Unwillingly to Earth (v1.0), page 4
Just the same when I have had enough of it I am coming straight back home.
M’Clare says I will do no such thing.
Great whirling nebulae he cannot keep me on Earth if I want to go! He says On the contrary he has no power to do anything else, my father appointed him my guardian on condition I was to do a four-year course at Russett. Of course if I am determined to return to Excenus Home and Dad rather than make the effort to adjust myself to an Environment where I have not got everyone securely under my thumb there is an easy way out, I have to take a Prelim test in three months and if I fail to make it no power on Earth could get me into Russett, and he would have to send me back home.
We have to start early in the morning so Good Night.
I go to my room, if there was anything I could bite holes in that is what I would do.
I will pass that exam if it takes twenty-eight hours a day, No this is to be on Earth well all the time that they have; I will get into M’Clare’s class and make him Sorry he interfered with me.
What does he take me for? Dad too, he would have sent me to school long ago except that we both knew I would never make the grade.
I am next thing to illiterate, that’s why.
Oh, I can read in a way, I can pick up one word after another as they come up in the machine, but I cannot use it right; Dad is the same.
Dad used to think it was because he learned to use it too late, then when I was old enough to learn he found I was the same, some kink in the genes I suppose. Both of us, we cannot read with the machine any faster than an old-style book.
I did not know this was wrong until I was eleven. Dad hid the booklet came with the machine, then one day I found it, part of it says like this:
It has sometimes been suggested that the reading rate should be used as a measure of general intelligence. This is fallacious. The rate at which information can be absorbed, and therefore the rate at which words move across the viewer, is broadly correlated with some aspects of intelligence, but not with all. Mathematicians of genius tend to read slower than average, and so do some creative artists.
All that can safely be said is that people of normal intelligence have reading rates somewhere above five thousand and that it is exceptional for anyone to pass the ten thousand mark; the few who do are usually people of genius in a narrowly specialized field.
My reading rate is so low the dial does not show, I worked out with a stopwatch it is eight hundred or thereabouts.
I go and ask Dad; it is the first time he ever lets me see him feeling bad, it is all he can do to talk about it at all, he keeps telling me it is Not so bad really he got on all right and he cannot read properly any more than me; he shows me those old books of his all over again.
After this we do not talk about it and I do not want to talk about it now. Not to anyone at all.
That is the longest night I remember in my life, nineteen years of it.
In the morning we go to the Gate. My pals are there seeing me off. I do not cry because I have just found out something makes me so mad I am just waiting to get in the ship and tell M’Clare what I think of him.
Then we go into the ship.
I cannot say anything now we have to strap in for takeoff. The feeling is like being in a Swing stopped at the top of its beat. I cannot help waiting for it to come down, but after a bit I grasp we are up to stay and get unhitched.
In the corridor is a crewman, he says Hello miss not sick? I say Ought I to be?
He asks am I an old traveler? when I say First time up he makes clicking noises to say I am clever or lucky or both.
We are getting acquainted when I feel eyes on my backbone and there is M’Clare.
M’Clare says Hello, Lizzie, not sick?
I say I do not have to pretend he is my uncle any more and I prefer to be called Miss Lee, I will not have a Person like him calling me Lizzie or in fact anything else, as of now we are not Speaking any more.
He raises an eyebrow and says Dear him. I start to go but he hooks a hand round my arm and says What is all this about?
I say I have been talking to that poor sucker come out of hospital and pretending to be my Dad. He is a heartcase thinks he will be cured when he gets to Earth able to get around like anyone else, I know if he could be cured on Earth he could be cured on Excenus 23 just as well, he will simply have to go on lying in bed and not even anyone he knows around, it is the dirtiest trick I ever knew.
Well he is not smiling now anyway.
He asks have I told the man he will not be cured, I say What does he take me for?
He says “I could answer that, but I won’t. You are quite right in thinking that it would do very little good to take a man with a diseased heart to Earth, but as it happens he will not be going there at all.
“Close to Earth,” M’Clare goes on, “there is a body called the Moon with approximately one-sixth the Gravitational pull. There is a big sanatorium on it for men like this one, the rare cases not curable by operation or drugs; they will grow him a new heart and graft it in. Meantime if he cannot live quite a normal life he will at least be able to get out of bed, and probably do some sort of job. This has been explained to him and he seems to think it good enough.”
Sweet spirits of sawdust I have heard of that sanatorium before, why does the deck not open and swallow me up?
I say I am sorry. M’Clare says “What for?”
I say I am sorry I spoke without making sure of the facts.
I do not beg his pardon because I would not have it on a plate.
M’Clare says my father gave him a letter to deliver to me when the ship was under way, he shoves it in my hand and goes away.
It is written with Dad’s styler, he fell on it during the accident and the L went wobbly, what it says is this.
Dear Liz,
About this College, I know when you said I know best you did not mean it, just the same I reckon I do. You got to look at it another way. At my old school when they found I could not use Readers they reckoned I was no good for learning, but they were wrong. There is more to being educated than just books or you could sit and read them at home.
You and I are handicapped same way so we have to use our heads to get over it. All that is in books came out of somebody’s head, well you and I just got to use our own instead of other people’s. Of course there is facts but a lot of books use the same facts over and over, I found that when I started to study.
There is another thing for you, they told me at school I would never be any good for studying but I reckon I did all right.
It is high time you saw some other worlds than this one but I would not send you to College if I did not think you could get through. M’Clare says you have this Flair. We will look forward to seeing you four years from now, don’t forget to write.
Your loving father
J. X. Lee.
P.S. I got a list of books you will want for Prelim School and Charlie had Information Store copy them, they are in your cabin. J. X. Lee.
Poor old Dad.
Well I suppose I better give it a try, and what’s more I better get on with it.
The reels are in my cabin, a whole box of them it will take me a year to get through, the sooner the quicker I suppose.
I am one in sit down in the Machine put on the blinkers and turn the switch.
There is the usual warmup, the words slide on slow at first then quicker then the thing goes click and settles down, the lines glide across just fast enough to keep pace with my eyes. I have picked myself something on Terrestrial Biology and Evolution, I realize suddenly I will be among it in a couple of weeks, lions and elephants and kangaroos, well I cannot stop to think now I have to beat that Exam.
Most of those weeks I study like a drain.
They have cut day-length in the ship to twenty-four hours already. I have difficulty sleeping at first but I adjust in the end. Between reading I mooch around and talk to the crew, I am careful not to be the Little Ray of Sunshine but we get on all right. I go and see the man with the sick heart a few times, he wants to know all about the Moon so I read up and relay as well as I can.
It sounds dull to me but compared to lying in bed I can see it would be a high-voltage Thrill.
He thanks me every day during the whole voyage. I keep telling him we only did it because we wanted someone to impersonate Dad. I think there ought to be ways for people like him to get enough money to go to the Moon, how can you earn it lying in bed? he agrees but does not seem to get ideas very much, I think I will write about it to Dad.
We stop at the Moon to put him down but no time to look round, M’Clare had to be back at Russett day before yesterday. I suppose he lost time picking me up, well I did not ask him to.
Dropping to Earth I am allowed maybe half a second in the control room to look at the screen, I say What is all that white stuff? they say It is raining down there.
More than half of what I see is water and more coming down!
When the Earthbound ask what strikes me most on Earth I say All that water and nothing to pay; they do not know what it means getting water out of near-dry air, condensing breath out-of-doors, humidity suit to save sweat on a long haul. First time on Earth I go for a walk I feel thirsty and nearly panic, on Excenus 23 that would mean Canteen given out rush fast for the nearest house.
They told me it was raining; all the same when we walk out of the ship I think at first they are washing the field from up above. I stand there with my mouth open in surprise; fortunately M’Clare is not looking and I come to quite soon.
Seems all this water has drawbacks too, round here they have to carry rainproofing instead of canteens.
I spend three days seeing sights and never turn on a book.
Prelim school.
Worst is, I do not have a Reader of my own now, only Reading Rooms and I have to keep it private that I read more than two hours a day or someone will catch on and I will be Out before I have a chance to try if what Dad says will work out.
There is more to teaching than books; for one thing Class Debates; these are new to me of course but so they are to the others and these I can take. Man to man with my tutor at least I can make him laugh, he says The rugged unpunctuated simplicity of my style of writing is not suited to academic topics even when leavened with polysyllables end of quote, but it is all these books are getting me down.
In the end I find a system, I read the longest reel on each topic and then the one the author doesn’t like, that way I get Both sides to the question.
Three months and the Exam; afterwards I keep remembering all the things I should have put down until I take a twenty-four-hour pill and go to bed till the marking is over.
I wake up and comes a little blue ticket to say I am Through, please report to Russett College in three days for term to begin.
Well, what am I grinning about?
All this means is four years more of the same and M’Clare added on.
I go for a walk in the Rain to cool off but I keep grinning just the same.
It comes to me as a notion I may not get through Russett term without telling M’Clare all about himself, so I get round and see as much of Earth as I can; more variety than at home.
So then three days are up and here I am in Russett entrance hall with more people than I ever saw in my life at one time.
There are these Speaker mechs which are such a feature of Terrestrial life, all round the room. One starts up in the usual muted roar like a miner at a funeral, it says All students for Cultural Engineering Year One gather round please.
This means me.
Cultural Engineering is not a big department, only fifty of us coagulated round this mech but like I said they come all kinds, there is one I see projecting above the throng so brunet he is nearly purple, not just the hair but all over. What is the matter with him? he looks like the longest streak of sorrow I ever did see.
Well there are other ways to get pushed into this place than through Basic urges thalamic or otherwise, just look at me.
The mech starts again and we are all hanging on what drops from its diaphragm, it says we are to file along corridor G to Room 31 alpha and there take the desk allotted by the monitor and No other.
This we do, even by Terrie standard it is a long hike for indoors.
I wonder what is a Monitor, one of these mechs without which the Earthbound cannot tell which way is tomorrow? Then we are stopped and sounds of Argument float back from ahead.
That settles it, Terries do not argue with mechs and I am conditioned already, it is a way to get no place at all; there is someone Human dealing with the line.
We go forward in little jerks till I can hear, it is one of those Terrie voices that always sound like they are done on purpose to me.
We come round the comer to a door and I can see that this Monitor is indeed Human or at least so classified.
It is only me that this could happen to.
Each person says a name and the Monitor repeats it to the kind of box he carries and this lights up with figures on it. I wonder why the box needs a human along and then I remember, one hundred twenty-four different planets and accents to match, I guess this is one point where Man can be a real help to Machine.
I am glad I saw him before he saw me; I tell him Lee, L. and he looks at me in a bored way and then does a double take and drops the thing.
I pick it up and say Lee, L. in cultivated tones and it lights up just the same; Q8 which means the desk where I have to sit.
The desks are in pairs. When I track Q8 to its lair Q7 is empty, I sit and wonder what the gremlins will send me by way of a partner.
I do not wait long. Here she comes, tall and dark and looks like she had brains right down her spinal column, she will have one of those done-on-purpose voices in which I will hear much good advice when the ice breaks in a month or so. Brother this is no place for me.
She looks straight past my shoulder and does not utter while she is sitting down.
I cannot see her badge which is on the other side. She has what looks to me like a Genuine imitation kor-hide pouch and is taking styler and block out of it, then she looks at me sideways and suddenly lights up all over with a grin like Uncle Charlie’s, saying as follows, “Why, you must be Lizzie Lee.”
I do not switch Reactions fast enough, I hear my voice say coldly that my name is Lee, certainly.
She looks like she stubbed her toe. I realize suddenly she is just a kid, maybe a year younger than I am, and feeling shy. I say quick that I make people call me Lizzie because my real name is too awful to mention.
She lights up again and says So is hers, we ought to found a Society for the Prevention of Parents or something.
Her brooch says B Laydon, she says her first name will not even abbreviate so people here got to call her just B.
I am just round to wondering where she heard my name when she says That stuffed singlet in the doorway is of course her big brother Douglas and she has been wanting to meet me ever since.
Here Big Brother Douglas puts the box under his arm and fades gently away, the big doors behind the rostrum slide open as the clock turns to fourteen hours and Drums and Trumpets here comes Mr. M’Clare.
B Laydon whispers I think Professor M’Clare is wonderful, don’t you?
Brother.
I know M’Clare is going to deliver the Opening Address of the Year to Cultural Engineering students, it is my guess all such comes out of the same can so I take time off for some thought.
Mostly I am trying to decide what to do. Prelim School was tough enough, so this will be Tough2, is it worth it going through that just to show M’Clare I can do it?
Sure it is but can I?
I go on thinking on these lines, such as what Dad will say if I want to give up; I just about decided all I can do is wait and see when suddenly it is Time up, clock shows 15:00 hours exactly just as the last word is spoken and Exit M’Clare.
Some timing I will say.
I look round and all the faces suggest I should maybe have Listened after all.
B Laydon is rapt like a parcel or something, then she catches me looking and wriggles slightly.
She says We have been allotted rooms together, sharing a study, do I mind?
I assume this is because we come together in the alphabet and say Why should I?
She says Well. On the form it said Put down anyone you would like to room with, and she wrote Lizzie Lee.
I ask Did she do this because mine was the only name she knew or does she always do the opposite of what Big Brother Douglas tells her, she answers Both.
O.K. by me anyway.
Our rooms are halfway up the center tower, when we find them first thing I see is a little ticket in the delivery slot says Miss Lee call on Professor M’Clare at fifteen thirty please.
Guardian or no I have seen him not more than twice since landing, which means not more than twice too often; still I go along ready to be polite.
He lets me sit opposite and looks thoughtful in a way I do not care for.
He says “Well, Miss Lee, you passed your qualifying exam.”
I say Yes, because this is true.
He says it was a very economical performance exceeding the minimum level by two marks exactly.
Hells bells I did not know that, marks are not published, but I swallow hard and try to look as though I meant it that way.
M’Clare says the Admission Board are reluctant to take students who come so close to the borderline but they decided after some hesitation to admit me, as my Prelim Tutor considered that once I settled down as a student and made up my mind to do a little work I should get up to standard easily enough.
He says However from now on it is up to me, I will be examined on this term’s work in twelve weeks’ time and am expected to get at least ten percent above Pass level which cannot be done by neglecting most of the work set, from now on there are no summarizing texts to rely on.
