Macroscope

Again he remembered Brad’s remark about normality being no insult, and again he appreciated it intensely. Intelligence might be defined as facility at solving problems — but it was only one talent among many required for existence. What about the problem of being fit to live with? By that definition, Beatryx was the smartest among them.

“Now I know what Lanier meant by the relation of music to poetry,” he said as he removed helmet and goggles, his head revolving with the music of the spheres and the meter of communication. “The rules are identical — there.”

“Lanier?” she inquired. “Sidney Lanier who wrote about the marshes?”

He looked at her, realizing his slip. “You know of him?”

“Only a little. I never understood the interpretations they taught me in school, but I did like some of the verse. I suppose I liked the American poets because they seemed closer. I remember how sad it made me when I learned about A

“A

“She was by Mr. Poe. I always used to think he was Italian, because of the river. I mean, he wrote about her. I memorized it because it made me cry.”

Ivo looked at her, seeing a woman of 37 who only once in the brief period he had known her had shown a sign of unhappiness. “Do you remember it now?”

“I don’t think I do, Ivo. It was a long time ago. Let me see.” She concentrated. “ ‘She was a child and I was a child. In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love — I and my A

“I didn’t realize you liked poetry,” he said. “What’s your favorite poem of all time?”

“Oh, I remember that one,” she said, her face animated. Ivo had judged her to be forty or more the first time he met her, then had learned her true age; now she seemed to have lopped half a dozen more years off that. People became so much much more alive when occupied in something really interesting to them. “It was so sad, but it seemed so true. I mean, I don’t know it any more, but it was my favorite. It was about Jesus Christ and how they slew Him, when He came out of the woods. Oh, I wish I could remember how it went—”

“ ‘Into the woods my Master went / Clean forspent, forspent. / Into the woods my Master came / Forspent with love and shame.’ ”

“That’s it! Oh, Ivo, that’s it! How did you know?”

“A Ballad of Trees and the Master,” he said, “by Lanier.”

“Yes, yes, I had forgotten, yes that was his! But how did you know it?”

“I know — quite a bit of his work. I — well, it’s a long story, and I don’t suppose it matters now.”

“Oh yes it does, Ivo! He’s such a good poet — I know he is — you must tell me! I remember it, I think. He came out of the woods — ‘When Death and Shame would woo Him last,’—”

“ ‘From under the trees they drew Him last; / ’Twas on a tree they slew Him — last / When out of the woods He came.’ ”

There were tears in her eyes that would not fall in the trace gravity. “He found peace among the trees — and then they crucified Him on a tree. Wood, anyway. Such an awful thing.” She reflected on it for a moment. “But you didn’t tell me how you know about Sidney Lanier.”

Ivo was touched by her genuine appreciation and interest. “It was a kind of game we played. You see, none of us knew who our real parents were—”

“You didn’t know? Ivo, where were you?”

“In a — project. They took people of all races and — mixed them together for a couple of generations and got children who were a combination of everything. The idea was to breed back to the basic stock of man, or at least obtain something equivalent to what he would have been if he hadn’t split into so many races. To see if he was any better than the — well, the whites and the yellows and the browns and the blacks. They wanted to reduce cultural influences and make it all the same, so we had no parents. Just supervisors.”

“How horrible, Ivo! I didn’t know.”

“It wasn’t so bad. Matter of fact, we had quite a time. We were never hungry or cold or neglected, and had all the best of everything. It was quite stimulating, as it was meant to be. There were several hundred of us, all the same age and — race. I didn’t really realize until I got out of the project that I was not a normal American.”

“Not a—”

“We’re considered nonwhite.”

“But that shouldn’t make any difference, Ivo. Not in America.”

He did not pursue that aspect farther. “Anyway, since we had no parents or relatives, some of us invented them. It got to be quite a serious thing. We’d pick figures from history and trace the lineage and work out a line of descent for ourselves. We had the whole world to choose from, of course — all times and all races. We’d show how these ancestors resembled us in some way, or vice versa. Anyway, my white ancestor was Sidney Lanier.”

“I think that’s very sweet, Ivo. But what made you decide he was the one?”

“I suppose it was the flute playing. Lanier was a fine flutist, you know — perhaps the finest in the world at that time. He earned his living for several years as first flutist for a prominent orchestra, even though he had tuberculosis, before he got more serious as a poet.”

She frowned. “The flute? I don’t see — Ivo! You play the flute!”

He nodded.

“Did you bring it with you? You must be a very good musician!”

“Yes, I brought it with me — the only thing I did bring. That’s the way Lanier would have done it. I guess music is my strong point. A single talent, like my math-logic talent. I never really worked at it, but I could play the flute better than any of the others.”

After another session with the macroscope, he yielded to her importunings, assembled his flute and played for her. The notes were oddly distorted in the confined space and trace-gravity air, but she listened raptly.

For her? He was playing for himself, too, for he loved the flute. He caressed the instrument, letting the music flow through his being as though they were merely two stops between composer and audience. He lived each note, feeling his soul expand and renew, animated by the melody. This was the theme that brought him closer to his ancestor.

After that it became a regular routine between them, for he felt comfortable while playing and her pleasure was genuine. He played the cold out of the bleak Schön-moonlet landscape; he played mighty Neptune up over the Triton horizon (Triton never turned a new face to Neptune, but Schön’s revolution about it caused a regular eclipse of impressive dimension); he played the spirit of Earth into their exile.

Sometimes, too, he took time off from the galactic bands to survey Earth and pick up the headlines from a New York newspaper, because Beatryx liked to know what was going on locally. In many respects, these sessions with her were as comfortable as anything he had known.

Meanwhile, below, developments were impressive. If flute-playing was Ivo’s genius, machinery was Groton’s.

“The problem is this,” Groton had explained. “Information does not equal gadgetry. The amount of detail work required to build even a crude shelter at a place like this, with temperature, gravity and atmosphere problems, is appalling. Cutting, fitting, finishing, sealing, installing, testing — many thousands of man-hours, not to mention the equipment! So I need to know how a party our size, with a macroscope and an atomic engine and a planetary module and a few hand tools can terraform a world like Triton within, oh, six months. There must be a program for it somewhere. Find me that program!”

Ivo found it. One of the far galactic stations had a complete A-to-Z presentation begi