Intermission Time

In the hundred years since, only a quarter of the Earth had become habitable, and its population was less than thirty millions. A sober, stunned, and bewildered humanity rebuilding amid the ruins.

They had accomplished much in that century. There were cities again; there was space-flight; then overdrive and the stars; and the mutants had been wiped out. There was a single coordinated government that united the efforts of all races and tongues.

It was the ruins that did it, John thought. No matter how drunk or how elated and forgetful man became, he could never get away from the ruins. A thousand years of rebuilding would not cover them all.

But Doris said this was not enough; she said that, in time, men would forget even what the ruins stood for and blast them anew in fresh wars of their own.

Maybe Doris was right. She had always been right, John thought.

He thought of George again. What are you? George had asked. John wished he had some kind of answer to that question. He had seen it before — in the eyes of those who watched him and Doris together.

He couldn’t understand exactly why the question should be asked. It didn’t seem unnatural that he should find his answers to living in the stronger and more brilliant mind of his sister. He felt sometimes as if some blast of energy had shattered all but a minimum of his own thinking circuits, leaving him as dependent as a robot.

He knew the moment when that happened, too — the day he learned their parents were dead and there was no one in the world but him and Doris. He could remember the moment like a great curtain drawing across the portion of his mind where life and initiative and enthusiasm were charted.

He was eight then; Doris was sixteen. It hadn’t done to her what it did to him. She’d had strength enough for both of them, and it had been hers that he’d drawn upon ever since.

So — going to Planet 7 —

He had no real hope or feelings in the matter. He felt blank to all the torrent of argument that swirled about him. That belonged to the portion of his mind that had been walled off so long ago. Doris said it was right; his own mind could hold no other opinion.

And he could not answer George's question, because he did not know how else he could be.

The babble of sound within the room was suddenly split by an angry voice. John looked in at the tall, dark-haired figure of Mel Gordon by the piano.

“Shut up, all of you,” Mel said. “Doris knows what she’s doing. Most of the rest of us haven’t got the guts to think about it, let alone carry it through. Shut up and leave her alone!”

He whirled and strode from the room to the darkness of the balcony. All of them understood the explosion. Mel Gordon didn't want Doris to go, either.

Mel saw John watching from the balcony shadows. “I’m sorry I blew my stack,” he said.

“We’d all feel a little better if we did the same,” said John. “Did you get a report on your re-application?”

“They turned me down again. Mel Gordon — not even good enough for a guinea-pig. Who knows what will happen when they get through tinkering and tampering, and trying to make homo superior out of you and Doris? Me, they'd have a chance with; but Doris is already what they are trying to find.”

“Have you asked her to stay?”

“I haven’t the right to ask that; no one has. How many of the rest of us know what we want to do with our lives?”

He looked back into the room as the noise of the stirring guests indicated their departure. “I guess I busted up your party. Sorry, John.”

“You didn’t bust it up; they didn’t like coming to this funeral anyway. They understand how you feel.”

“Yeah! Good old Mel — carry the torch high. John, when you get up there, tell her I tried to come, will you? Tell her I tried.”

* * *

After the guests were gone, they faced each other in the faintly embarrassing vacuum that surrounded them always when they were alone together. Doris sat again at the piano. Her fingers moved in the melody of a Brahms lullaby, so softly that it could scarcely be heard.

She was the most beautiful thing that had ever lived, John thought. At thirty she had something of the wisdom of a mother, and of the passion of first love. But she knew neither love nor motherhood, nor would she; she lived on some far, cold plane where human destiny was determined by sheer brilliance of reason, and emotion was unknown. He didn't understand such a place; he didn’t understand such a mind.

He only knew that Doris was not often wrong.

He was aware that she had stopped playing and was looking at him. There was wistful yearning in her eyes that startled him by its unfamiliarity. “You do think it’s right that we should go, don’t you, John?” she said.

“Sure — it's all settled: you haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

“No! It's just that sometimes I wish you could understand how I feel — just a little.”

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