went up to it and found it deserted. The heavy metal doors of a loading dock stood slightly ajar, indicating that the place had been left alone for some time; leaves and other windblown trash had piled up at the bottom of the opening.
The doors had evidently not been moved in some time and were hard to move. But they got them apart enough so that they could squeeze through to the inside.
Windows high in the wall, most of them still unbroken, let light into the interior.
It was a dusty, dusky sort of light. But as their eyes adjusted, it became as useful as full daylight for their purposes. They found sacks full of seed stacked near the further end of the building, which held another loading dock. Before this, inside, was a large hopper through which Jeebee remembered the already-gathered seed had been moved to be winnowed and cleaned. The sacks bore tags with dates in late August of the previous year. But the only identification of the seed itself seemed to be a letter followed by four numbers, followed by a date of the previous year.
One-year-old seed could be used; but how to tell which kind to take?
Jeebee and Merry looked about some more. There was a large, empty area in front of huge metal doors on rollers at one end of the building. Jeebee thought he remembered large machinery having been parked there, harvesters and planters. But there were no machines here now. Possibly they had been taken away somewhere back when the world had first started to fall apart. Maybe they had never been kept here on a regular basis.
There was also one dusty room, a cubicle built into a corner near the docks. It contained a couple of large metal desks, four filing cabinets, and a number of shelves with labeled glass specimen cases of seeds upon them and arranged in no particular order. The labels were marked in some form of symbols that neither Merry nor Jeebee could interpret. But on one wall there was a large map showing an area divided into rectangular sections, which drew Jeebee’s attention immediately.
As he stepped closer to it he saw that the map was actually a paper or plastic sheet about eight feet long and four feet from top to bottom. Over it there was a pane of glass, on which lines had been drawn and notations had been made, possibly by some type of crayon. Like the letter and number on the tags, they were indecipherable.
“I think the best thing we can do,” Jeebee said at last, “is head out into the fields themselves and simply go looking for a plot or field of healthy volunteers.” “Volunteers?” Merry echoed.
“That’s what I was told they call domesticated plants like these that’re left alone and simply reseed themselves, and come up in a second crop without any human attention.”
Accordingly, they went out and began their search. Jeebee was grateful for the horses, because they had a good deal of area to cover. Luckily the markers about the seed farm were still in place, not only those identifying the various fields of a certain experimental type of plant, but the ones marking the corridors of ground that spaced these fields apart. They started with corridor number one and went progressively through the rest, beginning at the end where the building was and going to the very edge of the farm itself.
Jeebee had half counted on his memory to point him toward the fields of wheat where genetic experiments were being tried out. It did not.
“Are you sure they actually were still experimenting with disease-resistant winter wheat?” Merry asked, after they had been up and down between the fields for several hours.
“I can’t be sure, of course,” said Jeebee, “but it doesn’t seem to make sense that they’d give up on it.” He waved his hand at the field on their left that they were just passing. It was a field of thin, green stalks, already at some height, but powdered with what looked like a gray dust. “That’s what we don’t want to get,” he told her, “powdery mildew. If we can just find a stand of healthy, green volunteers, we’ll know we’re home free. It’s too bad we aren’t here a little later in the year when we could actually harvest some of the seeds ourselves. But there’s a good chance, if we find a healthy field that’s reseeded itself and doing well, we’ll just take its code number. Any sacks back there in the building with the same code on their tags ought to be good bets to hold healthy, genetically resistant seeds.”
It was well past noon when at last they found a field of thick-standing green wheat stalks about knee- high.
Jeebee reined in at a corner of the field. The stalks were feathery, green, and almost happy looking in comparison to the stunted gray-dusted stems they had found until now.
“Look at that!” Jeebee waved at the healthy young plants. “That’s what we’ve been looking for. Now, if we can just find the signboard for this field and get the code number off it.”
“That shouldn’t be too much trouble, as long as the sign’s still standing,” said Merry. “We just have to ride around the edge until we come to it.”
And so they did; and so, finally, they located the signboard.
“G-4370A,” Jeebee read off the sign. “I think I can remember that. Do you think we ought to write it down?”
“I am,” Merry answered. Jeebee looked over at her and saw her using a pencil in a small, pocket notebook. “Let’s get back to that building and start looking for the sacks with matching tags.”
They went. Once back in the building, the hunt through the sacks, through the dust and the dimmed light, was almost as frustrating as their hunt had been through the fields. But eventually Merry found what they were after.
“G-4370A!” she said. “Jeebee, they’re here!”
He had been examining the tags on sacks about fifteen feet away. He hurried to her side and studied the tag.
“Looks beautiful, doesn’t it?” Merry said with a grin.
Jeebee grinned back.
“All we have to do now,” he said, “is load the packhorses and head back. Not all of this grain will sprout, probably. It’s a full year old. But most ought to do very well for whoever plants it.”
So they did. They had six packhorses to load; and when the job was done, they were dusty and itchy, as well as worn out from their work. But they were infinitely cheerful—and more than this had happened to them. The distance Merry had been maintaining from Jeebee had evaporated. They had worked closer and closer, until effectively all barriers had dissolved between them.
The first three nights out they both slept like the dead, each in their separate sleeping bags. The fourth night Jeebee found himself slow to fall asleep, although Merry had dropped right off. He found himself lying by the fire and watching her unmoving sleeping bag molded by her figure within it. A great deal of understanding had made itself manifest in him these last few days. He realized that more than the work had brought them together. Tacitly they had both acknowledged what they shared. He knew that now if he went over to Merry in her sleeping bag, she would not push him away.
That much of the battle was over. They were both ready to belong to each other and they both knew it. Nonetheless he lay still where he was. Because she had been right.
It was the time of iron years that had descended upon the world, binding people to paths they must follow whether or not they wished to do so. Just as Wolf had been bound by the instinctive part of him, which had told him not to go down into an unknown place like the root cellar. Come what might, they must be what they were. They must do what they had to do. And what must be borne must be borne whether they liked it or not. The only control they had over the situation was the manner in which they bore it.
Merry had been right. Jeebee must leave and she must go on. Theoretically, there was no reason why they could not meet again next year. But practically, the chances were slim. In this different world, two people who parted had much less chance of coming back together again than formerly. Many things could happen to either one of them or both to prevent their meeting again.
The situation came down at last to their making what they had to bear as easy as possible. Better they stayed apart, forgot each other, and looked elsewhere. Things would be easiest in the long run if they had a minimum of memories to forget.
So, he would stay here. He would fall asleep here, as she had fallen asleep over there; and they would go back to the wagon, separate but apart, knowing that there was no help for it, no way of having it any different. Like Wolf, they had choice only within limits.
In some strange way their silent mutual understanding that they both wanted each other and could not have each other had brought them closer together than Jeebee could remember being with anyone else in his life. In
