Manshape by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page A

rational—maybe like the stems of a climbing plant feeling around for something to latch on to and twine around, without the blindest hint of what it’s doing it
for!”
    “Jorgen!” cried van Heemskirk, appalled, and started forward. He was checked by Uskia.
    “One moment!” she said. “Director Thorkild”—and it was plain from the way she twisted her mouth that she had not yet accustomed herself to speaking politely to a male—“be so kind as to explain what the things are which you compared the Bridge System to: a barnacle and a spider’s web. On Ipewell we haveneither, although certain creatures in our local eco-structure are analogous.”
    “If you know that much,” Thorkild retorted, “what else can I add?”
    A scowl creased Uskia’s flat face. “I know!” she snapped. “But my daughter must know too!”
    She drew the zipper of her tight-stretched shirt down to her waist, and Thorkild saw that the flex from the microphone, held in place by adhesive tape, led to a button-size speaker plugged into her navel, turned inward to address the growing foetus.
    Thorkild tried to prevent himself from grinning, but the muscles strained in his cheeks. Activating the distorter again, he gestured at the magnified images it cast on the bubble wall.
    “See the grayish crowd? They’re emigrants, bound for Platt’s World and Kayowa. Eight thousand a day and-”
    No good. The idea of the speaker plugged into her navel! You can’t start educating them too young!
Wowph!
    And the hooting hysterical laughter began and seemed it would never stop. He managed to force his eyes open three times in succession: once—van Heemskirk looking fit to burst; twice—Uskia, face contorted with rage at the insult he had offered her; thrice—Lancaster Long, looking like the dark angel after whom his planet had been named.
    Then the laughter filled his eyes with tears and blinded him.

V

    In theory all of Earth’s business could for centuries have been conducted at a distance: solido projections could be supplemented even by pheromone synthesisers, which deluded the nose, as well as the eyes and ears, that the other party to the conversation was physically present.
    In practice some deeply-ingrained atavism rendered it, if not strictly necessary, then at any rate desirable, to hold face-to-face discussions. Possibly it was because on the subconscious level, what was to be done acquired a gloss of additional importance if one undertook a journey to discuss it. The sense of purpose during the trip reinforced attention and concentration, even though it might also entrain tiredness.
    Alida Marquis had sometimes wondered—though strictly privately, only aloud to her most intimate friends—whether the speed and ease of travel by Bridge was what made it fundamentally unsatisfying. Few people realised, but it was thanks to her that even starship crews returning to duty had to wait on line in the single vast transit-hall which handled the off-world trade for the entire planet. Earth was rich enough to have built dozens of Bridge Centres, but inorder to preserve at least: a semblance of a “real” journey people were still obliged to make their way by old-fashioned methods to their interstellar departure-point.
    Except, of course, if one happened to work in the Bridge Centre. There, forty worlds were within walking distance. How could such a marvel become a commonplace fact of daily existence? Yet it had, and there was something essentially wrong about the situation. It smelt of crisis. She had tried to explain her forebodings to Thorkild, but he had always evaded the subject, rather as though he were afraid it might compel him to continue to a discussion of Saxena’s fate. In its turn, that would inevitably lead to the question of his relationship with Alida, and she was still reluctant to talk about it To have your lover of a decade kill himself without warning, without appealing for help…
    Well, perhaps her premonitions of disaster