A Mile Beyond the Moon Part 16

Chaplain Pemberton stared incredulously. "You must look into your hearts," he told them in a reasonable voice. "You must look deeper than you have, and you will find that you have been deluded. This is not the way for human beings to act. Somebody has misled you dreadfully. Let me explain-"

"Blasphemy," the leader of the females said, and put her spear expertly into the chaplain's intestines. The shock of the broad, cold blade pulsed through him and felled him.

Jewel Flyte knelt beside him instantly, checking heart beat and breathing. He was alive.

"Get up," the male leader said. "Displaying and offering yourself to such as we is useless. We are pure in heart."

A male child ran to the door. "Wagners!" he screamed. "Twenty Wagners coming up the stairs!"

His father roared at him: "Stand straight and don't mumble!" and slashed out with the b.u.t.t of his spear, catching him hard in the ribs. The child grinned, but only after the pure-heartedeighteen had run to the stairs.

Then he blasted a whistle down the corridor while the sea people stared with what attention they could divert from the bleeding chaplain. Six doors popped open at the whistle and men and women emerged from them to launch spears into the backs of the Brownells cl.u.s.tered to defend the stairs. "Thanks, Pop!" the boy kept screaming while the pure-hearted Wagners swarmed over the remnants of the pure-hearted Brownells; at last his screaming bothered one of the Wagners and the boy was himself speared.

Jewel Flyte said: "I've had enough of this. Captain, please pick the chaplain up and come along."

"They'll kill us."

"You'll have the chaplain," said Mrs. Graves. "One moment." She darted into a bedroom and came back hefting the spiked k.n.o.bkerry.

"Well, perhaps," the girl said. She begari undoing the long row of b.u.t.tons down the front of her coveralls and shrugged out of the garment, then unfastened and stepped out of her underwear. With the clothes over her arm she walked into the corridor and to the stairs, the stupefied captain and inspector following.

To the pure-hearted Merdekans she was not Prynne winning her case; she was Evil incarnate. They screamed, broke and ran wildly, dropping their weapons. That a human being could do such a thing was beyond their comprehension; Merdeka alone knew what kind of monster this was that drew them strangely and horribly, in violation of all sanity. They ran as she had hoped they would; the other side of the coin was spearing even more swift and thorough than would have been accorded to her fully clothed. But they ran, gibbering with fright and covering their eyes, into apartments and corners of the corridor, their backs turned on the awful thing.

The sea people picked their way over the shambles at the stairway and went unopposed down the stairs and to the dock. It was a troublesome piece of work for Salter to pa.s.s the chaplain down to Mrs. Graves in the boat, but in ten minutes they had cast off, rowed out a little, and set sail to catch the land breeze generated by the differential twilight cooling of water and brick. After playing her part in stepping the mast, Jewel Flyte dressed.

"It won't always be that easy," she said when the last b.u.t.ton was fastened. Mrs. Graves had been thinking the same thing, but had not said it to avoid the appearance of envying that superb young body. Salter was checking the chaplain as well as he knew how. "I think he'll be all right," he said. "Surgical repair and a long rest. He hasn't lost much blood. This is a strange story we'll have to tell the s.h.i.+p's Council."

Mrs. Graves said, "They've no choice. We've lost our net and the land is there waiting for us. A few maniacs oppose us-what of it?" Again a huge fish lazily surfaced; Salter regarded it thoughtfully. He said: "They'll propose scavenging bronze ash.o.r.e and fas.h.i.+oning another net and going on just as if nothing had happened. And really, we could do that, you know."

Jewel Flyte said: "No. Not forever. This time it was the net, at the end of harvest. What if it were three masts in midwinter, in mid-Atlantic?"

"Or," said the captain, "the rudder-any time. Anywhere. But can you imagine telling the Council they've got to walk off the s.h.i.+p onto land, take up quarters in those brick cabins, change everything? And fight maniacs, and learn to farm?"

"There must be a way," said Jewel Flyte. "Just as Merdeka, whatever it was, was a way.

There were too many people, and Merdeka was the answer to too many people. There's always an answer. Man is a land mammal in spite of brief excursions at sea. We were seed stock put aside, waiting for the land to be cleared so we could return. Just as these offsh.o.r.e fish are waiting very patiently for us to stop harvesting twice a year so they can return to deep water and multiply. What's the way, Captain?"

He thought hard. "We could," he said slowly, "begin by simply sailing in close and fis.h.i.+ng the offsh.o.r.e waters for big stuff. Then tie up and build a sort of bridge from the s.h.i.+p to the sh.o.r.e. We'd continue to live aboard the s.h.i.+p but we'd go out during daylight to try farming.""It sounds right."

"And keep improving the bridge, making it more and more solid, until before they notice it it's really a solid part of the s.h.i.+p and a solid part of the sh.o.r.e. It might take . . . mmm . . .ten years?"

"Time enough for the old sh.e.l.lbacks to make up their minds," Mrs. Graves unexpectedly snorted.

"And we'd relax the one-to-one reproduction rule, and some young adults will simply be crowded over the bridge to live on the land-" His face suddenly fell. "And then the whole d.a.m.ned farce starts all over again, I suppose. I pointed out that it takes thirty-two generations bearing one child apiece to run a population of two billion into zero. Well, I should have mentioned that it takes thirty-two generations bearing four children apiece to run a population of two into two billion. Oh, what's the use, Jewel?"

She chuckled. "There was an answer last time," she said. "There will be an answer the next time."

"It won't be the same answer as Merdeka," he vowed. "We grew up a little at sea. This time we can do it with brains and not with nightmares and superst.i.tion."

"I don't know," she said. "Our s.h.i.+p will be the first, and then the other s.h.i.+ps will have their accidents one by one and come and tie up and build their bridges, hating every minute of it for the first two generations and then not hating it, just living it... and who will be the greatest man who ever lived?"

The captain looked horrified.

"Yes, you! Salter, the Builder of the Bridge; Tommy, do you know an old word for 'bridge-builder'? Pontifex."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Tommy Salter said in despair.

A flicker of consciousness was pa.s.sing through the wounded chaplain; he heard the words and was pleased that somebody aboard was praying.