Newmanhome years later.
What the Great Transporters did was dispose of their criminals, and they had a lot of criminals. In their community there were two hundred and eighty statutory crimes punishable by their supreme penalty—it came to about one crime for every two persons in the community, and the sentence was passed frequently.
Of course, the sentence wasn’t death. Not exactly, anyway. Execution was another of the life-taking sins that was prohibited. They had a better way. They put their criminals in the freezer.
It was fortunate for the Great Transporters that there was so much unused freezer space. The freezers had been big to begin with. Then they had been further enlarged when Newmanhome began to get too cold to support outside life, and tens of thousands of cattle and other livestock were slaughtered and frozen. The freezers had their own independent, long-lasting lines to the geothermal power plant; they were fully automatic and would last for the ages.
But that was one more of the many sources of friction among the communities, because the Greats were rapidly filling them up.
The four communities rubbed abrasively against each other in plenty of other ways. The Great Transporters hated to see even unbelievers profane their Sabbath. The Moslems lost their tempers when they saw anyone drinking alcohol; the Peeps were constantly irate about the wasteful, sinful “luxuries” of the other three groups, while the Reformers simply hated everyone else.
That was where the work of the Four-Power Council came in. They usually made sure that the frictions were kept minor. The system worked pretty well. They had not fought a real war for nearly eighteen years.
Viktor slept badly that night, in his barracks with forty other unattached male Greats sniffling and snoring and muttering in their sleep all around him, and the next day at his loathsome job was no better than the last.
Even the children seemed to have second thoughts about their undisciplined behavior of the day before. When Viktor asked Mooni-bet if she had seen Reesa the girl hung her head. She looked worriedly to see if anyone was listening, then whispered,