Clifford D. Simak - Strangers in the Universe 01 - Target Generation

VIP免费
2024-11-20 1 0 79.44KB 29 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
TARGET GENERATION
CLIFFORD D SIMAK
THERE had been silence—for many generations. Then the silence ended.
The Mutter came at "dawn."
The Folk awoke, crouching in their beds, listening to the Mutter.
For had it not been spoken that one day would come the Mutter? And that the Mutter would be the
beginning of the End?
Jon Hoff awoke, and Mary Hoff, his wife.
They were the only two within their cubicle, for they had no children. They were not yet allowed a
child. Before they could have a child, before there would be room for it, the elderly Joshua must die, and
knowing this they had waited for his death, guilty at their unspoken prayer that he soon must die—
willing him to die so they might have a child.
The Mutter came and ran throughout the Ship. Then the bed in which Jon and Mary crouched spun
upward from the floor and crashed against the wall, pinning them against the humming metal, while all
the other furniture —chest and chairs and table—came crashing from floor to wall, where it came to rest,
as if the wall suddenly had become the floor and the floor the wall.
The Holy Picture dangled from the ceiling, which a moment before had been the other wall, hung
there for a moment, swaying hi the air; then it, too, crashed downward.
In that moment the Mutter ended and there was silence once again—but not the olden silence, for
although there was no sound one could reach out and pinpoint, there were many sounds—a feeling, if
not a hearing, of the sounds of surging power, of old machinery stirring back to life, of an old order,
long dormant, taking over once again.
Jon Hoff crawled out part way from beneath the bed, then straightened on his arms, using his back to
lift the bed so his wife could crawl out, too. Free of the bed, they stood on the wall-that-had-become-a-
floor and saw the litter of the furniture, which had not been theirs alone, but had been used and then
passed down to them through many generations.
For there was nothing wasted; there was nothing thrown away. That was the law—or one of many
laws— that you could not waste, that you could not throw away. You used everything there was, down
to the last shred, of its utility. You ate only enough food—no more, no less. You drank only enough
water—no more, no less. You used the same air over and over again—literally the same air. The wastes
of your body went into the converter to be changed into something that you, or someone else, would use
again. Even the dead—you used the dead again. And there had been many dead in the long generations
from the First Beginning. In months to come, some day perhaps not too distant now, Joshua would be
added to the dead, would give over his body to the converter for the benefit of his fellow-folk, would
return, finally and irrevocably, the last of all that he had taken from the community, would pay the last
debt of all his debts—and would give Jon and Mary the right to have a child.
For there must be a child, thought Jon, standing there amidst the wreckage—there must be a child to
whom he could pass on the Letter and the Reading.
There was a law about the Reading, too. You did not read because reading was an evil art that came
from the Beginning and the Folk had, hi the Great Awakening, back in the dimness of Far Past, ferreted
out this evil among many other evils and had said it must not be.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (1 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
So it was an evil thing that he must pass on, an evil«art, and yet there was the charge and pledge—the
charge of his long-dead father had put upon him, the pledge that he had made. And something else as
well: the nagging feeling that the law was wrong.
However, the laws were never wrong. There was a reason for them all. A reason for the way they
lived and for the Ship and how the Ship had come to be and for those who peopled it.
Although, come to think of it, he might not pass the letter on. He might be the one who would open it,
for it said on the outside of the envelope that it was to be opened in emergency. And this, Jon Hoff told
himself, might be emergency—when the silence had been broken by the Mutter and the floor became a
wall and the wall a floor.
Now there were voices from the other cubicles, frightened voices that cried out, and other voices that
shrieked with terror, and the thin, high crying of the children.
"Jon," said Mary Hoff, "that was the Mutter. The End will be coming now."
"We do not know," said Jon. "We shall have to wait and see. We do not know the End."
"They say . . ." said Mary, and Jon thought that was the way it always was.
They say. They say. They say.
It was spoken; it was not read nor written.
And he heard his dead father speaking once again; the memory of how he had spoken long ago came
back.
The brain and the memory will play you false, for the memory will forget a thing and twist it. But the
written word will stay forever as it was written down. It does not forget and does not change its
meaning. You can depend upon the written word.
"They say," said Mary, "that the End will come swiftly when we hear the Mutter. That the stars will
no longer move but will stand still in the blackness, and that is a sure sign the End is near at hand."
And, he wondered, the end of what? The end of us? The end of the Ship? The end of the stars
themselves? Or, perhaps, the end of everything, of the Ship and stars and the great blackness hi which
the stars were spinning.
He shuddered to think of the end of the Folk or of the Ship, not so much that the Ship should end or
that the Folk should end, but that the beautiful, efficient, well-balanced order in which they lived should
end. For it was a marvelous thing that every function should be so ordered that there always would be
enough for the Folk to live on, with never any surplus. No surplus of food or water or air, or of the Folk
themselves, for you could not have a child until someone assigned against the coming of that child
should die.
There were footsteps running in the corridors outside the cubicles and excited shouting, and suddenly
there was someone pounding on the door.
"Jon! Jon!" the voice shouted. "The stars are standing still!"
"I knew it!" Mary cried. "I told you, Jon. It is as it was spoken."
Pounding on the door!
And the door was where it should have been, where a door logically should be, where you could walk
straight out of it to the corridor instead of climbing the now useless ladder that ran ridiculously to it from
the wall-that-used-to-be-the-floor.
Why didn't I think of that before? he asked himself. Why didn't I see that it was poor planning to
climb to a door that opened in the ceiling?
Maybe, he thought—maybe this is the way it should have been all the time. Maybe the way it had
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (2 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
been before was wrong. As the laws might well be wrong.
"I'm coming, Joe," said Jon.
He strode to the door and opened it, and he saw that what had been the wall of the corridor was now
the floor and that many doors were opening into it directly from the cubicles and that folks were running
up and down the corridor, and he thought: We can take down the ladders now, since we have no use for
them. We can feed them into the converter and that will give us the margin that we never have.
Joe gripped him by the arm. "Come with me," he said.
They went to one of the topsy-turvy observation blisters. The stars were standing still.
Exactly as it had been spoken, the stars were still.
It was a frightening thing, for now you could see that the stars were not simply spinning lights that
seemed to move against the flatness of a dead-black curtain, but that they were hanging in an emptiness
that took the pit out of your stomach and made you gasp and clutch the metal of the ports, fighting to
keep your balance, fighting off the light-headedness that came upon you as you stared into a gulf you
could not understand.
There were no games that "day," there were no hikes, there was no revelry in the amusement lounge.
There were knots of frightened people talking. There was praying in the'c'hapel where hung the
largest of the Holy Pictures, showing the Tree and the Flowers and the River and the House far off, with
a Sky that had clouds in it and a Wind you could not see, but only knew was there. There was a picking
up and a straightening up of the cubicles in preparation for a "night" of sleeping and a rehanging once
again of the Holy Pictures that were the prized possession of each cubicle. There was a taking down of
ladders.
Mary Hoff rescued the Holy Picture from the debris on the floor and Jon stood one of the chairs
against the wall and hung it upon the wall-that-once-had-been-the-floor and wondered how it happened
that each of the Holy Pictures was a little different from all the others. And it was the first time he had
ever wondered that.
The Hoffs' Holy Picture had a Tree in it, too, and there were Sheep beneath the Tree and a Fence and
Brook, and in the corner of the picture there were some tiny Flowers, and, of course, the Grass that ran
up to the Sky.
After he had hung the picture and Mary had gone off to another cubicle to talk in horror-stricken, old-
wife fashion with some of the other women, Jon went down the corridor, strolling as casually as he
could so that no one would notice him, so that no one would mark any hurry in him.
But there was hurry in him—a sudden, terrible hurry that tried to push him on h'ke two hands against
his back.
He tried to look as if he were doing nothing more than genteelly killing tune. It was easy for him, for
that was all he'd done his entire life, all that any of them had ever done. Except the few, the lucky or
unlucky ones, whichever way you might look at it, who had the hereditary jobs—tending the hydroponic
gardens * or the cattle pens or the poultry flocks.
* Hydroponics is the art of growing plants in water with added chemical nutrients instead of soil. The
feasibility of hydroponics has been well demonstrated in many experiments, but so far has not proved in
any case I know of to be economically successful. Chemicals necessary to plant growth are carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulphur, phosphorus, and iron. Small
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (3 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
quantities of boron, zinc, manganese, and copper also are required. Molybdenum is necessary in
extremely minute quantities. On board a spaceship, hydroponics would be an ideal way to produce food,
with the added advantage that the plant growth would aid in atmospheric engineering by absorbing
carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. In hydroponics aboard a spaceship there would be no seasons;
crops would be growing all the time. Although some insect pests might exist, to start with, these
probably would be eradicated after a human generation or less, so that the crops would be pest-free. The
same situation would exist so far as plant disease is concerned. Once either pests or disease were
eliminated within a spaceship there would be no further danger, since reinfection from other crop areas
could not occur. Since there would be on board a spaceship nothing equivalent to sunlight, necessary for
the growth of plants, the deficiency would have to be supplied by the use of lamps.—c. s.
But most of them, thought Jon, loitering his way along, had done no more than become expert in the
art of killing time. Like himself and Joe, with their endless chess games and the careful records that they
kept of every move they made, of every move and game. And the hours they spent in analyzing their
play from the records that they made, carefully annotating each decisive move. And why not? he asked
himself—why not record and annotate the games? What else was there to do? What else?
There were no people now in the corridor and it had grown dimmer, for now there were only
occasional light bulbs to drive back the darkness. Years of bulb-snatching to keep the living cubicles
supplied had nearly stripped the Ship.
He came to an observation blister and ducked into it, crouching just inside of it, waiting patiently and
watching back along his trail. He waited for the one who might have followed him and he knew there
would be no one, but there might be someone and he couldn't take the chance.
No one came, and he went on again, coming to the broken-down escalator which went to the central
levels, and here, once again, there was something different. Always before, as he had climbed level after
level, he had steadily lost weight, lost the pull against his feet, had swum rather than walked toward the
center of the Ship. But this time there was no loss of weight, this time there was no swimming. He
trudged broken escalator after broken escalator for all the sixteen decks.
He went in darkness now, for here the bulbs were entirely gone, snatched or burned out over many
years. He felt his way upward, with his hand along the guide rails, feeling the cross-draft of the corridors
that plunged down the great Ship's length.
He came at last to the proper level and felt his way along until he came to the hiding place, a
dispensary room with a pharmaceutical locker against one wall.
He found the proper drawer and pulled it open, and his hand went in and found the three things that he
knew were there—the Letter, the Book, and a bulb.
He ran his hand along the wall until he found the outlet, and when he found it he inserted the bulb and
there was light in the tiny room, light upon the dust that lay across the floor and along the counter tops,
light upon the wash basin and the sink, the empty cabinets with their idly open doors.
He laid the Letter face up beneath the light and read the words that were printed in block letters:
TO BE OPENED ONLY IN EMERGENCY.
He stood there for a long time, considering. There had been the Mutter. The stars were standing still.
Emergency, he thought. This is emergency.
For had it not been spoken that when the Mutter came and the stars stood still the End was near at
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (4 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
hand?
.And if the End was near at hand, then it was emergency.
He lifted the Letter in his hand and held it, hesitating. When he opened it, that would be the end of it.
There would be no more handing down—no more of the Letter and the Reading. For this was the
moment toward which the Letter had traveled down through time, from father to son for many
generations.
Slowly he turned the Letter over and ran a thumbnail along the sealed edge, and the dry wax cracked
open and the flap sprang loose.
He reached in and took the message out and spread it flat upon the counter top underneath the lamp.
He read, his lips moving to form whispered words, reading as one must read who had spelled out the
slow meaning of his words from an ancient dictionary:
To the son of my son many times removed:
They will have told you and by this time you may well believe that the ship is a way of life, that it
started in a myth and moves toward a legend and that there is no meaning to be sought within its
actuality and no purpose.
It would be fruitless for me to try to tell you the meaning or the purpose of the ship, for, while these
words are true, by themselves, they will have little weight against the perversion of the truth, which by
the tune you read this may have reached the stature of religion.
But there is purpose in the ship, although even now, as this is written, the purpose has been lost, and
as the ship plunges on its way it will remain not only lost, but buried beneath the weight of human
rationalizing.
In the day that this is read there will be explanations of the ship and the people in it, but there will be
no knowledge in the explanations.
To bring the ship to its destination there must be knowledge. There is a way that knowledge may be
gamed. I, who will be dead, whose body will have gone back into a plant long eaten, a piece of cloth
long worn out, a molecule of oxygen, a pinch of fertilizer, have preserved that knowledge for you. On
the second sheet of this letter are the directions for the acquiring of that knowledge.
I charge you to acquire that knowledge and to use it, that the minds and lives which launched the ship,
and the others who kept it going, and those who even now reside within its walls may not have used
themselves, nor dedicated themselves, in vain, that the dream of Man may not die somewhere far among
the stars.
You will have learned by the tune you read this, even to a greater degree than I know it today, that
nothing must be wasted, nothing must be thrown away, that all resources must be guarded and
husbanded against a future need.
And that the ship not reach its destination, that it not serve its purpose, would be a waste so great as to
stun the imagination. It would be a terrible waste of
thousands of lives, the waste of knowledge and of hope.
You will not know my name, for my name by the time you read this will be gone with the hand that
drives the pen, but my words will still live on and the knowledge in them and the charge.
I sign myself, your ancestor.
And there was a scrawl that Jon could not make out.
He let the Letter drop to the dust-laden counter top and words from the Letter hammered hi his brain.
A ship that started in a myth and moved toward a legend. But that was wrong, the Letter said. There
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (5 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
was a purpose and there was a destination.
A destination? What was that? The Book, he thought —the Book will tell what destination is.
With shaking hands he hauled the Book out of the drawer and opened it to D and followed down the
columns with an unsteady finger: desquamative, dessert, destinate, destination—
Destination (n). The place set for the end of a journey, or to which something is sent; a place or point
aimed at.
The Ship had a destination. The Ship was going somewhere. The day would come when it would
reach the place that it was going. And that would be the End, of course. The Ship was going somewhere.
But how? Did the Ship move?
He shook his head in disbelief. That the Ship moved was unbelievable. It was the stars, not the Ship,
that moved.
There must be, he felt certain, another explanation. He picked up the Letter's second sheet and read it
through, but didn't understand it all, for his brain was tired and befuddled. He put the Letter and the
Book and the bulb back in the drawer. He closed the drawer and fled.
They had not noticed his absence in the lower level and he moved among them, trying to be one of
them again, trying to pick up the old cloak of familiarity and wrap it around his sudden nakedness—but
he was not one of them.
A terrible knowledge had made him not one of them— the knowledge that the Ship had a purpose and
a destination—that it had started somewhere and was going somewhere and that when it got where it
was going that would be the End, not of the Folk, nor of the Ship, but only of the Journey.
He went into the lounge and stood for a moment just inside the doorway. Joe was playing chess with
Pete and a swift anger flared within him at the thought that Joe would play with someone else, for Joe
had not played chess with anyone but him for many, many years. But the anger dropped quickly from
him, and he looked at the chessmen for the first tune, really saw them for the first time, and he saw that
they were idle hunks of carven wood and that they had no part in this new world of the Letter and the
Purpose.
George was sitting by himself playing solitaire and some of the others were playing poker with the
metal counters they called "money," although why they called it money was more than anyone could
tell. It was just a name, they said, as the Ship was the name for the ship and the Stars were what the stars
were called. Louise and Irma were sitting hi one corner listening to an old, almost worn-out recording of
a song, and the shrill, pinched voice of the woman who sang screeched across the room:
"My love has gone to the stars, He will be away for long ..."
Jon walked into the room and George looked up from the cards. "We've been looking for you."
"I went for a walk," said Jon. "A long walk. On the center levels. It's all wrong up there. It's up, not in.
You climb all the way."
"The stars have not moved all day," said George.
Joe turned his head and said, "The stars won't move again. This is as it was spoken. This is the
beginning of the End."
"What is the End?" asked Jon.
"I don't know," said Joe and went back to his game.
The End, Jon thought. And none of them know what the End will be, just as they do not know what a
ship is, or what money is, or the stars.
"We are meeting," said George. Jon nodded.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (6 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
He should have known that they would meet. They'd meet for comfort and security. They'd tell the
Story once again and they'd pray before the Picture. And I? he thought. And I?
He swung from the room and went out into the corridor, thinking that it might have been best if
there'd been no Letter and no Book, for then he'd still be one of them and not a naked stranger standing
by himself—not a man torn with wondering which was right, the Story or the Letter.
He found his cubicle and went into it. Mary was there, stretched out on the bed, with the pillows piled
beneath her head and the dim bulb burning. "There you are," she said.
"I went for a walk," said Jon.
"You missed the meal," said Mary. "Here it is."
He saw it on the table and went there, drawing up a chair. "Thanks," he said.
She yawned. "It was a tiring day," she said. "Everyone was so excited. They are meeting."
There was the protein yeast, the spinach and the peas, a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup, tasty
with mushrooms and herbs. And the water bottle, with the carefully measured liquid.
He bent above the soup bowl, spooning the food into his mouth.
"You aren't excited, dear. Not like the rest."
He lifted his head and looked at her. Suddenly he wondered if he might not tell her, but thrust the
thought swiftly to one side, afraid that hi his longing for human understanding he finally would tell her.
He must watch himself, he thought.
For the telling of it would be proclaimed heresy, the denying of the Story, of the Myth and the
Legend. And once she had heard it, she, like the others, would shrink from him and he'd see the loathing
in her eyes.
With himself it was different, for he had lived on the fringe of heresy for almost all his life, ever since
that day his father had talked to him and told him of the Book. For the Book itself was a part of heresy.
"I have been thinking," he said, and she asked, "What is there to think about?"
And what she said was true, of course. There was nothing to think about. It was all explained, all neat
and orderly. The Story told of the Beginning and the beginning of the End. And there was nothing,
absolutely nothing for one to think about.
There had been chaos, and out of the chaos order had been born in the shape of the Ship, and outside
the Ship there was chaos still. It was only within the Ship that there was order and efficiency and law—
or the many laws, the waste not, want not law and all the other laws. There would be an End, but the
End was something that was still a mystery, although there still was hope, for with the Ship had been
born the Holy Pictures and these in themselves were a symbol of that hope, for within the picture were
the symbolism values of other ordered places (bigger ships, perhaps) and all of these symbol values had
come equipped with names, with Tree and Book and Sky and Clouds and other things one could not see,
but knew were there, like the Wind and Sunshine.
The Beginning had been long ago, so many generations back that the stories and the tales and folklore
of the mighty men and women of those long-gone ages pinched out with other shadowy men and women
still misty in the background.
"I was scared at first," said Mary, "but I am scared no longer. This is the way that it was spoken, and
there is nothing we can do except to know it is for the best."
He went on eating, listening to the sound of passing feet, to the sound of voices going past the door.
Now there was no hurry in the feet, no terror in the voices. It hadn't taken long, he thought, for the Folk
to settle down. Their ship had been turned topsy-turvy, but it was still for the best.
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (7 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
And he wondered if they might not be the ones who were right, after all—and the Letter wrong.
He would have liked to step to the door and hail some of those who were passing by so he could talk
with them, but there was no one in the Ship (not even Mary) he could talk to.
Unless it were Joshua.
He sat eating, thinking of Joshua in the hydroponic gardens, pottering around, fussing with his plants.
As a boy, he'd gone there, along with the other boys, Joe and George and Herb and all the rest of
them, Joshua then had been a man of middle age who always had a story and some sage advice and a
smuggled tomato or a radish for a hungry boy. He had, Jon remembered, a soft gentle way of talking,
and his eyes were honest eyes, and there was a gruff but winning friendliness about him.
It had been a long tune, he realized, since he'd seen Joshua. Guilt, perhaps, he told himself.
But Joshua would be one who could understand the guilt. For once before he had understood.
It had been he and Joe, Jon remembered, who had sneaked in and stolen the tomatoes and been caught
and lectured by the gardener. Joe and he had been friends ever since they had been toddlers. They had
always been together. When there was devilment afoot the two of them were sure, somehow, to be in the
middle of it.
Maybe Joe . . . Jon shook his head. Not Joe, he thought. Even if he was his best friend, even if they
had been pals as boys, even if they had stood up for each other when they had been married, even if they
had been chess partners for more than twenty years— even so, Joe was not one he could tell about this
thing.
"You still are thinking, dear," said Mary.
"I'll quit," said Jon. "Tell me about your day."
She told him. What Louise had said; and what Jane had said; and how foolish Molly was. The wild
rumor and the terror and the slow quieting of the terror with the realization that, whatever came, it was
for the best.
"Our Belief," she said, "is a comfort, Jon, at a time like this."
"Yes," said Jon. "A great comfort, indeed."
She got up from the bed. "I'm going down to see Louise," she said. "You'll stay here?" She bent and
kissed him.
"I'll walk around until meeting time," he said.
He finished his meal, drank the water slowly, savoring each drop, then went out.
He headed for the hydroponic gardens. Joshua was there, a little older, his hair a little whiter, his
shuffle
more pronounced, but with the same kind crinkle about his eyes, the same slow smile upon his face.
And his greeting was the joke of old: "You come to steal tomatoes?"
"Not this time," said Jon.
"You and the other one."
"His name is Joe."
"I remember now. Sometimes I forget. I am getting older and sometimes I forget." His smile was
quiet. "I won't take too long, lad. I won't make you and Mary wait."
"That's not so important now," said Jon.
"I was afraid that after what had happened you would not come to see me."
"It is the law," said Jon. "Neither you nor I, nor Mary, had anything to do with it. The law is right. We
cannot change the law."
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (8 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt
Joshua put out a hand and laid it on Jon's arm. "Look at the new tomatoes," he said. "They're the best
I've ever grown. Just ready to be picked." He picked one, the ripest and the reddest, and handed it to Jon.
Jon rubbed the bright red fruit between his hands, feeling the smooth, warm texture of it, feeling the
juice of it flow beneath the skin.
"They taste better right off the vine. Go ahead and eat it."
Jon lifted it to his mouth and set his teeth into it and caught the taste of it, the freshly picked taste, felt
the soft pulp sliding down his throat.
"You were saying something, lad."
Jon shook his head.
"You have not been to see me since it happened," said Joshua. "The guilt of knowing I must die
before you have a child kept you away from me. It's a hard thing, I grant—harder for you than it is for
me. You would not have come except for a matter of importance."
Jon did not answer.
"Tonight," said Joshua, "you remembered you could talk to me. You used to come and talk with me
often, because you remembered the talk you had with me when you were a kid."
"I broke the law," said Jon. "I came to steal tomatoes. Joe and I, and you caught us."
"I broke the law just now," said Joshua. "I gave you a tomato. It was not mine to give. It was not
yours to take. But I broke the law because the law is nothing more than reason and the giving of one
tomato does not harm the reason. There must be reason behind each law or there is no occasion for the
law. If there is no reason, then the law is wrong."
"But to break a law is wrong."
"Listen," said Joshua. "You remember this morning?"
"Of course I do."
"Look at those tracks—the metal tracks, set deep into the metal, running up the wall."
Jon looked and saw them.
"That wall," said Joshua, "was the floor until this morning."
"But the tanks! They . . ."
"Exactly," said Joshua. "That's exactly what I thought. That's the first thing I thought when I was
thrown out of bed. My tanks, I thought. All my beautiful tanks. Hanging up there on the wall. Fastened
to the floor and hanging on the wall. With the water spilling out of them. With the plants dumped out of
them. With the chemicals all wasted. But it didn't happen that way."
He reached out and tapped Jon on the chest.
"It didn't happen that way—not because of a certain law, but because of a certain reason. Look at the
floor beneath your feet."
Jon looked down and the tracks were there, a continuation of the tracks that ran up the wall.
"The tanks are anchored to those tracks," said Joshua. "There are wheels enclosed within those tracks.
When the floor changed to the wall, the tanks ran down the tracks and up the wall that became the floor
and everything was all right. There was a little water spilled and some plants were damaged, but not
many of them."
"It was planned," said Jon. "The Ship . . ."
"There must be reason to justify each law," Joshua told him. "There was reason here and a law as
well. But the law was only a reminder not to violate the reason. If there were only reason you might
forget it, or you might defy it or you might say that it had become outdated. But the law supplies
file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...in%20the%20Universe%2001%20-%20Target%20Generation.txt (9 of 29)21-2-2006 0:19:17
摘要：

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswijk/Mijn%20do...trangers%20in%20the%20Universe%...

展开>> 收起<<
Clifford D. Simak - Strangers in the Universe 01 - Target Generation.pdf

共29页,预览9页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：29 页 大小：79.44KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-11-20

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 29
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注