The World at the End of Time (29 page)

Viktor had thought his boredom on
Ark’s
long flight to Nebo was pretty close to intolerable. Now he looked back on it almost with longing, for his job on the “shit detail” was a good deal worse.

It wasn’t only labor that wasn’t wasted on Newmanhome. Nothing else was, either, not even excrement. When any person in the settlement had to relieve himself he followed strict procedures: Urine went into one vat, feces into another. The urine was processed to use its urea for nitrogen fertilizer for the underground crops. The feces became the most important constituent of the soil the crops were grown on.

Viktor got in on the ground floor. He was assigned to the unlovely task of spreading the fresh dung in a dark, unbearably malodorous cavern, where mushrooms grew on its surface and worms and dung beetles mined it for their nourishment. He wasn’t alone in the job. Reesa wasn’t with him, of course—they were kept mostly separate until such time as the Four-Power Council should decide their fate—but there were four other laborers assigned, one from each of the sects . . . and none of them older than Newmanhome twenty-two. Mooni-bet and Al-car, respectively Moslem from Allahabad and Reformer from the quarrelsome, allegedly Protestant-Christian sect, harvested worms and beetles to feed the chickens in the breeder pens—it meant scurrying around on top of the peatlike layers of excrement and scooping the little living things up with slitted spoon-like tools. Mordi, the Great Transporter girl, and Vandot, the boy from the People’s Republic, harvested mushrooms, which was easier still. And that left Viktor the hard labor of shoveling. The fresh loads of dung had to be spread onto the fields for the mushrooms to grow on. When they had produced a few crops and had aged enough to be fit for fertilizing other things, those sections had to be shoveled into wheeled vats, to be taken and mixed with soil for the lighted grain-growing caverns.

It wasn’t the work that Viktor minded most, not even the stink and the hostility of the children he worked with. It was not
knowing
—not knowing so many things! He didn’t know where Reesa was, he didn’t know what the blindingly bright thing they called the “universe” was. (Though he was beginning to have some very strange suspicions about that; relativistic effects were at work.) On a more immediate level, he didn’t even know what was being decided about his and Reesa’s future, and none of his co-workers wanted to talk.

It wasn’t just him. They didn’t even speak to each other very often. The hostility among the adults of the four sects was shared by the children, who worked in silent, disagreeable concentration. But children are children, and can’t stay silent forever.

The worms and dung beetles and mushrooms they harvested had to be carried out to the chicken farms or the food depots. One day when three of the children were away from the excrement chamber, dragging their hoppers of harvest to their destinations, the young girl from Allahabad ventured close to Viktor, looking up into his face.

“Hello,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’m Viktor. Which one are you?”

“I’m Mooni-bet,” she said, glancing fearfully at the doorway. Then she whispered, “Is it true? Were you really on old Earth? Did you actually see
Mecca?”

Viktor stared at her, startled. “Mecca? No, of course not. I remember California pretty well, and maybe even a little of Poland—but I was as young as you when I left. And, until we left Earth, I didn’t get to do much traveling.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You saw
California?
Where the
movie stars
and the
oil sheikhs
lived?”

“I don’t remember any sheikhs or movie stars,” Viktor said, amused, almost touched by the girl’s naïveté. “I mean, except on television—but I suppose you have the old tapes of that kind of thing, anyway.”

“We do not look at graven images,” the girl said sadly. “Not counting sometimes when we’re working in the bean fields, anyway—the Greats have screens there, but we’re supposed to turn away from them.”

She had stopped her bug catching and was just standing there, gazing curiously at him. Viktor rested on his spade, aware of a chance that might not come again. “Tell me, Mooni-bet, do you know where my wife is working?” She shook her head. “Or whether they are going to give us a room of our own?”

“That is in the hands of the Four-Power Council,” she explained. “You must ask your supervisor.”

“I’ve asked him,” Viktor said grumpily. His supervisor was the Great Transporter named Mirian. Mirian was not a communicative man, and he seemed to resent Viktor, probably as one more nasty chore added to his burden. “He just tells me to wait.”

“Of course he does. That is right. The Four-Power Council will perhaps discuss your situation when they meet.”

“And when will that be?”

“Oh, they meet all the time,” she informed him. “Except holidays, I mean—they meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. But when they will come to your case I do not know. They have much to discuss about important questions, for both the Peeps and the Reforms are now on overload.” She lowered her voice to a whisper as she spoke, looking around as though she were discussing something naughty. “I do not understand about that, but all is in the hands of Allah.”

“Oh, sure,” Viktor agreed. Then, as she started to turn away, he tried to prolong the contact. “Mooni-bet? Tell me one other thing, if you will. That very bright thing in the sky—”

“The universe, yes,” she said, nodding encouragingly.

“That’s what I mean. Why do you call it the universe?”

“It’s its name, isn’t it? The muezzins call it that,” she told him. “I don’t know why. I thought the universe was all around us, but they say that is no longer true.”

He blinked at her. “No longer true?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know what that means, only it is what we bow to in devotions. They say old Earth is there, along with everything else.” She paused, then added helpfully, “My father said when he was a boy it was much brighter. I don’t know what that means, either, only—” She broke off, then turned away. Over her shoulder she whispered, “They’re coming back! Don’t talk to me anymore, please!”

“Why not?” he demanded. “Can’t we talk while we work?”

“We
don’t,”
she whispered, looking agonizedly toward the returning workers.

“But I do,” he said, smiling.

The three returning children stopped in the doorway, scandalized. The boy in the kilts of the People’s Republic called menacingly, “I will report this!”

Viktor shrugged. “What is there to report, Vandot? I am simply talking; I have not been ordered to be silent, after all. If you don’t want to listen, then don’t listen. But I’ve been on Earth, and I am going to talk about what Earth was like, long ago, when I was young . . .”

And he did, shoveling the dung, while the mushroom cutters and beetle collectors lingered near him at their work. They glanced at each other diffidently, conscious that they were certainly bending the rules, if not breaking them outright; Mordi, the Great Transporter girl, was particularly uneasy, because she was the one from Viktor’s own commune. But they were listening, all right. How could they help it? For Viktor was telling them about the traffic jams in the cities, the surf at Malibu, about flying in supersonic jets that crossed oceans in an hour. And about the experience of flying from star to star, when
Mayflower
was whole and mighty. And about life on the colony when
Mayflower
landed, and sailing across Great Ocean in warm sunshine, and walking in the sun on a green meadow . . .

And by and by they began to talk, too. After all, they were only children.

Even slaves have to eat, and finally Vandot announced that the workday was done. Because Mordi had an errand to run Viktor followed the little girl, Mooni-bet, back through the tunnels to the caverns of the Great Transporters. She was nervous there, among the hostile black-shrouded enemies of her people. She was glad to abandon him at the entrance to the grown-up dining hall, disappearing to hurry to her own tunnels; and when Viktor entered he found his supervisor, Mirian, just coming in. The man looked glum. That didn’t discourage Viktor; it seemed to be Mirian’s normal expression. Viktor turned to face him. “I’ve been asking about that bright spot you called the universe,” he said, “but the kids I work with don’t seem to know much about it. Can I ask—”

He didn’t finish, because Mirian gave him an unfriendly look. “No,” Mirian said, crossing himself.

“No what?” Viktor asked plaintively.

“No, we do not discuss that subject here. I know nothing about it. I wish to know nothing about it.”

“All right,” Viktor said, suddenly angry, “then tell me what you do know about. When can my wife and I have a room of our own?”

Mirian stared at him belligerently. “A room of your own!” he repeated, raising his voice sarcastically so others could hear. “He wants a room of his own!”

“But I have a right to that much!” Viktor protested. “I don’t even know where Reesa is—”

“She is housed with the Moslems in Allahabad, since they are not on overload just now,” Mirian informed him.

“Of course, I know that, but what I want to know—”

“What you want to know is none of your business! In any case, I don’t want to talk to you about it—not until the Four-Power Council issues its orders, certainly.”

“Why do you have to be so nasty?”

“What right do you have to complain?” Mirian snapped angrily. “You owe us your life! And I am paying for my charity in reviving you!”

Viktor was puzzled. “Paying how?” he asked.

“I should be up on that ship, doing my proper work! But because they blame me for reviving you, they sent me back down to this miserable—” He stopped there, looking around to see if anyone had heard his complaints. Then he closed his mouth with a snap and turned away. He squeezed between two others on a bench, conspicuously leaving no room for Viktor to join him.

When Viktor sat down at another table the strangers next to him were equally unwilling to talk. Viktor sighed and devoted himself to his stew of corn and beans. At least, he reflected, the children had given him a pretty good idea of the polity and customs of this new Newmanhome. The four sects did work together on common needs. The chambers of the Four-Power Council were common and kept separate from the living quarters of the sects. So were the food-producing caves, or most of them—Allahabad insisted on growing its chickens and gerbils separately, for dietary reasons, and the People’s Republic chose not to share the grain and bean fields of the others. (They weren’t really
“fields,”
of course. They were stretches of tunnels where artificial light fed plants that were hydroponically grown; and the austere diet of the Peeps was even less varied, and even less tasty, than the meals of the other three communities.) The freezer caves, where they had long before stored the animals they could no longer afford to keep alive, were also common, though there wasn’t much food in them anymore. (The children didn’t want to talk about the freezers, for reasons Viktor didn’t at first understand.) The geothermal power plant was common, along with the datastores. All four communities shared their benefits and their responsibilities—though there weren’t many responsibilities, since the original builders had done good work. The four factions had no choice about maintaining their common possessions, of course; if the power plant failed they would all be dead in a day.

But for most of their lives the sects stayed firmly apart. Great Transporters married Great Transporters, Moslems Moslems. The citizens of the People’s Republic married no one, because they didn’t believe in marriage, but they made love (on occasions directed by their leaders) only with their own. And all four communities tried their best not to have too many babies, all in their own ways, because there was barely food enough and heat enough and living space enough for the twenty-two hundred human beings already alive on (or, rather, under the surface of) Newmanhome.

Of course, their ways of keeping the population down differed from community to community. When Viktor found out about them he was startled, not to say repelled. The Reformers and the Moslems practiced nonprocreative sex—frequently homosex. The People’s Republic did their best at abstinence, with males and females housed firmly apart except on designated nights, when a couple who had deserved well of the state were allowed to dwell with each other. And the Great Transporters, so to speak, attacked the problem from the other end. Their religion forbade them to take life—well, except in war, of course. For that reason they didn’t use contraception, nor did they practice abortion; they had babies, lots of babies, and when they pruned their populations it was among the adults—at least, mostly among the
near
adults, anyway; if a Great Transporter child managed to survive his rebellious adolescence he had a fair chance of a natural death, sixty or seventy Newmanhome years later.

What the Great Transporters did was dispose of their criminals, and they had a lot of criminals. In their community there were two hundred and eighty statutory crimes punishable by their supreme penalty—it came to about one crime for every two persons in the community, and the sentence was passed frequently.

Of course, the sentence wasn’t death. Not exactly, anyway. Execution was another of the life-taking sins that was prohibited. They had a better way. They put their criminals in the freezer.

It was fortunate for the Great Transporters that there was so much unused freezer space. The freezers had been big to begin with. Then they had been further enlarged when Newmanhome began to get too cold to support outside life, and tens of thousands of cattle and other livestock were slaughtered and frozen. The freezers had their own independent, long-lasting lines to the geothermal power plant; they were fully automatic and would last for the ages.