For Us, the Living Page 5

  “Diana, is the United States a socialism now?”

  “Why no, not if by socialism you mean government ownership of the factories and stores and farms and such. New Zealand has that kind of a government and I believe it works pretty well, but I don’t believe it would be suited to the American temperament. But see here, Perry, I’m no economist. I’ve got a pal at the University of California who is. I’ll get him to run up here in a day or two after you’ve studied up on history a little and he will be able to answer all of your questions. Which reminds me. If you are to have those recordings tomorrow, I had better order them.” She stepped to the communicator. Perry heard her calling the University of California at Berkeley.

  “Will you be able to order at this time of night?” he enquired.

  “Probably not, not without paying an excessively high bonus. I’ll simply set for recorded message and they will get the order first thing in the morning.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Either one of two ways. I can have my voice recorded, or write with the telautograph. Want to see the telautograph work, Perry?”

  He stepped over to her side. “They haven’t changed much.”

  “Do you mean to say that you could telewrite in 1939?”

  “Uh huh. They weren’t used much, but I remember seeing one in the Union Station in Kansas City. It was used for train orders.”

  “Hm—, maybe our mechanical marvels aren’t going to surprise you as much as I had thought.”

  “I’m sure I’ll find plenty to amaze me. But remember, Dian’. I was an engineer albeit in 1939. I take it you are an artist primarily. I may not be impressed at the things that you expect will impress me.”

  “That’s probably true.” She wrote slowly with the telautograph, stopping several times to think. Finally she signed it and closed the machine. “That will do for now. I’ve ordered a general catalog too so that you can pick out any records you may be interested in.”

  “Do you buy these records?”

  “No, not unless you want to. There is a small charge for using them. If you find you want to keep a record permanently, you can pay for it and keep it.”

  “Do you have any here?”

  “Oh yes, but not very many except for my professional library. I have quite a number of those, recordings of my own dances of course and a lot more of every sort of dancing. Most of the others are story records, just for amusement. Want to see some of them?

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll show you how to use the receiver as a reproducer at the same time. Now watch. This is the adapter switch. Turn it to ‘rep’. Then you put the record in like so and fasten the end of the film with this catch. Then press the power button. No, don’t do it yet. You control the volume of sound with this dial. Now push the power button.” The machine whirred softly and the large screen came to life. A fool in motley appeared and laughed sardonically in their faces.

  “Hi, brother fool,” he shouted, “You want another of Touchstone’s tales? Then gather round and attend me well. Touchstone Tells the Tale! Many, many years ago in ancient Greece there lived a wench of monstrous humor.” A large hook appeared from the side of the screen and settled about the jester’s middle. His grin changed to dismay and broke into a thousand pieces, reformed and spelled Lysistrata: A Comedy of Manners. Diana noticed Perry’s reflex of recognition.

  “You know it then?”

  “Yes. Oh yes.”

  “Shall I turn it off?”

  “No. Please don’t.” For the next hour they laughed and chuckled over the ageless farce of marriage and war. Perry was particularly delighted to recognize Diana among the Grecian wenches, and pointed out his discovery with a glee. Diana looked pleased, but protested when Perry insisted in whispers that Diana should have had the leading role.

  Presently the play came to its rollicking finish, and the machine clicked to a stop. Perry found Diana smothering a yawn. She made a face at him. “Sorry, but I was up earlier than you were.”

  “I’m sleepy myself.”

  “Ready for bed?”

  “I think so. Where do I sleep?”

  “Anywhere you like. Where you were last night is as good as any.”

  Perry accepted the suggestion and made himself comfortable on that part of the couch. Diana lay down across the room, called out a languid goodnight, and with as little ceremony as a cat, curled up and appeared to fall at once to sleep. Perry lay on his back, eyes closed but head seething with confused impressions and idea sequences, each demanding immediate attention. Sleep seemed impossible but nevertheless in a very few minutes he sank into the soft warm glow that precedes it. Soon he was breathing slowly.

  A scream of terror cut through the room. Diana sat up and switched on the light. Perry was sitting up also, his eyes staring, horrified. She ran to his side. “Perry, Perry, my dear. What happened?” He clung to her hand.

  “I was falling. It seemed like I landed here in the dark. I’m all right now. It was just a bad dream.”

  “There. There. It’s all right.” She soothed and comforted him. “Just wait a minute. I’ll leave the light on.” She left him and returned quickly with a cup of the same steamy, spicy mixture that he had drunk the night before. “Now drink this slowly.”

  He touched her hand. “Dian’, I know I’m being a baby, but will you stay with me for a little?”

  “Of course, Perry.”

  When he finished his drink, she lay down beside him, put her arms around him, and rested his head on her breast. “Now just relax and be quiet. You’re safe and I won’t leave you.” In a very few minutes he was sleeping peacefully. Diana held him a little while longer then gently uncurled herself and sat up. She massaged the pins and needles out of her arm and watched Perry’s face. After a long time she bent over and kissed him quickly and softly on the lips. He smiled without wakening. Then she returned to her place on the couch. Now it was her turn to have trouble wooing sleep. Why had she kissed him? It was a silly thing to do. She wasn’t in love with him. Of course not. She didn’t know him and didn’t feel any strong physical attraction for him. One didn’t fall in love with savages anyhow. And that was just what he was, essentially. He hadn’t acted like a savage though. Nevertheless, anyone brought up in the first part of the twentieth century couldn’t possibly be a fit companion for a girl nowdays. He would be sure to be emotionally unstable. He was unstable; that crying out in the night proved it. He hadn’t anything to fear. But suppose I had just fallen to my death, she thought. He wasn’t dead. No, but he thought he was. No, he didn’t either. It was very confusing. He had looked so hurt and lonesome. Then when he went to sleep he looked so young it had made her melt. That was why, just sympathy, just the way she had kissed the top of Captain Kidd’s furry cap after she cut a thorn out of his paw. Just sympathy. But why had she urged him to stay until he got oriented? There were institutions for that, quite capable and better equipped than she was. Oh damn, why hadn’t she turned Captain Kidd in when he first came mewing at the door and demanding attention? Diana, you’re a fool and any animal or child or man or woman that wants to can move you right out of your own home. Hadn’t she built this house for privacy? Hadn’t she come here so she could take out her soul and examine it in private? And now how could she? What interesting eyes he had. Yet he didn’t look at her, except to meet her gaze. Didn’t he think she was pretty? Could she be getting old? Were the women in 1939 more beautiful than they were today? Or would he think so? But then what if he did? Certainly she was not interested.

  Diana got up and fixed herself a cup of the sedative, drank it, sought a new place on the couch, arranged herself in a ball and fell asleep.2

  2 Diana grew up in a transport car. Both of her parents were interested in her and liked her and she, fortunately or perhaps in consequence, felt a warm affection and respect for them. Both her father and mother preferred the more casual hit-or-miss training that a child receives from interested parents to the presumably more scientific, certain
ly more systematic, training a modern child receives in our development centers. Her father had spent most of his active life in food technique. He was a man of considerable imagination and great talent in organization. Several of our present home comforts can be attributed in whole or in part to his effort. He invented the autotherm food container and induced others to develop it to the point that we now have it, cheap enough to use and throw away. Nearly forty years ago as an assistant engineer for the Cuisine Company (a forerunner of Universal Foods) he started the first agitation for natural texture in synthetic proteins. He left this company and founded Ambrosia, Ltd., while still a very young man, in order to permit two synthetic chemists to use all the credit they liked in their laboratory. The results we meet every day at dinner—sausages that have never seen a pig and soup stock that grew in a test tube.

  His energies were not confined to food. His bitter controversy with Polenski over the merits of dry point etching and the current acid thermal process is remembered by all devotees of that esoteric art. His assertion that the modern man is better fitted physically, mentally, and emotionally to cope with the wilderness barehanded than his savage ancestors caused a storm of argument which reached a dramatic climax in his year of practical experiment on an uninhabited South Pacific island. He took Diana with him on this adventure, a slim girl-child of ten. His triumphant return, a modern Crusoe, hale, hearty, and filled with boasts is known to every romantic boy and was the basis for a flood of story records, written, directed and acted by lesser men.

  Diana’s mother was less spectacular but equally important in the development of the girl’s character. She was a surgeon, of a line of surgeons and healers. Calm and cool, with large slender bony hands, more expressive than her placid face, she seemed detached from her surroundings and fully alive only when those delicate sensitive fingers were cutting the line between life and death. Although it was the father who encouraged the child to dance, it was the mother who insisted that she persevere in her studies until she produced a worthwhile result, a technique of her own.

  Diana grew up with first one, then the other, of these assorted progenitors and occasionally with both when their several occupations permitted family life. Her mother selected the instructional records for the child’s formal primary education and cultural orientation. Her father supplemented this with little excursions to cultural and industrial centers to make concrete what she learned from the recordings. On her mother’s insistence Diana lived for two years in a development center during her adolescence in order that she might experience the practical realities of social self government and understand the background of a large portion of the population.

  Ideal or not, Diana flourished in this environment and grew up, not only strong and healthy, but with a mind agile and uninhibited, a temperament sunny and free from boredom, a memory packed with a wide variety of information and skills arranged in reasonably efficient integration. The possible flaw in her character, if flaw it were, lay in her quick emotional sympathy, the ease with which she felt the pain and sorrows of others. It prevented her from following in her mother’s career as a surgeon, as she could not manage the detached viewpoint necessary to protect the surgeon from the emotional impact of the suffering she treated. This joint in her armor led her too easily into emotional relationships, especially with the opposite sex. In her late teens she suffered a severe hurt through a love affair with a young poet, who was ill with a cycloid neurosis probably psychotic in character. He became obsessed with her dancing and took his own life while watching the climax of one of her emotional numbers. It is easy of course to say that he should not have been at large, but the reader knows as well as the writer that our preventive diagnoses are not infallible and that we cannot afford to take the risk of violating the customs on which our liberty is based.

  In any case the results were very nearly disastrous to Diana. The physical effects were naturally pronounced in a character such as hers, hysterical gastritis, disordered metabolism of course; but the mental disturbance was intense. An immediate introversion, excessive timidity, and a terror of dancing were the gross symptoms. Her father dropped what he was doing and hurried to her, where he argued with the healers over her treatment, created a bedlam, and finally snatched her away to subject her to an uproarious picaresque six months that left her no time to think. Toward the end of the time, an unimaginative handsome young animal coaxed her back into a normal sex life. She quickly tired of him, and he of her, and she awoke one morning to find herself completely cured, and anxious, not only to dance, but to enjoy the world and the people in it.

  Her illness may not have improved her dancing, but it widened her horizon. Although still strongly interested in dance, and firmly believing it to be the most living and personal of all the arts, she now found herself not only cured, but grown up, with an alert interest in all life, all knowledge, the whole cultural pattern. But her reputation as a dancer grew even as it became to her more and more a means whereby she had the opportunity to enjoy more fully the myriad other aspects of living.

  The Author

  IV

  Diana awoke the next morning with a feeling that it was going to be a nice day. She stretched and yawned contentedly. As she sat up her eyes fell on Perry, tousle-headed and still sleeping. She sat still and then a smile stole over her face. Of course, that was it. She was no longer obsessed by the doubts and forebodings of the previous night. It seemed right and proper and very much fun to be helping a lost boy to find himself. Humming quietly she entered her refreshing room and prepared for the day. Perhaps she took a little longer with her hair-do than usual. In any case it was several minutes and a few more before she emerged pink and glowing into the living room. She glanced at Perry, and assured herself that he still slept, then quietly commenced preparations for breakfast. She was interrupted shortly by a voice behind her.

  “Good morning.”

  “Oh, you startled me. Good morning, Perry. Did you have a good night’s sleep?”

  “Yes, but say—you look gorgeous!”

  Diana blushed and dropped her eyes. “Don’t try to flatter me.”

  “But you do.”

  “Is it the custom of your time to make such direct personal compliments?”

  “Why, yes. Isn’t it nowdays?”

  “Well—, yes, if you wish and it’s deserved.”

  “I think you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “But—Oh, bother. Hurry up and refresh yourself. Breakfast will be ready before you are.”

  Perry laughed, and ducked into the guest’s refreshment chamber. Diana went determinedly ahead with her work. She mistakenly put a quantity of flour instead of tea in the steeper, turned boiling water over it, then stamped her foot and said ‘bother’ again, before washing out the pasty mess. Perry stuck his head into the room.

  “Dian’!”

  “Yes, Perry?”

  “Is there some way I can shave around here? My face is a sight.”

  “There is a capillotomer in my ’fresher. You can plug it in yours.”

  “What’s a catillopomer?”

  “Not a catillopomer, a capillotomer, a hair cutter.”

  “Will it shave?”

  “Smooth as a baby. Here, I’ll get it for you.” She fetched it and showed him how to use it.

  “Why, it’s the old dryshaver, streamlined and with a college education.”

  “It’s old fashioned all right, but I don’t care much for depilatories. Quit playing with it and shave. I’m about to serve.”

  “In a jiffy.”

  “All right, as long a jiffy isn’t over five minutes.”

  Breakfast was a dream of Hedonism. Clear winter sunshine crowned the snow on the far mountains. A light breeze made lacy patterns of the falls. Inside the glass screen two hungry healthy young people looked at each other over cups of steaming black tea and found the other in every way pleasant to look upon. In the background an orchestra in Honolulu played softly and substitut
ed for conversation. Presently the toast was gone and with it the poached eggs and fruit cup.

  Diana got up and put out her cigarette. “Your education begins today, my lad. Are you ready?”

  “I’ve polished an apple for teacher.”

  “That sounds nice. Now for works. Let’s pick out a few books. Here—yes, and this will do. And I mustn’t forget the Customs. I wonder where I put it. Oh, here it is. And you might be interested in this—it’s mostly engineering. Now let’s see if the records have arrived.” She stepped over and opened the receptacle. “Yes. Let’s see what Santa Claus brought: ‘Historical Panorama of the United States, sections 11-20, XXth Century, sections 21-28, XXIst Century’, plus supplements to date and a continuous narrative summary. Integrated world history in four sections. You won’t need the first two sections but you might run them anyway. ‘Illustrative Customs for Children, infancy to puberty’, in six sections. Same for adolescents, and the integrating series for full citizenship. ‘Taboo: a History of Social Conventions’. That will keep you busy for quite a while and you can pick out anything you are interested in from the general catalog. There is a list of special catalogs in the front of the big catalog. If you want to go after any particular subject, you can get its catalog. By the way did I show you how to stop the reproducer and make it repeat a portion?”

  “No, I don’t think you did.”

  “I’ll show you. It’s useful in study, especially for a slow poke like me. You’ll find that this particular historical series makes several references to this book of United States history. You can stop the machine if you like and read the reference and then pick up where you left off. I’m glad they sent this series. They were directed by the same master who wrote the book.”