THE WORLD JONES MADE

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE INTERIOR of the cabin was cool and dark. The air, moist with the swirling mist from outside, drifted up in Louis' face and momentarily cut off his view. He blinked, squinted, settled down on his haunches, and leaned closer to see.

"Be careful," Dieter warned him ominously.

In the shadows lay Vivian, covered to her chin by a blanket. She gazed up weakly at Louis, her eyes dark and immense. It gave him a strange feeling; his heart turned over, and he had trouble getting his breath.

"Maybe I better look later," he muttered.

"I don't drive you fifty miles for nothing," Dieter answered urgently. "What's the matter? Afraid?"

"Yes," Louis admitted. "Do I have to look?" Fear took over, and he backed hurriedly away from the bed. What if it wasn't right? There was always the chance, a high chance, a better than even chance. The problem had never been solved; maybe the genes were inviolate, as Mendel had said. But how, then, had evolution occurred? A vast torrent of abstract theory swept through his brain. "No," he said emphatically, "I can't look."

Dieter strode over beside his wife. "You'll be next," he said to Louis. "You and Irma. And then Frank and Syd. So look."

He looked. And it was all right.

Trembling, he bent down. The baby was sound asleep, a reddish, healthy face, eyes shut tight, mouth slack, forehead pulled into a rubbery scowl. Tiny arms stuck up, ending in bent fingers. In many ways, it looked like an Earth baby ,...ut it wasn't. He could see that already.

The nostrils were altered; he noticed that first of all. A spongy element closed each one: filter-membrane to screen out the thick water vapor. And the hands. Reaching cautiously down, he took hold of the baby's tiny right hand and examined it. The fingers were webbed. No toes at all. And the chest was immense: huge lungs, to gather in enough of the air to keep the fragile organism alive.

And that was the proof. That was the important thing, the real thing. The baby was alive. Breathing the Venusian air, withstanding the temperature, the humidity... all that remained was the problem of nutrition.

Fondly, Vivian drew the baby against her body. The baby stirred, struggled fitfully, opened its eyes. "What do you think of him?" Vivian asked.

"He's fine," Louis said. "What's his name?"

"Jimmy." Vivian smiled up blissfully. Presently she lifted the struggling baby up against her enlarged breasts; after a short while the struggles ceased, and the frantic motion died into a greedy half-doze. Louis watched for a moment, and then he tiptoed off, to where Dieter stood proudly waiting.

"Well?" Dieter demanded belligerently.

Louis shrugged. "It's a baby. It kicks."

The youth's face flushed scarlet. "Don't you understand? It's altered—it's adapted. It'll live."

"Sure," Louis agreed. Then he grinned and slapped the boy on the back. "You're a father, you squirt. How the hell old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"How old is Viv?"

"Seventeen."

"You old patriarch. By the time you're my age, you'll have grandchildren. Virility, thy name is youth."

Frank and Syd came rapidly into the cabin, followed by Laura: now three years old and skipping about ably. Irma appeared behind them, face anxious. "Is it—" she began, and then became quiet and subdued as she made out the two figures in the bed.

"Gosh," Frank said, awed. "It's real."

"Of course it's real!" Dieter shouted.

Garry appeared in the doorway. "Can I come in?"

"Come on in," Louis said. "We're going to have a party." He led Laura over to the bed. "You, too. Everybody can look."

Bending over the woman and her baby, Syd said thoughtfully: "The nutrition problem is solved right now. But what about later?"

"Don't worry about it," Dieter said haughtily. With a little embarrassment he explained: "Rafferty didn't overlook anything. Viv's glands... that is... the mammary secretions aren't the same. Louis and I made tests. It's milk, but it's not regular milk."

"Thank God," Syd said, relieved.

"I wouldn't want to have to keep him alive for the rest of his life," Vivian said softly. "I don't think I could."

Frank and Louis walked off to confer in private. "This is the best thing that's happened," Frank said. "Have you considered the alternative? Suppose the baby had been normal—an Earth baby, geared to an Earth environment. Suppose all our progeny reverted. Yes, that's the term. Reversion. Suppose we hadn't been able to pass this on? Suppose we were sports, not true mutants?"

"Well, we're not."

"Thank God for that. The eight of us would have lived out our little life spans and then died. That would have been the end of the race. Some race."

They stepped out of the cool darkness, down the three steps, onto the walk that Dieter had laboriously erected to the main road. In the last year the colony had expanded geometrically. Smooth-surfaced roads linked each of the individual settlements with the others. In front of Dieter's cabin stood a crude metal vehicle he and Garry had built: metal hammered from sheets rolled in their own furnace.

It was a grotesque-looking object, but it served its purpose. The vehicle was powered by a storage battery. Its tires were amateurishly molded, not precisely round, but serviceable. The material was a poured plastic, a sap derived from a fern-like tree. The vehicle, on level ground, did ten miles an hour.

"Don't look at it too hard," Louis commented. "It'll collapse."

And that wasn't all. The bubbling fonts of hot water that spilled to the surface were natural sources of electric power. Four generating plants had already been assembled; the new Venusian society had a constant source of heat, light, and general power. Most of the equipment had been removed from the ruined ships and scout domes; but gradually, bit by bit, hand-made elements were being substituted.

"Looks good," Louis admitted.

"It does," Frank agreed. "He's done a lot here. But all those silly-looking animals he's got tied up... what the hell are they for?"

"God knows," Louis said. He leaned into the cabin and said to Dieter: "What are those things standing around out here?"

Loftily, Dieter answered: "That's my herd of wuzzles."

"What are they for? You going to eat them?"

With dignity, Dieter explained: "The wuzzle was the dominant species. Intellectually, it's the most advanced indigenous life form. Tests I've conducted show the wuzzle is more intelligent than the Terran horse, pig, dog, cat, and crow put together."

"Heavens," Irma murmured.

"They're going to be our helpers," Dieter revealed sleekly. I'm teaching that particular herd to perform routine chores. So our minds will be free for constructive planning."

Shaking his head, Louis backed out of the cabin.

But it was a good sight. All of it: the fields, the animal sheds, the smoke-house, the silo, the main cabin, now a double-walled building with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and indoor bathroom. And already, Garry had located a substitute for wood-pulp; an abortive paper had been turned out, followed by primitive type. It was only a question of time before their society became a civilization: a civilization, now, of nine individuals.

An hour later, Frank and Syd were riding slowly back to their own settlement, in their electric-driven wagon. "It's good news," Frank reiterated, as the countryside crept past on each side of them.

"You said that five times already," Syd pointed out gently.

"It's true, though." Frank meditated, a worried frown on his face. "Maybe we should stop by one of the ships."

"Why?"

"We ought to build an incubator. Suppose the baby had almost adapted, but not quite? It might have died... but in an incubator, we could keep it alive until it got stronger. Adjust conditions until it could tolerate this environment. Just to be on the safe side." He added plaintively, "I don't want anything to happen to ours."

"We should drop by the domes, at least," Syd said. "They'd like to hear."

Frank turned the wagon from the road; in a moment it was bumping over the knobby greenish slush that made up the Venusian countryside. Ahead of them lay a long line of hazy mountains. At the base was the strewn debris that had once been the Terran protective domes. The war-projectiles had burst them, of course, but out of the remnants a single structure had been assembled. It was a quasi-dome, a hollow half-sphere anchored at the base of the hills.

"It's weird," Frank commented, "seeing that, there. Like being outside your skin."

"Outside your old skin," Syd corrected.

The Refuge wasn't as large as theirs had been; it was only a city block long and a few hundred feet wide. It had been constructed to keep alive three individuals, not eight. But the principle was the same: inside the transparent bubble lay a different world, with different temperature, atmosphere, humidity, and life forms.

The three inhabitants had done a good job of fixing up their Refuge. It was like a small section of Earth severed from the original. Even the colors were exact; Frank had to admire their handiwork, their skill in creating this authentic replica. But, then, this was all they had been doing the last year. This was all there was for them to do.

They had scrupulously developed an artificial blue sky, an almost convincing imitation of Earth's blue bowl. Here was a cloud. There was a flock of migratory ducks, permanently glued to the inside of the plastic bubble. The man, Cussick, had brought grass seed with him; the bottom surface was a solid expanse of dark lush green, similar to the outside Venusian flora, but not the same.

No, not the same at all. A subtle color difference, and a great difference in texture. It was a different world transplanted here, in miniature. A fragment. A museum-piece that gave Frank an odd nostalgic feeling as the wagon neared it.

The Earth family had grown themselves shrubs and trees. A maple and a poplar tree waved bravely inside the Refuge. They had, from the materials available, constructed a model of a Terran house, a small two-bedroom residence. White stucco walls. A red-tile roof. Windows, with curtains behind them. A gravel path. A garage (with nothing inside it but an elaborate workbench). Roses, petunias, and a few fuschias. The cuttings and seeds had all been brought on the original—and only—trip from Earth: Cussick had anticipated what lay ahead. In the back was a thriving vegetable garden. And the man had even thought to bring four chickens, a cow and a bull, three pigs, a pair of dogs, a pair of domestic cats, and a flock of assorted birds.

The Refuge was literally jammed with Terran flora and fauna. The woman, Nina, had painted an artificial backdrop that was startlingly convincing. Rolling brownish hills, with a distant blue ocean. The woman was quite talented along artistic lines; she had supervised the development of the creation with a trained and critical eye. Playing at the edge of the Refuge, where the backdrop began, was their four-year-old son Jack. He was busily assembling a sand castle at the edge or a small synthetic lake in which lapped painstakingly distilled water.

"I feel sorry for them," Syd said abruptly.

"You do? Why?"

"Because it's awful. You remember... Living like that, shut up in a little glass box."

"Someday they'll be able to go back," Frank reminded her. "One of these days the Society of the Prince of Man—or whatever the new hagiocracy is called—will cool off and let him return."

"If he hasn't died of old age."

"They're cooling; it won't be long. And remember: he knows why he's here. He decided; it was voluntary. And it has a purpose."

Frank turned off the motor of the wagon and brought it to a halt. He and Syd stepped gingerly down and walked toward the Refuge. Inside, beyond the transparent wall, Cussick had seen them. He walked toward them, waving.

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Frank shouted: "It's a boy. It's adapted—everything's fine."

"He can't hear you," Syd reminded him gently.

Together, they entered the intermediary lock. There, seated on stools, they clicked on the microphone and warmed up the communication system that linked them to the interior of the Refuge, the finite cosmos beyond. Around them, pipes and circuits wheezed; this was the intricate pumping equipment that kept the atmosphere of the Refuge constant. Beyond that were the thermostatic elements, ripped from the three damaged ships. And beyond that, the most important equipment of all: the manufacturing units that processed the Earthpeople's food.

"Hi," Cussick said, standing beyond the viewing wall, hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips. His sleeves were rolled up; he had been working in his garden. "How'd it come out?"

"He came out fine," Syd said.

"Adapted?"

"Totally. A regular monster."

"Fine," Cussick said, nodding. "We'll split a beer on it."

His wife appeared, a plump, pretty figure in blue slacks and halter, a streak of orange paint across her bare stomach, face glistening with perspiration. In one hand she carried a block of sandpaper and a paint scraper. She looked well-fed and content; quite happy, in fact. "Give her our congratulations," Nina's voice came. "It's a boy?"

"Absolutely," Frank said.

"It's healthy?"

"Healthy as a wuzzle," Frank said. "In fact, it's the new wuzzle. The replacement wuzzle, a better wuzzle to take the place of the old."

Puzzled, Nina shook her head. "You're not coming through. Your words are all garbled."

"Don't worry about it," her husband told her, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her to him. "Worry about the mice in the pantry."

"Mice!" Syd exclaimed. "You brought mice along?"

"I wanted things to be natural," Cussick explained, grinning. "I even boxed up some grasshoppers and flies. I want my world to be complete. As long as we have to stay here—"

Over by the synthetic lake, Jackie played happily with his sand castle.

"I want him to know what he's going to be up against," Cussick explained. "So he'll be prepared, when the three of us go back."