We walked past the body jigs. The air was a haze of blue smoke, punctuated with yellow splashes of flame from the electronic welding guns. Terms scuttled like gigantic spiders over the great silver hulls, their antennae glowing in a pattern of swift bright harmony, right on standard, good cost. Harvey's face was rapt as he watched them. I said harshly:

"Give me your third Production Axiom."

Harvey's shoulders squared. He said stiffly: "Beauty is functional. The quintessence of grace is the clean, soaring beauty of a spaceship's hull—"

"Extrapolate, Harvey."

His lips were tight. "What I see is ugly. Terms must be taught individuality. What I see is a fascinating, deadly beauty—deadly because it's useless. We must sublimate it, grind it down, hammer it out into a useful pattern. Waste motion is a sin...."

"Excellent."

We turned into the administration lift, leaving the iron roar behind us, and on the way up Harvey didn't say a word. I listened for the tinkle of shattering ideals, and said patiently, "You're here to build spaceships. To build them better and cheaper than Consolidated or Solar. Hell, we've even set up a village for the Terms! Electricity, plumbing, luxuries they wouldn't normally enjoy for the next million years—"

"Will they fire him?" Harvey's voice was flat.

My temper was shredding. "Four-day layoff. His third this month. Terms kick in most of their salary for village maintenance. They can't afford a part-time producer."

I could see that Term read out of the gang, leaving the company village, stoically, while his fellows played a wailing dirge of color on their antennae. The farewell song. I could see him trudging over the windswept peak of Cobalt Mountain, staring down at his native village, and shaking with the impact of the Stammverstand, the tribe-mind, the ache and the longing. A wheel, shaken out of orbit. The lonely cog, searching for its lost slot. I could see that Term returning to his tribe. And how they'd tear him to pieces because he was a thing apart, now, an alien.

We walked down the gray corridor, past Psych, past the conference hall, to the silver door marked Methods and Standards. Harvey's blue eyes were remote, stubborn. I clapped him paternally on the shoulder. "Anyone can call one wrong, lad. Forget it."

 Prev. P 2/19 next