The Colonists Part 7

This is where we've got to find out whether he can crack or not--and why."

"You can't break him," said Bonnie. "He's the strongest man I've ever known. If you find his breaking point it will be when you destroy him utterly. You've got to quit before you reach that point!"

"All that we've done will be useless if we quit now, Bonnie. Just a few more hours and then it will all be over--"

As if his words had touched a hidden trigger, she did begin to cry with a deep but almost inaudible sound and a heavy movement of her shoulders.

Mark Jorden put his arm about her as if to force away her grief.

"I _know_, Bonnie," said Ashby softly. "I can see in your face what's happened to you. It's going to be all right. Everything doesn't end for you when the test is over."

"Oh, shut up!" said Bonnie in a sudden rage that made her tears come faster. "If I ever work on another of your d.a.m.ned experiments it will be when I've lost my senses entirely! You don't know what this does to people. I didn't know either--because I didn't care. But now I know--"

"You know that no harm results after we've erased and corrected all inadequate reactions at the end of the test. You're letting your feelings cover up your full awareness of what we're doing."

"Yes, and I suppose that when it's over I had better submit to a little erasing myself. Then Bonnie can go back to work as a little iced steel probe for some more of your guinea pigs!"

"Bonnie--!"

She made no answer to Ashby, but lay her head on Jorden's shoulder while her sobbing subsided. How did it happen? she asked herself. It wasn't anything she had wanted. It had just happened. It had happened that first day when he came in from the field at the beginning of the experiment with all of the planted background that made him think he was meeting Bonnie for the thousandth time instead of the first.

She was supposed to be an actress and receive his husbandly kiss with all the skilled mimicry that made her so valuable to the lab. But it hadn't been like that. She had played sister, mother, daughter, wife--a hundred roles to as many other tested applicants. For the first time she saw one as a human being instead of a sociological specimen. That's the way it was when she met Mark Jorden.

There was no answer to it, she thought bitterly as she rested her face against his shoulder. Ashby was right--just a few more hours and it would all be over. All Jorden's feeling for her as his wife was induced by the postulates of the test, just as were his feelings for Roddy. His subjective reactions were real enough, but they would vanish when their stimulus was removed with the test postulates. He would look upon the restored Roddy as just another little boy--and upon Bonnie, the Doctor in Sociology, as just another misemployed female.

She raised her head and dried her eyes as she sensed that the service was ending. Actually, Ashby was right, of course. They had to go on, and the sooner it came to an end the better it would be for her. She _would_ submit to alteration of her own personal data after the test, she thought. She would let them erase all feelings and sentiments she held for Mark Jorden, and then she would be as good as new. After all, if a sociologist couldn't handle his own reactions in a situation of this kind he wasn't of much value in his profession!

The sun was hot as they returned from the little burial ground near the church. There were quite a number of other graves besides Roddy's, but his was the loneliest, Jorden thought. He had never forgiven them for robbing him of his home and the only world in which he could live.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He felt the growing coldness of Bonnie as they came up to their shabby cabin that had once looked so brave to him. Serrengia had cost him Bonnie, too. Even before Roddy. She had remained only because it was her duty.

He took her hand as she put a foot on the doorstep. "Bonnie--"

She looked at him bitterly, her eyes searching his face as if to find something of the quality that once drew her to him. "Don't try to say it, Mark--there's nothing left to say."

He let her go, and the two children followed past him into the house. He sat down on the step and looked out over the fields that edged the river bank. His mind felt numbed by Roddy's pa.s.sing. Bonnie's insistent blame made him live it over and over again.

The light from the green of the fields was like a caress to his eyes. I should hate it, he thought. I should hate the whole d.a.m.ned planet for what it's taken from me. But that's not right--Serrengia hasn't taken anything. It's only that Bonnie and I can't live in the same world, or live the same kind of lives. Roddy was like her. But I didn't know then.

I didn't know how either of them were.

We have to go on. There's no going back. Maybe if I'd known, I would have made it different for all of us. I can't now, and it would be crazy to start hating Serrengia for the faults that are in us. Who could do anything but love this fresh, wild planet of ours--?

He ought to go down and take a look at the field, he thought. He rose to go in and tell Bonnie. The crops hadn't had water since Roddy took sick.

He found Bonnie in the bedroom with the drawers of their cabinets open and their trunk in the middle of the floor, its lid thrown back. Clothes lay strewn on the bed.

He felt a slow tightening of his scalp and of the skin along the back of his neck. "Bonnie--"

She straightened and looked into his face with cold, distant eyes. "I'm packing, Mark," she said. "I'm leaving. I'm going home. The girls are going with me. You can stay until they dig your grave beside Roddy's, but I'm going home."

Jorden's face went white. He strode forward and caught her by the arms.

"Bonnie--you know there's no way to go home. There won't be a ship for six years. This is home, Bonnie. There's no other place to go."

For a moment the set expression of her face seemed to melt. She frowned as if he had told her some mystery she could not fathom. Then her countenance cleared and its blank determination returned. "I'm going home," she repeated. "You can't stop me. I've done all a wife can be expected to do. I've given my son as the price of your foolishness. You can't ask for more."

He had to get out. He felt that if he remained another instant just then something inside him would explode under the pressure of his grief. He went to the front door and stood leaning against it while he looked over the landscape that almost seemed to reach out for him in hate as it had for Roddy. So you want her, too! he cried inside himself.

Alice came up and tugged at his hand as he stood there. "What's the matter, Daddy? What's the matter with Mama?"

He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "Nothing, honey. You go and play for a moment while I help Mother."

"I want to help, too!"

"Please, Alice--"

He moved back to the bedroom. Bonnie was carefully examining each item of apparel she packed in the big trunk. She didn't look up as he came in.

"Bonnie," he said in a low voice, "are you going to leave me?"

She put down the dress she was holding and looked up at him. "Yes I'm leaving you," she said. "You've got what you wanted--all you've ever wanted." She looked out towards the fields, shimmering in the heat of the day.

"That's not true, Bonnie. You know it isn't. I've always loved you and needed you, and it's grown greater every hour we've been together."

"Then you'll have to prove it! Give up this h.e.l.l-world you want us to call home, and give us back our Earth. If you love me, you can prove it."

"It's no test of love to make a man give up the goal that means his life to him. You'd despise me forever if I let you do that to me. I'd rather you went away from me now with the feeling you have at this time, because I'd know I had your love--"

Bonnie remained still and unmoving in his arms, her face averted from his. He put his hand to her chin and turned her face to him. "You do love me, Bonnie? That hasn't changed, has it?"

She put her head against his chest and rocked from side to side as if in some agony. "Oh, no--Mark! That will never change. d.a.m.n you, Ashby, d.a.m.n you--"

In the control room Ashby and Miller groaned aloud to each other, and a technician looked at them questioningly, his hand on a switch. Ashby shook his head and stared at the scene before him.

Jorden shook Bonnie gently in his arms. "Ashby?" he said. "Who's Ashby?"

Bonnie looked up, the blank despair on her face again. "I don't remember--" she said haltingly. "Someone I used to--know--"

"It makes no difference," Jorden said. "What matters is that you love me and you're going to stay with me. Let's put these things away now, darling. I know how you've felt the past week, but we've got to put it behind us and look forward to the future. Roddy would want it that way."

"There's no future to look forward to," said Bonnie dully. "Nothing here on Serrengia. There's no meaning to any of us being here. I'm going back to Earth."

"It does have a meaning! If I could only make you see it. If you could only understand why I had to come--"

"Then tell me if you know! You've never tried to tell me. You live as if you know something so deep and secret you can live by it every hour of your life and find meaning in it. But I can only guess at what it is you've chosen for your G.o.d. If it's anything but some illusion, put it into words and make me know it, too!"