To Conquer Chaos

XIV

“Nestamay! Pay attention, girl!” Grandfather barked, leaving the tip of his pointer-stick on the plan where it was. The plan was unbelievably old-a pattern of faded dark lines on a yellowish, crackling substance which, to stop it breaking into pieces, had been carefully pasted on a well-cured piece of leather from a dead thing. As well as the lines, which were more or less self-explanatory-showing the general features of the Station below the dome-there were all kinds of curious symbols marked; it was these whose significance Grandfather was trying to explain.

“I–I’m sorry, Grandfather,” Nestamay said, pushing back her long hair with a limp hand.

“Sorry!” Grandfather took the pointer-stick in both hands now and looked for a moment as though he would break it. The tone of his voice frightened baby Dan, and he gave a howl.

Grandfather glared at him. The howl stopped magically.

“That’s better,” Grandfather muttered, and turned his attention back to Nestamay, resuming his former fierce tone. “Sorry, you said! A lot of use it is being sorry for not listening-nobody can help it but yourself! Do you think I like giving you these extra lessons after a hard day’s work? Do you think I do it just to annoy you and keep you away from Jasper? I do have a purpose, you know! Our family’s kept more of the old lore and cleared more fresh ground under the dome than any of the families here-you know that as well as I do because I’ve told you till I’m sick of repeating it. What’s going to become of us if we let things slide? Who’s fit to look after the fate of the community who doesn’t possess every ounce and scrap and tittle of information that’s available?”

Abruptly Nestamay put her head forward on her knees and burst into tears.

For a long moment Grandfather was dumbfounded. He looked at the pointer-stick in his hands as though expecting it to turn into a venomous thing; he looked at the plan displayed for Nestamay, but there was no counsel there, either. He looked at the blank irregular wall of the hovel, and when he could not reasonably delay a comment any longer, he set the pointer-stick aside and cleared his throat with a harrumphing noise.

“Come here, child,” he said, putting out his hand. A sort of rusty kindness coloured his voice, creaking like a hinge not used for a generation. “There’s something been preying on your mind lately-I know it. I thought you’d get over it by yourself, but if you can’t, you’d better tell me all about it.”

Nestamay snuffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She said, “It’s-it’s just …” Then she took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s just what you said about my not wanting to listen to you because I’d rather be with Jasper. Grandfather, it’s not true Because”-now the words came in an unstoppable rush-“I hate Jasper! He’s a fool, he’s dangerous, he’s selfish, and I wish a thing would get him!”

Appalled at her own ferocity, she stopped short. Her eyes were very wide as she stared at Grandfather, wondering what his reaction would be.

It began with a sigh. It continued with the rolling up of the plan of the Station, its return to the shiny metal case with a locking lid in which it was kept for safety, and its replacement on the wall by a chart she had seen scores of times-a chart dealing with another of the myriad subjects of which Grandfather kept track better than anyone else in the community. Her eyes sorted out the family names, linked by vertical lines for descent and wavy lines for generation-kinship and dotted lines for future associations.

Desperately, before Grandfather could launch into the patient exposition of her genetic situation and a repetition of the factors which made Jasper the best possible choice as the father of her children, she clutched at his rising arm.

“You don’t understand, Grandfather! Weren’t you listening?”

Grandfather blinked. Astonishingly, he gave a warm chuckle. “Beginning to talk my language, hey? All right, what’s the point I missed by not listening? Out with it!”

“I said Jasper was dangerous,” Nestamay emphasised. She had refrained from telling this story for days on end, thinking it might be selfish or spiteful to do so. Now, though, it was clear that Grandfather had to be informed.

“In what way?” Grandfather was suddenly tense.

“The-uh-the other night when the thing hatched and we chased it out of Channel Nine, I was late reaching the office for my watch.”

“I thought you were rather a long time getting there. I also thought the experience had frightened you badly enough for you not to do it again. What has this to do with Jasper?”

“The reason I was late,” Nestamay said very carefully, “was that Jasper tried to make me skip my watch and go with him to some hiding-place he has around the other side of the Station.”

Grandfather gave a thoughtful nod. He said, “You didn’t let him persuade you. And it wasn’t the alarm which saved you, either. Am I right?”

“Y-yes.” Nestamay tried to reduce the hammering of her heart by drawing in another very deep breath and letting it out as slowly as she could. It made her throat seem to shudder by itself.

“In which case it’s bad-he shouldn’t do it, and must be punished. But it hardly sounds dangerous, unless he came extremely close to persuading you.”

“Not me,” Nestamay said, and closed her eyes. Here it was at last: the thing she had learned afterwards, the thing which had really brought on the tears. “Not me. Danianel. She-she wasn’t so obstinate.”

Grandfather’s eyes switched to the kinship chart. There was a steel-blue blaze in them. He said, “Danianel?” And put his index and middle fingers, parted like a draftsman’s compass, on the two names on the chart.

“Yes.” Nestamay put her hands up to cover her eyes. She was thinking of the months-years, almost-through which she had compelled herself to endure Jasper’s attentions, knowing she would sooner or later have to suffer them permanently, and thinking like an idiot that the unpleasant truth which was so clear to her after Grandfather’s instruction must be equally clear, equally significant to Jasper.

“Danianel’s last watch was last night,” Grandfather said. “How much of it did she skip?”

“I don’t know.” Nestamay tossed her hair back again. “I wasn’t there.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Jasper boasted about it to me. This afternoon. When he was out with the working party at the ovens.”

There was a long silence. At last she looked at Grandfather, and was surprised and shocked to see that he had put his head forward in his hands, as she had often done.

She moved to his side instantly, her arm going as though by reflex around his shoulders. She felt his body shaking in a slow old-man rhythm.

“Sometimes I wonder, Nestamay-” His words came gravelly and reluctant. “Is there any point in going on? There’s nothing I can do about Jasper, girl. He’s what he is, and all the talking-to and all the beatings in the world won’t cure him, and he’s still the only possible mate for you of the young men we have. Look at the chart!”

He straightened, rubbing his nose with two fingers. “I wish it were otherwise! But see-he preserves two genetic lines which are otherwise united with lines forbidden for you! Are we to lose them? Are we to lose a pair of hands when we have so few?” He made a lost, helpless gesture. “When we’re reduced to this, I’m not sure any longer whether we can continue the struggle.”

Horrified, Nestamay drew back her arm as the old man moved to a more comfortable position. His gnarled fingers sought and clasped her work-toughened young ones. He continued in a haunted voice, pleading for understanding with his eyes.

“I remember foreseeing this a long time ago, Nestamay! I talked about it, over and over, with you father. I’ve never discussed your father with you, have I? Or not properly. For all I know, you may think I drove him to his death out of overweening pride!” He gave a short bitter laugh.

“I didn’t drive him. He went, bravely and willingly. He knew-I knew-we’d come in a little while to the state we’re now in, where we have to keep a tainted genetic line because we have nothing else to replace it. Generation after generation there’s been a fining-down; at first the mixing could be random, but the recessives showed up eventually, and lines which could have masked them were lost in accidents or because things came out of the dome and killed …” He wiped his brow with his hand.

“It was baby Dan who drove your father out, if anyone drove him,” He wiped his brow with his hand.

“Baby Dan?” echoed Nestamay in an incredulous tone. She stared at the pasty-pale fatness of her brother, playing with his blanket on the other side of the hovel.

“Of course. Only an accident kept the same thing from happening to you. He’s a mere three years younger than you, you realise-a total failure as a human being, a mere vegetable, an infant until he dies. He’s proof of what I’d previously just warned about. When he was a year old, or thereabouts, it was beyond doubt that he was an imbecile. And, seeing he could hide the truth no longer from himself, your father-my son also, remember! — set out to hunt for someone else. Anyone else! Anyone would be better than your Jaspers, your Danianel’s, and the other blockheads of this generation!”

After that they sat in silence for a long time. Baby Dan grew tired of playing with his blanket, rolled over and went to sleep as unfussily as a real baby. Nestamay watched him.

“You should have told me before, Grandfather,” she said. “I–I thought some very bad things about you because you didn’t.”

“I don’t like talking about it,” Grandfather snapped. “Didn’t I just remind you your father was also my son-my only son?”

He picked up his pointer-stick and sighed heavily. “Well, it’s no use fretting about what might have been. We have to make the best of what we’ve got. And you’re the best of what we’ve got right now, Nestamay-the brightest member of your generation, the only person in the Station who could possibly learn everything I know and hope to add to it.”

“But-!” The tortured cry was wrung from Nestamay. “But what for? If our genetic lines are all going to produce a baby Dan sooner or later, what’s the use of struggling?”

“We aren’t the only people in the universe,” Grandfather said. “Sometimes it seems like it. But somewhere there are other people, and some day we may find them, and when we do meet strangers we must be able to say to them, ‘We kept up the struggle.’ Because if we can’t say that, what right will we have to be respected as human beings?”