The Colonists Part 8

"I've never tried," said Jorden hesitantly. "I've never tried to put it into words. It's something I didn't know was in me until I heard of the chance to colonize Serrengia. And then I knew I had to come.

"It's like a growing that you feel in every cell. It's a growing out and away, and it's what you have to do. You're a sperm--an ovum--and if you don't leave the parent body you die. You don't have to hate what you leave behind as James and Boggs and so many of the others do. It gave you life, and for that you're grateful. But you've got to have a life of your own.

"It's what I was born to do, Bonnie. I didn't know it was there, but now I've found it I can't kill it."

"You have to kill it--or me."

"You don't mean that. You're part of me. You've been a part of me so long you feel what I feel. You're lying, Bonnie, when you say you're going away. You don't want to go. You want to go on with me, but something's holding you back. What is it, Bonnie? Tell me what it is that holds you back!"

Her eyes went wide. For a moment she thought he was talking out of the real situation, not the make-believe of the test. Then she recognized the impossibility of this. Her eyes cast a pleading glance in the direction of the observation tubes.

Ashby spoke fiercely: "Go on, Bonnie! Don't lose the tension. Push him.

We've got to know. He's almost there!"

She moved slowly to the dresser where she had laid Jorden's hunting knife previously, as if with no particular intent. Now, out of sight of Jorden, her hand touched it. She picked it up.

Ashby's voice came again. "Bonnie--move!"

She murmured, "Lost--"

And then she whirled about, knife in hand. She cried aloud. "I can't go on any further! Can't you see this is enough? Stop it! Stop it--"

Jorden leaped for the knife.

In the observation room a technician touched a switch.

Ashby felt the subdued elation of success reached after a long and strenuous effort. Bonnie was seated across the desk from him, but he sat at an angle so that he could see the four hulls out of the corner of his eye. One and Two had made their test flights and the others would not be far behind. The expedition would be a success, too. There was no longer any doubt of that, because he knew now where to look for adequate personnel.

"I'm glad I didn't foul up your test completely, anyway," said Bonnie slowly. "Even if what you say about Mark shouldn't turn out to be true."

Ashby moved his chair around to face her directly. She was rested, and had gone through a mental re-orientation which had removed some of the tension from her face.

"You didn't foul it up at all," he said. "We went far enough to learn that he would have survived even your suicide, and would have continued in his determination to carry the colony forward. Nothing but his own death will stand in his way if he actually sets out on such a project.

Are you completely sure you want to be tied to such a single purposed man as Mark Jorden is?"

"There's no doubt of that! But I just don't feel as if I can face him now--with his knowing.... How can I ever be sure his feeling for me was not merely induced by the test experience, and might change as time goes on? You should have wiped it all out, and let us start over from scratch. It would have been easier that way."

"There isn't time enough before the ships leave. But why should we have erased it all? We took away the postulates of the test and left Bonnie in his memory. His love for you didn't vanish when the test postulates went. As long as he has a memory of you he will love you. So why make him fall in love with you twice? No use wasting so much important time at your age. Here he comes--"

Bonnie felt she couldn't possibly turn around as the door opened behind her. She heard Mark's moment of hesitation, his slow steps on the carpet. Ashby was smiling a little and nodding. Then she felt the hard grip of Mark's hands on her shoulders. He drew her up and turned her to face him. Her eyes were wet.

"Bonnie--" he said softly.

Ashby turned to the window again. The gantry cranes were hoisting machinery in Hull Three. Maybe he had been wrong about there not being enough time between now and takeoff for Mark and Bonnie to discover each other all over again. They worked pretty fast. But then, as he had mentioned, why waste time at their age?

They were smiling, holding tight to each other as Ashby turned back from the window.

"They tell me I pa.s.sed," said Jorden. "I'm sorry about taking your best Social Examiner away from you--but as you told me in the beginning this colonization business is a family affair."

"Yes--that happens to be one of the few things I was right about." Ashby motioned them to the chairs. "Through you we located our major error. It was our identifying rebellion with colonization ability. Colonization is not a matter of rebellion at all. The two factors merely happen to accompany each other at times. But the essence of colonization is a growth factor--of the kind you so very accurately described when Bonnie pushed you into digging up some insight on the matter. It is so often a.s.sociated with rebellion because rebellion is or has been, historically, necessary to the exercise of this growth factor.

"The American Colonists, for example, were rebels only incidentally. As a group, they possessed a growth factor forcing them beyond the confines of the culture in which they lived. It gave them the strength for rebellion and successful colonization. And it is so easy to confuse colonists of that type with mere cutthroats, thugs, and misfits. The latter may or may not have a sufficiently high growth factor. In any case, their primary drive is hate and fear, which are wholly inadequate motives for successful colonization.

"The ideal colonist does not break with the parent body, nor does he merely extend it. He creates a new nucleus capable of interchange with the parent body, but not controlled by it. He wants to build beyond the current society, and the latter is not strong enough to pull him back into it. Colonization may take everything else of value in life and give nothing but itself in return, but the colonists' desire for new life and growth is great enough to make this sufficient. It is not a mere transplant of an old life. It is conception and gestation and birth.

"Our present society allows almost unlimited exercise of the growth factor in individuals, regardless of how powerful it may be. That is why we have failed to colonize the planets. They offer no motive or satisfaction sufficient to outweigh the satisfactions already available.

As a result we've had virtually no applicants coming to us because of hampered growth. You are one of the very few who might come under our present approach. And even a very slight change of occupational conditions would have kept you from coming. You didn't want the department leadership offered you, because it would limit the personally creative functions you enjoyed. That one slim, hairbreadth factor brought you in."

"But how do you expect now to get any substantial number of colonists?"

exclaimed Jorden.

"We'll put on a recruiting campaign. We'll go to the creative groups--the engineers, the planners, the artists--we'll show that opportunity for creative functioning and growth will be far greater in the work of building colonial outposts than in any activity they now enjoy. And we won't have to exaggerate, either. It's true.

"We'll be able to send out a colony of whom we can be certain. In the past, colonies have invariably failed when they consisted only of members fleeing from something, without possessing an adequate growth factor.

"When this becomes thoroughly understood in my field, I shall probably never live down my initial error of a.s.suming that a colonist had to hate or fear what he left behind in order to leave it forever. The exact opposite is true. Successful colonization of the Universe by Earthmen will occur only when there is a love and respect for the Homeland--and a capacity for complete independence from it."

Ashby pressed his fingers together and looked at his visitors soberly.

"There is only one thing further," he said. "We've found out also that Bonnie is not essentially a colonist--"

Bonnie's face went white. She pushed Jorden's arm away and leaned across the desk. "You knew--! Then we can't--Why didn't you tell me this in the beginning?"

"Please don't be hasty, Bonnie," said Ashby. "As I was about to say, we have found, however, that another condition exists in which you can become eligible and stable through a genuine love for a qualified colonist, to the extent you are willing to follow him completely in his ambitions and desires. This is strictly a feminine possibility--a woman can become a sort of second order colonist, you might say.

"Of course, Jorden, you still have to make the basic decision as to whether you want to go to Serrengia or not. We have found out merely that you _can_."

"I think there's no doubt about my wanting to," said Jorden.

He turned Bonnie around in his arms again, and Ashby chuckled mildly. "I have always said there is no piece of data you cannot find, provided you can devise the proper experimental procedure for turning it up," he said.