The Colonists Part 4

He stood in the doorway watching the departure of the three men, but he was aware of Bonnie behind him. She rushed to him as he turned, and put her face against his chest.

"Mark--you can't do it! Boggs will kill you. This is no concern of ours.

We don't belong to Maintown any more. It's their business up there. I'd go crazy if anything happened to you. You've got to think of the rest of us!"

"I am thinking," said Mark. He raised her chin so he could look into her eyes. "I'm thinking that we are going to live here the rest of our lives, and so are the children. If the story about Boggs is true, we're all concerned. We wouldn't be down here if the power plant hadn't been destroyed. We'd be living in our good home in Maintown. Would you expect me to let Boggs get away with this without raising a hand to stop him?"

"Yes--I would," said Bonnie, "because there is nothing anyone can do.

You know he has Maintown in the palm of his hand. He's screened out every ruffian and soured colonist in the whole group and they'll do anything he says. You can't fight them all, Mark. I won't let you."

"It won't be me alone," said Jorden. "If it develops into a fight the majority of the colony will be with us. Earth will be with us. Boggs will be facing the results of the whole two billion year struggle it took to make man what he now is."

In the lounge off the lab cafeteria, Ashby indulged in a late coffee knowing he wouldn't sleep anyway. Across the table Bonnie ate sparingly of a belated supper.

"The threat of having to fight Boggs didn't give him much of a scare,"

said Ashby thoughtfully.

"It'll take a lot more than a bogey man like Boggs to scare Mark," said Bonnie. "You've got yourself a bigger quant.i.ty of man than you bargained for."

"This might turn out to be more interesting than we thought. I wish there were more time to spend on him. But Merton called up again today to verify the ultimatum I told you about. We produce colonists by the time Hull Four is complete or they turn the personnel problem over to Winthrop--even after they saw Carnahan go to pieces before their eyes."

"Has it ever occurred to you," said Bonnie slowly, "that we might just possibly be off on the wrong foot? How do you know that any of the colonists of Earth's history could have stood up to the demands of Serrengia? I'm beginning to suspect that the Mayflower's pa.s.senger list would have folded quite completely under these conditions. They had it comparatively easy. So did most other successful colonists."

"Yes--?" said Ashby.

"Maybe they succeeded in _spite_ of being rebels. If they could have come to the new lands without the pressure of flight, but in complete freedom of action, they might have made an even greater success."

"But why would they have come at all, then?"

"I don't know. There must be another motive capable of impelling them.

In great feats of exploration, creation--other human actions similar to colonization--"

"There are _no_ other human actions similar to colonization," said Ashby. "Surely you realize we're dealing with something unique here, Bonnie!"

"I know--all I'm trying to say is there could be another valid motive. I think Mark Jorden's got it. There's something different about this test, and I think you ought to look in on it yourself."

"What's so different about him?"

"He doesn't act like the rest. He hasn't any apparent reason for being here."

Ashby looked at the girl closely. She was one of his top staff members and had been with him from the beginning. The incredible strain of working day after day in the test pits was showing its effects, he thought.

"I shouldn't have let you get started on this one," he said. "You're f.a.gged out. Maybe it would be better to erase what we've done and start over, so that you can drop out."

She shook her head with a quickness that surprised him. "I want to finish it, and see how Mark turns out. I'm so used to working with the bitter, anti-social ones that it's a relief to have someone who is halfway normal and gregarious. I want to be around when we find out why he's here."

"Especially if he should go all the way to the end. But he won't--"

Ashby was genuinely concerned about Bonnie's condition when he looked in on her the next morning. The strain on her face was real beyond any matter of make-up or acting. He wondered just why she should be giving in to it now. Bonnie was well trained, as were all the staff members who worked in the test pits. The emotional conflicts mocked up there were not allowed to penetrate very deeply into their personal experience, yet it looked now as if Bonnie had somehow lost control of the armor to protect against such invasion. She seemed to be living the circ.u.mstances of the test program almost as intensely as Mark Jorden was doing.

Such a condition couldn't be permitted to continue, but he was baffled by it. Her physical and emotional check prior to the test had not shown her threshold to be this low. Evidently there was emotional dynamite buried somewhere in the situation they had manufactured.

Through the observation lens of the test pit Ashby watched Jorden begin a tour of the villages, making a quiet investigation of the situation, which he had all but ignored until it was forced to his attention.

Jorden spent an hour with Adamson, listening carefully to the atomic engineer's story, and then was led to the hiding place of the engineer who claimed direct evidence that Boggs had instigated the explosion at the power plant.

As Adamson left them, Ashby signaled him through the tiny b.u.t.ton buried in the skin behind his right ear. "This is Ashby," he said. "How does it look? Do you think he's going to tackle Boggs?"

"No question of that." Adamson's words came back, although he made no movement of his mouth or throat. "Jorden is one of these people with a lot of inertia. It takes a big push to get him moving, but when he really gets rolling there isn't much that can stop him, either. You're really going to have to put the pressure on to find his cracking point."

"I'm afraid we're likely to find Bonnie's first. There's something about this that's. .h.i.tting her too hard. Do you know what it is?"

"No," said Adamson. "I thought I noticed it a little yesterday, too.

Maybe we ought to check her out."

"She insists on completing the program. And I'd like to go all the way with Jorden. I'm becoming rather curious about him. Keep an eye on Bonnie and let me know what you think at the end of the shift."

"I'll do that," said Adamson.

Jorden followed his guide for more than a mile beyond the last village on the bank of the river. There, in a willow hidden cave in the clay bank, he found James, the atomic engineer who was reported to know of Boggs' attack on the power plant.

"I told him you were coming," said Adamson, "but I'm going to leave. You can make out better if you're alone with him. He's bitter, but he isn't armed, and he'll go along with you if you don't push him too hard."

Jorden watched Adamson disappear along the bank in the direction from which they had come. He had a feeling of utter ridiculousness. This wasn't what they had come for! They had come to build an outpost of human beings, to establish man's claim in this sector of the Universe.

And they were ending in a petty conflict worthy of the politics of centuries before, back on Earth.

His face took on a harder set as he approached the mouth of the cave and whistled the signal notes that Adamson had taught him. If the establishment of the colony demanded this kind of fight then he was willing to enter the battle. He had not dedicated the remainder of his life to a goal only to abandon it to a petty tyrant like Boggs.

A bearded face peered cautiously through parted willows and James' voice spoke. "You're Jorden? I suppose by now everybody in the villages knows where I'm hiding out. I'm the world's prize fool for letting this parade come past my place. Come in and I'll tell you what I know. If you help get Boggs it will be worth anything it costs me."

Jorden followed the man through the screening willows to the mouth of the cave. There the two of them squatted on rocks opposite each other.

"I remember you now," said James. "You set up the electric plant when we were a.s.sembling the pile, didn't you? I thought we'd worked together."

Jorden nodded, hoping James would go on, remembering Adamson's caution not to push him too hard, but the engineer seemed to have nothing more to say. He rubbed a hand forcibly against his other arm and looked beyond the mouth of the cave to the slow moving river.

"This business concerning Boggs' destruction of the plant--how did it start?" said Jorden finally.

"How does anything of that kind start?" said James. "Boggs came to some of us and remarked in casual conversation what a shame it would be if the colony were to duplicate all over again the mistakes that Earth have made during the past thousands of years. A few of us were sympathetic with that thought--it would indeed be a shame. Some of the engineers thought that this was the perfect chance to set up a truly scientific society. They didn't agree that Boggs was the ideal leader, but he _was_ the leader and the obvious one to work through. They all became convinced that a rapid industrialization and a highly technological society built upon the old rusty foundations would be most difficult to overcome in building a society on truly adequate sociological principles. You can take it from there."

Yes, he could, Jorden thought. Anybody could take it from there. It was the oldest lie that men of power and position had ever concocted. Why had those particular colonists fallen for it?