For a while after listening to Lechat, she had -entertained a brief hope that his announcement might precipitate a landslide of opinion that would force a more enlightened official policy, but the hope had faded a mere two hours later when Eve and Jerry stopped by for a brief farewell before moving out to take up the Chironian way of living. Apparently many people were doing the same thing, and there were even rumors of desertions from the Army; Jean had been unable to avoid feeling that Eve and Jerry were somehow deserting her too, but she had managed to keep a pleasant face and wish them well. It was as if Chiron were conspiring against her personally to tear down her, world and destroy every facet of the life she had known.
The house around her was another part of it. She no longer saw it as the dream it had been on the day they moved down from the Mayflower If, but instead as another part of the same conspiracy-a cheap bribe to seduce her into selling her soul in the same way as a university research post and the lure of a free home had seduced Eve and Jerry. Chiron didn’t want to let her be. It wanted her to be like it. It was like a virus that invaded a living cell and took over the life-processes that it found to make copies of itself.
She shivered at the thought and got up from the sofa to find Bernard. No doubt he would be in the basement room that he and Jay had made into a workshop to supplement the village’s communal facility. Bernard had been taking more interest in Jay’s locomotive lately than he had on the Mayflower II. Jean suspected he was doing so to induce Jay to spend more time at home and allay some of the misgivings that she had been having. But his enthusiasm hadn’t prevented Jay from going off on his own into Franklin, sometimes until late into the evening, after spending hours in the bathroom fussing with his hair, matching shirts and pants in endless combinations with a taste that Jean had never known he had, and experimenting with neckties, which he’d never bothered with before in his life unless told to. Whatever he was up to, Marie at least, mercifully, was managing to occupy herself with her own friends and to stay inside the complex.
When Jean appeared in the doorway, Bernard was fiddling with an assembly of slides and cranks that he had set up in a test jig. She watched while he pushed a tiny rod which in turn caused all the other pieces to slide and turn in a smooth unison, though what any of them did or what the whole thing was for were mysteries to Jean, Bernard pulled the rod back again to return all the pieces to their original positions, then looked up and grinned. “I have to take my hat off to Army training,” he said. “I’ll say one thing for Steve Colman-he sure knows what he’s doing. Our son has produced some first-class work here.” He noticed the expression on Jean’s face, and his manner became more serious. “Aw, try and snap out of it hon. I know everything’s a bit strange. What else can you expect after twenty years? You’ll need time to get used to it. We all will”
“You don’t mind, do you? Here . . . the way things are . . .it doesn’t bother you. You’re like Eve and Jerry.” Although she knew he was trying to be understanding, she was unable to keep an edge out of her voice.”
“Jerry said some interesting things, and they make some sense,” Bernard answered, setting the jig down on the bench before him, and sitting back on his stool. ‘~The Chironians might have some strange ways, but they have a lot of respect-for us as well as for each other. That’s not such a bad way for people to be. Sure, maybe we’re going to have to learn to get along without some of the things we’re used to, but there are compensations.”
“Was it respect they showed that boy who was killed last night?” Jean asked bitterly. “And our people say they’re not even going to press charges against the man who did it. What kind of a way is that to live? Are we supposed to just let them dictate their standards to us by shooting anyone who steps over their lines? Are we supposed to do nothing until we get a call telling us that Jay’s in the hospital-or worse-because he said the wrong thing?”