“By all the Demons of Outside!” Simon was muttering and mumbling to himself, rubbing his chin with a shaking hand. “I never dreamed of this outcome! It is almost—”
“Think, Simon!” said Delia, her face white under the lights.
They passed out of the Captain’s Cabin, retraced their steps through the grandiloquent chambers, were taken by the electric car back to Simon’s laboratory in the higher levels of the warren. All the journey was passed in silence.
Then Simon, the free-thinking scientist, could contain himself no longer.
“I have never questioned the edicts of the Captain,” he said, throwing himself into a chair, his hair tousled. “And I never shall. But this—this almost gives me grounds for agreeing with the dissidents. My father would have put away his wife had the Captain ordered it. I would not, because I firmly believe the Captain could never give such an order. Times have changed and we set less store by the old ideas and regimens. But this!”
“Suppose we think what best to do,” said Delia. Her manner had grown brittle and irritable since the audience of the Captain. She tapped her slender fingers on the arm of her chair in a rhythm that annoyed Stead.
“What can we do but prepare Stead in the best way we can to be a Forager?”
Slowly, Stead said, “The Captain said that this was for one trip. That he would see me after that. Perhaps—”
“Of course!” Simon sat up, again eager and alert. “To succeed in our task you must experience every part of modern life. But the shock has been—is still—an emotional upheaval. To me, at least.”
In Archon the day, divided into three equal periods of eight hours each, was demarcated by a one-second flickering of the lights. Then the workers changed watches, the sleepers awoke, the pleasure seekers retired to bed, the guards changed, the whole breathing life of the warrens turned over in a smooth and organized turmoil.
But for the scientists trying to bring the empty husk that had been the stranger, Stead, into the living, breathing, thinking adult that he so obviously was, time meant nothing. There was so much to learn.
“Our society of Archon, we now know,” Simon told him, “is not perfect. Only a few years ago such a statement could not have been made.”
“You mean society was perfect then?” asked Stead.
Simon smiled indulgently. That would follow from my remark. But, no. I meant that although society was no better than it is today, it had no one to impel it to change. Men thought they lived in a perfect society. Only recently have we begun to question the basic foundations of our way of life, largely impelled by a great thinker and writer, called B. G. Wills. He explained that as the animals of the world evolved—always excepting Man—so society was evolving. If only we could change society we would improve man himself.”
“And what does the B. G. mean?” asked Stead. It had sounded odd.
“They were his off-watch names. We all have more than one name, although sometimes I tend to forget that. I am Simon Bonaventura and Delia is Delia Hope. But we use our ofl-watch names nearly all the time. Wills, for some odd reason, simply used the abbreviated form, an affectation. But don’t mistake me. He was a great man.”
“So if we all changed the society in which we live, then we, ourselves, would be changed.” Stead thought about that. Then he said, “Yes. That sounds reasonable.”
“I’m glad,” Simon said with a flashing ripple of sarcasm softened by his eager old smile, “that you agree with our greatest minds.”
“Oh, do come on,” said Delia. “The party’s due to begin in an hour and both of you look as though you’ve been wrestling with a Scunner.”
“By all the Demons, woman!” thundered Simon. “A party has no significance next to trying to teach Stead.”
“And that, my dear Simon, is where you are wrong. A party will show Stead in half an hour more about human nature than these books are likely to tell him in a year.”
“Impractical flibbertigibbet,” Simon rumbled away to himself. But he went off to his suite of rooms to change and make himself presentable.
Stead had been using a small suite, bedroom, anteroom, lounge and study, a very modest establishment compared with some Controllers’ cubicles. He went off to change, chuckling at Simon’s antics.
Everyone, it seemed, had turned out for Stead’s going away party.
“In reality,” Simon told him as they entered the packed and stifling hall, aswim with movement and color and scent, “they are doing you an immense favor, doing you honor. You see, Controllers normally have no social intercourse with Foragers. But you have been educated as a Controller. Up until today you were one of us and, I hope, after your probationary period as a Forager, you will be one of us again.”
“I hope so, too,” said Stead vehemently. “I feel dishonor, a horrible sense of dirt, at leaving the society of Controllers for that of the Foragers.”
Chapter Five
The going away party for Stead blossomed under the electrics.
The colorful personalities of off-watch Controllers flowered before his eyes; the bewildering variety of costume, the glitter of jewels, the laughing, painted faces, the noise of music, the rich streams of flowing wine spouting in bounty from ranked faucets into shell-shaped basins, the tables piled with cunningly made appetite-teasing dainties, the roaring clamor of voices and laughter, shrieks, greetings, snatches of song, the whole seething picture of gaiety struck him dizzily.
Banked electric heaters around the walls poured volumes of radiant warmth that progressively disrobed men and women alike. The People of Archon lived in a coldish world; they liked heat and Controllers could afford as much as they wanted.
A remarkable feeling assailed Stead, a sensation he had not previously experienced but one which in its essentials he recognized as being akin to the feeling that so troubled him in his dealings with Delia. The dictionary had defined that for him as embarrassment. But why should he feel embarrased when all these people had come to wish him well and say good-bye?
Prodded forward he allowed himself to be mounted upon a table, a drink to be thrust into his hand. Looking down he saw a flowerbed of flushed, upturned faces, eyes glinting, mouths smiling, teeth gleaming. Glasses were raised to him, a forest of white arms, reaching up.
A man shouted, high and powerfully, “Safe nook and cranny to Stead! Long life! And may he soon return home to the warren safely!” It was a toast.
They all drank. Drinking with them, not knowing any different, Stead felt again, strongly, how fine a class of people were the Controllers of Archon.
He jumped off the table and was immediately caught up in strange ritualistic dances, all gyrations and hand clappings and sinuous snaky lines; he tumbled around the hall, flushed and laughing and happy. This, indeed, was life, the full and free life promised him by Simon and Delia.
Cargill was not at the party.
A quick commotion took Stead’s attention. The dancing line fragmented into laughing, spinning individuals. Women screamed. Men rushed away from Stead, coalescing into a melee of pressing backs in a corner. Here the electric lights had been discreetly dimmed.
“Kill the beastly thing!” “There it goes!” “Ugh!” “What a filthy brute.” Cries and commotion filled the air. Peering over straining backs, Stead looked down, and saw the cause of the trouble.