Lora and John felt a deep contentment as if they could suddenly see all the way to the end of their lives, and knew they were on the right pathway.
But Doris walked alone, ignoring Bronson’s presence, as if she had been stunned and swept to the edge of grief by John’s words.
When they reached Papa Sosnic’s, she was the first to speak as she separated him from the rest and forced him against the wall. “You don’t mean what you said,” she insisted. “You don’t mean you are giving up all we have gained for a stubborn girl who is afraid to face life!”
“I love that stubborn girl,” he said softly, “and she loves me.”
“Then she can have courage enough to live here like a human being — if she has wits enough. John, you can’t do a crazy thing like this.”
The others had stopped where they stood, held by the anguish of Doris' voice. They did not want to hear, and could not help themselves.
Lora stepped in from the next room, and heard, but Doris did not seem to care. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep you from knowing how ugly the world can be,” she said to John, “I didn’t want you to know it. When you were a child, you never knew that sometimes the food you ate was stolen, and that I went without because there was not enough for both of us. I showed you how to make yourself great; and we were great artists on Earth. We couldn’t have had more — until we found this.
“And now there’s nothing more to worry about for all the rest of our lives. We’ll be taken care of, and we can work and create to the full extent of all that’s good in us.
“But more than that: we’re not only helping ourselves, we’re helping all mankind. There’ll never be another chance again to become the kind of humans that won’t destroy themselves. If we don’t change we won’t get that chance again.
“It’s like the intermission time between the act of a great play. And we’ve got a chance to change the lines, and rewrite the show — to make sure it doesn’t end as tragedy.
“You can’t throw away your chance to help in that, John. Lora, you can’t ask that of him!”
There was so little he could say now, he thought. He was understanding Doris for the first time in his life. For the first time he saw how the world had looked to her, a place of agony and terror from which she must flee and protect him.
He remembered the day when he met Lora by the gate. She had said that some came to Human Developments because they were running away. He had thought that such a thing could never be said of Doris; yet, it was true. She had run from the struggle of life to the security of Alpha Colony. And he had thought her the strongest of them all.
And now it was Lora who had the strength. She had claimed to be running away, but she was running to life, not away from it.
He took Doris’ icy hand in his and led her to the couch beside which the others stood. “You’ve taken care of me too long, and too well,” he said. “Tonight you heard what comes of men and women who are too well taken-care-of. You have heard the kind of creativeness built without need or want.”
He looked up at Dr. Warnock. “You know the Colony is a failure, don’t you, Doctor?”
Warnock smiled and shrugged. “Papa Sosnic has told me often enough. Myself — I am not a musician, only a sociologist.”
“Alpha Colony is a failure,” said John. “The whole project is a failure — all but the Control-Colonies.
“You have thought you could learn about the greatness of men by splitting them up into groups and viewing only a single facet of life. You can’t do it; you can’t have musicians without truck-drivers and bricklayers. And you can’t have a man who is a musician only. All this dividing, and separating, and splitting-up will reveal nothing, no more than would cutting off an arm or a leg show you where greatness lies.
“Greatness can be viewed only in the whole man. This other won’t work. Every man needs a touch of cussedness, a pinch of damn foolishness, and all the brain stuff he can cram in his head. Strain out any of it and you have only a piece of a man.
“And above all, you can’t make men great by taking care of them. I didn’t understand that until I heard the stupid little performances tonight. You have taken great men and made them weaklings. Faber Wagnalls — it’s enough to make you want to cry.
“The only real greatness a man ever has is the ability to take care of himself, and twist the world to fit his needs. True, we have almost burned it to a cinder in the process, but that ‘almost’ is what makes the difference. We haven’t failed, and we aren’t going to — unless we give up trying to take care of ourselves and create some fatal Utopia. There’s no freedom in the Garden of Eden.
“I almost found that out too late; and except for tonight, Lora might never have pounded it into my thick skull.”
In the light of another day, the Colony seemed a place that John had never seen before at all. They walked slowly toward the terminal building, past the great statuary that was somehow shoddy this morning.
He understood why, and he would have seen it before if he had been a sculptor. The images were but copies — copies made by the faulty memories of men who remembered Earth, but looked forward to nothing.
The lawns and the forest paths were like a child’s toy garden, and the narrow confines under the dome seemed to crush in upon him. He looked skyward — and now he could see the bars shutting out the world and the wind and the rain!
Lora hurried him along, as if she could endure no longer the imprisonment of the Colony. At the terminal building they looked out and saw that it was raining again beyond the dome, the eternal jungle rain. John shivered a little as the wind whipped moisture through the doors.
He looked back at Doris and the others. He felt sorry for them, but there was nothing at all that he could do for them. Doris was white-faced, but calm. He took her in his arms and kissed her.
“Bye, Sis,” he said.
Then they were out in the rain, moving toward the bus that would take them to the beginning of the jungle trail. Lora was laughing, the raindrops splashing on her face, and running down in trickles.
When the history of Human Developments was finally written, he thought, it would be of the descendants of the Control-Colonists, not those of the poor prisoners of Alpha Colony.
Then he caught sight of his own long, white hands and remembered there would be no music in the jungle. His hands would warp with the labor of building shelters and fighting for food. But no music? He suddenly laughed aloud, remembering the words of Papa Sosnic “— it would be with you always in your heart.”
So many things Papa Sosnic knew! John glanced again at Lora’s shining, rain-wet face and turned his own to catch the raindrops on his skin.
Their gentle sting assured him that, at last, he was alive.