The news from the view-wall kept coming in, in a mounting torrent of apprehension and excitement. Forrester, watching Adne and Taiko as they responded to the news reports, could hardly tell when they were reacting with fear and when with a sense of stimulation. Did they really expect Earth to be destroyed by the retaliation of the Sirians? And what were they going to do about it?
When he tried to ask them, Taiko laughed. “Get rid of the machines,” he said largely. “Then we’ll take ’em on—any snake or octopus from anywhere in the galaxy! But first we’ve got to clean house at home.”
Adne only said, “Why don’t you come with us—and relax?”
“Come along and see,” she said.
Considering his own guilt in that area, Forrester did not want to attract attention by seeming especially concerned about the Sirians. But he insisted, “Shouldn’t somebody be doing something?”
“Somebody will be,” said Taiko. “Don’t worry so, boy! There’ll be a run on the freezers—people chickening out, you see. You know. ‘Leave it to George.’ Then, by and by, the Sirians’ll come nosing around, and the appropriate people will deal with them. Or they won’t.”
“Meanwhile, Taiko and I have a date to crawl,” said Adne, “and you might as well come along. It’ll rest you.”
“Crawl?”
“It’s everybody’s duty to keep fit—now more than ever,” Taiko urged.
“You’re being very good to me,” Forrester said gratefully. But what he really wanted was to sit in that room and watch the view-wall. One by one the remote monitoring stations of Earth’s defense screen were reporting in, and although the report from each one of them so far was the same—“No sign of the escaped Sirian”—Forrester wanted to stay with it, stay right in that room watching that view-wall, until there was some other report. To make sure that Earth was safe, of course. But also to find out, at the earliest possible moment, if the (hopefully) recaptured Sirian would give out any information about his accomplice. . . .
“Well, we’re going crawling,” said Adne. “And we really ought to take off right now.”
Forrester said irritably, “Wait a minute. What did they just say about Groombridge 1830?”
“They said what they’ve been saying for a week, dear Charles. That thing they spotted is only a comet. Are we going to crawl or aren’t we?”
Taiko said humorously, “Charles is still a little dazed about his new loot. But look, old buddy, some of us have got things to do.”
Forrester took his eyes from the view-wall’s star map and looked at Taiko, who winked and added, “Now that you’re on the team, you ought to learn the ropes.”
“Team?” said Forrester. “Ropes?”
“I have to do a communication for the society,” Taiko explained. “You know. What you used to call a widecast. And as you’re on the payroll now you ought to come along and see how it’s done, because frankly—” he nudged Charles— “it won’t be too long before you’re doing them yourself.”
“But first we crawl,” said Adne. “So shall we the sweat get going?”
They hustled Forrester along, muttering and abstracted as he was, until he realized that he was attracting attention to himself, and he didn’t want to do that.
It might be, thought Forrester, that the right and proper thing for him to do was to go to someone in authority—if he ever found anyone in authority in this world, except maybe the joymaker—and say, frankly and openly, “Look, sir. I seem to have done something wrong and I wish to make a statement about it. Under what I guess was hypnosis I made it possible for that Sirian to escape, thus blowing the whole security of the human race forever.” Confess the whole thing and take his medicine.
Yes, he thought, some time I probably had better do just that; but not right now.
Meanwhile, he tried to look as much like everybody else as he possibly could, and if this required him to be thrilled but casual about the danger of an invasion fleet of Sirians appearing in the sky at any moment to crush the Earth, then he would do his best to seem thrilled but casual
“Well,” he cried gaily, “we sure had a good run for our money! Best little old masters of the planet I ever saw! But may the best race win, right?”
Adne looked at him, then at Taiko, who shrugged and said, “I guess he’s still a little shook.”
Dampened, Forrester concentrated on observing what was going on around him. Taiko and the girl were bringing him to a part of Shoggo he had not previously visited, south along the shore to what looked like a leftover World’s Fair. Their cab landed and let them out in a midway, bustling with groups and couples in holiday mood, surrounded by buildings with a queer playtime flavor. Nor was the flavor confined to the buildings. The place was a carnival of joy and of what Forrester at once recognized as concupiscence. The aphrodisiac spray that individual joymakers dispensed in microgram jolts was here a mist hanging in the air. The booths and displays were shocking to Forrester, at first, until he had taken a few deep breaths of the tonic, the invigorating air. Then he began at last to enjoy himself.
“That’s better,” cried Adne, patting him. “Down this way, past the Joy Machine!”
Forrester followed along, observing his surroundings with increasing relaxation and pleasure. In addition to its other attractions, the place was a horticultural triumph. Flowers and grasses grew out of the ground he walked on and along the margins at his sides; out of elevated beds that leaned out to the midway, heavy with emerald grapes and bright red luminous berries; out of geometrical plantings that hung on the sides of the buildings. Even on the walk itself, among the happy humans, there were what looked like shrubs bearing clusters of peach-and orange-colored fruits—but they moved, walked, stumped clumsily and slowly about on rootlike legs.
“In here,” said Adne, clutching at him arm.
“Hurry up!” cried Taiko, shoving him.
They entered a building like a fort and went down a ramp surrounded by twinkling patterns of light. The concentration of joymaker spray was a dozen times stronger here than in the open air. Forrester, feeling lightheaded, began to look at Adne with more interest than he would have believed himself able to show in anything but Sirians. Adne leaned close to nibble his ear; Taiko laughed in pleasure. They were not alone, for there was a steady stream of people going down the ramp with them, fore and aft, all with flushed faces and excited.
Forrester abandoned himself to the holiday. “After all,” he shouted to Adne, “what does it matter if we’re going to be wiped out?”
“Dear Charles,” she answered, “shut up and take your clothes off.”
Surprised, but not very, Forrester saw that the whole procession was beginning to shed its outer garments. Shaggy vests and film-and-net briefs, they were tossed on the floor, where busy glittering little cleaning creatures tugged them away into disposal units. “Why not?” he laughed, and kicked his slipper at one of the cleaners, which reared back on its wheels like a kitten and caught it in midair. The crowd rolled down the ramp, shedding clothes at every step, until they were in a sort of high-vaulted lounge and the noise of laughter and talk was loud as a lynching.
And then a door behind them closed. The cloying joymaker scent whisked away. Streams of a harsher, colder essence poured in upon them; and at once they were all standing there, nearly nude and cold sober.
Charles Forrester had had something less than four decades of actual life—that is to say, of elapsed time measured by lungs that breathed and a heart that beat. The first part of that life, measured in decades, had taken place in the twentieth century. The second part, measured in days, had taken place after more than half a millennium in the freezing tanks.