Chapter IV

Not only had Herl's permits come when they returned to the office, but so had an officer from Eyefer Placement who wanted to talk about Agnes Haulwell and a number of other cases. Herl had no difficulty in persuading the commissioner to let him go alone to get his listings and films, when he assured Crawford that the latter's presence was not essential to the trip.

Crawford called for his cabter to take Herl out to the ship; and Herl started back for the elevator, stuffing his assorted cards and permit slips in various pockets about his person.

He scrutinized the lobby for centers of golden light as he passed, but there were no gods or goddesses to be seen there. There were none on the nearly empty elevator going down. There were none on his side of the walkway at the bottom, though he thought he glimpsed the glow far away on the other side just before his cab drew up beside him.

The driver was the same sulky young fellow who had brought him in. Herl settled back for a silent ride to the port, looked intently out the window at the large warehouses, small shops, and low compact residences as they headed for open country where the cab could take off. The air seemed a little fresher as well as much colder. There were few pedestrians to be seen on the chilly streets and those few seemed to be in a great hurry ... whether merely because of the cold or because the demands of life were so numerous, Herl could not tell. He wasn't even sure this might not be a time of eating or sleeping for many of the population. He turned his head to his companion.

"What's the daily schedule here?" he asked. "I mean, what hours do stores and offices and families keep?"

"Stores and offices are open all day. Families have two ups: a day and a night up, depends on their jobs and such whether it's morning and first night or afternoon and second half night."

"What do they do in their night ups?"

"Kids go to school same as day. Rest of us have night jobs ... mostly mining and factory work. My sister and I work in a viscose mill nights."

The cabter had arrived at a broad hardtop landing area. The driver turned in, raised the copter vanes and took off. Herl watched the bleak countryside drop away below. The air had the piercing dampness of coming snow.

It occurred to Herl suddenly that the driver had volunteered some personal information ... maybe he could get more.

"What's your name," he asked interestedly, turning to face the driver.

"Bill Haulwell."

"Oh, any relation to Agnes Haulwell?" Herl felt a little apprehensive.

"Brother."

Herl let the conversation drop right there. He'd have to fish for information round-about. He watched miles of fields and pasture roll behind, noticed an isolated house, used that.

"Lonely sort of place to live," he pointed downward. "Don't suppose your people assign Eyefers to live out so far."

"Some do. What's it to them where they live?"

"Does it make any difference to a man's relatives when he goes Eyefer, other than his wife and children, I mean? Crawford told me some but not all about them," Herl added.

"Difference? They might as well have gone Eyefer themselves. They usually give a man's wife some heavy routine job no matter what she's been trained for. Say it's to keep her busy and take the mental strain off while she readjusts. Other relatives generally get the same. If they're close relatives they're suspected of being on the verge of Eyefer, since they're from the same stock; so all their permits come due within a month after. That's one reason I work so blamed hard on this job.... Aggie's job means so much to her. She wants to get married, too; and she'd have a deuce of a lot of trouble with that if anything happened to me."

This long speech made Herl most uncomfortable. It wasn't any of his business to tell Bill that Aggie had gone Eyefer only an hour since. But maybe it would ease Bill's strain. If Bill was going to lose his job when he got back to town anyway, it wouldn't make any difference if he knew it now. Might even give him a chance to wrestle it out inside himself.

"Bill," he began as if it were to be another question.

"Yeah?"

"Miss Haulwell went Eyefer an hour ago. Commissioner Crawford told me."

Bill Haulwell's face went whiter than it was by nature. "You're kidding. And that's not the kind of joke I like," he said threateningly.

"It's no joke, I'm afraid."

Bill scanned Herl's face, saw it grave, sympathetic. He then opened the door on his own side of the cabter and stepped out into the sky.

* * * * *

Herl found himself sliding over to the driver's seat, reaching for the loosely swinging door, peering down and out. Bill was a mere dwindling spot below. Herl slammed the door shut by reflex action; then sat numbly nauseated. The cab flew on evenly.

Herl took a couple of very deep breaths to subdue the nausea and looked ahead to where the outline of the port tower was sharpening on the horizon. Cautiously he tried the controls of the cabter ... up ... down ... right ... left. He could manage it, he thought dully. He could find no lever, no button, no pedal with which to reduce or increase the forward speed, however. The brake pedal for surface control evoked no response in the air. The tower came nearer and the image of the dwindling, falling blob that had been Bill Haulwell faded from Herl's mind as he sought frantically for the mechanism to cut his speed for landing.

The tower rushed toward the cab ... and past. Herl set the cab into a tight circle a little smaller than the circumference of the landing area. Someone would notice him, someone would either signal him or, if the power were broadcast, let him down slowly ... he hoped. If the cab used its own fuel, that would have to run out with time. He circled and circled, counterclockwise.

There seemed to be no diminution of speed so he began to spiral down toward the ground. If he could hold the circle a few feet above the ground, someone might at least come out and shout instructions.

There was no sign from the tower that his approach had been noticed. He circled the _Krylla_ several times, then circled the tower. The place seemed deserted in the growing twilight. He considered flying close to the ground and jumping out but rejected that thought as he remembered the towerman's remark about the pitting of the cinder surface ... and remembered the paved runway at the edge of the field from which the cabter had taken off on his trip to the city.

He headed for the runway in the direction from which he had originally taken off, coming down to let the wheels skim the smooth pavement. The cabter gathered speed rapidly as the end of the runway flung itself toward him. He raised the machine into the air missing the rough ground at the end of the way by scant feet.

Herl smiled grimly. Apparently power was somehow beamed at the runway. He circled over the weedy pasture-like space and a copse of small trees and headed back to the runway. Perhaps the power would be cut if one approached from this end. Again he lowered the cab till the wheels seemed but inches above the pavement ... and sure enough, the speed decreased. Slower and more slowly he went; but the far end of the runway approached all too rapidly. He tried to rise again, but the response of the cab was sluggish now. By lightning judgment, Herl knew that only a jump would save him from crashing with the cab among the weeds. Those weeds swept toward him as he opened the door and rolled out, relaxing to meet the pavement sliding past.

There was no tearing bruising impact, no sound of the cab's crash. Herl opened his eyes suddenly to see, meaninglessly before him, the control panel of his own _Krylla_. He was sitting in his own pneumatic control chair.

A moment of dull wonder was replaced by a deep shuddering from shoulders to hips and a feeling that his legs and arms had turned to dough. His eyes regarded the shadow across the control panel without trying to comprehend it; but the golden light reflected on both sides of the shadow meant something. He turned to see the source ... and it was the goddess of the lobby.

She smiled reassuringly, and the smile seemed to flow through his veins and tingle along his nerves, pushing the numbness out and away. He was alive and eager and yet utterly peaceful for the duration of her smile. But as the corners of her mouth fell into a graver repose, his thoughts sped back through the moment of expected impact ... through the frantic struggle with the cabter ... through the moment of Haulwell's step from the door.

"Bill Haulwell," Herl mumbled, "he ... he's...."

"He's in his cab halfway back to the city to report to Eyefer Placement." The matter-of-fact words were sung in the triumphant cadence of the close of a vast chorale, rich and full.

"You saved him ... and me?" Herl asked incredulously.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Clear recitative explained, "He had not earned his death; he did not wish to die. No more had you."

Herl thought this over for a moment. Did no one die here till he was ready? Were the gods personal guardians? Was the presence of human life one of their conditions of being, one of their motivations? He started to speak, then hesitated as he remembered his conclusion that there were special ways of phrasing special questions for such beings as these. His mind tried in vain to block the consciousness of fear that she would leave him with his questions unasked ... and simply that she would leave him.

But the cloud still swirled and glowed with a million pinpoints of deep yellow incandescence. A sodium halo, Herl thought irrelevantly.

"Yes," she smiled again from her seat above the edge of the paper-cluttered desk. "It's like sodium. And we are not guardians. We do not care whether men live or die but we do ... enjoy ... their being glad about living or dying. I will not leave you till you are sorry." She stood and came near his chair.

Herl could not see that she walked in the air ... she was just nearer. He rose and put out his hands as if to take hers to assure himself that she would stay, but where his hands entered the cloud they disappeared and felt nothing. He withdrew his offered embrace and his hands reappeared.

"Sorry for what?" asked Herl's voice; and Herl's heart quickened and his breathing forced, as he grew afraid to lose her and wild to keep her with him.

"Just sorry."

* * * * *

Regret was like a knife stab. He must lose her: a man couldn't go around rejoicing forever. Anger succeeded regret, and he accused her bitterly, "So that's why you do nothing for the poor Eyefers! Because they're sorry to be that way! When you could save the poor creatures even by picking them out of the air, it offends your sensibilities to save them from a little red tape. Is that kind or just?"

His voice sneered 'kind' and 'just' as his mind pictured 'sympathetic' and 'the best that men ought to receive.' He was angry for himself, for the Eyefers. His anger grew with the hurt to include all humanity betrayed by heartless beauty.

But a flood of intense living greenness washed through the control room, blotting out the walls and lapping against Herl's red tunic above the hip pockets, as if a strange sea rose about him to quench his anger.

He repeated his last words, vaguely, enthralled by the green waves, "Is that kind or just?"

The green waves changed to living blue and he heard her voice like a distant bell. "No."

Herl had a sensation as if the blueness washed completely through him with a tingling coolness. Suddenly the room cleared and she was sitting on the edge of the table still. In Herl's mind lay fresh and clear the method he had planned hours ... or was it minutes ... earlier for communicating with this glowing girl-thing, exact, detailed, perfect questions for a perfect mind. His overwhelming intent to embrace her was put neatly to one side as on a shelf; his anger was as if it had never been.

"Do you have a name?" he looked coolly at her as if helping her fill out a questionnaire.

"Yes."

"What is it please?" he asked, firm, polite.

"Abigail."

Herl smothered a grin. There could be something unexotic about a goddess. "Can you offer data as well as supply data and computation on demand?" he wanted to know.

"Yes."

"Will you be good enough to do so hereafter when I ask you questions?"

"If you will indicate the limitations you wish on additional data," she replied gravely.

"Do you mean that there is so great a correlation between all extant data that you would continue offering indefinitely if you were not arbitrarily limited?" he asked curiously, feeling an interior warmth of success. His method of communication was working indeed. Be explicit, he told himself.

"Yes."

Herl sneaked a mental look at his urge to kiss her. As when eating Crawford's steak, he found that he could forgive and forget a great deal when confronted with considerable pleasure in prospect.

He continued. "Will you decide and tell me what questions I ought to ask and what actions I ought to take and what limitations I should set on the data you have to offer?" Now he would have communication by the roots.

"No."

"Are you capable of doing so, Abigail?" A crucial question, asked almost in a whisper.

"No."

Grief more bitter than anger ran through his veins like corrosive poison. This was the wrong answer. She must be a machine-thing after all, he concluded ... limited, arbitrary, unhuman, incapable of loving him or being concerned for his welfare, incapable of sorting out good from bad or valuable from expedient.

He withdrew his eyes from her brightness and from her delicate features and from her rounded limbs and put his head in his hands. An agonized sigh burst from him. No human woman could keep from giving him good advice, particularly if she knew all the answers ... his mother never had avoided the responsibilities of knowledge. So she could have nothing human about her. She was just a thing.

"No ... no ... no," her music faded slowly away; and Herl looked up to catch the faintest after-image of the brilliance that had centered on the table. That, too, was gone in an instant; and no presence or effects of a presence other than his own was visible before him.

He sat motionless in his supporting chair, his eyes staring unseeingly at brown table and black film lockers and at the long blue chart roll hung behind the table and at the calculator keys in their neat meaningless ranks. In her absence, he felt compressed between the backward thrust of disillusion and emptiness and the forward pull of a tearing desire to be with her wherever she was. He would have done anything she wanted, gone anywhere, been anything ... and there was nothing she wanted of him. He remained slumped, drained of purpose. Drained, he reflected, by a shiny machine more bound than he to commands and limitations. At any rate he did have a few minor purposes of his own.