Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

My panniers had been brought up from the bike and I had returned, shaved and in a clean shirt, when there was a knock on the door. The visitor was Yackle. He seemed embarrassed to find Judith in her night-dress and robe, although I could not imagine more modest sleeping garments. “We’re having a communal supper tonight. Down at the Hall. We were hoping you’d join us, Doctor.” He glanced at me. “And Mister Gavin too, of course.”

“Thanks, Chuck. But not tonight. I’m exhausted. There’s food somebody’s kindly put in the larder. I’ll fix us something to eat here.”

“No need for that! Not for you cooking on your first night home.” He was obviously relieved that he would not have to explain my presence at the feast. “I’ll have the girls bring you up a meal.” He gave me a weak smile and disappeared.

Judith was wandering round rearranging things, the way a woman does when she moves into new quarters, starting to make the place her own. She ignored me, so presently I asked, “Didn’t Yackle say something about sending up supper?” I was hungry.

She turned, pushed back her hair, and studied me. She had put on perfume, the first time since I had met her when, she smelt of anything except herself. She had made up her face; something she hadn’t done since distracting the salesman at Hucksters’ Haven and impressing the doorman at the Shera-ton-Ritz. She had never used cosmetics in the Pen and they were forbidden in Sherando.

“Supper, Gavin? First booze, then food? Is that all you have on your mind?”

“I had two shots of rum with Enoch and I haven’t had anything to eat all day!” Why was she so jumpy? We had escaped the Feds. We had survived a dangerous journey, made more dangerous by the way she had ridden her Yama. We had been welcomed—at least she had—by the Settlement. We were in comfortable quarters. Yet when I mentioned I was hungry she reacted as if I had insulted her. That’s the trouble with having a female partner on any mission. Single-minded and resolute in the crunch; illogical and unpredictable when out of it.

Before I could annoy her further there was a knock at the door. Barbara and the boy from the woods had arrived with trays of food. “Supper,” announced Barbara, stepping into the room. “Compliments of Chairman Yackle. George, put that tray over there!”

George grinned at me, stared open-mouthed at Judith, and put the tray on the sideboard. Barbara started to lay the table with the quick efficiency which seemed to govern all her actions, issuing an occasional command to George. She had just told him to fill the water glasses when Judith took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the door.

“Thanks, Barbara. We can look after ourselves now. There’ll be lots of time to talk tomorrow, I promise you. George—take her back to the others. And show her how to enjoy herself! Will there be dancing?”

“If Chairman Yackle approves,” said George.

‘Tell him I hope he will. After all, I’m the reason for the gala. And I always thought dancing was the best part.”

“I’ll pass your message ma’am. Come on Barb!”

The girl still lingered. “If there’s anything else you want, anything at all, just call me. There’s a scrambled com in that cabinet.”

“Yes, dear! I remember.” She urged the two youngsters out, closed the door, and turned toward me.

“A scrambled com?” I asked.

“Ever the electronics tech!” Judith sighed. “We use a closed CB net here. Better than telephones. You can call anybody within five kilometers of the Cove.” She began dishing up the steaming container of clam chowder which Barbara had brought. “I suppose my only hope is to feed you!”

We ate in silence for several minutes, then I said, “That kid—she’s Enoch’s daughter all right. But her mother must have been quite something.”

“Vera was a line woman. Her eldest daughter—Barbara’s sister—is a lot like her. She’s a computer expert somewhere now. But Barbara takes after her grandmother—in looks and character.” The expression on Judith’s face suggested she had not liked Barbara’s grandmother. “She was the first female Captain of an American airliner. So you can guess the kind of woman she was!”

“Like Barbara will be at forty?”

“I hope not!” Judith stopped eating and looked into the fire. “Barb doesn’t know it—and you mustn’t tell her—but she’s an example of what Freyer, the geneticist, calls ‘dominant genetic clumping.’ A group of sex-linked genes which are transmitted as a group and surface every few generations in a female offspring.” She looked up from the flames and at me. “High-survival traits—not all of them pleasant!”

“So if Barbara has any grand-daughters, some of them may look like her?”

“Daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters! Those traits may not show up as a group for several generations.” “And you don’t approve of them?”

“I don’t know!” Judith sighed. “Her grandmother was very competent, very single-minded, very ambitious.”

“To make airline skipper in the nineties she’d have had to be!”

“She was also completely ruthless.”

She’d have had to be that too. “Barbara’s strong-minded all right. But I’d say there’s a lot of Enoch in her. And he’s the kindest guy—and the most sensible—that I’ve met for some time. While you and Barbara assumed we were boozing he was actually clueing me in how things are here.”

“What sort of things?” Judith glanced sharply at me. “Enoch says that Chuck Yackle and most of the Council—all oldsters or midders—think that being out in the boondocks is all the protection the Settlement needs. That they’re not going to be bothered because outsiders believe the woods are still full of unexploded missiles and the sea lousy with mines. That nobody’s going to come and try to loot this place if law and order break down.”

“Isn’t that true? Isn’t that what the Teacher said? When he told us to settle somewhere isolated and become self-sufficient in essentials?”

“I don’t know what your Teacher said. But he seems to have talked more sense than most gurus. And ‘self-sufficient’ includes being able to defend yourself.”

“It won’t come to thatl” Judy returned to her study of the fire.

“There are weapons here,” I persisted. “We saw some this afternoon. What do you think Barbara and her friends were doing in the woods? Playing cowboys and Indians? They had real guns.”

“They watch the road. That’s good. But they also hunt. That’s why they were carrying guns.”

“Do you hunt deer with veralloy-clad bullets?”

“How the hell should I know?” Judith made an impatient gesture. “I’ve never killed anything in my life. You said so yourself!”

“You’ve never killed people. Or deer. But what about rats?”

“Rats? That’s different. That was in the lab.”

“So you’re ready to kill for knowledge, but not for meat? And you won’t kill to defend the Faith?”

“Gavin, quit riding me! I suppose I might. If there was no other way. I’m a doctor, remember? Those kids—”

“Barbara’s no kid! She’s seventeen, and she has her own boat.”

“Her own boat?” Judith looked up, startled.

“She told me she got her ticket last spring. And a boat to go with it. How can a girl of her age get a boat of her own? A fully equipped fishing boat worth God knows how much?” “It’s not hers! It belongs to all of us!” Judith looked back into the fire. “Though once the boat’s been allotted it’s as good as hers for as long as she fishes it profitably.”

“Profitably? Profitable for who? Her or the Settlement?” “Profitable for both. Sutton Cove isn’t a commune, not like Sherando. We’re a cooperative. Everybody owns an equal share. Like a common stock company. And everybody gets an equal cut of any profits. The people who fish—and that’s all of us at one time or another—earn a share in the catch. Those of us who fish regularly get a boat allotted—if we show we’re good enough. In effect the boat’s ours so long as we can pay the rental and the operating costs. What’s left is our own. The best—the high-liners, men or women, make the most. The others, whether we’re carpenters, or doctors, or mechanics, or any other of the trades we have, get paid for what we do. The teachers and so on get a salary, indexed to what the average fisherman earns. A few don’t work at anything profitable but live on their share in the Settlement’s profits. Basic living with no luxuries. We had a poet like that once. A good poet but a lousy fisherman. He should have stuck to poetry but insisted on fishing. He drowned! He was a sweet guy too!”