"A couple of Earthers were here this morning," Kanaday said. "Slumming.
They took a fancy to our young friend here and invited him to one of
their parties. He accepted."
"He _what_? Don't go, Rolf. You're crazy to go."
"Why am I crazy?" He tried to control his voice. "Why should we keep
ourselves apart from the Earthers? Why shouldn't the two races get
together?"
* * * * *
She put down her tray and sat next to him. "They're more than two
races," she said patiently. "Earther and Spacer are two different
species, Rolf. Carefully, genetically separated. They're small and weak,
we're big and powerful. You've been bred for going to space; they're the
castoffs, the ones who were too weak to go. The line between the two
groups is too strong to break."
"And they treat us like dirt--like animals," Kanaday said. "But
_they're_ the dirt. They were the ones who couldn't make it."
"Don't go to the party," Laney said. "They just want to make fun of you.
Look at the big ape, they'll say."
Rolf stood up. "You don't understand. Neither of you does. I'm part
Earther," Rolf said. "My grandmother on my mother's side. She raised me
as an Earther. She wanted me to be an Earther. But I kept getting bigger
and uglier all the time. She took me to a plastic surgeon once, figuring
he could make me look like an Earther. He was a little man; I don't know
what he looked like to start with but some other surgeon had made him
clean-cut and straight-nosed and thin-lipped like all the other
Earthers. I was bigger than he was--twice as big, and I was only
fifteen. He looked at me and felt my bones and measured me. 'Healthy
little ape'--those were the words he used. He told my grandmother I'd
get bigger and bigger, that no amount of surgery could make me small and
handsome, that I was fit only for space and didn't belong in Yawk. So I
left for space the next morning."
"I see," Laney said quietly.
"I didn't say good-bye. I just left. There was no place for me in Yawk;
I couldn't pass myself off as an Earther any more. But I'd like to go
back and see what the old life was like, now that I know what it's like
to be on the other side for a while."
"It'll hurt when you find out, Rolf."
"I'll take that chance. But I want to go. Maybe my grandmother'll be
there. The surgeons made her young and pretty again every few years; she
looked like my sister when I left."
Laney nodded her head. "There's no point arguing with him, Kanaday. He
has to go back there and find out, so let him alone."
Rolf smiled. "Thanks for understanding." He took out Quinton's card and
turned it over and over in his hand.
* * * * *
Rolf went to Yawk on foot, dressed in his best clothes, with his face as
clean as it had been in some years. Spacertown was just across the river
from Yawk, and the bridges spanning the river were bright and gleaming
in the mid-afternoon sun.
The bombs had landed on Yawk during the long-forgotten war, but somehow
they had spared the sprawling borough across the river. And so Yawk had
been completely rebuilt, once the radioactivity had been purged from the
land, while what was now Spacertown consisted mostly of buildings that
dated back to the Twentieth Century.
Yawk had been the world's greatest seaport; now it was the world's
greatest spaceport. The sky was thick with incoming and outgoing liners.
The passengers on the ship usually stayed at Yawk, which had become an
even greater metropolis than it had been before the Bomb. The crew
crossed the river to Spacertown, where they could find their own kind.
Yawk and Spacertown were like two separate planets. There were three
bridges spanning the river, but most of the time they went unused,
except by spacemen going back home or by spacemen going to the spaceport
for embarkation. There was no regular transportation between the two
cities; to get from Spacertown to Yawk, you could borrow a jetcar or you
could walk. Rolf walked.
He enjoyed the trip. _I'm going back home_, he thought as he paced along
the gleaming arc of the bridge, dressed in his Sunday best. He
remembered the days of his own childhood, his parentless childhood. His
earliest memory was of a fight at the age of six or so. He had stood off
what seemed like half the neighborhood, ending the battle by picking up
an older bully, much feared by everyone, and heaving him over a fence.
When he told his grandmother about the way he had won the fight she
cried for an hour, and never told him why. But they had never picked on
him again, though he knew the other boys had jeered at him behind his
back as he grew bigger and bigger over the years. "Ape," they called
him. "Ape."
But never to his face.
He approached the Yawk end of the bridge. A guard was waiting there--an
Earther guard, small and frail, but with a sturdy-looking blaster at his
hip.
"Going back, Spacer?"
Rolf started. How did the guard know? And then he realized that all the
guard meant was, are you going back to your ship?
"No. No, I'm going to a party. Kal Quinton's house."
"Tell me another, Spacer." The guard's voice was light and derisive. A
swift poke in the ribs would break him in half, Rolf thought.
"I'm serious. Quinton invited me. Here's his card."
"If this is a joke it'll mean trouble. But go ahead; I'll take your word
for it."
Rolf marched on past the guard, almost nonchalantly. He looked at the
address on the card. _12406 Kenman Road._ He rooted around in his fading
memory of Yawk, but he found the details had blurred under the impact of
five years of Mars and Venus and the Belt and Neptune. He did not know
where Kenman Road was.
The glowing street signs were not much help either. One said 287th
Street and the other said 72nd Avenue. Kenman Road might be anywhere.
He walked on a block or two. The streets were antiseptically clean, and
he had the feeling that his boots, which had lately trod in Spacertown,
were leaving dirtmarks along the street. He did not look back to see.
* * * * *
He looked at his wristchron. It was getting late, and Kenman Road might
be anywhere. He turned into a busy thoroughfare, conscious that he was
attracting attention. The streets here were crowded with little people
who barely reached his chest; they were all about the same height, and
most of them looked alike. A few had had radical surgical alterations,
and every one of these was different. One had a unicorn-like horn;
another, an extra eye which cunningly resembled his real ones. The
Earthers were looking at him furtively, as they would at a tiger or an
elephant strolling down a main street.
"Where are you going, Spacer?" said a voice from the middle of the
street.
Rolf's first impulse was to snarl out a curse and keep moving, but he
realized that the question was a good one and one whose answer he was
trying to find out for himself. He turned.
Another policeman stood on the edge of the walkway. "Are you lost?" The
policeman was short and delicate-looking.
Rolf produced his card.