“The decisions have been made, Senhora Adelson. They have been made by the Council. Only your obedience is expected.” Falco bowed, to her, raised his hand in salutation to the crowd, and left the porch, surrounded by his guards. The people moved wide apart to let them pass.
On the porch, two groups formed: the explorers and other men and women, mostly young, around Vera, and a larger group around a fair, blue-eyed man named Elia. Down among the crowd this pattern was repeated, until it began to look like a ringtree forest: small circles, mostly young, and larger circles, mostly older. All of them argued passionately, yet without anger. When one tall old woman began shaking her red-leaf umbrella at a vehement girl and shouting, “Runaway! You want to run away and leave us to face the Bosses! What you need is a spanking!”—with a whack of the umbrella in demonstration—then very rapidly the people around her seemed to melt away, taking with them the girl who had annoyed her. The old woman was left standing alone, as red as her umbrella, brandishing it sullenly at nothing. Presently, frowning and working her lips, she joined the outskirts of another circle.
The two groups up on the porch had now joined. Elia spoke with quiet intensity: “Direct defiance is violence, Lev, as much as any blow of fist or knife.”
“As I refuse violence, I refuse to serve the violent,” the young man said.
“If you defy the Council’s request, you will cause violence.”
“Jailings, beatings maybe; all right. Is it liberty we want, Elia, or mere safety?”
“By defying Falco, in the name of liberty or anything else, you provoke repression. You play into his hands.”
“We’re in his hands already, aren’t we?” Vera said. “What we want is to get out.”
“We all agree that it’s time, high time, that we talk with the Council—talk firmly, reasonably. But if we begin with defiance, with moral violence, nothing will be achieved, and they’ll fall back on force.”
“We don’t intend defiance,” Vera said, “we shall simply hold fast to the truth. But if they begin with force, you know, Elia, even our attempt at reason becomes a resistance.”
“Resistance is hopeless, we must talk together! If violence enters in, in act or word, the truth is lost—our life in Shantih, our liberty will be destroyed. Force will rule, as it did on Earth!”
“It didn’t rule everybody on Earth, Elia. Only those who consented to serve it.”
“Earth cast our fathers out,” Lev said. There was a brightness in his face; his voice caught at a harsh, yearning note, like the deep strings of a harp plucked hard. “We’re outcasts, the children of outcasts. Didn’t the Founder say that the outcast is the free soul, the child of God? Our life here in Shantih is not a free life. In the north, in the new settlement, we will be free.”
“What is freedom?” said a beautiful, dark woman, Jewel, who stood beside Elia. “I don’t think you come to it by the path of defiance, resistance, refusal. Freedom comes with you if you walk the path of love. To accept all is to be given all.”
“We’ve been given a whole world,” Andre said in his subdued voice. “Have we accepted it?”
“Defiance is a trap, violence is a trap, they must be refused—and that’s what we’re doing,” Lev said. “We are going free. The Bosses will try to stop us. They’ll use moral force, they may use physical force; force is the weapon of the weak. But if we trust ourselves, our purpose, our strength, if we hold fast, all their power over us will melt away like shadows when the sun comes up!”
“Lev,” the dark woman said softly, “Lev, this is the world of shadows.”
2
Rainclouds moved in long dim lines above Songe Bay. Rain pattered and pattered on the tile roof of the House of Falco. At the end of the house, in the kitchens, there was a far-off sound of life astir, of servants’ voices. No other sound, no other voice, only the rain.
Luz Marina Falco Cooper sat in the deep window seat, her knees drawn up to her chin. Sometimes she gazed out through the thick, greenish glass of the window at the sea and the rain and the clouds. Sometimes she looked down at the book that lay open beside her, and read a few lines. Then she sighed and looked out the window again. The book was not interesting.
It was too bad. She had had high hopes of it. She had never read a book before.
She had learned to read and write, of course, being the daughter of a Boss. Besides memorizing lessons aloud, she had copied out moral precepts, and could write a letter offering or declining an invitation, with a fancy scrollwork frame, and the salutation and signature written particularly large and stiff. But at school they used slates and the copybooks which the schoolmistresses wrote out by hand. She had never touched a book. Books were too precious to be used in school; there were only a few dozen of them in the world. They were kept in the Archives. But, coming into the hall this afternoon, she had seen lying on the low table a little brown box; she had lifted the lid to see what was in it, and it was full of words. Neat, tiny words, all the letters alike, what patience to make them all the same size like that! A book—a real book, from Earth. Her father must have left it there. She seized it, carried it to the window seat, opened the lid again carefully, and very slowly read all the different kinds of words on the first leaf of paper.
A MANUAL OF EMERGENCY CARE FOR INJURIES AND ILLNESS
M. E. Roy, M.D.
The Geneva Press
Geneva, Switzerland
2027
License No. 83A38014
Gen.
It did not seem to make much sense. “First aid” was all right, but the next line was a puzzle. It began with somebody’s name, A. Manuel, and then went on about injuries. Then came a lot of capital letters with dots after them. And what was a geneva, or a press, or a switzerland?
Equally puzzling were the red letters which slanted up the page as if they had been written over the others: DONATED BY THE WORLD RED CROSS FOR THE USE OF THE PENAL COLONY ON VICTORIA.
She turned the leaf of paper, admiring it. It was smoother to the touch than the finest cloth, crisp yet pliable like fresh thatch-leaf, and pure white.
She worked her way word by word to the bottom of the first page, and then began to turn several pages at once, since more than half the words meant nothing anyway. Gruesome pictures appeared: her interest revived with a shock. People supporting other people’s heads, breathing into their mouths; pictures of the bones inside a leg, of the veins inside an arm; colored pictures, on marvelous shiny paper like glass, of people with little red spots on their shoulders, with big red blotches on their cheeks, with horrible boils all over them, and mysterious words beneath the pictures: Allergic Rash. Measles. Chicken Box. Small Box. No, it was pox, not box. She studied all the pictures, sometimes making a foray into the words on the facing pages. She understood that it was a book of medicine, and that the doctor, not her father, must have left it on the table the night before. The doctor was a good man, but touchy; would he be angry if he knew she had looked at his book? It had his secrets in it. He never answered questions. He liked to keep his secrets to himself.
Luz sighed again and looked out at the ragged, rain-dropping clouds. She had looked at all the pictures, and the words were not interesting.
She got up, and was just setting the book down on the table exactly where it had lain, when her father entered the room.
His step was energetic, his back straight, his eyes clear and stern. He smiled when he saw Luz. A little startled, guilty, she swept him a fancy curtsy, her skirts hiding the table and the book. “Senhor! A thousand greetings!”
“There’s my little beauty. Michael! Hot water and a towel!—I feel dirty all over.” He sat down in one of the carved wooden armchairs and stretched out his legs, though his back stayed as straight as ever.