"Speaking of pets, I see another problem," Carruthers said. "We're going to have packs of dogs roaming around, and we're going to have lots of abandoned farm animals that can't take care of themselves."
"Maybe the dogs will take care of them.Just a little joke. Seriously though, we're going, and we can't take every cow, pig and chicken with us. What happens after we leave well, the Earth is going to be destroyed anyway, so who cares?"
Carruthers put down his fork. "We'd better take a lot of pictures. Of the way it was."
After dinner Stone murmured, "Let's get out of here." He led her to a door at the far end of the room and ushered her into a living room only a little smaller than the other. "This is a little private apartment. Nobody comes in here unless I say so."
"How many of those people have you got living here?"
"Well, Doc does, and Rong, and Florence, of course. She's got things organized to where I don't have to worry anymore, I just look at the schedule and do what it says."
"And you're paying their rent, and their food too?"
"Plenty of money, Linda. Listen, there's something else I wanted to show you." He led her out the French windows, along a fence concealed by shrubbery, on the other side of which they could hear the guests' cheerful shouts and laughter. He showed her a break in the eucalyptus hedge where they could get through a plastic flap into the stink and heat, and stand at the parapet to look out over the lights of the city sparkling through the haze. The reflected lights in the dome above were like molten stars.
"This is beautiful," she said.
"Yeah, I guess so. What're all these gold pyramids? I never saw them before."
"They're very popular; they started going up on the tops of buildings twenty years ago. Do you know you can buy your own golden pyramid now, and a mummy case to be buried in?"
"You're kidding. How much does that cost?"
"About a hundred thousand for the cheapie model."
"Jesus." He stared out into the violet-brown fog. After a moment he said, "A hundred thousand bucks to be buried in a mummy case, and kids starving because they haven't got a dime. Satellites in space, and computers that talk to you. Something went wrong, I could tell that as soon as I got here. If you have all these gadgets, and people are still starving, then you're just showing them more great things they can't have."
"Well, what else is new?"
"And another thing, I notice people are still talking about progress and growth, as if it was the same thing. We never should of got to six billion people in the world. In the thirties, two billion, we could handle that. We should of stopped there, and we could of, or anyway close to it. But we didn't, and now they're talking about ten billion, or twenty. You talk about selling people on bizarre ideas, how about that one?"
"It's a better world, in some ways. Anyway, it doesn't matter now, does it?"
"I guess not. Listen, there's something else I wanted to talk about. I haven't asked you to marry me-"
"Well, hey, I haven't asked you, either. "
"No, but what I wanted to say, I want to, but I can't. Not until this is over. "
"Well, that means never, doesn't it?"
"I don't know. Maybe not, but anyway, not for the next eleven years."
"Okay."
Later she asked, "Why are you wearing that thing on your finger?"
He looked at it. "It's just a little bubble bandage. to cover the ring."
"You used to just turn it around when we had sex.'"
"Yeah, but-"
"You don't want me touching it."
"That's right, because, you remember I told you, I thought it would wear off?"
"And you want it to?"
He squirmed a little. "I don't want it to, but if I'd of kept touching you with the ring, how would you ever know? It isn't fair to you. You could of been married to Julian by now."
"Forget it."
After a moment she said, "Suppose it does wear off. I could do you a lot of harm if I turned against you."
"Like what?"
"Remember when you told me about Ginger Rogers dancing in front of a window with a see-through skirt?"
"Yeah."
"Well, that film wasn't made until nineteen thirty-five."
He looked at her steadily. "And you thought I didn't know that? What are you telling me, you think I'm a phony?"
"I don't know what to think. Let's get up and have a sandwich.''
CHAPTER 28
In the morning she found him hunched over the Astounding cover, measuring it with a protractor. She got a cup of coffee and wandered over to look. "See this?" he said, pointing to the three human figures at the bottom. "See how funny the two guys look? That's because all four of their legs are bent at the same angle, about a hundred twenty degrees. It makes them look like mechanical dolls or something."
"And their legs are too long. Maybe he used lay figures." "What's that?"
"Jointed wooden figures. You can buy them in art stores."
"Oh. But then their legs wouldn't be too long, would they?"
"Maybe he just couldn't draw. "
"No. Now look at this, it isn't quite as obvious, but the girl sitting on the ground, her legs are bent at the same angle, a hundred twenty degrees, and if you figure in perspective, so are the monster's legs. So it's a number, a code. What does it mean?"
"Well, it adds up to three. Threes are a lot like fives, they're restless, inventive, charming and so on."
"But not the same?"
"No."
"Or it could be days, couldn't it? There are three hundred sixty degrees in a circle, and three hundred sixty-five days in a year. "
"I know, but what makes you think it has to be a code?"
"Just a hunch. Something else it could mean, these human beings look like puppets, and they are puppets, and so are the monsters. I don't like that."
He stared at the picture. "Here's another funny thing. Look at the door of the spaceship. You'd think it would be circular, but it's oval, and it looks like the opening is facing you, even though the cylinder is laying at an angle. Then the curve of the front end hits the line of the top here and stops, as if there was only half a cylinder there."
"The artist couldn't draw."
"Yes, he could. He drew great machinery, and monsters and landscapes. Suppose he wanted to say something like, 'This isn't a spaceship, just a mockup'? Like a movie set, where the houses look real but there's nothing behind them? And look at the monster. It isn't really a spider, there aren't any segments, just a big squishy body like a caterpillar. It has a nose like a bull, and the feet look like rat fret."
"A chimera."
"What's that?"
"A fabulous beast made by putting parts of different animals together. Like a gryphon-it has the wings and head of an eagle, the body and tail of a lion."
"Okay, but that's mythology, right? This guy was illustrating science fiction. So maybe he's saying, 'Forget it, these stories aren't real, there aren't any spaceships and there aren't any monsters in space. But the readers knew that. Why bother to tell them? Unless it wasn't true?"
"Are you saying this artist knew something in nineteen thirty-one that we're just finding out now?"
"They all did. Why not? How do we know how long the aliens have been here?"
"Ed, if they kidnapped those people before they did you, why would they ask you those questions about the magazine?"
He scratched his nose. "I never thought of that. Well, I guess they already knew what Diffin thought of those magazines-he was an author. They wanted to find out what I thought about them, because I'm just an ordinary guy."
"The hell you are, but never mind. "