The Voices of Heaven (24 page)

"Well," I said, trying to sound apologetic, "I know I'm just a new boy here, but doesn't it seem to you that that ought to be up to the meeting to decide?"

She tugged that strand of hair loose again, curling it worriedly around a finger to help thought. "I don't know. Maybe, I guess. We've never voted on anything like that as long as I've been here."

"So maybe it's about time we started," I said, getting up, and at last her face lit up.

"Barry," she said, "what the hell. It's worth a try. We're with you all the way." And she caught my hand and pressed it to her cheek to show she really meant it.

That quick touch of fingers to flesh felt nice. Really nice, nice enough to derail my thoughts for a moment. Maybe that's not surprising, considering how long it had been since the Moon; I briefly considered punching Marcus Wendt in the face and dragging Theophan off to my bed.

That little aberration didn't last, though. What I actually did was to shake her hand, and Marcus's, and start looking around for other people to persuade.

The way I looked at the people there was that every one of them was a vote. I went after them like any politician. I table-hopped. By then I knew a fair fraction of Freehold's adult population, and I stopped for a moment to plant some seeds in the minds of as many of them as I could—Jillen Iglesias and Dabney Albright and Lou Baxto and—well, just about everybody whose name I could remember. Not quite everybody; Madeleine Hartly didn't seem to be there, though I did have a word with her great-granddaughter. And I skipped Becky Khaim-Novello. She was sitting quietly and thoughtfully by herself at the end of one table, eating as though it were a penance. I started toward her, all right, but then I turned away. She didn't look like a very distraught new widow, but it seemed to me that if I were in her shoes I'd really rather be left alone.

I told them all the same thing. I told them that I thought there was a good chance the orbiter could use the antimatter in
Corsair
's hold—as an expert in the subject, I was willing to go up there and check it out—and then I told them that it probably could use
Corsair
itself, too. As I went along I got more and more creative about the kinds of things the factory could make for them: a new power plant; air-conditioners; a helicopter or two to explore more of Pava. I sketched out how it would even be possible to build a small space tug out of pieces of
Corsair
so we could go out and harvest more material from Delta Pavonis's skimpy asteroid belt, so that even after
Corsair
was used up there'd still be materials to sustain the colony indefinitely.

I got all kinds of reactions. Some were skeptical. Dabney told me flat out that I was wasting my time; he pointed out that a lot of people, mostly Millenarists, would never vote to cannibalize
Corsair
simply because Captain Tscharka would be against it, and a lot of others wouldn't because they had other plans for the ship—like using it for a ride back to Earth. Jillen looked surprisingly worried—there'd been some upsetting news from Earth, she said—but she listened to me. So did everybody else. They did more than that, too. I could see some of them talking thoughtfully to others when I left.

By that time people were beginning to leave the tables, and the cleaning party was hurrying the laggards away. I packed it in then. I considered I'd done a good evening's work. The only thing I hadn't managed to do that suppertime was actually get anything to eat for myself.

I didn't mind. I guess I was already beginning to get a little bit hyper by then, but I didn't feel particularly manic. I just felt good.

When I stopped back at the apartment to clean up before the meeting, even Jacky Schottke was playing a list of supplies from his own screen into the central processing file. "What's the matter, weren't you hungry?" I asked him.

He looked up abstractedly. "Oh, you mean about supper? I guess I forgot. I was busy."

"Busy writing your letter to Santa Claus?"

"Well, I suppose you could call it that. It's just a shame that I don't have decent preservation facilities for type specimens, at least, but they always say it isn't really high-priority stuff. . . . Uh, Barry? While I think of it, there's a favor you could do me if you wouldn't mind—"

I didn't let him finish. I said, "Sure. The answer's yes. I'll vote for everything you want. I'll vote for everything everybody wants." And when he gave me a look, partly hurt because I didn't seem to be taking him seriously, partly puzzled, I laid it all on him.

If I expected him to jump with joy I was disappointed. He listened quietly while I spelled the plan out, then he sighed. "Poor Garold," he said.

"The hell with Garold. He'll just have to get used to it. Everybody's got to make a few sacrifices for the common good. Anyway, there's supposed to be another ship coming along pretty soon."

"Of course. Well, perhaps we'd better get over there. I'd like to get a good seat."

The good feeling was still with me as we cut between buildings on the way to the meeting place. Jacky wasn't talkative. I noticed clouds building up overhead and tried some neutral conversation—"It's a good thing we're getting the meeting in now, looks like we're due for some more rain"—but he just sighed again. He was looking at a group of three or four people talking earnestly together: Captain Tscharka, Tuchman, Jimmy Queng. They glanced at me, then turned away.

"What's the matter?" I asked Jacky.

"I think it's that story from the Moon," he said.

"What story?"

Jacky shook his head. "You don't follow the news from Earth much, do you? Well, never mind. Maybe it's not important."

I let it go at that. I shouldn't have, of course, but I wanted to be up front, while Jacky's idea of a good seat was something inconspicuous in the background.

The place was all set up for the meeting. All the tables had been carted away, and most of the benches were already full. I took an open seat next to Theophan Sperlie, who gave me an encouraging wink and patted my hand. That seemed promising, too, especially because, for a wonder, Marcus wasn't with her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him hurrying in a moment later; but then he came to a stop, looking chagrined. If Theo had been saving the seat next to her for him to occupy it wasn't saved anymore.

Things were looking up in more ways than one. I kept her hand in mine, but I had other things to deal with. I marshalled my arguments in my mind: the fuel; the plan of scrapping
Corsair
to feed the orbiter's production machines; the possibility of exploring for asteroidal metals and ending Pava's dependency on Earth once and for all. It all made sense to me. I was ready to get up in meeting and propose it for everybody.

I didn't even notice that Jimmy Queng had taken his place on the tabletop that served as a platform until he began to speak. "Quiet down, please," he said, looking somber and angry. "Reverend Tuchman has something to say to you."

That was when I began to realize that something was going wrong. So did most of the Freeholders at the same time; there was a buzz all around the audience as Friar Tuck climbed up on the table. He looked even more grim than Jimmy Queng while he waited for the noise to die down. Then he said:

"I speak particularly to our penitential brethren, but I fear this affects everyone here on Pava. As some of you know, we have had saddening news from Earth. We cannot let it pass unobserved. So, in mourning for our martyred brothers, I am declaring a retreat for three days effective at once. The congregation is asked to return here in one hour to proceed to the retreat site."

That made for some real muttering in the crowd—surprised, angry, generally upset. The only ones who seemed to know just what to do were the well-disciplined Millenarists, all of whom stood up and began to leave to get their possessions for the retreat. Jimmy Queng pounded the seat of the chair next to him for silence. "I think you'll all agree that it wouldn't be fair to continue with the meeting when so many must leave. Under the circumstances, this meeting is canceled. We will reschedule it as soon as possible."

That was that.

Five minutes later the Millenarists were all gone and most of the rest of us were just standing around trying to make sense of what had happened. "The bastards," Theo said, but without much emotion—as though she'd expected something of the kind.

Marcus nodded. "I knew it. I bet it's because of those two Millenarists on the Moon."

I blinked at him. "What two Millenarists?"

"The ones that were arrested and deported. What's the matter, Barry? It was all on the news reports; haven't you seen them?"

I hadn't, of course; I'd been too busy with my own worries and plans. Theo patted my hand again. "This whole thing is just a pretext, of course. Tscharka must have known what we were going to propose, so he wanted to stall as long as he could. 'Martyrs,' for God's sake. Nobody but Tuchman would have the nerve to call those two creeps martyrs."

She gave me a curious look, as though I were looking unusually stupid. As I guess I was.

"Well," she said consolingly, "we'll just have to take it up when the meeting's rescheduled. Don't worry, Barry. Our time is going to come." And she gave my arm a friendly squeeze . . . before turning away and leaving with Marcus, hand in hand. It was beginning to rain again, too.

And that's what happened that night. Now you can ask your question if you still want to.

17

THE question that is still to be asked concerns the "town meetings."

Really? I thought I answered all that already. The town meetings were the place where the colonists got together to decide on their priorities and pass their laws—I hope you're not going to ask me what "laws" are now, are you? We were able to run our government that way on Pava because there were so few human beings here. If there had been more of us we probably would have had to elect people to do all that sort of thing for us, the way it's done back in the solar system, but with a total population of less than a thousand we could all get together and hash everything out. Was that your question?

No. The question is this: Is it because of such "town meetings" that so many actions of the human persons on our planet work out so poorly?

You know, you surprise me sometimes. For somebody with no measurable sense of humor, you do manage to get a zinger in every once in a while.

Anyway, the answer to your question is no. I admit that when we try to plan ahead we don't always agree on what the plan should be—that's why we have these meetings, to try to get a consensus that everybody can live with—and even when we do agree we often make mistakes. We try things, and then maybe for one reason or another they don't work out—like that big hydropower dam that was supposed to solve all the colony's energy problems, but didn't. Then we just try something else. It may take us a while to get up the will for another effort. But we never do stop trying.

What we're always trying to do, one way or another, is to make things better.

It's true that some of the things people do try actually wind up making things a hell of a lot worse instead—I'm talking now about wars, and terrorism, and crime, and all the other bad things that human beings have been known to try. As some famous person said long ago—maybe it was somebody like George Washington, or possibly, what was his name, Winston Churchill—every time we take two steps forward we also take one step back. Hell, that's not the half of it. Sometimes it's more like ten or twenty steps back. Over the years human beings have done some of the most catastrophically nutty things you can imagine, in the attempt to make what they think is going to be some kind of improvement.

But we never give up.

Let me repeat that:
We never give up.
Not permanently, anyway. We never stop wanting to improve the way things are. I know that's not your nature. But it's ours.

Friar Tuck's little surprise set me back, all right. It was a shocker. I'd been all juiced up for confrontation, and he cheated me of it.

But it didn't mean that the town meeting wouldn't happen, only that it would be postponed for a few days. (Well, actually for one whole calendar week. Have I mentioned that the town meetings were always on Tuesdays? That was because Tuesdays were among the very few days of the week that were not somebody's Sabbath.)

It turned out to be a tough week in Freehold for the rest of us, though. For the duration of the retreat every Millenarist was off in the hills, and there were a lot of Millenarists. When you take a quarter of the population out of a community—more than a quarter, if you only count the adults—you leave a big hole in the work force. So all the nonessential activities of the colony had to be deferred.

There was a good part to that; with all the Millenarists out of the way, the situation began to settle down as a clear case of "us against them." Most everybody left behind was in favor of change, and we did outnumber them, after all.

Workwise, though, we were stressed. Theophan had to put off one of her seismology runs so that she and half a dozen others could go out to collect a couple of new parafoils from the factory orbiter. She swore a lot about it, but she went. Without Marcus, though, because he was sent, along with Jacky Schottke and me, upriver to the biofuel generating station, to replace the firemen who had taken off on the retreat. That was hard work for me—twice as hard for Jacky. We had to fish out the rafts of brush and logs that floated down the river, as well as the random flotsam that was still coming down from the storms. Then we had to dragline them, by sweat and muscle, to stack under the canopies in the drying yards. When we got a good supply of that on hand we weren't through, we just had to switch to the other part of the job. That was taking the dry stuff, as dry as it was ever going to get, and loading it into the hoppers that would feed it into the conveyors that would dump it into the furnaces that generated the steam that turned the turbine that made the electricity for Freehold.

I'd seen the smoke from the power plant's stacks, but this was the first time I'd come close to it. I wasn't impressed. It produced about 1.8 megawatts—about one meg for domestic consumption, which meant a little over one kilowatt per colonist, and the rest for "industry." But it was a pretty primitive affair. The only energy the turbine extracted was from the primary expansion of the steam; it could have produced twice as much with a low-pressure addition, and more than that with a hotter fuel. Which I didn't fail to point out to everyone who would listen: that was just one more thing the orbiter could make for us. They listened, too. I could see that I was beginning to consolidate my reputation—as a potential leader, maybe, or maybe just as a know-it-all pain in the ass.