Part 5 (1/2)
Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave the impression that he would respond politely when spoken to, but that he was busy with activities that kept him remote from stowaways.
About noon, s.h.i.+p-time, she asked;
”When will we get to Orede?”
Calhoun told her absently, as if he were thinking of something else.
”What--what do you think happened there? I mean, to make that tragedy in the s.h.i.+p?”
”I don't know,” said Calhoun. ”But I disagree with the authorities on Weald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins.”
”Wh-what are blueskins?”
Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly.
”When lying,” he said mildly, ”you tell as much by what you pretend isn't, as by what you pretend is. You know what blueskins are!”
”B--but what do you think they are?” she asked.
”There used to be a human disease called smallpox,” said Calhoun. ”When people recovered from it, they were usually marked. Their skin had little scar-pits here and there. At one time, back on Earth, it was expected that everybody would catch smallpox sooner or later, and a large percentage would die of it. And it was so much a matter of course that if they printed a description of a criminal, they never mentioned it if he were pock-marked--scarred. It was no distinction. But if he didn't have the markings, they'd mention that!” He paused. ”Those pock-marks weren't hereditary, but otherwise a blueskin is like a man who had them. He can't be anything else!”
”Then you think they're--human?”
”There's never yet been a case of reverse evolution,” said Calhoun.
”Maybe pithecanthropus had a monkey uncle, but no pithecanthropus ever went monkey.”
She turned abruptly away. But she glanced at him often during that day.
He continued to busy himself with those activities which make a Med s.h.i.+p man's life consistent with retained sanity.
Next day she asked without preliminary;
”Don't you believe the blueskins planned for the s.h.i.+p with the dead men to arrive at Weald and spread plague there?”
”No,” said Calhoun.
”Why?”
”It couldn't possibly work,” Calhoun told her. ”With only dead men on board, the s.h.i.+p wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-grid could bring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-stricken living men wouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. They might ask for help, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed on Weald if they were found to be plague-victims. So that would be no good, either! No, the s.h.i.+p wasn't intended to land plague on Weald.”
”Are you--friendly to blueskins?” she asked uncertainly.
”Within reason,” said Calhoun, ”I am a well-wisher to all the human race. You're slipping, though. When using the word 'blueskin' you should say it uncomfortably, as if it were a word no refined person liked to p.r.o.nounce. You don't. We'll land on Orede tomorrow, by the way. If you ever intend to tell me the truth, there's not much time.”
She bit her lips. Twice, during the remainder of the day, she faced him and opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again. Calhoun shrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. He carefully kept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Weald would willingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that a s.h.i.+pload of miners preferred death to remaining there. It tied in, like everything else that was unpleasant, to blueskins. n.o.body from Weald would dream of landing on Orede! Not now!
A little before the Med s.h.i.+p was due to break out from overdrive, the girl said very carefully;