Morey didn’t reply, and I felt miserable.
Holidays
I wasn’t able to reach Dad, so I left him a message. He called back a week later. “Joe, what is this? Why can’t you come home for Christmas?”
“I told you. Rosalie asked me to her house.”
I waited.
“You didn’t mention it when I talked to you.”
“I forgot. Maybe I didn’t know then.”
He stared at me. I watched his expression catch up with my words. “That’s not like you, Joe. What’s going on?”
“You probably weren’t planning much anyway.”
He was silent for much longer than the delay.
“Sorry,” I added, knowing that I was punishing him for not letting me come home for intersession.
“If you won’t come, I can’t force you,” he said finally.
His face faded away. I felt relieved and saddened.
I went to Bernie’s office on the second floor of the student center, hoping to talk about taking a job with him during the next term. The message plate on the door read that he was in Riverbend Hospital for an indefinite stay.
It was a Saturday morning, so I called Ro, and we arrived at the admissions desk an hour later.
“He’s in cold suspension life support,” the male nurse told us.
“What happened?” I asked nervously.
“Heart—he’ll have to stay until his new one is grown, and for a complete cell scrub renewal. He should be out before Christmas. Do you want to see him?”
“How can we?” I asked, puzzled and afraid.
“Are you friends or relatives?”
“Friends,” Ro said. “Joe knows him better than I do, but everyone has heard of Bernie at the university. He’s a legend.”
“Yes, I know,” the tall nurse said. “Come this way. He’ll need to hear from someone. We haven’t been able to contact any of his family.”
We followed him down a long corridor, through a few heavy doors, and into a large monitoring room.
“Number six,” the nurse said, pointing to a screen.
I took a deep breath as I saw Bernie’s face. It was composed, as if he were dead.
“Say something reassuring.”
“Can he hear me?” I asked.
The nurse nodded. “He’ll pick it up at a deep mental level. It helps calm the body, we’ve learned.”
I leaned close to the pickup. “Bernie,” I said, choking up, “this is Joe Sorby. I want you to get well soon, so I can work for you …”
“His signs are calmer,” the nurse said after what seemed a long silence. “He must like you.”
“I’ve met him only a few times,” I said, “but we talked a lot.”
“Come back when he’s through the replacement. It’ll be routine. We’re a bit puzzled why he didn’t come in sooner. You’ll help his recovery.”
“Haven’t you heard from his kids on Earth?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
I looked closely at Bernie’s face, wondering what he might be dreaming. Had he grown tired of life and decided to die when his body failed? I couldn’t believe it. He was obviously needed. Or was there something I didn’t know? “Get well,” I repeated, swallowing hard, afraid of my feelings. We had talked about more than I realized.
“You’re drawn to him,” Ro said as we walked back across the bridge from Riverbend.
I looked around. “I guess I admire what he’s helped do here. He can see what his life has been for. It’s all around him, and he still helps keep it going.”
“You’ll probably enjoy working for him. I can tell in the way you say it.” She smiled at me.
“Is it a good hospital?” I asked.
“Sure. His kind of recovery is routine, although he shouldn’t have let it go so long. You won’t miss school?”
“It can wait.”
“It’s not the best I’ve seen,” Fred Allport said as he adjusted the 3-D holo of the Christmas Tree from New York City’s Rockefeller Center. He had the whole scene reduced to fit in the corner of the living room. The people ice-skating under the branches seemed like toys.
I had given Rosalie a bracelet, and had received a shirt. Fred gave us a miniature set of the Oxford Classics. Ro had stopped me from buying him anything; he had insisted that our spending time with him would be enough.
Fred was a great cook and a nonstop talker, and he never tired of showing me his books. The visit took my mind off everything for a week. I felt that he wanted me to like him, and that he was very pleased with me, for more than Rosalie’s sake.
On Christmas Day there was a fireworks display in the square of each town. We sat watching from the terrace of the house as the towns tried to outdo each other. Little universes of light blossomed in the great space, throwing shadows across the countryside, illuminating the patterns of roads, houses, and backyards overhead.
“How was the term?” Fred asked as the display came to an end with a sparkle of yellow.
“Joe got all A’s,” Ro said.
“Very good!”
I shrugged. “So did she.” I had never been praised much for success. Fred’s genuine delight upset me. I felt a bit guilty about not going back next term.
The conversation drifted around to the Mercury crisis.
“They know they have to give them what they need, eventually,” Fred said, massaging his forehead. “Dragging out the final agreement like this will only give the bad feelings a longer life.”
Rosalie looked at me. “You are coming to the rally with me on New Year’s Day, aren’t you?”
“If they haven’t signed the agreement by then,” I said.
Fred chuckled. “Show more interest, son. My daughter is a toughie on stuff like this.” His voice vibrated with his pride in her.
“Doesn’t feel like they’ll settle it,” Ro said.
I stood up. “We’d better hurry if we’re going to make the boat ride.”
“Have a nice time,” Fred said with a note of loneliness in his voice.
The craft crossed the lake, gliding toward the outflowing stream. Rings of moonlight trembled on the dark water. We sat on deck and watched quietly for a long time.
The boat entered the flow of the river. It would take all evening to circle the equator and return us to the lake by the inflow stream.
A couple passed by us.
“Have you told your parents?” Rosalie asked, holding my hand.
“Not yet.”
“Has Bernie found a job for you yet?”
“He will. I hope to get work with him, at least for next term.”
“It’ll do you good, whatever you decide later.”
A slight breeze blew across the water. I watched the lights on the shore and imagined the massive circulating pumps that helped take the water in and out of the lake. Bernie had told me about it on my regular visits to him during his recovery. The water had been manufactured out of hydrogen and oxygen; it would have been very difficult to lug that much water out here when the place was built.
Rosalie slipped over to my recliner, and we kissed for a while. It seemed that she was trying to tell me much more than that she loved me. She also needed me, and I felt my caring for and loyalty to her grow into a force of tenderness that could never be defeated. Kisses are sometimes whispers that you can’t quite hear.
“Merk! Merk! Merk!” the crowd chanted insistently.
Riverbend’s main square was jammed with people on the afternoon of New Year’s Day.
Even though the rest of the solar system had sided with Mercury, and despite the fact that no one would gain by a breakdown of metal delivery into Earthspace, there was still no agreement.
I was pretty angry when I learned that the ores weren’t even half the story. No one would gain—in the long run; but an embargo on space imports to Earth—a cut-off of medical products, alloys, electronics, optical surfaces, not to mention reductions in simple power transmission—would help rearrange, if not topple, many political careers, and ruin a number of business interests on the planet. So it was to the benefit of various rival groups on Earth to drag out the agreement with Mercury and ruin their enemies. Resignations had been in the news all week.
Ro and I were at the edge of the crowd. We’d gotten up late, but it was just as well; we’d have been trapped in the crowdlock, unable to move until it broke.
Making sense of the forces playing around the Mercury problem was a job in itself—a lot of it seemed as if it couldn’t possibly make sense—but I tried. Short term interests were delaying worthy long-term developments everywhere. The Asteroids were keeping more of what they produced and building habitats for a growing population; self-sufficiency was an old story for much of Sunspace. The trouble with Mercury was that its population specialized in mining the planet, not settling it; too little time and energy was left over for improving the quality of life. If conditions did not improve, the miners might demand to leave and find work on Mars and in the Asteroids; those growing communities would be happy to have them. So the only way to keep the Mercury families put was to give them a habitat.
Mercury’s resources would last for centuries, Bernie had pointed out when we had visited him during his recovery; so it made sense to develop the place. A habitat would stimulate free trade. Mercury’s space would become a more humane place to live and work.
Earthside politicos had always hated the planet’s increasing dependence on the civilization beyond the sky. But it wasn’t Earth’s fault that it lacked the conditions for a humane industrialism. Its renunciation of destructive industries had saved the planet’s environment, and was a natural development for humankind—a move from a finite industrial base to a practically unlimited one.
“But the principal product of Earth is still people,” Bernie had insisted during our long talks in the hospital. “It can nurture, educate, and supply them wherever they may be needed. Someday Sunspace will all be one, and Earth will be the name given to all the inhabited space around the Sun.”
Bernie had looked very good by the end of his hospital stay. He stood up straighter when they let him out of bed; his skin looked younger, his hair thicker. His eyes seemed more penetrating and critical; his speech was quicker. It was heartening to see. I was happy for him, and it pleased Rosalie to see us become good friends.
The crowd quieted as the holo projector cast a giant figure in front of the courthouse. The man gazed down at the crowd, as if preparing to stomp us with his feet.
The crowd booed. “That’s LeCarrier,” Ro shouted to me, “the chief negotiator!”
The titanic ghost raised its arms. “We have a settlement!” his voice boomed.
“About time!” a smaller voice replied.
“Booooo!”
LeCarrier looked exasperated. “We have a settlement,” he repeated as the crowd calmed down. “And some other good news. An asteroid hollow has been diverted from its Martian orbit into a powered sunward trajectory. It should be in Mercury’s space within a few months.”
The gathering gave a feeble cheer.
“We are taking applications for volunteers who will be needed during the construction of the asteroid interior. No conscript or convict labor will be used, not even youthful offenders.”
The crowd cheered more loudly. A sense of relief and satisfaction rushed through me. Rosalie put her arm around my waist. “Finally, it’s over,” she said.
“We’ve won!” someone shouted, sending a jolt through me and the crowd. “Merk! Merk! Merk!” the massed voices chanted, breaking up into whistles, cheers, and hoots. “We’ve won!”
LeCarrier looked even more exasperated, but he smiled. I had the feeling that he did not like the outcome; it had made clear, perhaps too strongly, that power was shifting from Earth to its offspring.
The figure of LeCarrier winked out and was replaced by another—a middle-sized man with black hair, combed straight back, sitting in a bare room. He didn’t seem old, only tired.
“Robert Svoboda,” Ro whispered, “the head man on Mercury.”
Again I felt a thrill, knowing that I was looking at someone very special.
“I’d like to thank the additional negotiators on Earth,” he said softly, then paused and looked around, as if listening for something. For a moment it seemed that he was examining the hollow of Bernal. His image trembled. “A minor quake,” he said finally. It seemed that he wanted to say more, but he only smiled, waved, and faded away.
“I hope nothing more happens before the agreement is fulfilled,” Ro said, holding me close. “A lot can happen before then.”
I looked at her carefully and realized what she was thinking. “You want to go, don’t you?” I asked.
She nodded. “Don’t you? You will come if I go, won’t you?” She sounded unsure.
I hesitated, even though I knew I would want to go. “Sure, if they take us.” My voice trembled a bit. It would be a big step, and dangerous, unlike anything I’d ever known to sail against the solar wind to the first planet, which whipped around the blinding center of all Sunspace.
“They’ll take us,” Ro said finally.
“I got this notice from the University,” Dad said, “that you’re taking the term off.”
“I need some time.” One, two, three.
“You’ve only been two terms! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I need time to think.”
“But tell me why,” he said after the pause.
I felt my pulse race. What could I tell him? That maybe I didn’t want to go back ever? “I’ll probably go back next term.”
Dad sighed after a moment. “Your mother will blame me.”
“You had nothing to do with it.”
“She blames me for everything I can’t control.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “She blames you for trying to control everything, to keep things steady and calm, to suit yourself. You still don’t understand, do you? This is my decision to make. Mom probably felt the same way when she decided to break away. You’ve got to understand that.”
“What will you do?” he asked finally, and it seemed that my point had sunk in.
“I think I have a job for the term.”
“Doing what?”
“Maintenance apprentice.”
“Apprentice? Doesn’t that require a longer commitment?”
“If I want it.”
He was shaking his head, making me very nervous. “Joe, Joe, this is not for you.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
He stared. My words caught up with him and he still stared. “What are you saying? You just said for the term.”