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econo-war for years and years!"
"I'll be down in forty minutes," he told her.
Bernswa had several hundred semicities, but Estine did not live in one of
these. Her house stood isolated in a richly forested piedmont. This puzzled
Renson after a few minutes with her, because he could tell she was still the
lover of crowds and swirling activity he had remembered.
"I'm writing a drama," she explained, "and need the isolation of a place like
this."
"A drama?"
"Didn't I ever tell you? Dramaturgy has always been my dream. I still do
occasional news features but I
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give most of my working time to my play. I've been at it for over a year."
Renson nodded slowly. Estine was bright, clever, charming . . . but a
playwright? That hardly seemed likely. She was too much a reporter, too
intrigued by the event to pay much heed to the meanings behind the event. He
doubted if she could create a play worth watching.
"Tell me about yourself, Grap," she demanded gaily. "What brings you here?"
He sat down beside her and described his fruitless efforts to learn why the
econo-war existed.
"Welcome to the fold!" she exclaimed. "You won't find an answer here, but at
least you're among people who share your puzzlement. About the only sensible
thing to say about the econo-war is that it's ridiculous!"
"Which begs the question," Renson remarked glumly.
"Yes, but what else is there to say? The society, as well as the individual,
of the Independency is sane.
It has to appear nonsensical to us that the rest of humanity finds warfare a
normal and desirable condition of life. It's all so frantic and foolish."
He grinned. "You seemed to enjoy it when you were a correspondent."
"Oh, sure, as a reporter," Estine said with a toss of her head. "Life in the
Commonality has a crazy excitement that was fun to write about, and to watch
for a while. It's . . . well . . . have you ever tried writing, Grap?"
"Not the kind of writing you mean just engineering specs and so on. I've
thought if I could solve the mystery of the econo-war, I'd write something
about that."
"Yes, but that's not what I mean. I mean poetry, or fiction, or drama. What is
called creative writing.
Grap, it's next to impossible to write creatively, and interestingly, about
sane people doing sane things!"
Renson thought this over, and finally nodded. "I can see how it would be," he
agreed. "If everybody is sane and reasonable, you don't get much dramatic
conflict."
"That's it, exactly," she said. "And that's why I enjoyed covering the
econo-war. It's also why modern novelists do historical pieces about
Earth-Only days, or else fantasies. I'm not saying sanity is dull
," she giggled, "only that it makes dull fiction compared to Dickens, or
Tolstoy."
"And there is some fiction about the econo-war," Renson put in, wondering why
Estine had sounded defensive when she denied that sanity was dull. "Which may
be roundabout evidence that the econo-war is as anachronistic as Uriah Heap."
She smiled and grasped his hand. "I sensed that you felt that way when I first
met you, Grap. That was one of the things that attracted me to you. And now .
. . welcome to our non-fictionalized society."
"Thanks. Hope I'll fit in."
"Oh, you will," she said with assurance.
* * *
A few days later he went to talk to Ferd Primlay about a job. Primlay was
development director of
Halstayne United Life-Support Corporation, largest producer of life-support
equipment in the
Independency.
"I've not been active in the field for five years," Renson said apologetically
after they had talked for a while, "and that may put me a bit out-of-date."
"Not at all!" glowed Primlay. "You may, uh, even find you're ahead of us in
some respects. We do tend to lag behind Commonality and Federation companies
at times, with them always scrambling for some minor competitive advantage.
Although I must say we do all right, considering our size and position."
Renson nodded. It was all a matter, he thought fleetingly, of what one
considered "all right" to be. The
Halstaynian version of the multifield packet was a cumbersome object, nearly
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two cubic inches in volume and about sixty years out-of-date by Commonality
standards. He had noticed that Estine's packet
actually made a visible lump under her skin when she bent a certain way.
"Perhaps I can help you overcome some of those lags," he said. "Also, there's
an idea I had on the way here. Why not include an emo-monitor in standard
life-support equipment?"
"Hm-m-m. An interesting thought," said Primlay. "I wonder, though, if an
emo-monitor wouldn't be getting us too far away from the basic definition of
'life-support'?"
"I think not. The definition has got broader over the centuries. Life-support
originally meant providing a livable environment for a man in space, either
within a ship, or in protective clothing. In essence, it meant air and
temperature control. Provisions for propulsion and communication were called
by other names.
That distinction was eliminated as it became possible to equip a man for
spaceflight without recourse to ships or special clothing. And, after all,
motion and communication are as fundamental to life as breathing and
maintaining internal pressure, if somewhat less immediately so. An emo-monitor
would seem a logical addition to the communication capabilities of
life-support."
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