Damon Knight - Orbit 15

David nodded.

“Why did you leave like that? They all think we’re going to fight again.”

“We might,” he said.

She smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“We should start down. It’ll be dark in a few minutes.” But he didn’t move.

“David, try to make Mother see, will you? You understand that I have to go, that I have to do something, don’t you? She thinks you’re so clever. She’d listen to you.”

He laughed. “They think I’m clever like a puppy dog.”

Celia shook her head. “You’re the one they’d listen to. They treat me like a child and always will.”

David shook his head, smiling. “Why are you going, Celia? What are you trying to prove?”

“Damn it, David! If you don’t understand, who will?” She took a deep breath. “People are starving in South America. Not just a few Indians, but millions of people. And practically no one has done any real research in tropical farming methods. It’s all lateritic soil, and no one down there understands it. Well, we trained in tropical farming and we’re going to start classes down there, in the field. It’s what I trained for. This project will get me a doctorate.”

The Wistons were farmers, had always been farmers. “Custodians of the soil,” Grandfather Wiston had said once, “not its owners, just custodians.” Celia reached down and moved aside some matted leaves and muck on the ground, and straightened with her hand full of black dirt. “The famines are spreading. They need so much. And I have so much to give! Can’t you understand that?” she cried. She closed her hand hard, compacting the soil into a ball that crumbled again when she opened her fist. She let the soil fall from her hand and carefully pushed the protective covering of leaves back over the bared spot.

“You followed me to tell me good-bye, didn’t you?” David said suddenly, and his voice was harsh. “It’s really good-bye this time, isn’t it?” He watched her and slowly she nodded. “There’s someone in your group?”

“I’m not sure, David. Maybe.” She bowed her head and started to pull her glove on again. “I thought I was sure. But when I saw you in the hall, saw the look on your face when I came in ... I realized that I just don’t know.”

“Celia, you listen to me! There aren’t any hereditary defects that would surface! Damn it, you know that! If there were, we simply wouldn’t have children, but there’s no reason. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded. “I know.”

“Come with me, Celia. We don’t have to get married right away, let them get used to the idea first. They will. They always do. We have a resilient family, you and me. Celia, I love you.”

She turned her head and he saw that she was weeping; she wiped her cheeks with her glove, then with her bare hand, leaving dirt streaks. David pulled her to him, held her and kissed her tears, her cheeks, her lips.

She finally drew away and started back down the slope, with David following. “I can’t decide anything right now. It isn’t fair. I should have stayed at the house. I shouldn’t have followed you up here. David, I’m committed to going in two days. I can’t just say I’ve changed my mind. It’s important to me. To the people down there. I can’t just decide not to go.”

He caught her arm and held her, kept her from moving ahead again. “Just tell me you love me. Say it, just once.”

“I love you,” she said very slowly.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Three years. I signed a contract.”

He stared at her. “Change it! Make it one year. I’ll be out of grad school then. You can teach here. Let their bright young students come to you.”

“We have to get back, or they’ll send a search party for us,” she said. “I’ll try to change it,” she whispered then. “If I can.” Two days later she left.

David spent New Year’s Eve at the Sumner farm with his parents and a horde of aunts and uncles and cousins. On New Year’s Day, Grandfather Sumner made an announcement. “We’re building a hospital up at Bear Creek, this side of the mill.”

David blinked. That was a mile from the farm, miles from anything else. “A hospital?” He looked at his uncle Walt, who nodded.

Clarence was studying his eggnog with a sour expression, and David’s father, the third brother, was watching the smoke curl from his pipe.

“Why up here?” David asked finally.

“It’s going to be a research hospital,” Walt said. “Genetic diseases, hereditary defects, that sort of thing. Two hundred beds.”

David shook his head in disbelief. “You have any idea how much something like that would cost? Who’s financing it?”

His grandfather laughed nastily. “Senator Burke has graciously arranged to get federal funds,” he said. His voice became more caustic. “And I cajoled a few members of the family to put a little in the kitty.” David glanced at Clarence, who looked pained. “I’m giving the land,” Grandfather Sumner went on. “So here and there we got support.”

“But why would Burke go for it? You’ve never voted for him in a single campaign in his life.”

“Told him we’d dig out a lot of stuff we’ve been sitting on, support his opposition. If he was a baboon, we’d support him, and there’s a lot of family these days, David. A heap of family.”

“Well, hats off,” David said, still not fully believing it. “You giving up your practice to go into research?” he asked Walt. His uncle nodded. David drained his cup of eggnog.

“David,” Walt said, “we want to hire you.”

He looked up quickly. “Why? I’m not into medical research.”

“I know what your specialty is,” Walt said quietly. “We want you for a consultant, and later on to head a department of research.”

“But I haven’t even finished my thesis yet,” David said, and he felt as if he had stumbled into a pot party.

“You’ll do another year of donkey work for Selnick and eventually you’ll write the thesis, a bit here, a dab there. You could write it in a month, couldn’t you, if you had time?” David nodded reluctantly. “I know,” Walt said, smiling faintly. “You think you’re being asked to give up a lifetime career for a pipe dream.”

Grandfather Sumner let out his breath explosively. He was a large man with a massive chest and great bulging biceps. His hands were big enough to grip a basketball in each. But it was his head that you remembered. It was the head of a giant, and although he had farmed for many years, and later overseen the others who did it for him, he had found time to read more extensively than anyone else David knew. And he remembered what he read. His library was better than most public libraries. Now he leaned forward and said, “You listen to me, David. You listen hard. I’m telling you what the goddam government doesn’t dare admit yet. We’re on the first downslope of a slide that is going to plummet the world to a depth that they never dreamed of. I know the signs, David. Pollution’s catching up to us faster than anyone knows. There’s more radiation in the atmosphere than there’s been since Hiroshima—French tests, Chinese tests. Leaks. God knows where all it’s coming from. We reached zero population growth a couple of years ago, but, David, we were trying, and other nations are getting there too, and they aren’t trying. There’s famine in a quarter of the world right now. The famines are here, and they’re getting worse. There are more diseases than there’s ever been since the good Lord sent the plagues to Egypt. And they’re plagues that we don’t know anything about. There’s more drought and more flooding than there’s ever been. England’s changing into a desert, the bogs and moors are drying up. Entire species of fish are gone, just damn gone, and in only a year or two. The anchovies are gone. The codfish industry is gone. The cods they are catching are diseased, unfit to use. There’s no fishing off the west coast of the Americas, North or South. Every damn protein crop on earth has some sort of blight that gets worse and worse. We’re restricting our exports of food now, and next year we’ll stop them for good. We’re having shortages no one ever dreamed of. Tin, copper, aluminum, paper. Chlorine, by God! And what do you think will happen in the world when we suddenly can’t even purify our drinking water?”