‘Is it?’ Stan turned on Roberta.
Something in him seemed to have snapped, Rocky thought. Roberta recoiled from his sudden anger.
Stan said, ‘So is this the outcome of your great Next experiment? Humans like Jules here, reduced to performing tricks for your approval, all their dignity gone? Your own lost children, crying without comfort in the dark?’ He glared around at the Grange, as if in disgust. ‘Is this the best you can do?’
Roberta snapped, ‘Your remarks are inappropriate. A dozen years ago the Next were scattered, stigmatized, locked up in human institutions. Now we are together, proud, growing strong, confident. You will learn, with us. Great minds think alike—’
‘Hmm,’ Stan said. ‘You ever read Tom Paine?’
‘Of course—’
‘The Rights of Man, 1792. “I do not believe that any two men, on what are called doctrinal points, think alike who think at all. It is only those who have not thought that appear to agree.” I’m with good old dim-bulb Tom Paine, not you. I humbly disagree with you – hell, no, I don’t feel humble at all.’ He looked at Rocky. ‘I’m out of here. You coming?’ He held out his hand.
Rocky was taken aback. ‘But we only got here a day ago.’
‘So what? I’m a Next, remember. A quick study. And I learned all I needed to know.’
‘You can’t leave,’ Roberta said now. ‘It’s impossible, unless one of us takes you.’
Stan grinned. ‘You know that’s not true. Not any more. And you always knew I wouldn’t stay here. Like you said, we super-minds can see all the way to the end game, right? So if you’re as smart as you say you are—’
Rocky, ever practical, asked, ‘What about our stuff?’
‘Screw it. I’ll buy you new jockey shorts. You coming or not?’
‘Hell, yes.’ And he grabbed Stan’s hand.
Roberta made to get hold of them. ‘Wait – you can’t—’
But Stan could.
32
EARTH WEST 389,413.
Joshua’s first impression was that this world, towards the outer Western edge of the Corn Belt, was unimpressive. A little drier than most of its neighbours, maybe, the forest more sparse, the grasslands thinner. No animals in sight; he saw none of the big herd beasts that characterized such worlds.
And yet somebody had come here, to this world, to build a home.
Deep in the heart of a stepwise Kansas, by a sluggish river, a sturdy log cabin stood back from the flood plain. Joshua, watching from cover from a couple of hundred yards away, could see how a nearby forest clump had been cut for timber. Fields had been marked out and roughly fenced. There was a wood store, a hen house, what looked like the beginnings of a forge. There was even a garden, contained by a picket fence, where flowers grew this summer’s day. All of this was surrounded by a neat stockade to keep out predators, and to contain any stock animals. Joshua was impressed. Yet it struck him that one couple could have built all this, given time and determination.
But the hen house was broken open now. Whatever animals had been kept here, goats or pigs or sheep, were gone, slaughtered or driven off. The fields were overgrown, the potatoes needed earthing, even the flowers were growing wild.
The house, though, was not empty. And Joshua, peering through his lightweight binoculars, thought he saw a face staring out of one window, a man’s face, roughly shaven, fearful. The face disappeared, the man ducking back.
Whoever he was, it was obvious why he was afraid, and who he was afraid of. For Sally Linsay was here.
It was the spring of 2058. Since his airship tour of beetle-world with Lobsang it had taken Joshua nearly half a year to track her down.
He found her settled on a bluff to the west, overlooking the farmhouse.
Joshua approached her small camp, whistling softly. The tune was called ‘Harpoon of Love’, a fragment of their shared past that she might recognize. Then he walked into her field of view, with his hands up.
At least she didn’t gun him down immediately. When she recognized him she turned her back and returned to her scrutiny of the farmhouse, squatting easily, her rifle of aluminium and bronze and ceramic in her lap.
‘Took me months to find you,’ he called as he walked up.
She shrugged.
When he got to the top of the bluff he found Sally sitting beside a deep-dug hearth laden with ash, a hearth evidently repeatedly used. Bones were heaped neatly, testifying to the many small animals who had given their lives here to keep her alive. And there was a pail of water, presumably fetched from the stream below. Even clothes, washed, spread over the rock, drying in the dusty sunlight.
He said, ‘You’ve been here a while, right? A regular home from home.’
‘What do you want, Joshua?’
‘What the hell are you doing here, Sally?’
‘Tell me what you want. Or just go, I don’t care.’