“And here,” said Crang beside him, “is a store offering video games that teach General Semantics.” Gosseyn said, “I was wondering what had happened to those. We’d better buy all that are available to take back with us to the Dzan battleship for Enin, and—” he added—“any other educational video games we can find, because—”
… On the roof, the hand was moving forward in the throwing act; and there was no such thing as waiting any longer. As he acted, Gosseyn’s feeling of regret was strong. Because electricity on the move was all too visible. This particular movement came from the socket a hundred and Fifty feet away in the form of a lightning bolt; and there was no possible way of modifying its impact.
The details of what happened were not even clear to Gosseyn, although he was the only witness; and he was watching closely.
The metal ball—as he observed the scene—was already in motion when the lightning bolt corruscated against it. The ball exploded not more than four or five feet from the hand that had thrown it from the roof; but that was evidently too close.
The man screamed, and fell back out of sight.
It was one of those small periods of time of several things happening almost simultaneously.
Enin came running forward, and grabbed Gosseyn around the waist, yelling, “Gee, Mr. Gosseyn, I’m sure glad to see you.”
Dan Lyttle was looking up toward the roof of the two-storey building. “What was all that?” he asked in a puzzled tone.
The young woman, Strella, also spoke to Gosseyn: “Thank you for sending me here.” She took hold of Dan Lyttle’s arm in a possessive way. “It’s going to work out.”
Crang hurried into the door of the two-storey building. He came out again presently, “I told the guard inside to call an ambulance.”
Gosseyn hoped the ambulance would come quickly.
He had already, among numerous fleeting awarenesses, noticed that it was an over-sized men’s clothing and shoe store. Now, he saw the name of the place lacquered into the transparent plastic wall beside the entrance: KORZYBSKI MEN’S CLOTHING AND FOOTWEAR.
… Presumably featuring semantically styled suits, shoes, shirts, ties, pajamas, socks, slippers, and underwear—
It was all a little ridiculous. But it fitted, alas, with the nature of human life everywhere.
—Go aboard the Dzan battleship; and there was a rebellion brewing against a child emperor, who took it for granted that one behaved like father; at that age there was no thought of the possibility that father had been murdered because of the behavior that the son was now imitating…
—Go aboard the Troog battleship, and there was the tense, self-appointed leadership situation…
—And now, here on earth, two aspects: On the one hand, outraged Big Business executives reacting against a philosophy that had raised their costs by depriving them of cheap labor; and on the other, individuals like the ones on this street, trying to cash in on various business aspects of semantics.
Involved were problems of life, and more than one solution. Among these latter was surely: be aware, moment by moment!
One of those awarenesses came through at that exact instant. The distant Gosseyn Two said, “I’ve just checked with the film department of this ship; and they were naturally given Enro’s visual materials by my future sister-in-law, because—naturally—she doesn’t deal with things like that herself. And as we suspected there was a tiny distorter under a false bottom of the container; and that has been disposed of. So things are lining up.” They were, indeed.
CHAPTER 30
Back at the Institute apartment, there were the usual details. Crang phoned Dr. Kair, found him in—and willing to cancel his other patients immediately… “Come right over!”
It was agreed, then, that Prescott and Crang would go with him. While they waited for the arrival of a car dispatched by the office of President Blayney, Gosseyn became aware that Dan Lyttle was beckoning him.
The two men went into the master bedroom; and Lyttle closed the door. Lyttle’s lean face was twisted into a mildly embarrassed smile, as he said, “I thought I should tell you. About this woman, Strella—”
What he reported was, in a way, amazing. All these years, Dan Lyttle had hesitated about subjecting an earth girl to being the wife of a hotel clerk, who worked on a night shift. But, apparently, as he evaluated Strella’s predicament, suddenly there were more possibilities. Because—Lyttle pointed out—the girl from Meerd was trapped. Speaking only English, she could never again fit into the society of her former friends on her home planet. No one there would understand. It was even possible that she would be considered mentally deranged.
Being a stranger on earth, with no way to turn, or return—unless she specifically requested this latter solution—she would, presumably, automatically tolerate being in a daytime-only-wife situation. It could be that, as the years went by, it would slowly dawn on her that hers was a special marriage.
“That is,” Dan concluded, “unless I can find a daytime job—which I now may consider doing. But that could take a while.”
… As he listened to the account, Gosseyn Three conducted one of his silent conversations with Gosseyn Two:
“It would appear,” he analyzed, “that people still automatically expect that the poor will automatically tolerate more severe conditions than the rich—”
The distant alter ego was calm: “My dear idealistic brother, there will—let us hope—never be a time when everybody reacts exactly like everyone else. The time may come when we have disposed of criminal behavior; but human beings will probably continue to have different life experiences, depending on where they were born; and will tend to choose friends and work that is congenial to the tens of thousands of small personal memories inside their heads; memories—which I will now point out—General Semantics has no intention of eliminating, even if at some future time, science can do the job of memory erasure.”
The distant Gosseyn Two concluded: “My suggestion is that as soon as you have taken care of people like Gorrold, and found out why that Gung-ho company that called the first day, didn’t show up to make an estimate for rebuilding the institute, that you get Dan appointed to be in charge of rebuilding the institute and, of course, the Games Machine. You don’t want to do these details yourself; but he may now be motivated to take on such a daytime job.”
“I can see,” Gosseyn Three replied mentally, “that a local hotel owner is about to have the job of finding himself another night clerk.”
He concluded his communication, smiling: “Be seeing you—very soon now, I believe, after Dr. Kair interviews me.”
The answer came, accompanied by misgivings: “I suppose it is, finally, going to happen. You and I meeting face to face—”
Gosseyn Three replied: “I’m due to leave in a few minutes.”
… As he sat in the rear seat of the limousine with Crang and Prescott, Gosseyn Three silently confronted the reality of what was about to happen:
“… Am I going to do everything that’s expected of me?—”
That was definitely a basic question. But, in terms of General Semantics, there was an even more fundamental consideration. It seemed, as he, memory-wise, glanced back over his behavior, the outward appearance was that he had, somehow, felt automatically committed to help the Dzan and the Troogs to return to their home galaxy.
But why return?
It seemed like a reasonable question. With their equipment, and their great ships, they would probably be acceptable colonists on any number of planets. And colonists seldom felt the need to go back to their homelands. The people, who had settled North America in those early days, for the most part never did, as individuals, return to Europe. Some of their descendants were occasionally, casually, interested to visit the land from which their forefathers had come. But theirs was a vacationer’s curiosity, without strong feeling, and certainly without a homing instinct.