The Complete Stories_ Volume 1 - Isaac Asimov [324]
And she managed a quick and baleful glare at Dr. Sloane.
In one respect, Dr. Sloane had lied. He did not go outside "sometimes." He hadn't been in the open since early college days. True, he had been athletically inclined (still was to some extent) but in his time the indoor ultra-violet chambers, swimming pools and tennis courts had flourished. For those with the price, they were much more satisfactory than the outdoor equivalents, open to the elements as they were, could possibly be. There was no occasion to go outside. So there was a crawling sensation about his skin when he felt wind touch it, and he put down his flexied shoes on bare grass with a gingerly movement.
"Hey, look at that." Richard was quite different now, laughing, his reserve broken down. Dr. Sloane had time only to catch a flash of blue that ended in a tree. Leaves rustled and he lost it.
"What was it?"
"A bird," said Richard. "A blue kind of bird."
Dr. Sloane looked about him in amazement. The Hanshaw residence was on a rise of ground, and he could see for miles. The area was only lightly wooded and between clumps of trees, grass gleamed brightly in the sunlight. Colors set in deeper green made red and yellow patterns. They were flowers. From the books he had viewed in the course of his lifetime and from the old video shows, he had learned enough so that all this had an eerie sort of familiarity. And yet the grass was so trim, the flowers so patterned. Dimly, he realized he had been expecting something wilder. He said, "Who takes care of all this?"
Richard shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe the mekkanos do it."
"Mekkanos?"
"There's loads of them around. Sometimes they got a sort of atomic knife they hold near the ground. It cuts the grass. And they're always fooling around with the flowers and things. There's one of them over there." It was a small object, half a mile away. Its metal skin cast back highlights as it moved slowly over the gleaming meadow, engaged in some sort of activity that Dr. Sloane could not identify.
Dr. Sloane was astonished. Here it was a perverse sort of estheticism, a kind of conspicuous consumption—
"What's that?" he asked suddenly.
Richard looked. He said, "That's a house. Belongs to the Froehlichs. Coordinates, A-3, 23, 461. That little pointy building over there is the public Door."
Dr. Sloane was staring at the house. Was that what it looked like from the outside? Somehow he had imagined something much more cubic, and taller.
"Come along," shouted Richard, running ahead.
Dr. Sloane followed more sedately. "Do you know all the houses about here?"
"Just about."
"Where is A-23, 26, 475?" It was his own house, of course.
Richard looked about. "Let's see. Oh, sure, I know where it is—you see that water there?"
"Water?" Dr. Sloane made out a line of silver curving across the green.
"Sure. Real water. Just sort of running over rocks and things. It keeps running all the time. You can get across it if you step on the rocks. It's called a river." More like a creek, thought Dr. Sloane. He had studied geography, of course, but what passed for the subject these days was really economic and cultural geography. Physical geography was almost an extinct science except among specialists. Still, he knew what rivers and creeks were, in a theoretical sort of way.
Richard was still talking. "Well, just past the river, over that hill with the big clump of trees and down the other side a way is A-23, 26, 475. It's a light green house with a white roof."
"It is?" Dr. Sloane was genuinely astonished. He hadn't known it was green. Some small animal disturbed the grass in its anxiety to avoid the oncoming feet. Richard looked after it and shrugged. "You can't catch them. I tried."
A butterfly flitted past, a wavering bit of yellow. Dr. Sloane's eyes followed it.
There was a low hum that lay over the fields, interspersed with an occasional harsh, calling sound, a rattle, a twittering, a chatter that rose, then fell. As his ear accustomed itself to listening, Dr. Sloane heard a thousand sounds, and none were manmade. A shadow fell upon