Rick almost ran from her, bumping into two figures standing at a corner
of the house, smoking. It was Len and Sam from his own farm.
“It’s not fair,” Len complained jokingly, “to spend all your time with
Barie. After all, you _are_ going to be paired with a Mech in a couple
more days!”
“I’m not!” he cried in exultation. “I’m going with Barie. I need your
help.” In a tumble of words he told them what he planned. “Get a half
dozen more guys from inside the house, Sam. Len, you come and help me
get started. We’ll pump the tanks full and figure out a way to feed
them from spare barrels inside the plane. There ought to be enough
barrels around the farm.”
But neither of the men had moved. “Come on!” he said.
“You can’t,” said Sam. “You know better, Rick. It isn’t right. The
Machine’s told you what’s best. We like you too much to help with a
fool thing like this. You and Barie--we like you both too much.”
He saw it then, he thought. Sam had always liked Barie. Maybe he
figured with Rick out of the way the Machine might give her to him.
“It takes something like this to find out who your friends are,” Rick
cried. “There are plenty of guys who _will_ help me!”
“We’re your friends,” said Len quietly. But he was gone from hearing.
One by one, or in groups of two or three, they were approached by him
in the hall or out in the yard. They were appalled by the stupidity of
the thing he asked them to do. He was stunned by their repeated refusal.
In panic, he looked about him. There was still dancing in the hall, but
it was muted now, and the jumping, frantic rhythm had reduced to a low
beat that was more felt than heard. Their eyes were upon him, averting
as he stared back in defiant bewilderment.
He had not asked them all, but word had gone around from mouth to ear,
until all knew his frantic decision.
He held them in his stare when he had asked his last man, and knew it
was futile to ask any longer. He whirled from the room and raced out to
the hangars alone.
The night was half gone and he had only until daylight to work, but he
had to try. He unreeled the fuel hose and fed it to the partially empty
tanks of the plane. While it throbbed with the pump’s pulsations, he
ransacked the tool and supply sheds for drums to fill the cabin.
He gathered some, but there didn’t seem to be nearly enough. What he
had he wrestled up the landing stairs and through the doorway. He
lashed them down and went searching for more, then came back to change
the hose connection on the tanks.
The dancing had ceased inside the house. All the guests, those who
were his friends and had known him all his life, came out and stood in
silent knots watching his frantic movements silhouetted against the
night sky as he tried to prepare the plane alone.
But it was too much of a task. Dawn came, and he hadn’t found enough
barrels. He hadn’t filled those he had, and he hadn’t devised the way
to feed their contents to the main tanks from inside the plane.
He was licked, but he was still trying when they saw the plane of the
Watch Police against the brightening sky, coming to take him to the
re-orientation center.
He climbed down in defeat and looked slowly about the ring of sober
faces of his friends who had watched and refused to help. “I could
have done it,” he cried, “if you’d given me a hand. I leave behind no
friends at Lonestar--only enemies!”
And then it came to him for the first time, apparently, that Barie
could have helped, but she hadn’t. He turned to her, in the forefront
of the group, and seemed to read in her eyes the thing he had always
known was there but didn’t dare to admit.
She had known it would be this way. She had never intended going with
him.
“You can’t keep childhood forever, Rick. I had to show you that,” she
said. “It was the last good thing I could do for you!”
Six days ago he’d had nothing in his heart but love for the land--and
for Barie. He’d expected he’d have the right to pair with her. If you
were an Agro, you could afford such hopes. The Machine didn’t bother
Agros too much. It let them pair often with the ones they had chosen
themselves.
Only a few were denied it. And fewer still were taken away from the
Region altogether, to pair and spend the rest of their lives elsewhere.
Rick remembered those who had gone. Stan More, Daly Croden--not more
than a couple of dozen since he’d been aware of the kind of world he
lived in, and the things that sometimes happened to people.
Now, he was one of them, borne through the sky to an alien land that he
had never seen, never wanted to see. It had happened to him.
He watched the unfamiliar landscape through the windows of the plane. A
couple of Watch Police were his companions, but they were busy over a
game and paid no attention to him. His thoughts remained with the world
he was leaving behind.
There was something wrong with it. He had never been able to put his
finger on it, but he had always been the odd one, the strange one who
didn’t fit. He wanted things of his own--in a world where each man
could say that all the Earth was his, if he remembered his neighbor
could say it too. He didn’t believe that the great Machine, which they
told him did the thinking for mankind, could think out his own problems
as well as he could.
Somehow this wrongness in the world had destroyed Barie. That was the
sign by which he knew it was the world and not he who was in error. It
could make her stand and say it was right for someone else to take her
place in his arms.