Cities in Flight

The original phenomena which the soul-hypothesis attempted to explain still remain. Homo sapiens does have some differences from other animal species. But when his biological distinctions and their consequences are clearly described, man’s ‘morality,’ his ‘soul,’ and his ‘immortality’ all become accessible to a purely naturalistic formulation and understanding, … Man’s ‘immortality’ (in so far as it differs from the immortality of the germ plasm of any other animal species) consists in his time-transcending inter-individually shared values, symbol-systems, languages, and cultures—and in nothing else.

—WESTON LA BARRE

IT TOOK Paige no more than Anne’s mandatory ten seconds, during breakfast of the next day in his snuggery at the Spaceman’s Haven, to decide that he was going back to the Pfitzner plant and apologize. He didn’t quite understand why the date had ended as catastrophically as it had, but of one thing he was nearly certain: the fiasco had had something to do with his space-rusty manners, and if it were to be mended, he had to be the one to tool up for it.

And now that he came to think of it over his cold egg, it seemed obvious in essence. By his last line of questioning, Paige had broken the delicate shell of the evening and spilled the contents all over the restaurant table. He had left the more or less safe womb of technicalities, and had begun, by implication at least, to call Anne’s ethics into question—first by making clear his first reaction to the business about the experimental infants, and then by pressing home her irregular marriage to her firm.

In this world called Earth of disintegrating faiths, one didn’t call personal ethical codes into question without getting into trouble. Such codes, where they could be found at all, obviously had cost their adherents too much pain to be open for any new probing. Faith had once been self-evident; now it was desperate. Those who still had it—or had made it, chunk by fragment by shard—wanted nothing but to be allowed to hold it.

As for why he wanted to set matters right with Anne Abbott, Paige was less clear. His leave was passing him by rapidly, and thus far he had done little more than stroll while it passed—especially if he measured it against the desperate meter-stick established by his last two leaves, the two after his marriage had shattered and he had been alone again. After the present leave was over, there was a good chance that he would be assigned to the Proserpine station, which was now about finished and which had no competitors for the title of the most forsaken outpost of the solar system. None, at least, until somebody should discover an 11th planet.

Nevertheless, he was going to go out to the Pfitzner plant again, out to the scenic Bronx, to revel among research scientists, business executives, government brass, and a frozen-voiced girl with a figure like an ironing-board, to kick up his heels on a reception-room rug in the sight of gay steel engravings of the founders, cheered on by a motto which might or might not be Dionysiac, if he could only read it. Great. Just great. If he played his cards right, he could go on duty at the Proserpine station with fine memories: perhaps the vice-president in charge of export would let Paige call him “Hal,” or maybe even “Bubbles.”

Maybe it was a matter of religion, after all. Like everyone else in the world, Paige thought, he was still looking for something bigger than himself, bigger than family, army, marriage, fatherhood, space itself, or the pub-crawls and tyrannically meaningless sexual spasms of a spaceman’s leave. Quite obviously the project at Pfitzner, with its air of mystery and selflessness, had touched that very vulnerable nerve in him once more. Anne Abbott’s own dedication was merely the touchstone, the key …. No, he hadn’t the right word for it yet, but her attitude somehow fitted into an empty, jagged-edge blemish in his own soul like—like … yes, that was it: like a jigsaw-puzzle piece.

And besides, he wanted to see that sunburst smile again.