CV

28

On days when he had business in the passenger section, Higpen usually managed to drop in on Newland for an hour or so. Once or twice they had lunch or dinner together. Hal Winter was always present on these occasions, and sometimes a young couple, Julie Prescott and John Stevens, who had been in the hospital at the same time as Newland.

At first Higpen made allowances for their recent illness, but as time went by he grew more and more uneasy. There was something odd about all three of them; he was sure that Winter scented it too.

He told himself that part of the problem was that he simply did not care for John Stevens: he was too perfectly polite, too charming, and at the same time too ironic—the sort of young man Higpen instinctively mistrusted. He felt more sympathetic toward Julie Prescott, who seemed to be making an effort to be more cheerful than she felt. But it was the change in Newland himself that disturbed him most. Newland was as gracious as ever, his conversation as fascinating, but Higpen had the eerie impression many times that he was playing a role. Furthermore, among the three of them there seemed to be some unspoken understanding, some secret agreement that excluded both him and Hal Winter.

Once, when they were alone together for a moment, he said, “Paul, how are you feeling?”

“Very well. I’m all right.”

“No aftereffects?”

“No. Not physical ones, at any rate. A philosophical fallout, maybe.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s hard to explain. The other day I woke up thinking about an exchange I had with a young woman in the audience at one of my lectures. That was, oh, four or five years ago, in San Diego. I don’t know why I suddenly remembered it. She stood up and asked me why I thought it was important to build cities in space, or for that matter in the ocean. We already had cities on land, she said; why not spend the money to make them better?”

He smiled at Higpen. “Well, I put her down with two or three well-chosen phrases. I said that we hadn’t got where we are by settling for what we had. We’ve always been an exploring animal; we’ve gone everywhere it was possible for us to go, and done everything it was possible for us to do. That’s what made us great, I said.”

“Good.”

“Yes, and she sat down, but the other morning I seemed to hear her voice saying, ‘Why do we have to be great?’ And I couldn’t think of the answer.”

“Well,” said Higpen uncomfortably.

“You see, you can’t think of it either.”

Hal Winter came back into the room and sat down. “Hal, maybe you can tell us—why do we have to be great?”

Hal looked wary. “Great in what way?”

“You know, building pyramids, climbing Everest, going into space.”

Hal crossed his legs. “Lots of people don’t.”

“No, that’s true, but think where we were a hundred thousand years ago and where we are now.” He turned to Higpen. “Do you remember the Tasaday?”

“In the Philippines? Yes.”

“A little tribe, what was it, about twenty people, absolutely isolated in the jungle. They were still living in the Stone Age. They didn’t know there were any other people in the world.”

“I remember.”

“And you know what? They were happy.”

“They didn’t know any better.”

“No. They didn’t. Something else I remember—it’s funny how these things come back. An anthropologist once figured out that the Australian aborigines, before the white people came, had to work about ten hours a week, hunting and gathering. The rest of the time they could sit around and tell stories.”

“So? They were naked savages.”

“Yes, that’s right. And they were happy. I used to know a man who had lived with the Eskimos in Alaska, and he said that in the villages where they hadn't had much contact with the white people yet, they were the happiest people he had ever known.”

“Paul, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“I don’t know myself, but I just began to wonder, the other morning, what’s wrong with being happy?”