Intermission Time

Wagnalls was much older now, and gray, different from the pictures John had seen. He sat at the piano on the spotlighted stage and began playing.

John closed his eyes and listened with all his being. The first notes were strange. It was a new man playing, he thought — not the Wagnalls who had written so long ago upon Earth. John listened to the theme, echoing it in his own mind.

Slowly, it seemed to him as if a cold wind had begun to blow upon his naked body. The music — it was not the great Faber Wagnalls at all. It was a simpering, effeminate tune that pranced and dawdled by turns, and had no loveliness or grace in a single note.

The applause was obviously out of sympathy rather than praise, and John joined in it when Wagnalls was through. But he wondered if it were really merciful to let the old master make such a fool of himself.

He glanced at Doris who returned his look, her nostrils thin and defiant. She knew, he thought, but she wasn’t admitting that there was any bad in Alpha Colony.

Lora caught his eye and grinned maliciously; he wondered exactly why.

The next performance was a group of string instruments. It was mediocre, not as poor as Wagnalls’ performance. John began to wonder when he would hear some of the fine work for which Alpha Colony had been created. Beside what he had heard so far his own would not show so badly, even if it was noisy and brash.

He continued to wonder as the program advanced. He grew sick inside as the parade of inept performers and trivial compositions followed one after the other.

And when his sickness bordered on panic — as if he had suddenly perceived the falsity and trickery of life itself — then he understood.

He understood an infinity of things he had never understood before. He understood himself and Doris, and he understood Lora. He understood why she looked up at the great dome and saw bars in the sky. He understood that the applause for Wagnalls was genuine not in pity.

Dimly, in the midst of panic and understanding, he heard his own name called. He stood up and moved automatically to the platform and sat before the piano.

Then he began to play. And with his playing there came clarity and a new reality. He knew what he had to do.

He tried to tell them with the music. He looked out over the dimly lit faces of the audience. He knew they would not understand, but he told them, anyway. He told them with fury and noise that echoed the anger of betrayal. He told them with a theme of passion and struggle that shocked them.

When he was through there was a moment of silence, and then a scattering of faint applause, followed all too quickly by a scattering of the audience itself. He was left standing almost alone with his few friends as the hall cleared.

Dr. Warnock came up and took his hand. “It was strong meat for our tender people,” he said. “I don’t know anything about music, but I liked that better than the twiddling little pieces I hear so often around here.”

“You know what I have to do,” said John.

“Yes?”

“I’m going with Lora; we’ll leave for the Control-Colony in the morning.”

8

They gathered after the concert at Papa Sosnic’s. Papa wore an air of secret mirth as they walked towards the house under the dome-filtered starlight. Bronson seemed puzzled and half-angry, while Dr. Warnock was an interested spectator of the wholly unexpected events of a play.

Lora and John felt a deep contentment as if they could suddenly see all the way to the end of their lives, and knew they were on the right pathway.

But Doris walked alone, ignoring Bronson’s presence, as if she had been stunned and swept to the edge of grief by John’s words.

When they reached Papa Sosnic’s, she was the first to speak as she separated him from the rest and forced him against the wall. “You don’t mean what you said,” she insisted. “You don’t mean you are giving up all we have gained for a stubborn girl who is afraid to face life!”

“I love that stubborn girl,” he said softly, “and she loves me.”

“Then she can have courage enough to live here like a human being — if she has wits enough. John, you can’t do a crazy thing like this.”

The others had stopped where they stood, held by the anguish of Doris' voice. They did not want to hear, and could not help themselves.

Lora stepped in from the next room, and heard, but Doris did not seem to care. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep you from knowing how ugly the world can be,” she said to John, “I didn’t want you to know it. When you were a child, you never knew that sometimes the food you ate was stolen, and that I went without because there was not enough for both of us. I showed you how to make yourself great; and we were great artists on Earth. We couldn’t have had more — until we found this.

“And now there’s nothing more to worry about for all the rest of our lives. We’ll be taken care of, and we can work and create to the full extent of all that’s good in us.