New America

TO PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE

The Constitutional Convention had recessed for the midwinter holidays, and Daniel Coffin returned to his house at Lake Moondance. In this part of the lowlands the season brought roaring, chill rains, winds which streaked along mountains to make forests creak and sough, dazzlements of light and hasty shadow as the cloud deck swirled apart, re-formed, and broke open again upon sun, moons, or stars. To travel by aircar was not predictably safe; thus custom was for folk to stay home, visit only near neighbors, in revelry draw closer to their kindred.

Last year he had not done so, but had been the guest of Tom and Jane de Smet in Anchor. His place had felt too big and hollow, and at the same time too full of ghosts. Soon afterward, though, his eldest granddaughter Teresa and her husband Leo Svoboda had suggested they move in with him. It was partly kindness to an old man they loved; their dwelling was no mansion like his, but it was comfortable and they were prospering. Yet there were enough mutual practical advantages—such as centralizing control over the vast family holdings, now that improved transportation made it possible—that they were not offending him with charity. He was glad to agree.

Pioneers marry young. However well tamed this region might be, the frontier was not far off, that entire planet which beckoned every lowlander on Rustum. Leo and Teresa already had two children, and a third on the way. Again the house resounded to joyous voices, again the lawns knew fleet little bodies of his own blood; and Daniel Coffin regained the happiness which is peace.

Today his household had been trimming the tree. Afterward he felt tired. He wasn’t played out, he knew. His hair might be thin and white, the broad face seamed, but his eyes needed no contacts, his stocky frame was erect as ever, and he could walk many a man half his age into the ground. Still, he had overdone it a trifle in romping with the kids. A quiet couple of hours before dinner would let him take full part in its ceremonies and cheer.

He passed slowly through rooms and halls. Much of their serene proportions, blue-gray plastering, gleaming-grained wood floors, furniture and fireplaces, had grown beneath his hands; much of the drapery was Eva’s work. Later, when the plantation commanded a large staff and most of their attention, they had hired professionals to enlarge the building. But the heart of it, he thought, would always be the heart that Eva and he had shared.

Upstairs was their suite, bedchamber, bath, and a separate study for each. At first, after she died, he had wanted to close hers off, or make a kind of shrine of it. Later he came to understand how she would have scorned that, she who always looked outward and lived in the overflowingness of tomorrow. He gave it to Teresa for her use and she could make whatever changes she wished.

His private room stayed as it had been, big desk, big leather armchair, walls lined with books as well as microtapes, book publishing having become a flourishing luxury industry well before anyone might have expected it to on an isolated colony world. French doors gave on a balcony. The panes were full of rain, wind hooted, lightning flared, thunder made drumfire which shuddered in the walls. He could barely see down a sweep of grass, trees, flowerbed-bordered paths to the great lake. Waves ran furious over its iron hue. Besides the storm, Raksh was at closest approach, raising tides across the tides of the sun.

The apartment was gloomy and a touch cold. He switched on the heater and a single fluoropanel, put Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg on the player, poured himself a small whisky and settled down with his pipe and the Federalist Papers.

My duty to reread them, if we’re trying to work out a government which’ll stay libertarian, now that population’s reached the point where Rustum needs more than a mayor and council in Anchor, he thought; then chuckling: Duty, hell! I enjoy the style. They could write in those days.

What’d you have said, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, if you’d been told that someday some people would travel twenty light-years, cut themselves off from the planet that begot mankind, just to keep alive the words you lived by?

I suspect you’d say, “Don’t copy us. Learn from us—from our mistakes, what we overlooked, as well as what we got right.”

We’re trying, gentlemen.

“The erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety—”

Bop, it said on the door. He knew that shy knock. “Come in,” he called.

His great-granddaughter entered. “Hi,” she said.

“I figured you’d be playing with the other kids, Alice,” he answered, referring more to those of the staff than to her younger brother.

“I’m tired, too.” The slight form in the crisp white frock snuggled against his trousers. “Story?”

“Calculating minx. Well, c’mon.” He helped the girl scramble to his lap. Her eyes were blue and enormous, her curls and color and odor of sunlight—if memory served, exactly like those of Mary Lochaber when she was young. No surprise, considering that Mary was also an ancestor of Alice….

She gave him a happy sigh. “What kind of story do you want?” he asked.

” ‘Bout you an’ Eva-Granny.”

For an instant he knew Eva was gone, no more than three years gone, and darkness went through him in a flood. It left; he could look at her picture on the desk and think how it was good to give this flesh of her flesh what he could of what she had been and done; for then, after he himself, and later the children they had gotten together, were likewise departed, a glow of her would live on.

And it was no longer pain for him, really, it was a special kind of pleasure to hark back.

“Hm-m-m, let me see,” he murmured. He blew a series of smoke-rings, which made Alice giggle in delight and poke her finger through them as they went by. Images drifted before him, sharper and brighter than anything in this room except the girl and her warmth. Were they truly from so far in the past? That didn’t seem believable. Of course, these days time went like the wind….

“Ah, yes,” he decided. “You recall I told you how we were explorers before we settled down, Eva-Granny and I.”

“Yes. You tol’ me ‘bout when the t-t-t-TERASAURS,” she got out triumphantly, “they went galloop, galloop ‘roun’ an’ roun’ the big rock till you made’m stop.”

“I couldn’t have done that without Eva-Granny’s help earlier, Alice. Okay, shortly afterward she got the idea of taking a boat out to some islands where nobody had ever landed, only flown over, but that looked wonderful from the air.” (The fantastic coraloid formations might give a clue to certain puzzles concerning marine ecology, which in turn were important if fisheries were to develop further. No need to throw these technicalities at the youngster—nor, actually, any truth if he did, as far as her viewpoint went; because Eva and he had really wanted to explore the marvel for its own sake. She was always seeking the new, the untried. When she became a mother and the mistress of a plantation, it had not taken the freshness from her spirit; she originated more ideas, studies, undertakings than he did, and half of his innovations had been sparked by her eagerness.) “In those days there weren’t enough motors and things to go around, no, not nearly enough. All the motorboats were being used other places. We kept a sailboat by the sea. It was the same kind, except bigger, as I have on the lake, and, in case you don’t know, that’s called a sloop.”

“Becoss it goes sloop-sloop-sloop inna water?”

Coffin laughed. “Never thought of that! Anyhow—”

The phone bonged: its “urgent tone. “‘Scuse me, sweetheart,” Coffin said, and leaned over to press the accept button.

The screen filled with the features of Dorcas Hirayama, mayor of Anchor and thus president of the Constitutional Convention. Her calm was tightly held. “Why, hello,” Coffin greeted. “Happy holidays.”

She smiled at the girl on his lap. “Happy holidays, Alice,” she said. To Coffin: “I’m afraid you’d better send her out.”

He didn’t ask the reason, knowing it would prove valid. He simply inquired, “For how long?”

“Shouldn’t take more than five minutes to tell. Then I suppose you’ll want to spend a while thinking.”

“A moment, please.” Coffin lowered Alice to the floor, rose, and clasped her hand. “Do you mind, dear?” He didn’t see any public question as worth ignoring the dignity of a child. “My Lady Hirayama has a secret. Why don’t you take this book—” she crowed in glee as he gave her a photo album from his roving days—”and go look at it in my bedroom? I’ll call you as soon as I’m through.”

When the door between was shut, he returned to the mayor. “Sorry, Dorcas.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Daniel. But this won’t wait… in spite of going back about thirty-five years.”

For several heartbeats he stood moveless. Chills chased along his spine and out to the ends of his nerves. Lightning glared, thunder exploded, rain dashed against the glass.

Thirty-five years. Rustum years. That’s about twenty of Earth’s. The time it takes light to go between Eridani and Sol.

He sat back down, crossed ankle on knee, tamped the coals in his pipe. “It’s happening, then?” he said flatly.

“It has happened. The message was, they planed to launch a colonizing fleet toward us within five years—five of their years. Unless something interfered, and that doesn’t seem likely, those ships are, at this moment, a third, maybe almost half of the way here. We may have as much as fifty years before they arrive, but no more and probably less.”

“How many aboard?”

“It’s a bigger fleet than carried our founders. The message gave an estimate of five thousand adult passengers.”

In the little death of suspended animation, that they entered dreaming of a glorious resurrection on Rustum—

“What do people have to say about this?” Coffin asked.

“The man who read the tape had the sense to come straight to me, thank God. I swore him to silence. You’re the first I’ve talked to.”

“Why me?”

Hirayama smiled again, wryly this time. “False modesty never did become you, Daniel. You know how I respect your judgment, and I’m hardly alone in that. Besides, you’re the convention delegate from the Moondance region, its leader at home and its spokesman in Anchor, and it’s the largest and wealthiest in the lowlands, which makes you the most powerful person off High America and comparable in influence to anybody on it. Furthermore, you know your folk better than a highlander like me, who can’t come down among them without a helmet, ever will. Must I continue spelling it out?”

“No need. I’d blush too hard. Okay, Dorcas, what can I do for you?”

“First, give me your opinion. We can’t sit on the news more than a few days, but meanwhile we can lay plans and rally our forces. Offhand, what do you suppose the lowland reaction will be?”

Coffin shrugged. “Mildly favorable, because of glamour and excitement and the rest. No more than that. We’re so busy overrunning the planet. Nor do five thousand immigrants mean a thing to us, as regards crowding or competition, when we don’t yet total a lot more ourselves.”

“You confirm my guess, then.”

“Besides,” Coffin said, not happily, “very few of the newcomers will be able to live down here anyway.”

“Doubtless true. The devil’s about to break loose on High America, you realize that, don’t you?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Suggestions?”

Coffin pondered before he said: “Let me think at leisure, as you predicted I’d want to. I’ll call you back after sleeptime. Agreeable?”

“It’s got to be. Well, happy holidays.”

“Same to you. Don’t let this spoil your fun, Dorcas. You and I won’t have to cope with the arrival.”

“No. That girl of yours will.”

“Right. We’ll have to decide on her account. I only hope we’re able to. Good-bye.”

Coffin switched off, crossed the room, and knocked on the inner door. “All done, Alice,” he said. “Shall we continue our story?”

A calm spell, predicted to last a while, enabled Coffin to flit about by aircar, visiting chosen households throughout that huge, loosely defined territory which looked to him for guidance in its common affairs. He could have phoned instead, but the instrument made too many nuances impossible. Nobody objected to his breaking the custom of the season. They were glad to return some of the hospitality he and Eva had shown them.

Thus he went for a horseback ride with George Stein, who farmed part of the estate whereon he lived but mainly was the owner of the single steel mill in the lowlands, hence a man of weight. Stein knew that Coffin’s real desire was to speak privately. Yet the outing was worthwhile in its own right.

The Cyrus Valley was lower and warmer than Lake Moondance. Here many trees and shrubs— goldwood, soartop, fakepine, gnome—kept their foliage the year around. The blue-green “grasses” of summer had given way to russet muscoid, whose softness muffled hoofbeats. This was open woodland, where groves stood well apart. Between them could be seen an upward leap of mountains, which lost themselves in pearl-gray cloud deck. The air was mild and damp, blowing a little, laden with odors of humus. Afar whistled a syrinx bird.

When Coffin had finished his tale, Stein was quiet for a space. Saddle leather squeaked, muscles moved soothingly between thighs. A good land, Coffin thought, not for the first or the hundredth time. How glad I am that, having conquered it, we made our peace with it May there always be this kind of restraining wisdom on Rustum.

“Well, not altogether unexpected, hey?” Stein said at length. “I mean, ever since radio contact was established, it’s seemed more and more as if this colony wasn’t a dying-gasp attempt after all. Earth’s made some resumption of a space effort. And they may have a few expeditions out looking for new habitable planets, as they claim; but they know for certain that ours is.”

“On the highlands,” Coffin answered redundantly. “I doubt that this lot they’re shipping to us, I doubt it contains a bigger percentage than the original settlers had, of persons able to tolerate lowland air pressure. And… the highlands are pretty well filled up.”

“What? You’re not serious, Dan.”

“Never more so, my friend. There isn’t much real estate that far aloft, and High America contains nearly the whole of what’s desirable. Most has been claimed, under the Homestead Rule, and you can bet your nose that the rest soon will be, after this news breaks.”

“Why? Who has to worry about getting crowded? The lowlands can feed a hundred High Americas if we expand cultivation. Let them industrialize the whole plateau if need be.” Stein lifted a hand. “Oh, yes, I remember past rivalry. But that was before you got some industry started down here. Now we don’t have to fear economic domination. Anytime they overcharge us, we can build new facilities and undersell them. Therefore it makes perfectly good sense to specialize along geographical lines.”

“The trouble is,” Coffin said, “that prospect is exactly what’s worrying the more thoughtful High Americans. Has been for quite a while. They’ve been raised in the same tradition of elbow room and ample unspoiled nature as we have, George. They want to keep it for their descendants; and the area available to those descendants will be limited for a long time, historically speaking, until at last the pressure-tolerant genes have crowded the older kind out of man on Rustum.

“For instance, take my sometime partner Tom de Smet. He’s spent a fairish part of his life buying out land claims in the wilderness, as he got the money to do it. He’s created a really gigantic preserve. He’ll deed it to the public, if we write into the Constitution an article making its preservation perpetual, and certain other provisions he wants as regards the general environment. Failing that, his family intends to keep it. On a smaller scale, similar things have been happening— similar baronies have been growing—everywhere on High America. People have not forgotten what overpopulation did to Earth, and they don’t aim to let their personal descendants get caught in the same bind.”

“But—oh, Lord!” Stein exclaimed. “How many immigrants did you say? Five thousand? Well, I grant you even forty years hence, or whenever they arrive, even then they’ll be a substantial addition. Nevertheless, a minority group. And no matter how they breed, they won’t speed population increase enough to make any important difference.”

“They will, though,” Coffin replied, “having no land available to them for the reasons I just gave you—they will be a damned significant augmentation of one class of people we’re already beginning to get a few of.”

“Who?”

“The proletariat.”

“What’s that?”

“Not everybody on High America succeeded in becoming an independent farmer, a technical expert, or an entrepreneur. There are also those who, however worthy, have no special talents. Laborers, clerks, servants, routine maintenance men, et cetera. Those who have jobs, whatever jobs they happen to get, rather than careers. Those whose jobs get automated out from under them when employees acquire the means to build the machinery—unless they accept low wages and sink to the bottom of the social pyramid.”

“What about them?” Stein asked.

“You’ve not been keeping in touch with developments on High America over the years. I have. Mind you, I’m not scoffing at the people I’m talking about. Mostly they’re perfectly decent, conscientious human beings. They were absolutely vital in the early days.

“The point is, the early days are behind us. The frontier on High America is gone. We have a planetful of frontier in the lowlands, but that’s no help to men and women who can’t breathe here without getting sick.

“Anchor hasn’t got a real city proletariat yet, nor has its countryside got a rural one. Nevertheless, the tendency exits. It’s becoming noticeable, as increasing numbers of machines and workers end the chronic labor shortage we used to have.

“If something isn’t done, Rustum will repeat Earth’s miserable history. Poverty-stricken masses. Concentration on wealth and power. The growth of collectivism. Later, demagogues preaching revolution, and many of the well-off applauding, because they no longer have roots either, in a depersonalized society. Upheavals which can only lead to tyranny. Everything which we were supposed to escape by coming to Rustum!”

Stein frowned. “Sounds farfetched.”

“Oh, it is farfetched in the lowlands,” Coffin admitted. “A territory this big won’t stifle in a hurry. But High America is a different case.”

“What do they plan to do to head off this, uh, proletariat?”

Coffin smiled, not merrily. “That’s a good question. Especially when the whole idea of the Constitutional Convention is to secure individual rights—close the loopholes through which they got shot down in the republics of Earth—limit the government strictly to keeping public order and protecting the general environment—because, thank God, we don’t have to worry about foreign enemies.” Somberly: “Unless we generate our own. Societies have been known to polarize themselves. Civil wars are common in history.”

“On the one hand, then, you don’t want a government able to take hold of things; on the other hand, you don’t dare let things drift,” Stein complained. “What do you propose, then?”

“Nobody has a neat solution,” Coffin said. “Besides, we hope to avoid imposing any ideology, unless you count freedom itself. However—official policies could maybe encourage an organic development. For instance, under the ‘public order’ heading, government might create incentives for employers to treat their employees as human beings, individual human beings, not just interchangeable machines or a faceless organized mass. Better conditions could be maintained for the growth of small than big businesses; a strict hard-money rule ought to help there, if it includes some provision for persons down on their luck. On the larger scale, under ‘environmental protection,’ maybe agreements can be reached which’ll distribute economic activity in such ways that everybody will have a chance to get ahead, no matter where he lives. Voluntary agreements, of course, with a profit motive behind them, but entered into under the advice of scholars who see more than just the immediate profit.”

Coffin sighed. “Those are superficial examples,” he finished. “We can’t prescribe the behavior of future generations. All we can do is be aware of certain dilemmas, present and future, put forth ideas, and hammer into our successors that they will face the future ones and had better start preparing well in advance.”

Stein rode sunk in thought. Wind lulled, leaves whispered. Two kilometers off, a herd of cero-there left a wood and started across the sward in graceful bounds.

Finally he said: “I guess I see what you’re driving at, Daniel. Forty or fifty years from now, the proletariat problem should still be fairly small. Only a few people, at worst, should be in that uprooted condition. The economy will be expanding, jobs potentially plentiful, lots of surplus wealth which can be used to help the laid-off city worker get on his own feet. Nothing unmanageable, given common sense and good will.

“Except… then Earth dumps five thousand newcomers on us.”

Coffin nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“Who’ll get no chance to become freeholders. Who’ll have to adapt to the higher gravity, the longer day and shorter year, a million different matters before they can work. And then they aren’t likely to have skills that’re in demand, considering how even the simplest things must be done otherwise on Earth. Instead of occasional individuals who need a helping hand once in a while, High America gets an instant proletariat!”

“For which it won’t be prepared, George, because it won’t have had experience with the type. Shucks, I certainly wouldn’t know how best to treat them, and doubt if the most sophisticated Anchor dweller could make a much better guess than mine.”

“It’ll hardly affect the lowlands.”

“Oh, yes, it will, if we want to keep a unified planet.” Coffin paused. “Or a free one. Elbow room doesn’t guarantee liberty. Some of the harshest empires in Earth history had all kinds of wide-open spaces.”

He straightened in the saddle, though he was becoming to feel weariness from a ride that he would once have considered short. “That’s why I’m traveling around, talking to influential and respected persons like you,” he said. “I’ve got to have the backing of this community—because I mean to make a damned radical proposal when the convention reopens.”

Stein considered his friend for a while before he responded. “I may or may not agree with you, Daniel. Frankly, here is my country, the country I care about, not High America. But I’ll hear you out, of course.”

And if need be, Coffin thought, I have reserves of my own to call on. He began speaking.

The de Smet house, where Coffin stayed when he visited Anchor, lay well out from the center of town, in an area where most homes stood on broad grounds, amidst groves and gardens. Street lamps were infrequent, and trees broke the city’s light haze. Thus, there was little to blur the sky when the man from Lake Moondance went for a walk.

Winter on the altiplano had turned silent and cold. The face stung, the body was glad of a thick coverall, breath felt liquid as it entered the nostrils and came back out in stiff white puffs. Where byways were unpaved, the ground rang underfoot. Elsewhere reached snow, frost-glittering until vision faded out in distance and shadowless. The occasional yellow shining from windows looked infinitely tender but infinitely tiny. Far in the east, the peaks of the Hercules reared glacier-sharp.

Overhead stood heaven. One rarely saw such a wonder in the lowlands, however many other wonders they gave in exchange. Stars crowded the dark, sparks of frozen fire which melted into the Milky Way; tonight that great torrent gleamed like sea-glow. Three sister planets burned in copper, silver, and amber. Among them hastened pygmy Sohrab, while Raksh hung near the half, so low in the west that illusion made it huge, and cast the shadows of trees and drifts long across the land.

Eva had always loved this sight.

The path reached the Emperor River and followed its bank. It sheened hard frozen. On its opposite side, buried fields and pastures rose toward hills and wilderness. Against that remote murk glimmered a few lights, from one of the villages which were springing up across the plateau.

To Coffin, sound seemed muffled in this thin air; and in these his latter years he had grown hard of hearing. He wasn’t aware of the skaters until he rounded a bend in the river, screened by a clump of plume oak, and saw them. Here a road was carried by a bridge. Around its piers and across the ice frolicked a score of boys and girls. They whizzed, they swooped, they laid arms about each other’s waists and took wing. Their shouting and laughter crackled in the chill.

Coffin went onto the span to watch. Abruptly he noticed another already present. The lad was tall, but not only was he wearing a black outfit, the African share of his ancestry made his face almost invisible at a distance. The skates which he had removed caught the moonlight at his feet.

“Why,… hullo,” Coffin said, peering.

“Oh.” The youth turned. “Mr. Coffin. How do you do, sir?”

The man recognized him, Alex Burns, son of a neighbor of de Smet: a bright, well-mannered chap. “Taking a rest?”

“Not exactly, sir.” Alex gripped the railing and stared away. “I got to thinking.”

“On a night like this? Seems as if you’re missing a lot of fun. Sure wish I could get in on it.”

“Really? Sir, you’re welcome to borrow my skates.”

“Thanks, but at my age, a fall under Rustum gravity can be a serious matter. And I’ve got business ahead of me.”

“Yes, sir. Everybody knows that.”

Then Alex swung around again to confront him and said in a desperate voice, “Mr. Coffin, could I talk with you?”

“Certainly. Though I don’t know what a rusticating gaffer like me has to say that’d be of use.” Yet I remember my sons at your age—how short a while ago!

“This news… about the fleet coming from Sol —it’s true?” Somehow the adolescent squeak in midquestion was not ridiculous.

“As far as we can tell. Twenty light-years between makes for slow communications. The Earth government may have changed its mind meanwhile. They were phasing out space travel when your ancestors left. Too costly, given a bloated population pressing on resources worn thin. Not quite in their world view, either. The culture was turning more and more from science and technology to mysticism and ceremony.”

“Th-that’s what my teachers say. Which is how come I’m scared this is a, a false alarm.”

“Well, I don’t think it’ll turn out to be. Giving the Constitutionalists passage to Rustum was a gimmick to get rid of them. But those who elected to go weren’t all the Constitutionalists by any means, nor was that the only kind of dissenter. Once we started sending messages back, our example seems to’ve had considerable psychological effect, roused a widespread desire to emulate. My suspicion is, the government has no choice except to resume a space effort—for several decades, at least, till the social climate changes again. They claim they’re searching for other habitable planets…. No, I think this emigrant fleet is indeed under weigh.”

“Why don’t our people want it?”

The anguish startled Coffin. “Well, uh, well, some folks worry about the effects on society. That’s not unanimous, Alex. I assure you, the average lowlander has nothing against receiving a few thousand newcomers.”

“But the, the average High American—”

“Nobody’s taken a poll. I’m not sure, myself, how a vote on the question would go.”

Alex flung an arm skyward, pointing. The constellations of Rustum were scarcely different from those of Earth; in this universe, twenty light-years are the single stumbling step of an infant.

But just above Bootes flickered a wanness which was Sol.

“Th-they can come to us,” the boy stammered. “Why can’t we go to them?”

“We haven’t the industry to build spacecraft. Won’t for generations, maybe centuries.”

“And meanwhile we have to stay here! Our whole lives!” Did tears catch the level moonbeams?

Now Coffin understood. “How does your pressure tolerance test out?” he asked softly.

“I can live… down to about… t-t-two kilometers below.”

“That’s not bad. Plenty of territory in that range. You can have an adventurous life if you want.”

“Oh, yes, sir. I s’pose.”

“As I recall, you aim to become a scientist. Well, there’s no lack of field research left to do. And if you want to go further down, clear to sea level, why, the new-model air helmets are excellent.”

“It’s not the same.” Alex gulped, knotted fists at sides, and after a while said rapidly: “Please don’t think I’m whining, sir. Nor am I, uh, uh, looking down on anybody. But most lowlanders I’ve met— you’re different, of course—most of them, I don’t… well, we don’t fight or anything, but we don’t seem to have a lot to talk about.”

Coffin nodded. “The frontier doesn’t exactly breed intellectuals, does it? Do bear in mind, though, son: those scouts, lumberjacks, farmers, fishermen—they aren’t stupid. They simply have different concerns from this tamed High America.

In fact, the well-established lowland communities, like my Lake Moondance, they no longer maintain frontier personality either.”

No, instead it’s a wealth-conscious squirearchy, a yeomanry settling down into folkways—not effete, not ossified… still, we’ve become rather ingrown and self-satisfied, haven’t we? It hasn’t been so on my plantation; Eva never allowed it to become so. She got the kids, and me, to lift our eyes from our daily concerns. Elsewhere, however—No, I hardly think Alex would find many of his own sort around Lake Moondance.

“The compromise for you,” he suggested, “might be to do your field work in company with roughneck local guides—who can be top-notch company, remember, who are if you take them on the proper terms—and afterward you come back here and write up your findings, where people are cultured.”

“Culture!” Alex fleered. “They think ‘culture’ means playing the same symphonies and reading the same books their grandfathers did!”

“That’s not entirely fair. We have artists, authors, composers, not to mention scientists, doing original work.”

“How original? The science is… using tried and true methods, never basic research… and the arts copy the old models, over and over—”

He speaks considerable truth, Coffin thought.

Alex’s finger stabbed back at the stars. “If they really were original, sir,” he cried, “they wouldn’t want to wall us off from those. Would they?”

Coffin consoled him as well as might be.

It was doubtful if man would ever altogether outlive the heritage of the planet which bore him. He could train himself to some degree of change from the ancient rhythm of her turning, but not enough to become a fully diurnal creature on Rustum. In the middle latitude at which Anchor lay, a midwinter night lasted for forty-two hours. Of necessity, during two fourteen-hour segments of that darkness, indoor and outdoor illumination made the town a cluster of small suns.

Beneath this sky-hiding roof of light, delegates to the second session of the Constitutional Convention mounted the staircase into Wolfe Hall. They numbered about fifty men and women. Though all were dressed to show due respect for the occasion, the costumes were nearly as varied as the ages. (Daniel Coffin was the oldest, the youngest a male who probably didn’t shave oftener than once a day.) Here a professor walked lean and dignified, in tunic and trousers as gray as his head but the academic cloak gorgeous on his shoulders. There an engineer had reverted to archaic styles and put upon herself a long skirt of formality. Yonder a sea captain, weathered and squint-eyed, rolled forward in billed cap and brass buttons, next to the blue uniform of an air pilot. A rancher from lowland North Persis, otherwise a sensible man, flaunted leather garments and a necklace of catling teeth. The physician with whom he talked had underlined her standing in the cut of her jacket…. Coffin felt drab among them. And yet, he thought, weren’t they reaching a bit, weren’t they being just a touch too studiedly picturesque?

Citizens crowded the pavement, watching, in an eerie hush. Anchor had grown used to seeing the congress assemble. But this time was different. This time its first order of business was light-years remote and terrifyingly immediate. Soon they would hasten home, to follow the proceedings on television. Afterward they would argue in their houses, fields, shops, laboratories, camps, schools, taverns, and who knew what passions might flare?

Coffin paused in the lobby to leave his coverall. Most others had omitted that garment, as being too unsolemn when they scrambled in or out of it, and walked in frozen dignity from their lodgings. Low-voiced talk buzzed around him. An ache throbbed in his left wrist; probably he needed an arthritis booster. He shoved the awareness aside and concentrated on his plan of action. He must get his licks in early, because he hadn’t the stamina any longer for ten or twelve unbroken hours of debate. Well, he and Dorcas Hirayama had discussed this privately beforehand.

The building had been enlarged over the years, but the meeting place was the original whole of it, piously preserved birch wainscoting and rough rafters. Echoes boomed. Folding chairs spread across the floor. At the far end rose the platform, decorated in red-white-and-blue bunting, Freedom Flag on the wall behind—the platform where for three generations, speakers had spoken, actors performed, orchestras played, callers sounded the measures of square dances.

For an instant the assembly was gone from around Daniel Coffin. They were calling a new one, and he and Mary Lochaber ran hand in hand, laughterful like skaters, to join in, and afterward he would walk her home under stars and moons.

No. That was then. Mary married Bill Sandberg, and I married Eva Spain, and this was best for us both, and at last we were united in Alice and David. I’m sorry, Eva.

It was as if he heard her chuckle and felt her rumple his hair.

Well—The delegates were taking their seats, much scrapping and muttering back and forth. Hirayama was mounting the podium. The cameramen were making final adjustments. Coffin shivered. Poor heating in here. Or else simply that old blood runs cold. His head lifted. They may find it can still run pretty hot when it wants to.

The gavel slammed. How far back did that signal go, anyway? To the first cave patriarch whose stone hammer smote a log? There was strength in the thought, a sense of not being utterly adrift and alone in time. No wonder the colonists tried so hard to keep Earth ways alive, or actually to revive some which had been as obsolete on Earth as the liberty their ancestors came here to save. And when this failed on a world that was not Earth, no wonder they were so quick to develop rituals and taboos of their own.

“In the name of the people of Rustum, for whom we are gathered, I call this meeting to order,” said the clear female voice. It continued through parliamentary formalities to which nobody really listened, not even those who took part.

Until:

“As you doubtless know, we’ve had a surprise dropped in our laps.” Coffin felt his mouth twitch upward. Now Dorcas could start behaving like herself! She leaned forward, hands on the lectern, small in her gown but large in her presence, “Maybe it’s best that it did occur at this precise time. In writing the basic law of our planet, we’ll remember that a universe encloses it.

“At any rate, many persons, including many members of this assembly, feel we should take the matter up before going on to our regular agenda. I agree. By virtue of the powers vested in me, et cetera, I’ve appointed a couple of committees to study the implications of the immigrant fleet and make recommendations. This will be kept brief, ladies and gentlemen. No general discussion. The idea is to set forth different views as clearly as possible, then adjourn to consider them, then reconvene to exchange thoughts in detail.

“Will Dr. O’Malley’s committee please report first?”

Only their chairman joined her. He’d probably domineered over everyone else, for he had inherited genes from his grandfather. However; Jack O’Malley made his domineering fun, Coffin remembered from boyhood. Also,… well, I’m not saying Morris O’Malley is inferior; but a lab administrator is not the same as an explorer who could drink his whole band under the table and wake in six hours, hound-dog eager to go discover some new miracle.

The speaker rustled papers. “My lady and colleagues, perhaps it would be best if I commence by summarizing the situation as my group understands it,” he said, and did at a length which caused Hirayama to drum nails on the arm of her chair.

“Well.” Finally O’Malley’s tone grew vigorous. “The question before us is twofold. Should we allow the travelers to join us? If not, can we prevent it?

“The second part is simple. We can. Presumably the fleet is already en route. Theron Svoboda, chief of interstellar communications, thinks we have a fair chance of intercepting it with a maser beam, getting a message through to the officers on watch. These can change course for a different star or, more likely, return to the Solar System.

“If this fails and the ships arrive, we—rather, the next generation of us—will nevertheless be in full control. A minority of your committee advocates constructing nuclear missiles to ensure it. The majority considers that would be a waste of effort. Fuel requirements being what they are, those are surely unarmed vessels. They will depend on us to help them refine reaction mass for the trip home. In no case can a few bewildered newcomers impose their will on a planet.”

He paused for a sip of water. “Very well. The issue is, therefore, should we give entry to these self-invited strangers?

“They bring us no benefit. We’d have to nurse them through adjustment to Rustum; for certainly we could never let them suffer and die as horribly as did many among our forefathers, whom nobody helped. Later we’d have to take time we can ill afford to teach them the habits, technicalities, and tricks which generations on Rustum have painfully learned for themselves. And at the end, in reward, what would we get? Workers not especially desirable, being grossly limited in what they can do. Perhaps not workers at all, but mere parasites. I shall return to this point shortly.

“We are under no moral obligation to admit them. Your committee has reviewed every tape of every communication between Earth and Rustum. A few from our side may have waxed overenthusiastic. But no government of ours has ever issued any invitation or given any promises—if only because hitherto we have never possessed a very formally organized government.

“If they are turned back, none but their officers on watch will even have looked upon the Promised Land. The human cargo would remain in suspended animation until reawakened in Earth orbit or, conceivably, in orbit around some wholly new planet. If they feel disappointment, why, so must every human being, often in this life.

“We have the power to exclude them, and we have the right. Your committee finds that we have, in addition and ultimately, the duty to exclude them.”

Coffin heard out the argument against allowing a proletariat to appear overnight. He wasn’t surprised to find it almost identical with the position he’d outlined to George Stein and the others. O’Malley was an intelligent man in his way, and knew history…. Coffin felt his lips quirk afresh.

You’ve got a moderately good opinion of yourself, don’t you, Daniel, my boy?

He tensed when O’Malley went on, because here he recognized, not an abstract sociological argument, but that which reached into the guts and grabbed.

“More vital, ladies and gentlemen, people of Rustum, far more vital is what I next have to say. Dare we open our gates to a gang of aliens?”

O’Malley let silence underline that before he continued. “Your committee does not necessarily denigrate anyone’s human worth,” he said; and Coffin thought that the measured syllables, the overtones of regret, were the best oratory he’d heard in years. “Assuredly we do not subscribe to any cruel and absurd doctrine of racial hierarchies.” He bowed a little toward Hirayama, toward Gabriel Burns, toward the entire room and planet. “If we are of predominantly Caucasoid North American stock, we are not exclusively that, and we are proud that in us lives the entire human species.

“But”—he lifted a finger—”it would be equally absurd and, in the long run, equally cruel, to pretend that cultures do not differ in basic ways. And let us hear no bleat that there can be no value judgments between them. The freedom we enjoy is superior to the despotism on Earth; the rational judgment we cultivate is superior to, yes, more truly human than the blind obedience and blinder faith which have overwhelmed Earth.

“People of Rustum, it is all too easy for us to imagine that the thousands on their way here are just like our forebears—perhaps not the same in color of skin or shape of eyelids, but the same inside, where it counts. Were this true, we might hope to prevent them from becoming proles, difficult though that would be.

“But consider. Earth has not been static since our founding fathers made their weary pilgrimage hither. Study the transcribed communication tapes for yourselves, people of Rustum. Judge for yourselves how social evolution back there seems to have nearly obliterated the last shards of American—no, Western civilization—those shards which we mean to preserve and to make the foundation of a new and more enduring house of liberty.

“Today’s emigrants are not in search of freedom. That notion is extinct on Earth. They are apparently dissenters, but their dissent is not that of the individual demanding a steelclad bill of rights. What they seek, that puts them in conflict with their authorities, is not certain. It appears to be a kind of neo-Confucianism, though with paradoxical ecstatic elements. Who can tell? When seventy years must pass between question asked and reply received, there can be no real understanding.

“The point is, they are alien.

“Shall we, who still dwell precariously on a world that is still full of deadly surprises, shall we take upon ourselves such a burden of unassimilable outsiders?”

O’Malley lowered his voice. Almost, it tolled into the hush: “Would that actually be a kindness to the outsiders themselves? I have pointed out that they are a potential poverty class. I will now point out that since they are alien, since there are bound to be offenses and clashes, they could become the victims of hatred, even outright persecution. We are not saints on Rustum. We are not immune to the ancient diseases of xenophobia, callousness, legalized robbery, and mob violence. Let us not inflict upon our home the same unhealable wound which was inflicted on Mother America.

“Lead us not into temptation.”

He stepped down to such applause, from the mostly highlander congress, that Hirayama could barely be heard: “We will take a half hour’s recess.”

Coffin stood with his pipe, though smoke had scant taste in air this keen, on an upstairs balcony. Anchor gleamed and murmured beneath, busy at its work, its hopes. Its radiance dimmed, in his vision, the ice on the river, the reaching snow-lands, the peaks and the stars above them. But I only have to walk a jew kilometers out, he thought, and I’ll be alone with the unhuman and its eternity.

I’m also close to them in time, of course, his mind added. Soon I’ll be among them. It was a strange feeling.

A voice brought him around. “Ah, greetings, Daniel. Did you want to escape the crowd?”

He saw Morris O’Malley’s ascetic visage between the street lamps and the moons. “Yes,” he replied; the mist of his words fled away into night. “Say, that was a fine speech you made. To be quite frank, better than I expected.”

The other man smiled. “Thanks. I’m no Demosthenes. But when you speak from conviction, it gets easier.”

“Those are your beliefs?”

“Of course. I have no personal ax to grind. I may live to see that fleet arrive, but before the trouble becomes acute, I’ll be safe in my grave. It’s my grandchildren I’m worried about.”

“Do you really think they’ll have that much grief from a bunch of well-meaning Asians or Africans or whatever those are? This is a whole planet, Morris.”

O’Malley’s voice turned bleak. “For your kind it is.”

“It was for your granddad too, in spite of his having to wear a reduction helmet—one of those primitive muscle-powered jobs—every time he ventured below three kilometers.”

“He helped map the lowlands. He didn’t live in them. We, confined to High America—” The talk he had given made it less astonishing than it would formerly have been, that dry Dr. O’Malley laid a hand on Coffin’s shoulder. “Daniel, I know I was oversimplifying. I know the issues are much more subtle and complicated, with far more ifs and maybes. That’s precisely what scares me.”

Coffin drank smoke and looked across rooftops. “Your granddad never let anything scare him, permanently anyway, that I know of.”

“Things were different then. Simple issues of survival.”

“I have a notion that, at bottom, all issues are alike. They turn on the same principles. And, for your information, survival wasn’t always a simple either-or question.”

O’Malley was mute for a while before he said low: “I’m told you’re to speak just after recess.”

Coffin dipped his head. “It won’t take as long or be near as eloquent as yours, Morris.”

How many of their faces he knew! There was the mother of Leo Svoboda, there the son of Mary Sandberg, there his old poker opponent Ray Gonzales, there young Tregennis who’d worked for him before seeking a fortune in the western islands, there his and Eva’s son Charlie whom Tom and Jane de Smet had raised because he couldn’t live in the lowlands, his own hair grizzled…. Rustum was mystery and immensity, to this day; but man on Rustum remained a world very small and close and dear to itself.

“This is not exactly a committee report,” Coffin said. “I represent the Moondance area, and because we thereabouts have reached a sort of consensus, I asked leave of the president to set our views before you.”

His throat felt rough. Like his predecessor, he took a drink. He recognized the water; its faint iron tang brought him back to springs near the farm on the Cleft edge when he was a child. How much of everything he had known could he hope to pass on?

“I’ll try to be brief,” he said, “because my esteemed colleague Dr. O’Malley has covered the generalities, leaving the practicalities to me. Mind you, philosophy and theory are essential. Without them, we blunder blind at best, we’re brutes at worst. But they are not ends in themselves; that’d make them mere parlor games. They are guides to action. Life depends on what we do—or don’t do.

“Shall we or shall we not receive strangers into our midst? I propose we answer the question fast, in practical terms, and get on with our proper business.”

He had them, he saw. He was no longer an old man allowed to drone on a while out of respect for what he had been; suddenly he gripped reality in the sight of them all.

“As for the problem that’d be created for High America if we admit outsiders,” he said, taking advantage of his lack of oratorical ability to convey a sense of unemotional confidence: “many of you have been assuming that the highlanders would have to cope with it alone. Why should we lowlanders care? If so, I can sympathize with highlanders who want to use the majority they still will have when the ships come, to forbid them to land any passengers.

“Well, I am here to tell you that Lake Moondance and environs, clear through the Cyrus Valley, does care and wants to help.” He heard the breath sigh into fifty pairs of lungs. No doubt it was doing so around the planet. Inwardly, he grinned. Half his effort had gone toward keeping this revelation secret, that he might spring it tonight for top effect.

The other half had gone into argument, cajolery, chicanery, and genteel bribery, to get the support that he must have.

“I expect our sister lowland communities will follow suit,” he continued, thereby going a ways toward committing them. “Frontiersmen are generally pragmatists. They have ideals, but their first thought is what material measures will put those ideals to work.

“In this case, the practical problem is that High America would find it difficult, maybe impossible, from both an economic and a social viewpoint, to take in five thousand persons of exotic background, who can’t scatter across the globe and get absorbed, but must stay here where they can breathe.”

Coffin reached for pipe and tobacco pouch. He didn’t really want a smoke this soon after the last; but the homely action of filling the bowl should help bring everything down to a less giddily exalted plane.

“Now that ought to be solvable,” he drawled. “As for the cost, why, Moondance is ready to pay a fair share in money, materials, labor, whatever is needed that we can supply. I repeat, I’m sure the other lowland communities will join us in that. Shared, the expense won’t fall hard on anybody.

“And you know, that’ll be an important precedent, a symbol and function of our unity. I hate to contradict Dr. O’Malley’s noble disclaimer, but the fact is, we do have basic differences among us, not only social but actually genetic, racial. Some of us can live down there, some cannot. We must find as much common human ground as we can, to transcend that. Don’t you agree?”

After a wait: ” ‘Common human ground’ includes the good old Homo sapiens habit of not meekly adapting to circumstances, but grabbing them by the ears and adapting them to us.

“Look, air helmets have improved beyond belief since I was young. Why, when I was a baby they didn’t exist! Who says we must stop here? Who says we can’t work out something better, a biochemical treatment maybe, which’ll let every man, woman, and child on Rustum live anywhere that he or she likes?”

The assembly stirred and exclaimed. He cut through the noise:

“Moondance proposes a joint research effort, which will itself be another unifying element, an effort to discover means of overcoming the handicap that most of our children are born with. I know that’s been daydreamed about for a long time. Part of the reason nothing’s happened has been that close cooperation of both human breeds is obviously essential, and we lowlanders, at least, have had no motivation toward it, especially with so much else to keep us busy. Tonight we do urge moving from daydream to reality.

“If we succeed in that, the problems associated with admitting immigrants will become trivial. Furthermore, if we commit ourselves to an open-door policy, then the knowledge that yonder fleet is aimed at us will be one hell of a stimulus to solving this merely scientific problem!”

Again he drank, before he added mildly, “Of course, without that open-door policy, the low-landers will have no reason to help in such a project, or to promise to help bear the burden if the project fails. If you vote to close the gates, then to hell with you. Stay up here in the isolation you like so much.”

Uproar. Dorcas Hirayama hammered for odor. As the racket died, a voice from the middle of the room shouted, “Why do you want a lot of damn foreigners?”

Coffin lit his pipe. “I was coming to that,” he said, “impolitely though the question may have been put.

“Whether or not we can crack the air-pressure barrier, we can’t expect to assimilate the immigrants quickly or easily. To some extent, probably we can never assimilate them at all, in the sense of making them or their descendants identical with us. Besides the obstacles raised by their unfamiliarity with Rustum, why, they’re coming here to preserve a way of life, not lose it in a melting pot.

“As said, I think with some sacrifice by both highlands and lowlands, whatever happens otherwise, we can avoid creating a proletariat. At worst, we’ll have to tide over the older generation, and make some economic-industrial changes to accommodate the younger one.

“But as for that second aspect Dr. O’Malley discussed—the introduction of foreign philosophies, minds strange to our own—”

He laid down his pipe. He filled his lungs and roared across the hall, echoes thunderous even in his deaf ears:

“God damn it, that’s exactly what we need/”

And afterward, into their shock, himself most gently:

“Not many hours ago, I stood on North Bridge and talked to a very puzzled and embittered young man. He couldn’t comprehend why his elders wanted to cut us off from the stars. We ended by considering ways and means whereby Rustum might acquire those spaceships when they arrive.

“Unlikely, of course. The point is, the news had made him realize how suffocated he is in this smug backwater we’ve become. Oh, yes, we have big jobs ahead of us. But who will do them? People exactly like us? If so, what’ll there be afterwards, except sitting back and admiring the achievements of the ancestors?

“I’ll tell you what there’ll be. Hell to pay!

“I’ve heard a great deal of worry expressed about creating a rootless, impoverished proletariat, with no stake or interest in continuing the society that bred it. Ladies and gentlemen, have you considered the danger in creating a proletariat of the soul?

“Let foreigners in. Welcome unexpected insights, weird ways, astonishing thoughts and feelings. We may not always like them—probably we often won’t—but we’ll experience them and they’ll make us look to the foundations of our own beliefs. If there’s anything at all to the idea of liberty and individual worth, which we’re supposed to be keeping alive, then on the whole, we’ll be the better for being challenged. And it works two ways, you know. They’ll learn from us. Together, the old and the new dweller on Rustum will do and think what neither alone could dream.”

Coffin drew breath. He had gotten a little dizzy from so much talking. Sweat was on his skin and his knees shook.

He finished hoarse-voiced: “As most of you know, seeing how I brag about them, I have a couple of great-grandchildren. I don’t want to protect them from the cosmos, any more than that boy I met wants to be protected.

“No, they deserve better.”

When, after lunations, the debates were ended, the hard bargains driven, the resolutions drawn and passed, the law established that Rustum would greet and help the offspring of Earth—

Daniel Coffin sat alone in his room in the de Smet house. He had turned off the fluoros. Moonlight streamed through an open window, icy as the air. Afar reached the taut silence of winter night, barely disturbed by a rumble from the river, whose hardness had begun to break into floes under a first faint flowing of spring.

The coldness touched Eva’s portrait on a table. He picked it up. His hand trembled. He was very tired; it would be good to lie down and rest.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered. “I wish you could have seen.” He shook his head, ran fingers through his hair. Maybe you did? I don’t know.

“You see,” he told his memory of her, “I did what I did because that was what you’d have wanted. Only because of you.”