The Past Through Tomorrow (45 page)

“No, me lord, I simply refuse to expose myself to the outer air in six ounces of nylon and a pair of sandals. I want some warm clothes first.” She squirmed further down under the covers.

“The Perfect Pioneer Woman. Going to have fitters sent up?”

“We can’t afford that. Look—you’re going anyway. Buy me just any old rag so long as it’s warm.”

MacRae looked stubborn. “I’ve tried shopping for you before.”

“Just this once—please. Run over to Saks and pick out a street dress in a blue wool jersey, size ten. And a pair of nylons.”

“Well—all right.”

“That’s a lamb. I won’t be loafing. I’ve a list as long as your arm of people I’ve promised to call up, look up, have lunch with.”

He attended to his own shopping first; his sensible shorts and singlet seemed as warm as a straw hat in a snow storm. It was not really cold and was quite balmy in the sun, but it seemed cold to a man used to a never-failing seventy-two degrees. He tried to stay underground, or stuck to the roofed-over section of Fifth Avenue.

He suspected that the salesmen had outfitted him in clothes that made him look like a yokel. But they were warm. They were also heavy; they added to the pain across his chest and made him walk even more unsteadily. He wondered how long it would be before he got his ground-legs.

A motherly saleswoman took care of Jo’s order and sold him a warm cape for her as well. He headed back, stumbling under his packages, and trying futilely to flag a ground-taxi. Everyone seemed in such a hurry! Once he was nearly knocked down by a teen-aged boy who said, “Watch it, Gramps!” and rushed off, before he could answer.

He got back, aching all over and thinking about a hot bath. He did not get it; Jo had a visitor. “Mrs. Appleby, my husband—Allan, this is Emma Crail’s mother.”

“Oh, how do you do, Doctor—or should it be ‘Professor’?”

“Mister—”

“—when I heard you were in town I just couldn’t wait to hear all about my poor darling. How is she? Is she thin? Does she look well? These modern girls—I’ve told her time and again that she must get out of doors—I walk in the Park every day—and look at me. She sent me a picture—I have it here somewhere; at least I think I have—and she doesn’t look a bit well, undernourished. Those synthetic foods—”

“She doesn’t eat synthetic foods, Mrs. Appleby.”

“—must be quite impossible, I’m sure, not to mention the taste. What were you saying?”

“Your daughter doesn’t live on synthetic foods,” Allan repeated. “Fresh fruits and vegetables are one thing we have almost too much of in Luna City. The air-conditioning plant, you know.”

“That’s just what I was saying. I confess I don’t see just how you get food out of air-conditioning machinery on the Moon—”

“
In
the Moon, Mrs. Appleby.”

“—but it can’t be healthy. Our air-conditioner at home is always breaking down and making the most horrible smells—simply unbearable, my dears—you’d think they could build a simple little thing like an air-conditioner so that—though of course if you expect them to manufacture synthetic foods as well—”

“Mrs. Appleby—”

“Yes, Doctor? What were you saying? Don’t let me—”

“Mrs. Appleby,” MacRae said desperately, “the air-conditioning plant in Luna City is a hydroponic farm, tanks of growing plants, green things. The plants take the carbon dioxide out of the air and put oxygen back in.”

“But—Are you quite sure, Doctor? I’m sure Emma said—”

“Quite sure.”

“Well… I don’t pretend to understand these things, I’m the artistic type. Poor Herbert often said—Herbert was Emma’s father; simply wrapped up in his engineering though I always saw to it that he heard good music and saw the reviews of the best books. Emma takes after her father, I’m afraid—I do wish she would give up that silly work she is in. Hardly the sort of work for a woman, do you think, Mrs. MacRae? All those atoms and neuters and things floating around in the air. I read all about it in the
Science Made Simple
column in the—”

“She’s quite good at it and she seems to like it.”

“Well, yes, I suppose. That’s the important thing, to be happy at what you are doing no matter how silly it is. But I worry about the child—buried away from civilization, no one of her own sort to talk to, no theaters, no cultural life, no society—”

“Luna City has stereo transcriptions of every successful Broadway play.” Jo’s voice had a slight edge.

“Oh! Really? But it’s not just going to the theater, my dear; it’s the society of gentlefolk. Now when I was a girl, my parents—”

Allan butted in, loudly. “One o’clock. Have you had lunch, my dear?”

Mrs. Appleby sat up with a jerk. “Oh, heavenly days! I simply must fly. My dress designer—such a tyrant, but a genius; I must give you her address. It’s been charming, my dears, and I can’t thank you too much for telling me all about my poor darling. I do wish she would be sensible like you two; she knows I’m always ready to make a home for her—and her husband, for that matter. Now do come and see me, often. I love to talk to people who’ve been on the Moon—”

“In the Moon.”

“It makes me feel closer to my darling. Good-by, then.”

With the door locked behind her, Jo said, “Allan, I need a drink.”

“I’ll join you.”

Jo cut her shopping short; it was too tiring. By four o’clock they were driving in Central Park, enjoying fall scenery to the lazy clop-clop of horse’s hoofs. The helicopters, the pigeons, the streak in the sky where the Antipodes rocket had passed, made a scene idyllic in beauty and serenity. Jo swallowed a lump in her throat and whispered, “Allan, isn’t it beautiful?”

“Sure is. It’s great to be back. Say, did you notice they’ve torn up 42nd Street again?”

Back in their room, Jo collapsed on her bed, while Allan took off his shoes. He sat, rubbing his feet, and remarked, “I’m going barefooted all evening. Golly, how my feet hurt!”

“So do mine. But we’re going to your father’s, my sweet.”

“Huh? Oh, damn, I forgot. Jo, whatever possessed you? Call him up and postpone it. We’re still half dead from the trip.”

“But, Allan, he’s invited a lot of your friends.”

“Balls of fire and cold mush! I haven’t any real friends in New York. Make it next week.”

“‘Next week’…hmm…look, Allan, let’s go out to the country right away.” Jo’s parents had left her a tiny place in Connecticut, a worn-out farm.

“I thought you wanted a couple of weeks of plays and music first. Why the sudden change?”

“I’ll show you.” She went to the window, open since noon. “Look at that window sill.” She drew their initials in the grime. “Allan, this city is
filthy
.”

“You can’t expect ten million people not to kick up dust.”

“But we’re breathing that stuff into our lungs. What’s happened to the smog-control laws?”

“That’s not smog; that’s normal city dirt.”

“Luna City was never like this. I could wear a white outfit there till I got tired of it. One wouldn’t last a day here.”

“Manhattan doesn’t have a roof—and precipitrons in every air duct.”

“Well, it should have. I either freeze or suffocate.”

“I thought you were anxious to feel rain on your face?”

“Don’t be tiresome. I want it out in the clean, green country.”

“Okay. I want to start my book anyhow. I’ll call your real estate agent.”

“
I
called him this morning. We can move in anytime; he started fixing up the place when he got my letter.”

It was a stand-up supper at his father’s home, though Jo sat down at once and let food be fetched. Allan wanted to sit down, but his status as guest of honor forced him to stay on his aching feet. His father buttonholed him at the buffet. “Here, son, try this goose liver. It ought to go well after a diet of green cheese.”

Allan agreed that it was good.

“See here, son, you really ought to tell these folks about your trip.”

“No speeches, Dad. Let ’em read the
National Geographic
.”

“Nonsense!” He turned around. “Quiet, everybody! Allan is going to tell us how the Lunatics live.”

Allan bit his lip. To be sure, the citizens of Luna City used the term to each other, but it did not sound the same here. “Well, really, I haven’t anything to say. Go on and eat.”

“You talk and we’ll eat.”

“Tell us about Looney City.”

“Did you see the Man-in-the-Moon?”

“Go on, Allan, what’s it like to live on the Moon?”

“Not ‘on the Moon’—in the Moon.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Why, none, I guess.” He hesitated; there was really no way to explain why the Moon colonists emphasized that they lived under the surface of the satellite planet—but it irritated him the way “Frisco” irritates a San Franciscan. “‘In the Moon’ is the way we say it. We don’t spend much time on the surface, except for the staff at Richardson Observatory, and the prospectors, and so forth. The living quarters are underground, naturally.”

“Why ‘naturally’? Afraid of meteors?”

“No more than you are afraid of lightning. We go underground for insulation against heat and cold and as support for pressure sealing. Both are cheaper and easier underground. The soil is easy to work and the interstices act like vacuum in a thermos bottle. It is vacuum.”

“But Mr. MacRae,” a serious-looking lady inquired, “doesn’t it hurt your ears to live under pressure?”

Allan fanned the air. “It’s the same pressure here—fifteen pounds.”

She looked puzzled, then said, “Yes, I suppose so, but it is a little hard to imagine. I think it would terrify me to be sealed up in a cave. Suppose you had a blow-out?”

“Holding fifteen pounds pressure is no problem; engineers work in thousands of pounds per square inch. Anyhow, Luna City is compartmented like a ship. It’s safe enough. The Dutch live behind dikes; down in Mississippi they have levees. Subways, ocean liners, aircraft—they’re all artificial ways of living. Luna City seems strange just because it’s far away.”

She shivered. “It scares me.”

A pretentious little man pushed his way forward. “Mr. MacRae—granted that it is nice for science and all that, why should taxpayers’ money be wasted on a colony on the Moon?”

“You seem to have answered yourself,” Allan told him slowly.

“Then how do you justify it? Tell me that, sir.”

“It isn’t necessary to justify it; the Lunar colony has paid for itself several times over. The Lunar corporations are all paying propositions. Artemis Mines, Spaceways, Spaceways Provisioning Corporation, Diana Recreations, Electronics Research Company, Lunar Biological Labs, not to mention all of Rutherford—look ’em up. I’ll admit the Cosmic Research Project nicks the taxpayer a little, since it’s a joint enterprise of the Harriman Foundation and the government.”

“Then you admit it. It’s the principle of the thing.”

Allan’s feet were hurting him very badly indeed. “What principle? Historically, research has always paid off.” He turned his back and looked for some more goose liver.

A man touched him on the arm; Allan recognized an old schoolmate. “Allan, old boy, congratulations on the way you ticked off old Beetle. He’s been needing it—I think he’s some sort of a radical.”

Allan grinned. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

“A good job you did. Say, Allan, I’m going to take a couple of out-of-town buyers around to the hot spots tomorrow night. Come along.”

“Thanks a lot, but we’re going out in the country.”

“Oh, you can’t afford to miss this party. After all, you’ve been buried on the Moon; you owe yourself some relaxation after that deadly monotony.”

Allan felt his cheeks getting warm. “Thanks just the same, but—ever seen the Earth View Room in Hotel Moon Haven?”

“No. Plan to take the trip when I’ve made my pile, of course.”

“Well, there’s a night club for you. Ever see a dancer leap thirty feet into the air and do slow rolls on the way down? Ever try a lunacy cocktail? Ever see a juggler work in low gravity?” Jo caught his eye across the room. “Er…excuse me, old man. My wife wants me.” He turned away, then flung back over his shoulder, “Moon Haven itself isn’t just a spaceman’s dive, by the way—it’s recommended by the Duncan Hines Association.”

Jo was very pale. “Darling, you’ve got to get me out of here. I’m suffocating. I’m really ill.”

“Suits.” They made their excuses.

Jo woke up with a stuffy cold, so they took a cab directly to her country place. There were low-lying clouds under them, but the weather was fine above. The sunshine and the drowsy beat of the rotors regained for them the joy of homecoming.

Allan broke the lazy revery. “Here’s a funny thing, Jo. You couldn’t hire me to go back to the Moon—but last night I found myself defending the Loonies every time I opened my mouth.”

She nodded. “I know. Honest to Heaven, Allan, some people act as if the Earth were flat. Some of them don’t really believe in anything, and some of them are so matter-of-fact that you know they don’t really understand—and I don’t know which sort annoys me the more.”

It was foggy when they landed, but the house was clean, the agent had laid a fire and had stocked the refrigerator. They were sipping hot punch and baking the weariness out of their bones within ten minutes after the copter grounded. “This,” said Allan, stretching, “is all right. It really is great to be back.”

“Uh-huh. All except the highway.” A new express-and-freight superhighway now ran not fifty yards from the house. They could hear the big diesels growling as they struck the grade.

“Forget the highway. Turn your back and you stare straight into the woods.”

They regained their ground-legs well enough to enjoy short walks in the woods; they were favored with a long, warm Indian summer; the cleaning woman was efficient and taciturn. Allan worked on the results of three years research preparatory to starting his book. Jo helped him with the statistical work, got reacquainted with the delights of cooking, dreamed, and rested.

It was the day of the first frost that the toilet stopped up.

The village plumber was persuaded to show up the next day. Meanwhile they resorted to a homely little building, left over from another era and still standing out beyond the wood pile. It was spider-infested and entirely too well ventilated.