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locked in their filthy dungeon. Once was to try. If it got serious, well then, I could turn my attention to the
serious side of life.
It could be worse being right than being wrong, I said, absently intruding into the conversation another
thread of thought I'd been working on.
No, she said. She knew what I meant. She'd thought, too. She'd been thinking for years.
Mike Sobieski's dream died with Lindquist, I said. The human race can't have the stars. Not the way
he wanted it."
You're a member of the human race, she told me.
I wonder."
We'll adopt you."
Because you need me. Big deal. All these years an outcast, and then, Come back, Harker all is
forgiven. I don't even have to forgive. I don't get the choice. It's you that hands out the labels. Human,
schizo."
When you pilot that ship, said Jenny, you're human. You're carrying Mike Sobieski, and you're
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carrying me."
Are you sure? I said. Are you sure that come next year, or the year after, both you and Mike might
not sit down and think: the road to the stars isn't open. It's as firmly shut as it was before FMA was ever
thought of. Only madmen can go to the stars. Only our filth and our vermin. Do we really want that? Can
the human race really permit the stars to be polluted as the Earth was polluted before we invented places
like Block C? Do we really want the stars on those terms? Isn't that the way it'll be when the truth does
eventually leak out? What happens when they begin to line up for their tickets to the stars and they find a
notice on the ticket office saying schizoids only? Are you sure that when I come back from Proxima
Centauri and I say Hello, how are you, I've just conquered the stars, you won't hate me for it? Are you?"
I'm sure, she said.
And how many others?"
I don't know."
Quite."
It doesn't matter."
Listen to you. Like hell it doesn't matter. You could turn around in ten years time to the assembled
ranks of your starmen, culled from the finest asylums in the country, and you could say: Sorry, boys, the
taxpayer has decided that if his little boy can't be a spaceman he's damned if he'll let some punk out of a
funny farm be one either. We can probably channel you into sewing mailbags and making road signs,
provided that you put up with the environment provided. Otherwise, we could shoot you. How d'you
feel?"
That's childish, she said.
Precisely, I said. That's why it's such a real possibility. Have you seen your local taxpayer recently?"
Have you?"
No. But I have seen that scientists never consider the consequences of their actions. Not the real
consequences. Think of the silly bastard who invented the wheel."
Now you're simply retreating into foolishness."
I finished eating, and I put the knife and fork down very carefully.
That's right, I said. Put to flight by contemplation of the enormity of it all."
She poured me a drink and offered it to me. I shook my head, and she sipped it herself instead.
If I come back, I said, will you marry me?"
What would that prove? she said. Either way?"
I didn't know. I didn't press for an answer, either. At that particular moment in time, it was a pretty silly
question anyway.
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You might wish you were wrong, I said. You might."
Harker, she said, you're a fool. I hope with all my heart that you come back. And if you come back,
we win as well as you. Some of them might hate you, but since when has that been new? No matter how
much they hate you, we can't afford not to make use of you. We need the stars."
Don't we all? I said. Don't we all?"
Cage of Darkness
Time Isn't onMySide
The men who live in Block C didn't voluntarily shoot themselves full of cocaine or chew peyote in order
to give themselves a special kind of experience. They weren't momentarily dropped from the routine of
life like the victims of diseases or car crashes. They were put into their present circumstances as a
punishment (adebt to society).
They have been giventime . Somebody else's time. Their own time has been taken away from them, in
order to pay that debt. (What does society do with the debts they collect? When is the big payoff?) Mind
you, it could be that fair exchange is not robbery (courts don't commit crimes), and the time the
Canaanites are given is equal in value to the time that is taken away from them. How can you measure it?
(No one in Canaan has a watch.)
The men in the deep cage aren't the only ones who make big deals in time, of course. Look around you,
at the civilized world. Are most of those people selling their labor, selling their skills, their talents, their
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