He looked at her, the shadowy outlines of her, not knowing what to say.
“I heard you talk this morning,” she said.
Len said uncomfortably, “We didn’t know—”
“They told you to say all those things, didn’t they?”
“What things?”
“About what dreadful people they are out there, and what a hateful world it is.”
“I don’t know exactly what you mean,” said Len, “but every word of what we said was true. You think it wasn’t, you go out there and try it.”
He started to push past her up the steps. She put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“I’m sorry. I guess it was all true. But that’s why Sherman had you talk over the radio, so we’d all hear it. Propaganda.” She added shrewdly, “I’ll bet that’s why they let you two in here, just to make us all see how lucky we are.”
Len said, very quietly, “Aren’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Joan, “we’re very lucky. We have so much more than the people outside. Not in our everyday lives, of course. We don’t even have as much, of things like food and freedom. But we have Clementine, and that makes up. Did you enjoy your trip to The Hole?”
“The Hole?”
“It’s a name some of us have for Bartorstown.”
Her manner and her tone were making him uneasy. He said, “I think I better go in,” and started once more up the steps.
“I hope you did,” she said. “I hope you like the canyon, and Fall Creek. Because they’ll never let you leave.”
He thought of what Sherman had said. He did not blame Sherman. He did not have any intention of going away. But he did not like it. “They’ll learn to trust me,” he said, “Someday.”
“Never.”
He did not want to argue with her. “Well, I reckon to stay awhile, anyway. I’ve spent half my life getting here.”
“Why?”
“You’re a Bartorstown girl. You shouldn’t have to ask.”
“Because you wanted to learn. That’s right, you said that this morning. You wanted to learn, and nobody would let you.” She made a wide mocking gesture that took in the whole dark canyon. “Go. Learn. Be happy.”
He got her by the shoulder and pulled her close, where he could see her face in the dim glow from the windows. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I just think you’re crazy, that’s all. To have the whole wide world, and throw it all away for this.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Len. He let her go and sat down on the steps and shook his head. “I’ll be damned. Doesn’t anybody like Bartorstown? Seems to me I’ve heard more griping since I got here than I ever heard in my lifetime before.”
“When you’ve lived a lifetime here,” she said bitterly, “you’ll understand. Oh, some of the men get out, sure. But most of us don’t. Most of us never see anything but these canyon walls. And even the men have to come back again. It’s like your friend says. You have to be a fanatic to feel that it’s all worth while.”
“I’ve lived out there,” said Len. “I think what it is now, and what it could be, if—”
“If Clementine ever gives them the right answer. Sure. It’s been almost a century now, and they’re no nearer than they ever were, but we’ve all got to be patient and devoted and dedicated—dedicated to what? To that goddamned mechanical brain that squats there under the mountain and has to be treated like it was God.”
She leaned over him suddenly, in the faint glow of the lamplight.
“I’m no fanatic, Len Colter. If you want somebody to talk to, remember that.”
Then she was gone around the corner of the house, running. Len heard a door open somewhere at the back. He got up, very slowly, and climbed the steps and went slowly into the house and ate his dinner at the Wepplos’ table. And he did not hear hardly anything that was said to him.
24
The next morning Len and Esau were called again to Sherman’s place, and this time Hostetter was not with them. Sherman faced them over the table in the living room, balancing two keys back and forth between his hands.
“I said I wouldn’t push you, and I won’t. But in the meantime you have to work. Now if I let you work at something you could do in Fall Creek, like blacksmithing or taking care of the mules, you wouldn’t learn anything more about Bartorstown than if you hadn’t left home.”
“Well, no,” said Esau, and then he asked eagerly, “Can I learn about the big machine? Clementine?”
“Offhand, I’d say she’s always going to be beyond you, unless you want to wait until you’re an old man. But you can take it up with Frank Erdmann, he’s the boss on that. And don’t worry, you’ll get all the machine you want. But whatever you pick will mean a lot of studying before you’re ready, and until then—”
He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, perhaps he didn’t really hesitate at all, and perhaps it was only by pure and unmeaning chance that his eyes happened to rest then on Len’s face, but Len knew what he was going to say before he said it and he set himself hard so that nothing would show.
“Until then you’ve been assigned to the steam plant. You’ve had some experience with steam, and it shouldn’t take you too long to master the differences. Jim Sidney, the man you were talking to yesterday, will give you all the help you need.”
He got up and came around the table and handed them the keys. “To the safety gate. Take care of them. Jim will tell you your hours and all that. In free time you can go anywhere you want to in Bartorstown and ask any questions you want so long as you don’t interfere with work in progress. You can make arrangements with Irv Rothstein in the library. And you don’t need to look so stony-faced, both of you. I can read your minds.”
Len looked at him, startled, and he smiled.
“You’re thinking that the steam plant is right next to the reactor and you would rather be anywhere else than there. And that is exactly why you’re going to work on the steam plant. I want to get you so accustomed to the reactor that you’ll forget to be afraid of it.”
Is that the truth? thought Len. Or is it his way of testing us, to see if we
“Get along now,” Sherman said. “Jim’s expecting you.”
So they went, walking in the early morning up the dusty road and across the slope between the rocks to Bartorstown. And at the safety gate they stopped and fidgeted, each one waiting for the other one to open it, and Len said, “I thought you weren’t afraid.”
“I ain’t. It’s just that—oh, hell, those other men work around it. It’s all right. Come on.”
He jabbed his key savagely in the lock and wrenched it open and went in. And Len closed it carefully, thinking, Now I am locked in with it, the fire that fell from the sky on Gran’s world.
He walked after Esau down the tunnel and through that inner door, past the monitor room where young Jones nodded at them. And isn’t he afraid? No, he’s like Ed Hostetter, he’s never been taught to be afraid. And he’s alive, and healthy. God hasn’t struck him down. God hasn’t struck any of them down. He’s let Bartorstown survive. Isn’t that a proof right there that it’s all right, that this answer they’re trying to find is right?
But the ways of the Lord are past our understanding, and the wicked man is given his day upon the earth —
“What are you mooning about?” snapped Esau. “Come on.”
There was a line of sweat across his upper lip, and his mouth was nervous. They went down the stairs again, the steel treads ringing hollow under their feet, past the level where the big computer was, down and down to the lowest step and then off that and out into the great wide cavern with the throb of power beating through it, past the generators and the turbines, and there it was, the concrete wall, the blank and staring face. And the sins
