Cities in Flight

“Because you’re just what we need for the job. I don’t mind telling you that your blundering into the Pfitzner project in the first place was an act of Providence from my point of view. When Anne first called your qualifications to my attention, I was almost prepared to believe that they’d been faked. You’re going to be liaison-man between the Pfitzner side of the project and the Bridge side. We’ve got the total output to date of both ascomycin and the new anti-agathic salted away in the cargo-hold, and Anne’s already shown you how to take the stuff and how to administer it to others. After that—just as soon as you and Helmuth can work out the details—the stars are yours.”

“Anne,” Paige said. She turned her head slowly toward him. “Are you with this thing?”

“I’m here,” she said. “And I’d had a few inklings of what was up before. You were the one who had to be brought in, not I.”

Paige thought about it a moment more. Then something both very new and very old occurred to him.

“Senator,” he said, “you’ve gone to an immense amount of trouble to make this whole thing possible—but I don’t think you plan to go with us.”

“No, Paige, I don’t. For one thing, MacHinery and his crew will regard the whole project as treasonous. If it’s to be carried out nevertheless, someone has to stay behind and be the goat—and after all, the idea was mine, so I’m the logical candidate.” He fell silent for a moment. Then he added ruminatively: “The government boys have nobody but themselves to thank for this. The whole project would never have been possible so long as the West had a government of laws and not of men, and stuck to it. It was a long while ago that some people—MacHinery’s grandfather among them—set themselves up to be their own judges of whether or not a law ought to be obeyed. They had precedents. And now here we are, on the brink of the most enormous breach of our social contract the West has ever had to suffer—and the West can’t stop it.” He smiled suddenly. I’ll have good use for that argument in the court.”

Anne was on her feet, her eyes suddenly wet, her lower lip just barely trembling. Evidently, over whatever time she had known Wagoner and had known what he had planned, it had never occurred to her that the young-old senator might stay behind.

“That’s no good!” she said in a low voice. “They won’t listen, and you know it. They might easily hang you for it. If they find you guilty of treason, they’ll seal you up in the pile-waste dump—that’s the current penalty, isn’t it? You can’t go back!”

“It’s a phony terror. Pile wastes are quick chemical poisons; you don’t last long enough to notice that they’re also hot,” Wagoner said. “And what difference does it make, anyhow? Nothing and nobody can harm me now. The job is done.”

Anne put her hands to her face.

“Besides, Anne,” Wagoner said, with gentle insistence, “the stars are for young people—eternally young people. An eternal oldster would be an anachronism.”

“Why—did you do it, then?” Paige said. His own voice was none too steady.

“Why?” Wagoner said. “You know the answer to that, Paige. You’ve known it all your life. I could see it in your face, as soon as I told Helmuth that we were going out to the stars. Supposing you tell me what it is.”

Anne swung her blurred eyes on Paige. He thought he knew what she expected to hear him say; they had talked about it often enough, and it was what he once would have said himself. But now another force seemed to him to be the stronger: a special thing, bearing the name of no established dogma, but nevertheless and unmistakably the force to which he had borne allegiance all his life. He in turn could see it in Wagoner’s face now, and he knew he had seen it before in Anne’s.

“It’s the thing that lures monkeys into cages,” he said slowly. “And lures cats into open drawers and up telephone poles. It’s driven men to conquer death, and put the stars into our hands. I suppose that I’d call it Curiosity.”

Wagoner looked startled. “Is that really what you want to call it?” he said. “Somehow it seems insufficient; I should have given it another name. Perhaps you’ll amend it later, somewhere, some day out by Aldebaran.”

He stood up and looked at the two for a moment in silence. Then he smiled.

“And now,” he said gently, “nunc dimittis … suffer thy servant to depart in peace.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Jupiter V