Chapter II

It wasn’t a good orchestra and never would be. It was just some of the farm boys who liked to get together on Saturday nights and beat out a little whimsey. Sometimes it was at RiGrand; sometimes at Rillo or Worth-Dallas. At best it was a five hundred mile round trip, and of course the Watch Police knew all about it. They didn’t expect anything better from Agros, Sixth Rating.

They were doing something called “The Lass at the Mech-Shake Ball.”

Barie bounced happily to its senseless, repetitious rhythm. Rick felt the warm touch and vibration of her body against him, but he couldn’t keep time.

“What’s the matter?” Barie said finally. “Don’t you want to dance with me tonight?”

To everyone but him it seemed like a time for dancing. “I want to get out of here,” he said.

He took her out to the patio under the open sky, where the stars were so sweet and clear it made something ache inside a man. They wouldn’t look like that anywhere else in the world, even if you roamed the world over.

He stopped with Barie just beyond an arbor, from which they could see the distant sheet of restless water against the horizon. He touched her and drew her close to him. She looked up, smiling, and patted his cheek.

“I don’t think you want to go very badly,” she said.

“Am I supposed to?”

“It’s like growing older every year. You may not want to, but it happens just the same.”

“You mean there’s nothing we can do when a machine a thousand miles or more from here says one day that Rick Theron is to leave the land he loves and go to a city he never wanted to see and there be paired with a Mech he never wanted to know?”

Barie laughed softly and pressed a little closer to him. “Rick, you talk so silly. I guess that’s why I’ve always liked you. Even the first time we met, when Dad took me with him to Rillo to talk about cattle with your father. I remember I thought I’d never seen a boy who talked like you. I remember how you spoke of the cattle and the land as if they were your very own. You were nine then. Do you remember?”

Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know he remembered every glimpse he’d ever had of her, every sound her voice had made in his hearing? He gripped her arm tightly in his big, rough hand. His eyes swept the fields and the grassy plain that led down to the sea.

“Is there anything wrong with having and owning something for your very own?” he demanded.

“Who’d want to? You’re hurting my arm, Rick.”

He released her. “I’d want to,” he said. “I’d want some land, some cattle that were mine and couldn’t be taken away. Something to love and take pride in.”

He turned her so that he could see her eyes by the light from the sky. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, even yet, do you?” he said.

Barie shook her head. “I don’t understand you, Rick. Sometimes you frighten me with your talk that I can’t make any sense out of. Why should you want to _own_ something? It already belongs to you. You work the land. You turn in its production. You make your living here.”

“Except that now I have to go away and never come back again.”

“It makes no difference!” Barie cried. “Wherever you go you’ll have something to do, something to produce, something that will get you your living. If the Machine says you belong in another place, paired to a certain Mech, then that’s right. There’s no argument with it. The Machine can think better than any man ever could! You know that’s so.”

He regarded her for a long moment. Then swiftly he took her into his arms and pressed his mouth hard against hers. She clung to him, answering his yearning. But even in the midst of her embrace he felt a coldness somewhere that was like a little stab of terror in his mind.

He raised his face from hers. “Does the Machine know how to think about love?” he said softly.

“It must.” Barie shrugged and straightened in his arms. “It says a certain Mech girl is more right for your arms than I am.”

“And don’t you _hate_ it for saying that?”

“Hate it for knowing more than our poor, stupid brains do? Hate it for being right? Would it make sense if you and I went ahead and made a dreadful mistake that would bring us misery all our lives?”

“Barie, do you really believe that? In your heart--?”

“I think I almost hate _you_ when you pretend to be so blind,” Barie said. “You know it’s true as well as I do.”

“Barie--Barie--has it all been so empty? Has it all been meaningless--since that day when I was nine and showed you what land and cattle could really mean to a man?”

He had to turn away to keep her from sensing the sudden, quick sob that welled up from the depths of him. And then she came to him and stroked his long hair with her soft fingers.

“Of course it has not been meaningless and empty,” she said. “It’s been wonderful. We’ve been happy. Our childhood has been sweeter because of each other. And now it is time to grow up. Do you want childhood to last forever, Rick?”

He stood looking down at her face--at her long black hair teasing about her shoulders in the soft night wind and her wide dark eyes so full of trust for the world to which they were born that she would not listen even to her own heart.

It added to the smouldering, uncertain hate in his own heart against that same world.

“Is it childishness that we love each other?” he demanded almost roughly.

For a moment the expression of calm acceptance on her face seemed to break. “It must be,” she whispered at last, “because no one keeps it. We have everything else; we mustn’t expect to keep childhood. And even if we wanted to, what could we do about it?”

“We can go away! Listen to me, Barie. There hasn’t been much time to plan, but I’ve been thinking of this ever since the notification came. Tonight’s our chance.”

“What are you talking about? Go where?”

“The Machine doesn’t do the thinking for the whole world. There are savages it doesn’t care about. We could be one with them!”

“How?”

He pointed to the dark shapes of the planes beyond the farmhouse. “I’ve planned for us to take one of them. We can fill it with spare tanks of fuel and fly it as far south as the Andes. They’d never find us there. They’d never want to!”

She seemed to hesitate a long time, watching the direction of his glance. “How would you get it ready? The escort comes for you in the morning. There isn’t time--”

“_They’ll_ help me load fuel.” He nodded toward the farmhouse where the music was thumping ecstatically. “Say you’ll go with me, Barie! It’s our only chance!”

“All right,” she whispered. “If you can get them to help with making the plane ready, I’ll go.”