“You know what it is ?”
“Perhaps.”
Papashvilly had smiled to himself. “The world is full of them. And I will tell you something: they have always known they will be left behind. That’s why they’re so careless and surly.”
“Ah.”
“The city people and the farmers. They have always known their part in the intent of history. That’s why the have their roofs and thick walls—so they can hide and also say that it’s no longer out there.”
“I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. I have no understanding of history.”
Papashvilly burst into laughter. At the end of the room,
Eddie had looked up briefly from the glass he was towelling. “You know. Some do not. But you know.” He smiled and shook his head, drumming impatiently on the edge of their table. “These have been peculiar centuries lately. Look how it was. From the beginning of time, the six-legged came from the steppes, and only the mountains and the seas held some of them away, but not always and not forever.”
“For uncounted centuries before the birth of Christ, they came again and again. Some remained at the edges of the sea, in their cities, and ventured out then beyond the walls to make orchards and plough fields. And again the six-legged would come, and take the cities, and leave their seed, or stay behind and become the city people, to be taken by the next six-legged who came not from the edge of the world - no, we say that in the books, but we mean the centre of the world; the source of the world. The city people had time for books. The city people are obsessed with making permanent things, because they know they are doomed. The six-legged know something else. They laugh at what you say is the story and the purpose of the world. And the more earnest of manner you are, the more amusing it is, because you know, really, it is all nonsense that you tell yourselves to be more comfortable. You know what the six-legged are. When you were pushed over the edge of the western ocean from your little handhold on what was left to you of Europe, you knew better than to let the six-legged remain free on your prairies, just as we Osseti knew who must not be allowed in the high pastures.”
“And so you city people of the West took for yourselves not only the edges beyond the mountains, where you have always had your places for ships and warehouses, but like Ivan you took the great central steppes, too, for a while in which you could build great things.”
“Great things. Great establishments on which we all choke, and in which we sit and say the grass is gone forever. It makes us neither honestly happy nor sad to say that; it makes us insane. There are walls, walls, all around us, and no honest tang of the wind and the seed of the grass. We say the walls make us safe, but we fear they make us blind. We say the roof makes us warm, but we know we lie when we pretend there are no stars. I do not, in fact, understand how it is we are not all dead. Ever since Ivan, it has been inevitable we would turn the cannon on ourselves someday. It is not only a great solver of problems, it is pleasurable to see such a mighty end to lies. And yet somehow, when we should close these four so-called civilized centuries in one last pang, we merely bicker and shuffle among ourselves, and tell the lie that we are all more like brothers each day.”
“I am a good boy. I have been to Muscovy and not been entirely despised by my masters in our democratic association of freely federated republics. I am friends with Slavs, with Khazaks, with Tartars, and with Turkmen. I am a civilized man, furthermore a crew commander and a fleet commander, and a doctor of engineering. When we go toward mighty Jupiter and approach his great face, when we send in the modules to slice away a little here, and probe out a little there, and suck in a fraction here and there, I shall read all the checklists at the proper time, and all my personnel and I will follow all the manuals exactly. Then the mining extractors will come in a few years, and the orbital factories, and Jupiter shall be garlanded by them. The robotized containers shall flow Earthward; there will be great changes when it is no longer necessary to rip at our soil and burrow ever deeper in our planet, and make stenches and foul the sight of heaven. This much I owe the city people and that part of my blood which comes from men who held on. And, besides, perhaps the grass will come back, and that would be to the liking of those who still live with horses. Who knows?”
“I am a good boy. But I see. I see that it was perhaps needful that there be four centuries in which the six-legged were required to bide. I also see that the time is at an end.”
The establishments have done their work. I would not have believed it; I would say that city ways should have killed us all by now. There are so many machines that must lie for everyone’s comfort. But—“ He shrugged. ”Machines go wrong. With so many, perhaps there is one, somewhere, that does us good, almost by accident, and so blunts the edge of destiny.
“But, you know, I would not risk it much longer.” He smiled. “We are already going very far. Next time, we will reach distances such that the radio takes an impossible time to transmit the reports and instructions, is it not so? And the trip is so long. It becomes senseless to return all the way, or to think that someone at a microphone in Africa can control what needs to be done at Neptune, or perhaps at Alpha Centauri. Control, or even advise. No, I think it becomes very natural then to make camps out there, and to have repair depots and such, so that it is not necessary to go to the constant expense and time to go back and forth to here. If we can make food from petroleum and cloth from stone in Antarctica, I think we can find minerals and hydrocarbons in space as well, no?”
“I think then we come back once in a while if it is still here; we will come back for new recordings of Les Sylphides, and we shall pay for them with gems snatched from the temples of Plutonian fire-lizards, say, or with nearly friction-less bearings, or with research data. We shall tell the Earthmen how the universe is made, and they shall tell romantic stories about us and wish they had time to leave home.” Papashvilly shook his head. “Clinging is a thing a man can take pride in, I think, and there is nothing to be ashamed in it. Nothing, especially if one clings so well that nothing can dislodge him. Nevertheless, I have stood on Mount Elbrus and looked northeast, Lavrenti, and from there I could only see as far as one of Timur’s hazarras could ride in a week. And I said to myself : I, too, am six-legged.” He had put down his empty glass. “Goodbye, alcohol,” he had said. A few polite words more and it was time to go. Papashvilly had put his hands on Michaelmas’s arms and shaken him a little, fondly. “We shall see each other again,” he had said, and had gone up to his room.
Domino said: “The European Flight Authority has determined the cause of Watson’s crash.”
Michaelmas sat up. They were coming out of the hills, now, and whirling down the flats, leaving a plume of finely divided dust along the shoulder of the highway. “What was it?”
“Desiccator failure.”
“Give me some detail.”
“The most efficient engine working fluid is, unfortunately, also extremely hygroscopic. It’s practically impossible to store or handle it for any length of time without its becoming contaminated with water absorbed from the air.
The usual methods, however, ensure that this contamination will stay at tolerable levels, and engines are designed to cope with a certain amount of steam mixed into the other vapours at the high-pressure stages. Clear so far? All right; this particular series of helicopter utilizes an engine originally designed for automobiles produced by the same manufacturing combine. The helicopter cabins have the same basic frame as the passenger pod and engine mount of the automobile, the same doors and seats, and share quite a bit of incidental hardware. This series of helicopter can therefore be sold for markedly less than equally capable competing machines, and is thus extremely popular worldwide among corporate fleet buyers. The safety record of the model Watson was flying is good, and indicates no persistent characteristic defect. However, this is not true of an earlier model, which showed something of a tendency to blockage in its condenser coils. They froze now and then, usually at high altitudes, causing a stoppage of working fluid circulation, and consequent pressure drop followed by an emergency landing or a crash due to power loss.”