He never did.
In school, Danton got barely passing grades in Group Acculturation, Sibling Fit, Values Recognition, Folkways Judgment, and other subjects which a person must know in order to live serenely in the modern world. Because of his lack of comprehension, Danton could never live serenely in the modern world.
It took him a while to find this out.
From his appearance, one would never have guessed Danton’s basic lack of Fit. He was a tall, athletic young man, green-eyed, easygoing. There was a certain something about him which considerably intrigued the girls in his immediate affective environment. In fact, several paid him the highest compliment at their command, which was to consider him as a possible husband.
But even the flightiest girl could not ignore Danton’s lacks. He was liable to weary after only a few hours of Mass Dancing, when the fun was just beginning. At Twelve-hand Bridge, Danton’s attention frequently wandered and he would be forced to ask for a recount of the bidding, to the disgust of the other eleven players. And he was impossible at Subways.
He tried hard to master the spirit of that classic game. Locked arm in arm with his teammates, he would thrust forward into a subway car, trying to take possession before another team could storm in the opposite doors.
His group captain would shout, “Forward, men! We’re taking this car to Rockaway!” And the opposing group captain would scream back, “Never! Rally, boys! It’s Bronx Park or bust!”
Danton would struggle in the close-packed throng, a fixed smile on his face, worry lines etched around his mouth and eyes. His girl friend of the moment would say, “What’s wrong, Edward? Aren’t you having fun?”
“Sure I am,” Danton would reply, gasping for breath.
“But you aren’t!” the girl would cry, perplexed. “Don’t you realize, Edward, that this is the way our ancestors worked off their aggressions? Historians say that the game of Subways averted an all-out hydrogen war. We have those same aggressions and we, too, must resolve them in a suitable social context.”
“Yeah, I know,” Edward Danton would say. “I really do enjoy this. I—oh, Lord!”
For at that moment, a third group would come pounding in, arms locked, chanting, “Canarsie, Canarsie, Canarsie!”
In that way, he would lose another girl friend, for there was obviously no future in Danton. Lack of Fit can never be disguised. It was obvious that Danton would never be happy in the New York suburbs which stretched from Rockport, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia; nor in any other suburbs, for that matter.
Danton tried to cope with his problems, in vain. Other strains started to show. He began to develop astigmatism from the projection of advertisements on his retina, and there was a constant ringing in his ears from the sing-swoop ads. His doctor warned that symptom analysis would never rid him of these psychosomatic ailments. No, what had to be treated was Danton’s basic neurosis, his antisociality. But this Danton found impossible to deal with.
And so his thoughts turned irresistibly to escape. There was plenty of room for Earth’s misfits out in space.
During the last two centuries, millions of psychotics, neurotics, psychopaths, and cranks of every kind and description had gone outward to the stars. The early ones had the Mikkelsen Drive to power their ships, and spent twenty or thirty years chugging from star system to star system. The newer ships were powered by GM subspatial torque converters, and made the same journey in a matter of months.
The stay-at-homes, being socially adjusted, bewailed the loss of anyone, but they welcomed the additional breeding room.
In his twenty-seventh year, Danton decided to leave Earth and take up pioneering. It was a tearful day when he gave his breeding certificate to his best friend, Al Trevor.
“Gee, Edward,” Trevor said, turning the precious little certificate over and over in his hands, “you don’t know what this means to Myrtle and me. We always wanted two kids. Now because of you—”
“Forget it,” said Danton. “Where I’m going, I won’t need any breeding permit. As a matter of fact, I’ll probably find it impossible to breed,” he added, the thought having just struck him.
“But won’t that be frustrating for you?” Al asked, always solicitous for his friend’s welfare.
“I guess so. Maybe after a while, though, I’ll find a girl pioneer. And in the meantime, there’s always sublimation.”
“True enough. What substitute have you selected?”
“Vegetable gardening. I might as well be practical.”
“You might as well,” Al said. “Well, boy, good luck, boy.”
Once the breeding certificate was gone, the die was cast. Danton plunged boldly ahead. In exchange for his Birthright, the government gave him unlimited free transportation and two years’ basic equipment and provisions.
Danton left at once.
He avoided the more heavily populated areas, which were usually in the hands of rabid little groups.
He wanted no part of a place like Korani II, for instance, where a giant calculator had instituted a reign of math.
Nor was he interested in Heil V, where a totalitarian population of 342 was earnestly planning ways and means of conquering the Galaxy.
He skirted the Farming Worlds, dull, restrictive places given to extreme health theories and practices.
When he came to Hedonia, he considered settling on that notorious planet. But the men of Hedonia were said to be short-lived, although no one denied their enjoyment while they did live.
Danton decided in favor of the long haul, and journeyed on.
He passed the Mining Worlds, somber, rocky places sparsely populated by gloomy, bearded men given to sudden violence. And he came at last to the New Territories. These unpeopled worlds were past Earth’s farthest frontier. Danton scanned several before he found one with no intelligent life whatsoever.
It was a calm and watery place, dotted with sizeable islands, lush with jungle green and fertile with fish and game. The ship’s captain duly notarized Danton’s claim to the planet, which Danton called New Tahiti. A quick survey showed a large island superior to the rest. Here he was landed, and here he proceeded to set up his camp.
There was much to be done at first. Danton constructed a house out of branches and woven grass, near a white and gleaming beach. He fashioned a fishing spear, several snares and a net. He planted his vegetable garden and was gratified to see it thrive under the tropic sun, nourished by warm rains which fell every morning between seven and seven-thirty.
All in all, New Tahiti was a paradisical place and Danton should have been very happy there. But there was one thing wrong.
The vegetable garden, which he had thought would provide first-class sublimation, proved a dismal failure. Danton found himself thinking about women at all hours of the day and night, and spending long hours crooning to himself—love songs, of course—beneath a great orange tropic moon.
This was unhealthy. Desperately he threw himself into other recognized forms of sublimation; painting came first, but he rejected it to keep a journal, abandoned that and composed a sonata, gave that up and carved two enormous statues out of a local variety of soapstone, completed them and tried to think of something else to do.
There was nothing else to do. His vegetables took excellent care of themselves; being of Earth stock, they completely choked out all alien growths. Fish swam into his nets in copious quantities, and meat was his whenever he bothered to set a snare. He found again that he was thinking of women at all hours of the day and night—tall women, short women, white women, black women, brown women.