He should have known that they would meet. They’d meet for comfort and security. They’d tell the Story once again and they’d pray before the Picture. And I, he thought, and I?
He swung from the room and went out into the corridor, thinking that it might have been best if there’d been no Letter and no Book, for then he’d still be one of them and not a naked stranger standing by himself—not a man torn with wondering which was right, the Story or the Letter.
He found his cubicle and went into it. Mary was there, stretched out on the bed, with the pillows piled beneath her head and the dim bulb burning. “There you are,” she said.
“I went for a walk,” said Jon.
“You missed the meal,” said Mary. “Here it is.”
He saw it on the table and went there, drawing up a chair. “Thanks,” he said.
She yawned. “It was a tiring day,” she said. “Everyone was so excited. They are meeting.”
There was the protein yeast, the spinach and the peas, a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup, tasty with mushrooms and herbs. And the water bottle, with the carefully measured liquid.
He bent above the soup bowl, spooning the food into his mouth.
“You aren’t excited, dear. Not like the rest.”
He lifted his head and looked at her. Suddenly he wondered if he might not tell her, but thrust the thought swiftly to one side, afraid that in his longing for human understanding he finally would tell her. He must watch himself, he thought.
For the telling of it would be proclaimed heresy, the denying of the Story, of the Myth and Legend. And once she had heard it, she, like the others, would shrink from him and he’d see the loathing in her eyes.
With himself, it was different, for he had lived on the fringe of heresy for almost all his life, ever since that day his father had talked to him and told him of the Book. For the Book itself was a part of heresy.
“I have been thinking,” he said, and she asked, “What is there to think about?”
And what she said was true, of course. There was nothing to think about. It was all explained, all neat and orderly. The Story told of the Beginning and the beginning of the End. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing for one to think about.
There had been Chaos, and out of the Chaos order had been born in the shape of the Ship, and outside the Ship there was Chaos still. It was only within the Ship that there was order and efficiency and law—or the many laws, the waste not, want not law and all the other laws. There would be an End, but the End was something that was still a mystery, although there still was hope, for with the Ship had been born the Holy Pictures and these, in themselves, were a symbol of that hope, for within the pictures were the symbolism-values of other ordered places (bigger ships, perhaps) and all of these symbol-values had come equipped with names, with Tree and Book and Sky and Clouds and other things one could not see, but knew were there, like the Wind and Sunshine.
The Beginning had been long ago, so many generations back that the stories and the tales and folklore of the mighty men and women of those long-gone ages pinched out with other shadowy men and women still misty in the background.
“I was scared at first,” said Mary, “but I am scared no longer. This is the way that it was spoken and there is nothing we can do except to know it is for the best.”
He went on eating, listening to the sound of passing feet, to the sound of voices going past the door. Now there was no hurry in the feet, no terror in the voices. It hadn’t taken long, he thought, for the Folk to settle down. Their Ship had been turned topsy-turvy, but it still was for the best.
And he wondered if they might not be the ones who were right, after all—and the Letter wrong.
He would have liked to have stepped to the door and hailed some of those who were passing by so he could talk with them, but there was no one in the Ship (not even Mary) he could talk to.
Unless it were Joshua.
He sat eating, thinking of Joshua in the ponic gardens, pottering around, fussing with his plants.
As a boy, he’d gone there, along with the other boys, Joe and George and Herb and all the rest of them. Joshua then had been a man of middle age who always had a story and some sage advice and a smuggled tomato or a radish for a hungry boy. He had, Jon remembered, a soft gentle way of talking, and his eyes were honest eyes and there was a gruff but winning friendliness about him.
It had been a long time, he realized, since he’d seen Joshua. Guilt, perhaps, he told himself.
But Joshua would be one who could understand the guilt. For once before he had understood.
It had been he and Joe, Jon remembered, who had sneaked in and stolen the tomatoes and been caught and lectured by the gardener. Joe and he had been friends ever since they had been toddlers. They had always been together. When there was devilment afoot the two of them were sure, somehow, to be in the middle of it.
Maybe Joe…
Jon shook his head. Not Joe, he thought. Even if he were his best friend, even if they had been pals as boys, even if they had stood up for each other when they had been married, even if they had been chess partners for more than twenty years—even so, Joe was not one he could tell about this thing.
“You still are thinking, dear,” said Mary.
“I’ll quit,” said Jon. “Tell me about your day.”
She told him. What Louise had said. And what Jane had said. And how foolish Molly was. The wild rumor and the terror and the slow quieting of the terror with the realization that, whatever came, it was for the best.
“Our Belief,” she said, “is a comfort, Jon, at a time like this.”
“Yes,” said Jon. “A great comfort, indeed.”
She got up from the bed.
“I’m going down to see Louise,” she said. “You’ll stay here?” She bent and kissed him.
“I’ll walk around until meeting time,” he said.
He finished his meal, drank the water slowly, savoring each drop, then went out.
He headed for the hydroponic gardens. Joshua was there, a little older, his hair a little whiter, his shuffle more pronounced, but with the same kind crinkle about his eyes, the same slow smile upon his face.
And his greeting was the joke of old: “You come to steal tomatoes?”
“Not this time,” said Jon.
“You and the other one.”
“His name is Joe.”
“I remember now. Sometimes I forget. I am getting older and sometimes I forget.” His smile was quiet. “I won’t take too long, lad. I won’t make you and Mary wait.”
“That’s not so important now,” said Jon.
“I was afraid that after what had happened you would not come to see me.”
“It is the law,” said Jon. “You and I, nor Mary, had anything to do with it. The law is right. We cannot change the law.”
Joshua put out a hand and laid it on Jon’s arm.
“Look at the new tomatoes,” he said. “They’re the best I’ve ever grown. Just ready to be picked.”
He picked one, the ripest and the reddest, and handed it to Jon.
Jon rubbed the bright fruit between his hands, feeling the smooth, warm texture of it, feeling the juice of it flow beneath the skin.
“They taste better right off the vine. Go ahead and eat it.”
Jon lifted it to his mouth and set his teeth into it and caught the taste of it, the freshly-picked taste, felt the soft pulp sliding down his throat.
“You were saying something, lad.”
Jon shook his head.
“You have not been to see me since it happened,” said Joshua. “The guilt of knowing I must die before you have a child kept you away from me. It’s a hard thing, I grant—harder for you than it is for me. You would not have come except for a matter of importance.”