Worlds Apart by J. T. McIntosh Read Free Book Online

Bentley patiently, "that we weren't all nuclear physicists. Then we might know what we were talking about. I told Dick, truthfully, that if we all changed our minds and went all out for atomic energy, pooling all our knowledge instead of suppressing it, nobody alive today would be alive when it was accomplished. Clues don't matter -- they're there already, and Dick has the brains to have seen them. The curious reticence in the microfilm about some substances and processes and lines of research, for example. I hate atomic energy, and everything connected with it. You can trust me to say nothing to Dick that will make the rediscovery of atomics any easier, and quite a lot that may make him less inclined to rediscover it."
    "That shouldn't be necessary," rapped Robertson. "They should have the sense to see that anything we forbid is forbidden for their own good."
    Bentley sighed. He was only a little less equable than Brad. But he had come as near as he ever did to losing his temper. "If it ever comes to open dissension between the young people and us," he said, "they'll win. Because, as a group, they have more sense than we have."
    Robertson was on his feet, raging. "Is that a personal insult to me?" he demanded.
    "Well, if when stupidity is mentioned, you take it as a personal insult," observed Bentley, "it probably is."
    That was the end of that meeting.
    2
    Rog had two rooms tacked on to the end of his father's house. There was no way from one part of the building to the other -- old Bob Foley had walled it up.
    June was in one of the rooms, sewing. Rog gently prodded the door shut before he turned to Toni.
    "Do you want the whole story, Toni?" he asked. "Or will you have it in a nutshell?"
    Toni leaned back and tensed sundry muscles. She wasn't making any conscious effort to be seductive; she couldn't help it. "Something between the two," she suggested. "I want to know what's behind this, whatever it is. You said it was something wild enough for me, that I might do but no one else."
    "That's it. You like John Pertwee, don't you?"
    She grinned. "What girl doesn't? A few men have that -- something. Other men make dirty cracks about it because they're jealous. They pretend it's all physical, that the man who has it is just sort of prize bull. But they don't know . . . Yes, I like John. I always did. So?"
    "So why not marry him?"
    Toni wasn't a genius, but her intelligence was quick. "You're crazy," she said instantly, but kept her eyes on Rog, waiting for him to prove he wasn't.
    "No. I think Pertwee's the man you've been looking for all your life. Only you wouldn't took there because of a silly law."
    "Maybe -- but how do you get round the fact that I can't possibly marry him? Do you search for all the impossible things, Rog, and try to make people do them?"
    "Yes, if there's any purpose in it. There is in this. Toni, you know we're fighting the Constitution. It's wrong, and we want to change it. By 'we' I mean, broadly, all our generation, and particularly those who occasionally think. That includes you."
    "Thanks. I'm with you, moderately. But why not just wait a few years till we can vote the changes?"
    "Three quarters majority? That's the Constitution, you know."
    "Well, a few more years."
    "Why not wait until we're all dead and then we don't have to bother doing anything at all? No, Toni, I don't undervalue patience. Sometimes it's essential. But if a thing is wrong, /now/ is always the time to change it. Like the three quarters majority. That was all right for the founders, all the same age, with the same experience, with the same goals. Now it has to go. As things are, it just stops all change, all progress . . . "
    June tooked in. "Can I come in?" she asked, looking uncertainly at Toni.
    "Sure thing," said Toni, with her friendly grin. June had Rog, whom Toni had wanted, but Toni had never acquired the habit of bearing malice.
    However, June was looking at Rog. He considered the matter carefully. "No, June," he said at