“Great Spirit, give to me a heaven not so large as yours but large enough for me.”
Its significance escaped Stirling, but he did not feel qualified to criticize another man for overlaying the hard reality of the lie with the colors of his own dreams. He pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin and waited for sleep. Although winter had come early to Heaven that year, the shell field and a minimal amount of under-soil heating had kept the temperature to reasonable levels. The snow clouds crowded by, far below the raft, in great gray rivers, while the villagers lived in the thin, pure sunlight of a faded water-color.
Stirling now knew almost everybody in the community and admitted to himself that he had begun to look like the other villagers. At his most conservative estimate, he had lost thirty pounds in weight, and felt as though he could have run the full length of the He. His skin had darkened to the color of polished teak, and his stubble had developed into a rakish, seignorial-looking beard. But underneath his new, piratical exterior, his early instinctive desire to get off the He had crystalized into a diamond-hard determination, which was with him every second of every day. In his dreams he walked city streets, drinking in the sights and sounds of the culture which had spawned him—but sleep was not always easily achieved.
Stirling had been lying in darkness for an indeterminate time when he became aware of distant voices rising and falling, like the sound of waves sifting shingle. Several people ran by the stockade, talking excitedly hi breathless whispers. Recognizing an unusual amount of activity for the time of night, Stirling got up again and crossed to the door. He waited until he heard more leisurely steps outside, then rattled the lashed door against its frame.
“What’s going on out there?”
“Go back to bed, Vic,” someone replied. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
“Will you tell me what’s happening, or do I kick this door down?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. Old man Latham has finally bought it. His daughter’s having some kind of a fit back there.”
Stirling went to his pack and took out the final cigarette he had been saving for some unspecified occasion. He puffed it into life and drew deeply; but the dry smoke ravaged his lungs and made him cough. And, when he had snuffed out the tiny orange spark, the night seemed very much darker than before.
Stirling was not allowed to attend the funeral, but he saw the party wind its way along the margin to the grass-covered bank of drifted dust which served the villagers as a graveyard. The bank, heaped against the eastern wall by air eddying through a configuration of larger tanks, was not long and was only four feet hi depth at its maximum. Stirling had no idea how many people had died on the He, but he guessed their bodies were keeping each other pretty close company. The Great Spirit was seeing to it that Judge Latham’s allotted heaven was not over-large.
While the straggling procession was returning a westbound jet grumbled its way down through the sky, and the villagers dispersed into the background. Stirling returned to the work of repairing the nets used by the food-foraging teams.
An hour later, during the midday break, Melissa Latham came to the stockade where Stirling had been doing much of his work during the colder weather. He had not seen her, except at a distance, for several months and was surprised to realize how much of her already economical body had been pared away by the strain of tending her father. Her eyes looked bruised.
Stirling stood up. “I’m sorry …”
“He told me to give you this.” She held out Latham’s gold wristwatch. “I couldn’t take it.”
“It’s all right. It doesn’t work, and the gold is meaningless.”
“I don’t mean that—I mean, it was your father’s.”
“I don’t need it.” Melissa looked at him with a new curiosity. “He made me promise you would have it.”
“All right—thanks.” Stirling accepted the watch and warmed its chilly metal in his hands. “I don’t know how much it would mean to you at this moment, but when your father knew he was going to die he picked the place where he wanted to go… . And I think he made a good personal choice.”
“He told you he was ill before he came here?”
“Yes. You don’t …”
“It happened afterwards. He could have been cured if he had been able to go back.”
“Didn’t he try?”
“No.” Melissa sounded almost defiant.
“But that’s …” Stirling searched for the right word, and found his vocabulary inadequate. “What are you going to do now?”
“Too soon … Too soon …” Her gaze flicked past him. Stirling looked around and saw Johnny Considine approaching, for once without his entourage. It was the first time in five months that he had come within speaking distance. His eyes were fixed on Latham’s watch with a look of overt covetousness which Stirling found puzzling.
“Here, Johnny.” Stirling offered him the watch. “I suppose I’m expected to render unto Caesar.”
Johnny put out his hand, carefully wrapped Stirling’s fingers around the watch, and squeezed down on them. He gave Stirling a stare of resentment from stranger’s eyes, but did not speak. Stirling suddenly understood that the watch was a symbol, not in its physical reality, but in the giving of it by the judge.
Still without speaking, Johnny put his arm around Melissa’s shoulders; and she allowed herself to be led away. When they were almost out of earshot Melissa said something in a low, angry voice. Johnny, glancing back once over his shoulder, answered her; and Stirling knew why he had been so silent when they were together. His voice was a thin, plaintive squawk which showed that the vocal prosthetic was rapidly failing. Johnny was destined to be a king who gave commands with his fingers.
Stirling put the watch in his pocket and returned to the nets. Second in importance only to the rule that nobody went back, was the villagers’ law that the food supplies had to be gathered over the widest possible area. The foraging teams traveled the full width of the He and diffused their demands to escape the electronic musings of distant computers—and nets were necessary for transportation.
Stirling worked stolidly with the tough plastic strands, while his mind re-ran the brief encounter with his brother. Johnny had changed again, this time for the worse. His personality seemed to be imploding on itself, building up internal pressures which would not be contained, like a fission-fusion bomb. The symptoms would not have been apparent to anyone else; but Stirling had read them hazing through Johnny’s eyes like the wind patterns drifting on his striated kingdoms of grain. But what was eating into Johnny? Disillusionment with the He and the pettiness of his chieftainship? Imagined or real rejection by both Judge Latham and Melissa? That might explain his reaction to seeing Melissa hand Stirling a worthless watch.
The skin of Stirling’s face prickled coldly, as though it had been dusted with ice particles.
A worthless watch!
He stood up, stretched casually, and made his way into the stockade. Just inside the doorway—where the light was still good—he stopped, took out the watch, and sprang open its case. Nothing, except its magnetic motor and escapement. He examined the plastic of the strap for stitching which might have been disturbed; but it was made of a single thickness. Again nothing. Breathing heavily with frustration, he studied the body of the watch for the second time. The face was a lamination of gold which could be lifted away from the backing plate. Stirling pried it up with his thumbnail and saw the imprisoned corner of a microfilm frame. He began to tremble.