She looked amused. «I assume you’re quoting from some sort of absurd manual, Malloy. Does it actually use the word ‘stock’? As with fish in a pond?»
«There is a case on record where one colonial planet suffered such an emotional degeneration that the colonists acquired a superstitious fear of Center facilities and moved off into the woods.»
«And they were adjusted?» Deen Thomason asked mildly.
«Re-educated,» Malloy amended.
«That sounds dreadful. Just report, Praecursor, that the inhabitants of Able XII prefer a so-called primitive life, and that the facilities of the Centers and the field station are used when emergencies arise.»
“That will make no sense to the Bureau,” he said hotly. “You people live out here in absolute squalor. All the Center homes are empty. Insects have gotten in. Of course they can do no damage, but they have spun webs on the projector dials. It’s untidy, a criminal waste. You could move to a Center. Everything you could possibly desire would be no farther from your hand than the nearest dial. It is incomprehensible to me, Thomason, that you should prefer to walk back into the earliest history of your race. Every possible comfort was made available when this colonial planet was set up for...”
She raised her hand. “Please, Malloy. Stand up a moment.”
He stood up, puzzled. She walked around the table, smiled enigmatically at him and suddenly, clenching her fist, she struck him hard in the diaphragm. He had just enough warning so that he was able to tense his muscles against the blow. Even so, it almost took his breath.
“To strike a Praecursor is...”
“Oh, stop being so stuffy! Why are you a Praecursor? Why are you reasonably lean and hard and fit? Why aren’t you sitting plump and happy within arm’s reach of a dial on your home planet?”
He stared at her. “Why, I... there have to be Praecursors!”
“That point is debatable. But I’m asking why you are one.”
“I like problems and new places, I suppose,” he said hesitantly. “And I have to keep fit because sometimes I run into... strenuous situations. But no one forced me to be a Praecursor.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“I hope you realize that you are not making sense, Thomason.”
“Indeed? I thought I was making a great deal of sense. Anyway, you can report that we are not completely lost. One of the Centers is occupied, you know.”
“Is it? Good! Which one?”
“Number Six. I’d like to visit it with you. I have a reason, Malloy.”
He pressed the stud on his time ring and the correct sun time of the Able XII twenty-hour day came into his mind. He knew that she was standing near enough to him so that she caught it, too, though less strongly. She chuckled, and it was a surprisingly warm sound.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked.
“That toy. See the sun pattern on the floor? From that I could have told you the time within a half hour.”
“Not much of a degree of accuracy.”
“Again you’ve missed the point, Malloy. It’s accurate enough.”
“I can’t argue with unreason. Come on. That flier I projected is beyond the clearing where I found you. I’ll leave it with you when I go.”
“Thank you. I’d have no use for it. And we should eat before we go.”
“We’ll eat at the Center.”
“Thank you, no. I’ll get us something here. First, though, I must bathe.”
He looked around the room. “No cleansing unit here.”
“There’s a perfectly good one in the stream, Malloy.” She went to the shelves near the fireplace, selected a tunic of softer fabric than her work clothes, and a heavy towel. “You can make yourself useful, Malloy. Build a small fire in the fireplace. But first come here a moment. That’s my garden. See those spiky green things? Pull up about a dozen of them and wash them in the stream.”
Before he could decide whether or not to refuse the request, she had gone, walking toward the stream with that long stride of hers, supple and somehow wild. He selected small sticks and tried with infuriating lack of success to start them burning by using a short hot focus of his pocket heat unit. Angry at failing in so simple a task, he walked out and yanked up a dozen of the growths she had indicated. Black moist soil clung to the bulbular white ends that came out of the ground.
He took them to the stream, below the wider part that formed a pool. Remembering the extreme variations in attitudes of modesty on the colonial planets, he did not wish to look directly at her. Precursors were trained to adapt themselves readily to many odd folkways. But in spite of his intentions he found himself gawking at her as she stood by the pool, tall and tanned and lithe. She smiled down the slope at him as she toweled her shining hair and he made a comparison oddly damaging to the soft pallid women of home.
She belted the short aqua tunic around her slim waist and he followed her back to the house. As he watched her she put some dried moss under the sticks in the fireplace, scratched an object which he recognized as being one of the crude firemaking devices of earliest times. It was called, he remembered, a “match.” The small fire blazed. She brought ovoid white objects from the cellar, cracked them into an earthenware dish, chopped the bulbous white growths with a crude knife and stirred them into the mixture. The dish was then suspended over the flame while she sawed off heavy slabs of coarse bread, spread them with a yellow substance.
Malloy watched closely. This primitive substitute for the extremely simple procedure of operating the synthesizer would form an interesting portion of his report. The odor that filled the room, however, made his salivary glands surprisingly active. The mixture firmed and she took the dish from over the fire, divided the contents into two parts, placed one part between two heavy slabs of bread and put it on another dish, set it in front of him.
Malloy took a cautious bite and then a much larger one. The taste was harsher and more concentrated, the texture far coarser than any food he had ever tasted before.
Before he knew it, his share was gone. She washed the dishes in the stream and replaced them on the shelf.
“That was very interesting,” he said.
“But nothing you’d care for day in and day out?”
“N-no,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m ready, Malloy. Shall we go?”
They walked to the small flier. Malloy watched her closely. She had no awe of it, accepted it as something routine and unimpressive. He ducked under the low door, sat down beside her, lifted the flier off the ground, swung around the crest of a clump of trees.
“Let me see,” he said, “six would be...”
Turn it a bit to your right, Malloy. That’s enough.’
Air whined by as he upped the speed. Cabin heat increased and the cooling unit came on. The ground streamed by far below, flattened by the height.
He said, in a fatherly tone, “This would be a long trip afoot, the way you people seem to travel.”
“Several days, Malloy. Through country where pine woods cover the hills, where silvery fish leap high in the lakes, where the trees hold wild honey. At dusk you come to a village. You are always made welcome. Cheese and bread and wine and dancing in the dusk, and the fireflies are like little lanterns.”
“Oh,” he said distantly.
“But your way is, of course, much quicker,” she added.
“I see the Center,” he said.
He brought the flier around in a long swooping curve and dropped it lightly onto cleared land outside the gates. Even as he got out he saw people walking in the wide pastel streets of the Center. It was like a scene from home. They wore clothes of all shades, hues, fancies, whims. A completely anachronistic shack stood outside the gate, though. A tall young man with a full blond beard sat with his back against the door frame. He grinned and stood up as Malloy and Deen approached. He wore the crude garments of the villagers.