The Seeds of Time
- Автор: Уиндем Джон Паркс Лукас Бейнон Харрис
- Язык: английский
- Год: Michael Joseph
- ISBN: 0-7181-0362-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Seeds of Time». Краткое содержание книги:
A middle-aged man who has read nothing longer than an occasional magazine article does not take to books. He tired very quickly, as his predecessor had prophesied, of the popular records, and could make nothing of the others. He taught himself the moves in chess from a book, and instructed Lellie in them, intending after a little practise with her to challenge the man on Callisto. Lellie, however, managed to win with such consistency that he had to decide that he had not the right kind of mind for the game. Instead, he taught her a kind of double solitaire, but that didn’t last long, either; the cards seemed always to run for Lellie.
Occasionally there was some news and entertainment to be had from the radio, but with Earth somewhere round the other side of the sun just then, Mars screened off half the time by Callisto, and the rotation of the satellite itself, reception was either impossible, or badly broken up.
So mostly he sat and fretted, hating the satellite, angry with himself, and irritated by Lellie.
Just the phlegmatic way she went on with her tasks irritated him. It seemed an injustice that she could take it all better than he could simply because she was a dumb Mart. When his ill-temper became vocal, the look of her as she listened exasperated him still more.
‘For crysake,’ he told her one time, ‘can’t you make that silly face of yours mean something? Can’t you laugh, or cry, or get mad, or something? It’s enough to drive a guy nuts going on looking at a face that’s fixed permanent like it was a doll just heard its first dirty story. I know you can’t help being dumb, but for heaven’s sake crack it up a bit, get some expression into it.’
She went on looking at him without a shadow of a change.
‘Go on, you heard me! Smile, damn you-Smile!’
Her mouth twitched very slightly.
‘Call that a smile! Now, there’s a smile!’ He pointed to a pin-up with her head split pretty much in half by a smile like a piano keyboard. ‘Like that! Like this!’ He grinned widely.
‘No,’ she said. ‘My face can’t wriggle like Earth faces.’
‘Wriggle!’ he said, incensed. ‘Wriggle, you call it!’ He freed himself from the chair’s spring-cover, and came towards her. She backed away until she fetched up against the wall. ‘I’ll make yours wriggle, my girl. Go on, now smile!’ He lifted his hand.
Lellie put her hands up to her face.
‘No!’ she protested. ‘No-no-no!’
It was on the very day that Duncan marked off the eighth completed month that Callisto relayed news of a ship on the way. A couple of days later he was able to make contact with her himself, and confirm her arrival in about a week. He felt as if he had been given several stiff drinks. There were the preparations to make, stores to check, deficiencies to note, a string of nil-nil-nil entries to be made in the log to bring it up to date. He bustled around as he got on with it. He even hummed to himself as he worked, and ceased to be annoyed with Lellie. The effect upon her of the news was imperceptible-but then, what would you expect… ?
Sharp on her estimated time the ship hung above them, growing slowly larger as her upper jets pressed her down. The moment she was berthed Duncan went aboard, with the feeling that everything in sight was an old friend. The Captain received him warmly, and brought out the drinks. It was all routine-even Duncan’s babbling and slightly inebriated manner was the regular thing in the circumstances.
The only departure from pattern came when the Captain introduced a man beside him, and explained him.
‘We’ve brought a surprise for you, Superintendent. This is Doctor Whint. He’ll be sharing your exile for a bit.’
Duncan shook hands. ‘Doctor…?’ he said, surprisedly.
‘Not medicine-science,’ Alan Whint told him. ‘The Company’s pushed me out here to do a geological survey -if geo isn’t the wrong word to use. About a year. Hope you don’t mind.’
Duncan said conventionally that he’d be glad of the company, and left it at that for the moment. Later, he took him over to the dome. Alan Whint was surprised to find Lellie there; clearly nobody had told him about her. He interrupted Duncan’s explanations to say:
‘Won’t you introduce me to your wife?’
Duncan did so, without grace. He resented the reproving tone in the man’s voice; nor did he care for the way he greeted Lellie just as if she were an Earth woman. He was also aware that he had noticed the bruise on her cheek that the colour did not altogether cover. In his mind he classified Alan Whint as one of the smooth, snooty type, and hoped that there was not going to be trouble with him.
It could be, indeed, it was, a matter of opinion who made the trouble when it boiled up some three months later. There had already been several occasions when it had lurked uneasily near. Very likely it would have come into the open long before had Whint’s work not taken him out of the dome so much. The moment of touch-off came when Lellie lifted her eyes from the book she was reading to ask: ‘What does “female emancipation” mean?’
Alan started to explain. He was only half-way through the first sentence when Duncan broke in:
‘Listen-who told you to go putting ideas into her head?’
Alan shrugged his shoulders slightly, and looked at him.
‘That’s a damn silly question,’ he said. ‘And, anyway, why shouldn’t she have ideas? Why shouldn’t anyone?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I never understand you guys who apparently can’t say what you mean. Try again.’
‘All right then. What I mean is this: you come here with your ritzy ways and your snazzy talk, and right from the start you start shoving your nose into things that aren’t your business. You begin right off by treating her as if she was some toney dame back home.’
‘I hoped so. I’m glad you noticed it.’
‘And do you think I didn’t see why?’
‘I’m quite sure you didn’t. You’ve such a well-grooved mind. You think, in your simple way, that I’m out to get your girl, and you resent that with all the weight of two thousand, three hundred and sixty pounds. But you’re wrong: I’m not.’
Duncan was momentarily thrown off his line, then:
‘My wife,’ he corrected. ‘She may be only a dumb Mart, but she’s legally my wife: and what I say goes.’
‘Yes, Lellie is a Mart, as you call it; she may even be your wife, for all I know to the contrary; but dumb, she certainly is not. For one example, look at the speed with which she’s learned to read-once someone took the trouble to show her how. I don’t think you’d show up any too bright yourself in a language where you only knew a few words, and which you couldn’t read.’
‘It was none of your business to teach her. She didn’t need to read. She was all right the way she was.’
‘The voice of the slaver down the ages. Well, if I’ve done nothing else, I’ve cracked up your ignorance racket there.’
‘And why?-So she’ll think you’re a great guy. The same reason you talk all toney and smarmy to her. So you’ll get her thinking you’re a better man than I am.’
‘I talk to her the way I’d talk to any woman anywhere -only more simply since she’s not had the chance of an education. If she does think I’m a better man, then I agree with her. I’d be sorry if I couldn’t.’
‘I’ll show you who’s the better man ‘ Duncan began.
‘You don’t need to. I knew when I came here that you’d be a waster, or you’d not be on this job-and it didn’t take long for me to find out that you were a goddam bully, too. Do you suppose I’ve not noticed the bruises? Do you think I’ve enjoyed having to listen to you bawling out a girl whom you’ve deliberately kept ignorant and defenceless when she’s potentially ten times the sense you have? Having to watch a clodkopf like you lording it over your “dumb Mart”? You emetic!’