Well, I don’t know how else you could organize things to feed a world population of fifteen billion.
“All right,” I said. “I understand. But this is a depressing subject. Let’s saunter for a while. I’ve found some gentian blooming.”
“So early in the season? Is it in walking distance? I’d like to see.”
“Too far for now, I’m afraid. I’ve been tramping some mighty long days. However, let me show you the local blueberry patch. It should be well worth a visit, come late summer.”
As I took her arm again, she said, in her awkward fashion, “You’ve become an expert, haven’t you, Pete?”
“Hard to avoid that,” I grunted. “Ten years, collecting sensie material on the Wilderness System.”
“Ten years… I was in high school when you began. I only knew the regular parks, where we stood in line on a paved path to see a redwood or a geyser, and we reserved swimming rights a month in advance. While you—” Her fingers closed around mine, hard and warm. “It doesn’t seem fair to end your stay.”
“Life never was fair.”
Too damn much human life. Too little of any other kind. And we have to keep a few wildernesses a necessary reserve for what’s left of the planet’s ecology; a source of knowledge for researchers who’re trying to learn enough about that ecology to shore it up before it collapses altogether; never mentioned, but present in every thinking head, the fact that if collapse does come, the wilderness will be Earth’s last seedbeds of hope.
“I mean,” Jo plodded, “of course areas like this were being destroyed by crowds—loved to death, as somebody wrote—so the only thing to do was close them to everybody except a few caretakers and scientists, and that was politically impossible unless ‘everybody’ meant everybody.” Ah, yes, she was back to her habit of thumbing smooth-worn cliches. “And after all, the sensie documentaries that artists like you have been making, they’ll be available and—” The smoothness vanished. “You can’t come back, Pete! Not ever again!”
Her fingers remembered where they were and let go of me. Mine followed them and squeezed, a measured gentleness. Meanwhile my pulse fluttered. It was as well that words didn’t seem indicated at the moment, because my mouth was dry.
A mediaman should be more confident. But such a God damn lot was riding on this particular bet. I’d gotten Jo to care about me, not just in the benevolent way of her colleagues, isolated from mankind so they can afford benevolence, but about me, this Pete-atom that wanted to spend the rest of its flickering days in the Wind River Mountains. Only how deeply did she care?
We walked around the lake. The sun dropped under the peaks—for minutes, the eastern snows were afire—and shadows welled up. I heard an owl hoot to his love. In royal blue, Venus kindled. The air sharpened, making blood run faster.
“Br-r-r!” Jo laughed. “Now I do want that drink.”
I couldn’t see her features through the dusk. The first stars stood forth infinitely clear. But Jo was a blur, a warmth, a solidness, no more. She might almost have been Marie.
If she had been! Marie was beautiful and bright and sexy and—Sure, she took lovers while I was gone for months on end; we’d agreed that the reserves were my mistresses. She’d had no thought for them on my returns… Oh, if only we could have shared it all!
Soon the sky would hold more stars than darkness, the Milky Way would be a white cataract, the lake would lie aglow with them, and when
Jupiter rose there would be a perfect glade across the water. I’d stayed out half of last night to watch that.
Already the shining was such that we didn’t need a penflash to find the entrance to my cabin. The insulation layer yielded under my touch. We stepped through, I zipped the door and closed the main switch, fluoros awoke as softly as the ventilation.
Jo was correct; those portables don’t lend themselves to individuality. (She had a permanent cabin, built of wood and full of things dear to her.) Except for a few books and the like, my one room was strictly functional. True, the phone could bring me the illusion of almost anything or anybody, anywhere in the world, that I might want. We city folk learn to travel light. This interior was well proportioned, pleasingly tinted, snug; a step outside was that alpine meadow. What more did I need?
Out of hard-earned habit, I checked the nucleo gauge—ample power—before taking dinner from the freezer and setting it to cook. Thereafter I fetched nibblies, rum, and fruit juice, and mixed drinks the way Jo liked them. She didn’t try to help after all, but settled back into the airchair. Neither of us had said much while we walked. I’d expected chatter out of her—a bit nervous, a bit too fast and blithe—once we were here. Instead, her stocky frame hunched in its mother-of-pearl suit that wasn’t meant for it, and she stared at the hands in her lap.
No longer cold, I shucked my mackinaw and carried her drink over to her. “Revelry, not reverie!” I ordered. She took it. I clinked glasses. My other hand being then free, I reached thumb and forefinger to twitch her lips at the corners. “Hey you, smile. This is supposed to be a jolly party.”
“Is it?” The eyes she raised to me were afloat in tears.
“Sure, I hate to go—”
“Where’s Marie’s picture?”
That rocked me back. I hadn’t expected so blunt a question. “Why, uh—” Okay. Events are moving faster than you’d planned on, Peter. Move with them. I took a swallow, squared my shoulders, and said manfully: “I didn’t want to unload my troubles on you, Jo. The fact is, Marie and I have broken up. Nothing’s left but the formalities.”
“What?”
Her mouth is open, her look lost in mine; she spills some of her drink and doesn’t notice—Have I really got it made? This soon?
I shrugged. “Yeah. The notice of intent to dissolve relationship arrived yesterday. I’d seen it coming, of course. She’d grown tired of waiting around.”
“Oh, Pete!” She reached for me.
I was totally aware—walls, crowded shelves, night in a window.
murmur and warm gusting from the heat unit, monitor lamp on the radionic oven and meat fragrances seeping out of it, this woman whom I must learn to desire—and thought quickly that at the present stage of things, I’d better pretend not to notice her gesture. “No sympathy cards,” I said in a flat tone. “To be quite honest, I’m more relieved than otherwise.”
“I thought—” she whispered. “I thought you two were happy.”
Which we have been, my dear, Marie and I, though a sophisticated mediaman does suspect that considerable of our happiness, as opposed to contentment, has been due to my long absences this past decade. They’ve added spice. That’s something you’ll always lack, whatever happens, Jo. Yet a man can’t live only on spices.
“It didn’t last,” I said as per plan. “She’s found someone more compatible. I’m glad of that.”
“You, Pete?”
“I’ll manage. C’mon, drink your drink. I insist that we be merry.”
She gulped. I’ll try.”
After a minute: “You haven’t even anyone to come home to!”
“ ‘Home’ doesn’t mean a lot to a city man, Jo. One apartment is like another; and we move through a big total of ’em in a lifetime.” The liquor must have touched me a bit, since I rushed matters: “Quite different from, say, these mountains. Each patch of them is absolutely unique. A man could spend all his years getting to know a single one, growing into it—Well.”
I touched a switch and the armchair expanded, making room for me to settle down beside her. “Care for some background music?” I asked.
“No.” Her gaze dropped—she had stubby lashes—and she blushed—blotchily—but she got her words out with a stubbornness I had come to admire. Somebody who had that kind of guts wouldn’t be too bad a partner. “At least, I’d not hear it. This is just about my last chance to talk… really talk… to you, Pete. Isn’t it?”