Woman on the Edge of Time

“But Connie! The world doesn’t know that. Don’t you see? Let’s go around this way–the bees have been set out today.” They walked through part of the Goat Hill complex, where fish were being raised in solar‑heated tanks and the water fertilized by the fish was used to grow vegetables. Inside the fish domes, men and women, gleaming with sweat, were working wearing only brief shorts. Outside there was a special cooling‑off pool with people splashing and swimming in it. “Instance, a factory makes a product. But that’s not all. It makes there be less of whatever it uses up to make that product. Every pound of steel used we have to account for–whether what’s made is needed and truly desired. It’s a pound less for something else … . Let’s get a bike.”

“You’ll have to pedal for me.” Connie hung back.

“Fasure I’ll tote you like a baby. We’re for Oldtown.” On a two‑seater, Luciente argued over her shoulder a little breathlessly. “A factory may also produce pollution–which takes away drinking water downstream. Dead fish we can’t eat. Diseases or gene defects. These too are products of that factory. A factory uses up water, power, space. It uses up the time, the lives of those who work in it. If the work is boring and alienating, it produces bored, angry people–”

“You didn’t answer me who drugs are tested on. I want to know. Is it criminals?”

“I’m sorry. I started speeching. We volunteer.”

“I’ll bet. That’s what they say about the prisons. They said Claud volunteered for the hepatitis. But for a buck a day, you’d kill your best friend in prison. Because you got no other way to touch money. Everything in the canteen costs. Your family’s in trouble. You want time off. They say maybe you’ll get parole if you go along. So you volunteer.”

“But nobody lacks here. All you get for volunteering is a little prestige. Local councils may give luxury credits or extra sabbatical. Mostly just time off. If enough people won’t volunteer for something, we put it aside. Sometimes people choose such a proj for atoning, but that’s between them and whoever you hurt.”

“Have you ever volunteered?”

“Not for drugs. I don’t like taking drugs, even when I’m supposed to. We don’t use them much. We do co‑op curing, when the healer helps the person firm better habits of minding, better eating or carriage of the spine.” She pedaled at a steady rate. They were cruising past Mattapoisett now, past the weir, and Morningstar, who was loading boxes of pillows and comforters on a boat, stopped to wave. They passed the bridge to Cranberry and pedaled toward the wharves of Oldtown. “I’ve put in for testing new apparatus. Broke my scapula testing a solar airboat. We do admire each other for taking chances for the common good. Everybody is feathered to be admired, how not? More love, more attent. Besides, everybody always yearns for extra time. Life is short and there’s so much to do!”

They left the bike at one of the racks and walked along a path in Oldtown, where the main harbor was. It was a Portuguese village whose main activities were boatbuilding, boat repair, shell‑fishing, and deep‑sea fishing.

“They get up at three or four in the morning when the boats go out, so evening meetings are out for them. They have their meets in the afternoon, so that’s why I have to present a reck at three P.M. Isn’t it beautiful here? Some of these buildings are four hundred years old!”

They had adapted the old buildings, although between them were the same fields and plantings as everyplace else. An old man with a wispy beard was slowly picking blackberries, eating some, putting most in a basket over his withered arm, on what must once have been the lawn of a resort hotel. With him was a child who was eating rather more than picking and singing with him sometimes in unison and sometimes in a bouncy counterpoint, interrupting with questions every few minutes which he slowly answered.

“Why is life short?” Connie asked. “Your old people are healthy, sure, they live with everybody else. But they age. And they die, not much later than we do. Why not live longer?”

“We decided not to try.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The councils. The town meetings. That’s how general questions of direction of science get decided.”

“You mean by people like me? How could I decide if they should build an atom bomb or something?”

“Of course you could decide. It affects you–how not? A rep from the base talks. On the local level for a small proj. But if it’s a major proj–such as research on prolonging life would be–then everybody decides. What it would cost to begin. What it would use up in the way of resources and labor. All that would be set out. What would be consequences on the whole yin‑and‑yang of it, that we could foresee or guess.”

“But how could I know if you’re a good scientist or not? I know nothing from nothing about genetics. By the time I figured it all out, I’d be an old woman.”