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surface believing that Joey was just a memory and go back with you. I'd have
done the same.'
Joey took the pad after Marie had read it, cleared off the message and wrote,
'Thanks, Pal,' holding it so that I could see it but not Marie. Then he
cleared it again immediately. If Marie noticed this, she made no comment. She
may not have noticed, for my words had obviously jolted her.
I see,' she said after at least two minutes of silence. 'That puts a different
light on the whole thing. He's less obvious than some people, I must admit.'
She paused for a few more seconds. Then, 'Joey, I admit it's your own private
business; but are you willing to tell me exactly and truthfully why you
decided to stay down here?'
A negative shake of the head was the answer.
'Or how long you plan to stay?'
Another negative.
'Or even whether you still regard yourself as a Board official?'
Still refusal. I was pretty sure that Joey didn't really care whether Marie
knew the answers to those questions, especially the first one; but, especially
with the first one, he didn't want to tell her himself.
He was coming as close as his personality would let him to telling her to get
out of his hair. Marie, as I
have already said many times, is sharper than I am, in spite of one blind
spot.
She looked at him speculatively after his third headshake, for several
seconds. Then she suddenly turned to me.
'Are you staying?'
Naturally, I didn't know. All I could do was throw the question back at her;
she might be rougher on me than Joey had been on her, but I was ready for it
I hoped.
'Are you?' I wrote.
' A shock wave, not quite painful, hit all of us; I don't know whether she hit
something with her fist or stamped her foot.
'Will you make your own mind up, just this once?' she snapped.
That was unjust, of course. I'm perfectly able to make decisions, and Marie
knows it. She's even admitted it. I just don't like to make them when there's
a shortage of relevant information. She knew perfectly well what information I
wanted, and why, too - she'd just been trying to get the same sort out of Joey
for the same reason.
I made an honest effort to decide without reference to Marie, but I couldn't
do it.
Chapter Twenty-five
On the surface there is sunlight and sound. I hadn't really appreciated either
until recently. Sunlight on trees and lakes, blue sky, red and orange sunsets.
Girls' voices and falling raindrops and laughter and puns.
Down here is the beating of hearts, humming machinery, tapping and thudding of
random activity, but otherwise silence no music, no voices, not even a
tongue click or snapping fingers.
On the surface there is restraint. Every action is conditioned by the
underlying awareness that it may involve a waste of energy which means life.
If someone accidentally shorts a power cell or lets a fire start he feels as
guilty as the Victorian-age girl who misbehaved with her boy friend. The fact
that your wife is dying in a hospital five miles away is a borderline excuse
for using a power vehicle. An air or space flight is considered only in direct
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connection with power acquisition or research projects.
Down here, while there is actually only a slightly larger supply of energy per
person, the difference in attitude is all the world. No one is either worried
or offended that his neighbor has used more than his fair share of energy. I
had winced time after time there in the library as a reader had swum off
leaving his carrel light or reading projector going, with no one else even
noticing the lapse.
And why couldn't there be music here? I hadn't heard any, and singing was
obviously impossible. But stringed instruments should work. They might have to
be modified in design, but they should work.
Electrical ones would certainly be possible. If there weren't any, I could
design them.
Even if there were no girls' voices, there were still girls.
There was a good-looking one only a few feet away, watching us as though she
had some idea of what was going on.
But it was so different. Even with energy restraint gone as far as my
neighbors were concerned, would I
feel comfortable after a lifetime under its rules? Would the thought of the
black, crushing ocean
between me and all I had grown up with loom too large? Or if I didn't stay,
would the thought of what I
might have accomplished down here come too often between me and normal living?
I couldn't decide. Even if I tried to cut out all personal factors - not just
those connected with Marie, but all which by any stretch could be called
selfish I still couldn't.
There was my regular work with the Board. It was useful, even important, and I
liked it. I could do useful work down here, though, and would almost certainly
like it. Reward, to be selfish again, meant little in either place. Wealth as
such has been meaningless since power rationing started, and down here
I had seen no signs of plutocracy. Though admittedly I might have missed them;
I know so little about the place.
Of course, I could learn more. Neither decision was irrevocable. The only
thing that couldn't be changed back had already been done; my coughing reflex
was gone, and I'd have to be careful in eating for the rest of my life no
matter where I lived.
Maybe I could stay now, see more of what life here was like and go back up
later on. After all, there was no reason why the two places couldn't stay in
communication. I looked up and was about to write an answer for Marie when my
thoughts started working again.
Would there be communication? Joey had pointed out excellent reasons why the
Board would not want knowledge of this place to spread, though he hadn't
stated them just that way.
Here was a place where power rationing, however real it might, be
mathematically, simply wasn't a conscious factor in life. The population, as
Marie had said, was like a group of French aristocrats in a world of
Jacquerie. Ordinary morals up above called for a rigid attitude toward energy
use which these people didn't have and probably couldn't understand.
If too many people from the surface visited here and the word about its way of
life spread at all generally, there would be trouble. Even if the spreading
word remained accurate, which was most unlikely, a lot of the outer world's
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