A baby is always legitimate as an opening for conversation between strangers.
The lady across the way said (her words were predictable), ‘What a lovely child. How old is he, my dear?’
Laura said, through the pins in her mouth (she had spread a blanket across her knees and was changing Walter), ‘He’ll be four months old next week.’
Walter’s eyes were open and he simpered across at the woman, opening his mouth in a wet, gummy grin. (He always enjoyed being changed.)
‘Look at him smile, George,’ said the lady.
Her husband smiled back and twiddled fat fingers.
‘Goo,’ he said.
Walter laughed in a high-pitched, hiccupy way.
‘What’s his name, dear?’ said the woman.
‘He’s Walter Michael,’ Laura said, then added, ‘After his father.’
The floodgates were quite down. Laura learned that the couple were George and Eleanor Ellis, that they were on vacation, that they had three children, two girls and one boy, all grown-up. Both girls had married and one had two children of her own.
Laura listened with a pleased expression on her thin face. Walter (senior, that is) had always said that it was because she was sucha good listener that he had first grown interested in her.
Walter was getting restless. Laura freed his arms in order to let some of his feelings evaporate in muscular effort.
‘Would you warm the bottle, please?’ she asked the stewardess.
Under strict but friendly questioning, Laura explamed the number of feedings Walter was currently enjoying, the exact nature of his formula, and whether he suffered from diaper rash.
‘I hope his little stomach isn’t upset today,’ she worried. ‘I mean the plane motion, you know.’
‘Oh, Lord,’ said Mrs Ellis, ‘he’s too young to be bothered b that. Besides, these large planes are wonderful. Unless I look out the wmdow, I wouldn’t believe we were in the air. Don’t you feel that way, George?’
But Mr Ellis, a blunt, straightforward man, said, ‘I’m surprised you take a baby that age on a plane.’
Mrs Ellis turned to frown at him.
Laura held Walter over her shoulder and patted his back gently. The beginnings of a soft wail died down as his little fingers found themselves in his mother’s smooth, blond hair and began grubbmg mto the loose bun that lay at the back of her neck.
She said, ‘I’m taking him to his father. Walter’s never seen his son, yet.’
Mr Ellis looked perplexed and began a comment, but Mrs Elhs put in quickly, ‘Your husband is in the service, I suppose?’
‘Yes, he is.’
(Mr Ellis opened his mouth in a soundless ‘Oh’ and subsided..)
Laura went on, ‘He’s stationed just outside of Davao and he’s gomg to be meeting me at Nichols Field.’ .
Before the stewardess returned with the bottle, they had discovered that her husband was a master sergeant with the Quartermaster Corps, that he had been in the Army for four years, that they had been married for two that he was about to be discharged, and that they would spenda long h neymoon there before returning to San Francisco.
Then she had the bottle. She cradled Walter in the crook of her left arm and put the bottle to his face. It slid right past his lips and his gums seized upon the nipple. Little bubbles began to work upward throug? the milk, while his hands batted ineffectively at the warm glass and his blue eyes stared fixedly at her.
Laura squeezed little Walter ever so slightly and thought how, with all the petty difficulties and annoyances that were involved, it yet remained such a wonderful thing to have a little baby all one’s own.
4
Theory, thought Gan, always theory. The folk of the surface, a million or more years ago, could see the Universe, could sense it directly. Now, with eight hundred miles of rock above their heads, the Race could only make deductions from the trembling needles of their instruments.
It was only theory that brain cells, in addition to their ordinary electric potentials, radiated another sort of energy altogether. Energy that was not electromagnetic and hence not condemned to the creeping pace of light. Energy that was associated only with the highest functions of the brain and hence characteristic only of intelligent, reasoning creatures.
It was only a jogging needle that detected such an energy field leaking into their cavern, and other needles that pinpointed the origin of the field in such and such a direction ten light-years distant. At least one star must have moved quite close in the time since the surface folk had placed the nearest at five hundred light-years. Or was theory wrong?
‘Are you afraid?’ Gan burst into the conversational level of thought without warning and impinged sharply on the humming surface of Roi’s mind.
Roi said, ‘It’s a great responsibility.’
Gan thought, ‘Others speak of responsibility.’ For generations, Head-Tech after _Head-Tuch ha<d been working on the Resonizer and the Receiving Station and it was in his time that the final step had to be taken. What did others know of responsibility.
He said, ‘It is. We taJk about Racial extinction glibly enough, but we always assume it will come someday but not now, not in our time. But it will, do you understand? It will. What we are to do today will consume two thirds of our total energy supply. There will not be enough left to try again. There will not be enough for this generation to live out its life. But that will not matter if you follow orders. We have thought of everything. We have spent generations thinking of everything.’
‘I will do what I am told,’ said Roi.
‘Your thought field will be meshed against those coming from space. All thought fields are characteristic of the individual, and ordinarily the probability of any duplication is very low. But the fields from space number billions by our best estimate. Your field is very likely to be like one of theirs, and in that case, a resonance will be set up as long as our Resonizer is in operation. Do you know the principles involved?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Th:n you know that during resonance, your ind ill be on Planet X in the brain of the creature with a thought field 1dent1cal to yours. That is not the energy-consuming process. In resonance with your mind, we will also place the mass of the Receiving Station. The method· of transferring mass in that manner was the last phase of the pro lem to_ be solved, and it will take all the energy the Race would ordmanly use m a hundred years.’
