Chapter V

The fact that Venusian trees of every species tend to trail their branches on the ground makes no particular difference; with approximately one day's direct sunshine during a Venusian year, shade is less important than what the tree produces and the decoration it provides. Neither, reflected Heidekopfer, would it particularly matter to people who were used to it that everything was mildly damp to the touch. The members of the Supreme Soviet scattered on the bank of the little natural amphitheatre around him seemed to be having a thoroughly good time, laughing, talking, drinking beer and listening to the music of the goose-necked instruments, which tinkled from group to group. He felt lonely, and Ann was somewhere else.

There was a touch on his shoulder and Lanzerotti sat down beside him, saying in a low voice, "All right, but talk fast. And smile now and then, so it will look casual. I understand how you couldn't discuss it last night with Rosa in the droshky."

"She got angry," said Heidekopfer. "Just like Ann."

"And you think you have the explanation?"

"You said something about pattern. It makes one. Mass hypnotism."

Lanzerotti gestured with one hand, as though he were pointing to the group around them. "I find that difficult to credit. The thing hasn't existed since the days of the dictators and their wars."

"Remember that these people are the overflow of a totalitarian state. And I don't mean mass hypnotism with one person hypnotizing many, as among the old dictators, but with the group exerting mass pressure on one person. The will of all is the will of one."

Lanzerotti smiled. "I think you misinterpret. There is undoubtedly some pressure from what might be called public opinion, but--"

"Listen!" cried Heidekopfer, desperately. "It all fits together. Kazetzky twirled something bright in his fingers when he asked Rosa to spend the day with him, and all of them rallied round. They've achieved some kind of mental integration and they want to expand--"

Lanzerotti laid a hand on his knee. "You're talking too loud. And I think on the wrong lines. The nature of this development is essentially elymosynnary--"

Heidekopfer experienced a sensation of being surrounded by stone walls as two of the Tolstoians stood over them. One was a member of the Supreme Soviet whose name he had, of course, forgotten, and the other was a remarkably pretty girl with ash-blond hair pulled back from a well-shaped forehead. He got up, as the man from the Supreme Soviet said, "Sonia Grigorevna is the cousin of the patriarch Pitrim Androvich."

"Heidekopfer, Robert Murrayovich," said Heidekopfer, dutifully.

Lanzerotti repeated his part of the formula, but the girl seemed to be concentrating on the reporter. "Is it not a joy to be in this beautiful countryside?" she said, looking at him directly.

"I find it so."

"Would it be your will to let me show you some of the flowers of happy Tolstoia?" she said.

* * * * *

If he were right, this was his chance to get one of them apart from the rest, where the group pressure would presumably be less effective. He said, "It would please me very much."

She reached out a hand to take his. "Come," and led the way across the bowl of green. A group of men and women stood in their path. "We are going to look at flowers together," the girl announced gaily. "Pitrim Androvich thinks it would be good."

They all seemed to find something delightfully humorous in this, and there was a burst of laughter as they crowded round. "Flowers are nature's key to happiness!" boomed one of the men, patting Heidekopfer on the shoulder. "You will see what fine ones we produce in happy Tolstoia."

He was suddenly aware that they were staring at him with a peculiar intensity in the midst of their animated movements, and of a slight tension, like the beginning of a headache, at the back of his neck. This must be it; he was being high-pressured for some purpose. It was understandable how they would call this the brotherhood of man ... how they had developed the ability to put mass hypnotic pressure on any individual ... how the castaways had been similarly pressured into adopting the Tolstoian way of life ... how--

Sonia Grigorevna's voice came through his reverie, "Are you dreaming, little father? Let us go."

He shook himself a little, like a dog coming out of water. "By all means, let us go." She was really beautiful, not with the broad Slavic features at all, but a narrow face and high cheek-bones that must have come from some remote Nordic ancestor.

The others waved hands as she led him up the gentle slope at the edge of the bowl, and pushed through a screen of trees into a field of lush grass. There was a string of bushes toward the river-bank. "The best flowers are there," said Sonia.

"Tell me," he said, "when someone really does not want to do something the rest want, how do you make them do it?"

She gave him a glance of puzzlement. "I do not understand. We do not make them do it. It is the word of the Master that everything savoring of compulsion is harmful."

Pretty neat, he thought ... just like the Russian Soviets of the old days, who got away with dictatorship by calling it democracy. Aloud he said, "I know. But don't you ever have--deviationists?"

"Oh no. The will of all is the will of one. That is the brotherhood of man. But if a person doubts whether his will is fully given, he takes the cure. That is the law. This way."

She pushed through the bushes and they were on a slope above the river, starred with red poppy-like flowers. "Are they not beautiful? Let us sit here and contemplate them. The contemplation of nature is the source of happiness."

Heidekopfer lowered himself to the damp grass, blessing the forethought that had led him to dress in waterproof nylon. "They're very nice," he said, "but when did you Tolstoians discover the brotherhood of man?"

She settled herself comfortably against him. "I am not certain of the date. But it was in the time of the Patriarch Ilarion Triunfovich, long ago. Is it your will that we cease talking of material things and address ourselves to what we see?" She snuggled against him, and the pressure was not at all unendurable.

He placed a hand on one of hers. "Just one more question. When people come from the--outside, do you always will them to stay?"

"We do not need to. Everyone wishes to stay in happy Tolstoia. See how that blossom shakes on its stalk."

Except those who come back in boxes, he thought, and wondered how he could broach the subject, but before he could think out a way, she lifted his hand beneath her own and pressed it softly against her cheek. He turned to look at her; her lips were slightly parted as she lifted her lovely face toward his....

And it struck him like a thunderbolt why the others had laughed when Sonia said they were going to see flowers at Samsonov's suggestion, and what the pressure had been on him for. He said abruptly, "Do you know where Ann went--the photographer who was with us?"

"To look at flowers with Pitrim Androvich." Her glance was neither disappointed nor hostile, merely a trifle wide-eyed as though she had just discovered something frightening. She let his hand drop.