Furthest Read online

  “But—”

  “There, Coyote, there comes the heroine. You see, she is looking for the boy she loves… and there he is. Now, they are just going to talk together for a little while, it isn’t anything important. They talk about loving each other, about their plans to marry. None of the speech is really important for a while.”

  Coyote watched the girl swim up to her lover, saw them embrace—a rather chaste embrace, but more than he’d thought would be usual with these people. The girl’s eyes shone, the boy set a tender kiss on her forehead, and their fingers flashed in the water. The girl wore narrow enameled rings on the fingers of her left hand, he noticed, a different color for each finger.

  “Why does she wear the rings, Bess?”

  “To make it easier to use the finger alphabet. There is a letter on each fingertip, each fingerjoint, the tip and joints of the thumb, and the palm of the hand, twenty in all. We touch the ‘letter’ with the right hand to spell out the words.”

  “I see.”

  “This next scene is all local color, Citizen. These two are going through the market; he’s helping her shop.”

  “Your markets are under water?”

  “Everything is under water.”

  “But what about the city, then? What’s its function?”

  “You’re going to miss the film, Citizen.”

  “No. I can watch while you talk.”

  “The surface cities are simply a kind of cover, so that if any high government official should wreck a star-ship here, for example, and have to be admitted to the planet, there would be someplace to admit him to without giving away our secrets. People are chosen to live in the cities, chosen by lottery; anyone who is so chosen must take his whole family and serve three yeats, and one term of service exempts you for life. There is almost nothing more hated, Citizen, than Surface Duty, but we all must take our turn.”

  “So that explains the empty citydomes?”

  “That’s right. We have a dome for each hypothetical ‘city’ that we show on the faked atlas that is in the libraries on other planets. They’re all empty; having to staff three of them is burden enough.”

  “And all the statistics about population, education, taxes, and all the rest?”

  “All fake. There—they’re coming out of the market now.”

  “What does she have in the net bag, Bess?”

  Bess shrugged. “I can’t really tell; salad vegetables, I think. Watch this, now—here comes the boy’s younger brother with the bad news.”

  On the wall a younger boy, his face distraught, swam -up to the young couple and began the rapid finger-speech. He, too, wore the rings on his left hand.

  “Do you have rings like those, Bess?” Coyote asked.

  “Yes, of course, when I am at home and not on Surface.”

  “What is he saying now?”

  “It’s very sad. He’s telling his brother that their family has just been chosen in the lottery. Just as I was telling you, it’s a tragic occasion.”

  “Why is it hated so?”

  “Wouldn’t you hate it?” she demanded. “Away from everything that is dear to you, forced to breathe air that hurts your lungs and burns your skin, having to be wrapped up like a mummy all the time when you are accustomed to wearing nothing but a hairband, isolated from your people and everything that is going on—surely you can’t think you’d like that?”

  “The girl is crying.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course she is. Her family was not chosen; that means she will be separated from her lover for three years, and no hope of any change.”

  “What will she do?”

  “Watch.”

  Coyote watched as the story progressed. He saw the hurried, tearful packing done by the boy’s mother in their home, a home which appeared to be a series of rooms cut in the solid rock and connected by halls through which the people swam. He could not see what the light source was, but there was a soft glow everywhere in the rooms. There was no furniture, as such; anyone wanting to rest curled into one of the colored nets that were slung in groups in the corners of the rooms.

  Now the chosen family was leaving for the surface, pulling behind them on a sort of powered sled a large trunk that Bess told him held their personal belongings and their “uniforms.” Everything else they needed would already be in the surface house assigned to them for their term of duty. They emerged onto the familiar gray waste that Coyote knew so well, in the brilliant glare of noon when it was its ugliest, and stood looking around them in seeming resignation, except for the boy, who was taut with despair.

  “Bess, do your people ever come out on the surface to watch the water—the colors in it, I mean?”

  “No, Citizen. There are many places on our planet where most of the surface rock has been worn away; we watch the night colors from below, in such places.”

  “I see.”

  “Watch, now!”

  There was a scene where the family struggled into their heavy surface clothing, fighting with hooks and buttons and belts that were obviously totally unfamiliar to them. And then there was the weary trek into the town and into their house.

  Then it flashed back to the girl under the water. She was going about various tasks inside her house, he supposed; her movements meant nothing to him, but seemed purposeful.

  “What is she doing, Bess?”

  “That is one of the classic Water Dances, Coyote. Listen, you will hear the drums and shells; they are the traditional accompaniment for Water Dancing. That dance she is doing—see how graceful she is?—is called the Dance of Unbearable Sorrow. The actress is famous for this sequence.”

  “She should be; it’s beautiful.”

  They watched in silence for a while, and then Bess speeded up the film.

  “I’ve got to skip some of these things,” she said, “or we will never get through. Now, here is the important part. See what she’s doing?”

  It was dark now on the surface of Furthest, except for the rainbows of water. As Coyote watched, the girl, painted black from head to foot, slipped out onto the surface of the planet and headed for the city, crawling in the open, running where she was sheltered.

  Bess turned off the projector.

  “I think that’s enough of that one,” she said. “Most of the rest of it is trivial, and predictable. She is trying to join the boy on the surface, and that is strictly forbidden.”

  “No volunteer service, eh?”

  “No. They tried it and found it didn’t work; it meant a city staffed entirely by all the wrong sorts of people. Desperate people, sets of lovers like the two in this film, people running away from domestic crises, anything but the cross-section of normal, ordinary families that is supposed to meet the eye.”

  “Does she make it?”

  “She gets to the steps of the boy’s home, but the family has gone away for the night to visit friends that were called to the Surface earlier. She doesn’t know this, and she is forced to spend the entire night in the open, waiting for them to return. The boy finds her in the morning when the family finally comes back, but of course she is dead.”

  “Why should she be dead?”

  Bess glanced at him, surprised. “Surely you have guessed that by now? Our skin is incredibly delicate, it requires a great deal of moisture. If it is exposed to the open air, to sun and wind and dust, we die in a very few hours. Even covered as we are, we suffer.”

  “I understand, Bess. And that’s a sad film.”

  “Very sad. And it’s reasonably true to life. People are separated in tragic ways by Surface Duty, someone does occasionally find himself trapped in the open and die of exposure.”

  “The girl couldn’t have knocked at some other house and saved herself?”

  “This is an old-fashioned film, Citizen. Technically, she cannot do that because anyone whom she appealed to for help would be duty bound to turn her in to the police. I don’t think anyone would really do that, frankly, but that’s what the film is intended to convey.” />
  “All right, Bess. What else have we got?”

  “Let me see. This is the best for your purposes, I think.”

  She slipped another clip into the projector, explain ing, “It’s the biography of one of our heroes, a man called—well, you couldn’t pronounce it. In Panglish his first name would be Andrew, I believe. It should show you what constitutes the Furthester ideal for the male.”

  Coyote nodded approvingly.

  “That should be useful,” he agreed. “Go ahead, love, run it.”

  He was frankly astonished by the film as he watched it. The hero was a scientist, a man who was offered a great deal of money to put aside research that would lead to medical benefits for the people but that would eliminate the need for a drug brought out by a powerful chemical monopoly. This was heroic in any culture, especially when the man continued with his work despite threats on his life, threats to his family, and the usual bag of tricks trotted out in such situations.

  What was surprising was the profile of character that emerged from the film. It was nothing like what Coyote had expected. The difference was so great that it made him half sick; his error could have been very dangerous.

  He had based his conception of an ideal Furthester man upon the men he had seen in the city and in the MESH, men he had not for a moment suspected were literally “on duty.” He had assumed that such a man, the very epitome of male Furthester, would be proud, cold, totally devoid of any display of emotion except conceivably a display of anger, given to abrupt arrivals and departures, interested in nobody and nothing except himself and his possessions. This was the estimate he had made and would have reported, based upon months of the closest observation he could muster.

  And he had been wrong, deeply wrong. The man he saw on the screen was not like that at all. He was gentle, warm, affectionate, patient, compassionate, loving. He was not given to open exhibitions of affection of the exuberant sort, but strong male affection, reserved but obviously tender, displayed frequently and willingly.

  The personality that Coyote had been seeing had been entirely the pattern shown by a man conscripted into a life he despised, suffering the irritations of an environment literally poisonous to his body, encumbered by the unfamiliar trappings of a vanished culture, knowing that his wife and children were at that moment suffering the same indignities and miseries that he was. No wonder they appeared cold and unapproachable!

  At the idea of the immensity of the mistake that he had been making Coyote felt like the embodiment of an elderly cliché—his blood “ran cold.” Never mind that it was trite, it was exact. If he had not learned the truth there would have been some very grave difficulties when a Furthester man became President of the Tri-Galactic Congress. No doubt he would appear even more cold, even more distant and miserable, in the alien environment of the Inner Galaxies, and yet his normal personality profile was totally unlike the picture he would present.

  “Bess,” he asked suddenly, “didn’t you tell me that your people are forbidden by law to leave this planet?”

  “That’s correct,” she said. “No one may leave.”

  “Then how does it happen that you have a delegate to the Tri-Galactic Council?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I had forgotten about him. But he is the one and only exception to the law. And even for him, it requires a special dispensation from the Chief Elder, and a long period of cleansing when he returns.”

  “Is it a religious prohibition?” Coyote asked in amazement.

  “Yes, of course; what other reason could there be?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t see how it fits into the religious pattern.”

  “Well, Citizen, if you’ve based an entire theology upon the necessity for total secrecy, you are almost certain to find your goings and comings restricted by religious law.”

  “You’re right, of course. Again, that should have been obvious to me.”

  “Why is it that all these things that should be so obvious to you are so opaque, Citizen? Perhaps it is the strain of worry about your financial situation?”

  He tugged at a lock of her hair until she yelped.

  “Be serious, Bess,” he said severely. “Everything is supposed to be serious. After all, I’m a spy and you’re a heretic.”

  She sighed and said, “Well, then, what else do you want to see from these?”

  “What else do you have?”

  “Some travelogs. An example of our humor. A film of a musical program. And something very special.”

  “The others could wait until later. What’s the very special one about?”

  “It should really interest you.”

  “Don’t tease, Bess.”

  “I’m not teasing—I’m simply embarrassed.”

  “Embarrassed? Why?”

  “The other one is all about me. I’m the plot, the star, the suspense, the whole bit. All me.”

  Coyote raised his eyebrows. “I had no idea you were that important, Citizenness.”

  “I’m a mindwife,” she reminded him, “one of the best, potentially perhaps the very best.”

  “So RK told me.”

  “And it’s unheard of for a mindwife not to glory in her role, not to revel in her so-called sacred functions. They made a whole film about it. Full of dire moral pronouncements and urgent calls to prayer. It has my trial… and my wedding.”

  “Oh, Bess. You’re married?”

  “Nope. I went to the wedding, though.”

  “Bess,” he moaned, “will you stop, please?”

  She chuckled. “You want to see it, Citizen? It’s just full of cultural foibles. Not to mention the fact that it’s an excellent portrayal of how a mindwife is not supposed to behave.”

  “Of course I want to see it,” Coyote said. “But not now. It’s almost three o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t do you justice in my present condition, I’m falling down tired. Let’s see it tomorrow night, love.”

  “How much longer are you staying, Citizen?” she asked him.

  It was a question he was accustomed to hearing from women, and one to which he had learned the only possible answer.

  “Long enough, Bess,” he said easily, smiling at her. “Just long enough.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “The vast majority of activities which take upon themselves the name ‘revolution’ are not revolution at all; they’re just foreplay.”

  (from an old commercial)

  Bess touched his hand and leaned over to speak to him.

  “This will be a lot easier,” she said.

  “In what way?”

  “Because in this one you get vocal speech. It’s a news documentary, a weekly ‘Story of the Week’ kind of thing, and they’re all done in vocal only.”

  “Where do they film them, then?”

  Bess laughed. “Even our primitive society is up to the construction of a watertight underground chamber, Citizen.”

  “Sorry, love.”

  “The reason for it is that many people collect these documentaries. You must realize that, as isolated as we are out here, what happens on our own planet takes on an immense importance to us. And many people who could not afford to buy the films are able to buy tapes of the sound track; so they put them together with that in mind.”

  “Good old profit motive,” said Coyote with satisfaction. “I’m tired of getting everything secondhand.”

  “Here it goes—they’re pretty… Wait a minute. I don’t have a word for it, I don’t think, not one that you would understand. It’s a slang word. ‘Cheq’thah.’”

  “Does it paraphrase?”

  She frowned. “Let’s see. Something aimed at the lowest common denominator. Full of bad jokes, with all the meanings underlined twice and everything pointed out to you with red pencil. You’re lucky; your Furthester speech isn’t good enough for you to see the puns. The language is completely behind the times, my parents’ generation, but salted with current slang in what they think are appropriate places. Home, mother
, and waterweed loaf. Have you a word for it?”

  “Corny.”

  “Corny?”

  “Ancient Earth word, but it’s survived because it’s needed. The sort of thing you described is called ‘corny.’”

  “Good enough. All right, the narration, the transition, all that stuff, is going to be corny. The actual events were all filmed as they happened, though, so they haven’t been able to foul those up, they’re authentic. Try to ignore the fillers. Ready.”

  NARRATOR: Citizens! Once again we are proud to bring you-the NEWS-in DEPTH! DEPTH, BREADTH, AND LIVING COLOR… brought straight to you!

  “You see?” said Bess. “Pretty bad.”

  NARRATOR: This week’s story concerns the recent scandalous tragedy of Mindwife Kh’llwythenna Be’essahred Q’ue, who as you know is now a fugitive attempting to evade the execution of her sentence—TOTAL ERASURE! Citizens, this is one of the most vital, one of the most gripping, one of the greatest stories of our times, a story with deep import for all of us—and now, Citizens-NEWS… IN… DEPTH! We take you first to Mind-wife Q’ue’s wedding in the Grand Hall…

  FADE TO VAST UNDERWATER GROTTO. A CROWD OF PEOPLE IS GATHERED IN NETS ALONG BOTH SIDES OF THE ROOM. GLOBES CONTAINING FOODS ARE TIED TO THE NETS. SERVOMECHANISMS SWIM SLOWLY ABOUT THE ROOM OFFERING TUBES OF DRINKS. AT THE FAR END OF THE GROTTO A SORT OF ALTAR IS CARVED IN THE ROCK…

  “Bess?”

  “What?”

  “How did you get away?”

  She chuckled in the darkness.

  “We’re supposed to be so bloody law-abiding. It never occurred to them I wouldn’t sit docilely waiting for them to get around to Erasing me. I just walked out when the guards weren’t looking.”

  “Clever of you.”

  “No. Stupid of them. Ah… here come the Marrying Elder.”

  AN OLD MAN SWIMS DOWN THE AISLE BETWEEN THE NETS, FOLLOWED BY A LINE OF FOUR YOUNGER MEN. THE OLDEST IS CARRYING A NET BAG CONTAINING A BOOK AND THREE CARVED SHAPES OF WOOD. ALL FOUR WEAR NARROW COLLARS OF GOLD AROUND THEIR NECKS AND BANDS OF GOLD ON THEIR ANKLES, SET WITH TINY DOLPHIN-LIKE CREATURES DIVING MADE OF A PALE GREEN STONE.