Quaker Meeting was not exactly like a regular church service. There was no minister, and there were no songs or readings. The people filed in quietly and took the pews and seats. They sat in silence.
After a while, one of the men of the community stood. “We live in perilous times,” he said. “The world is becoming more difficult. It is good to find refuge in the field and forest. I pray to the divine spirit that is within all of us that our effort will be successful. We hope to achieve an island of peace that will endure though troubles come elsewhere. I see it being realized, but I don’t know whether it is enough. May amity and fellowship prevail throughout.” He sat down again.
Later another person stood, and spoke of the beauty of the day and the countryside, and the joy of the experience of harmony with nature. Another person did not stand, but leaned forward and spoke a prayer for peace in all the world.
Bry wasn’t sure what to make of it. This was a religious service? It seemed like a meditation session, with occasional comments thrown in. Yet he rather liked the atmosphere. There was a certain quiet good humor throughout. These people were quite serious, without taking themselves too seriously.
In due course the meeting ended, and people chatted with each other. Jes discovered an old friend of hers named Crockson. “I must repay that loan!” she exclaimed.
“What loan?” the man asked blankly.
“Don’t pretend you don’t remember! It enabled me to travel on until I found my husband.”
Bry moved on, not much interested, because he didn’t know Crockson. Faience came up. “What did you think of it?” she asked Bry.
“It’s different, but nice,” he said.
“Like Tourette?”
He laughed. “Maybe so.”
They adjourned to a nice lunch of fresh vegetables that tasted better than anything Bry had eaten recently. “We do our own gardening,” Faience explained. “We can use another gardener, if you’re interested.”
Offhand, Bry could not think of anything he would be much less interested in. But his recent experiences with the hydraulic ram, basket weaving, and Tourette had shaken his certainties. Maybe there would be more surprises. “Okay.”
In the evening there was a song session. The harmonies were not perfect, but were enthusiastic, and Bry found himself joining in as he learned the songs. One especially struck him: ‘The Garden Song.” “Inch by inch, and row by row, Going to make this garden grow.” There was a wholesome optimism that was contagious. “Pulling weeds, picking stones, We are made of dreams and bones.” The image caught hold of him. Dreams and bones—that was indeed what this community was all about. It was personal for Bry, because this community was called Dreams, while the nickname for the other community, where Tourette lived, was Bones. Bry and Tourette, dreams and bones. He had nice dreams, she had nice bones. But it was more than that. Much more.
The next day, Monday, Bry started the day with Ned and Bill, who were trying to design a refinement for the Solar Stirling engine. Bry realized that if he wanted to be of any real use with the computer, he would have to learn to understand the principle of the Stirling engine. But its mechanism was weird; it had a piston, but it wasn’t like a gasoline motor. For one thing, he had heard it was a free piston, connected directly to nothing. How could that accomplish anything?
“Maybe I can help,” Faience said. “I have a general notion, because Dad has explained it to me about half a zillion times. I can tell you what I know while we work on the garden.”
He had forgotten: he had agreed to go to the garden with her. “Okay.”
It turned out that they had a number of gardens, ranging from old-fashioned outdoor dirt to hydroponic. They had to pull some encroaching weeds from a tomato patch without damaging the garden plants. This was reasonably tedious work, which was ideal. While they worked, Faience explained the Solar Stirling engine as she understood it.
“First, you have to understand that it’s an external combustion engine,” she said. “It can run on anything, but we’re using the sun as much as we can. We have huge reflectors set up to focus the sunlight on the engine, making it very hot.”
“I didn’t see those.”
“They’re portable, and made of shiny cloth or foil stretched on frameworks; no point in setting them up until we get the kinks out of the engine. We can also use a series of Fresnel lenses—named for a French physicist—which consist of very thin optic lenses of short focal length layered in concentric rings. We can get square Fresnel lens panels commercially, and they can generate a lot of heat—up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. They’re less sturdy, but resistant to minor pocks or scratching, and much more efficient, and that’s important here where we can’t be sure of intense sunlight.”
She obviously had more than a “general” notion. She was comfortable with terms he had never heard of. “Okay, I understand how a lot of heat can translate into power. A gasoline engine does that. But there the explosions push the pistons, and the pistons push the wheels, ultimately, making the car move. Your Stirling engine has just a loose piston that stays inside. I don’t know what makes it move, and how it can do any work when it does move.”
“Those are easy questions to answer,” she said. “The heat focuses on a chamber and heats the air inside. Actually it’s not air, it’s helium, what we call the working fluid, but you can think of it as air if you want to.”
“Isn’t helium a gas, rather than a fluid?”
She smiled. “Sure it is. But under high pressure at high heat, it acts just about like a fluid, so that’s the technical term. It heats and expands, and pushes the piston out. Then the heat is cut off, and it cools and contracts, and the piston comes back in. So that’s what makes it move. Of course the actual cycle is way more sophisticated, with a regenerator, a piston, which is actually connected to the alternator, not exactly ‘free’ in the way you thought—it’s what we call a ‘kinematic mechanism’—and a displacer, and the pistón and the displacer take turns moving as the helium changes volume and moves about. The displacer is to make sure it doesn’t lock up at the extremes, I think. I could draw you a diagram in the dirt—”
“No, I get the message: it gets hot and pushes the piston out, then it gets cool and pulls the piston back in. But since the piston isn’t connected to anything solid—”
“How does it do any work,” she finished for him. “You’ll kick yourself for this one. You know how they generate electricity from big dams or whatever?”
“They pass iron wiring through magnetic fields. The motion generates electric current that—” He paused, seeing it. “Electricity! The piston generates current. It doesn’t need to go outside the engine; all it needs to do is move.”
“Right. So it moves a tenth of an inch, sixty cycles a second. The helium varies only a few degrees in temperature, at about 670 degrees Celsius, but it does the job. And we have power. Or will, once it is properly set up.”
“What’s the matter with it? Don’t they deliver these things ready to operate?”
“They do, but it seems that the tolerances are extremely close, and it has to be adjusted just right. That’s what Dad’s been working on. He’s checking the computer to get the settings exactly right for the job we have, and, well, he says the devil is in the details.”
“That’s what Ned says, too. They’ll work it out.”
“They’d better. We’re on commercial power now, but when the crash comes, we’ll have to be on our own power.”
“The crash?”
“You know, when society collapses and civilization ends. That’s why were out here. So we won’t be taken down with it, and humanity won’t expire.”
Bry was amazed. “Do you really think that’s going to happen?”
“Oh, sure. We just don’t know when. Isn’t that why you folk are out here? To save your skins?”
“No, just to find decent work and living conditions. We don’t much like it in the big city. But I guess you’re right: We know that things can’t
go on as they are. Something’s going to give, and maybe pretty soon.”
“Yes. So it’s best to be well away from the bomb before it explodes. And not to be dependent on the rest of the world for anything, so we don’t get dragged down with it.”
“Isn’t that a rather selfish philosophy?”
She nodded, unsmiling. “I guess it is. But I don’t see too many others trying to protect themselves either. They find it easier just to ignore the handwriting on the wall.”
“How about the survivalists?”
“Bones. Yes, I guess they are doing it too. But we don’t like their guns. In fact, they make us pretty damn nervous.”
“Why? Aren’t they just trying to be ready to protect themselves?”
“From what? From us? More likely they figure to come in and take what we’ve got.”
Bry was silent, pondering that. It did seem like sheep living next to the den of wolves. “But Tourette—she’s not like that.”
“Yes she is. Ask her.”
“But then why are you friends with her?”
“The crunch hasn’t come yet. So there’s no problem. But when it happens, we won’t be friends any more. We both know that.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Well, you’re half in love with her.”
“I am not! We’ve only dated once.”
She shook her head. “I’m jealous, I admit it. Not of you personally. I knew you weren’t for me. I mean of your relationship. You saw her, and she saw you, and it was like two magnets getting charged. And not just because you’re handsome and she’s pretty, though I guess that doesn’t hurt. I wish I could meet someone and have that happen. I’m a little annoyed I didn’t see it coming, but of course I was afraid you’d be turned off by her syndrome. You said you understood, but I didn’t really believe that. Tourette was almost afraid of you, despite being fascinated. Then when your sister showed her hand—you’ve been waiting all your life for someone like Lin, only who’s not your sister, and there she was. And Tourette—she’s never had a boyfriend. She saw that hand, and she knew. You two were destined for each other.” She looked at him challengingly. “Now tell me it’s not so.”
Bry considered. Could he be in love with Tourette, after just one day with her? And she with him? “I don’t think love happens like that. Fascination, maybe, but not love. Sure I like her. But—”
“What’s the big distinction between fascination and love, except that the one happens fast and the other slow? You two are in mutual orbit, spiraling in together. Maybe if you never see each other again, you’ll get over it. But next week—do you even want me along?”
Bry reconsidered. “I think maybe you’d better be along. If she feels the way I do, we’re in free fall. There’s no telling what might happen.”
“Would it be wrong?”
“Yes! We’re not ready for that. My family may not even stay here, and anyway, if I’m a Dream and she’s a Bone, how can it be?”
“Okay, I’ll be there. But I think you’d better have that Dreams and Bones discussion with her right away.”
“I’d better,” he agreed, with uncomfortably mixed feelings.
The week passed, and with every day it looked more as if the family was fitting in, and would stay. Flo liked the big kitchen, and the community members liked her cooking. Dirk was an all purpose handyman, doing good work. Sam was finding plenty of outdoor hard work to do, the kind he liked, on a crew that Ittai organized, and it was evident that they were making a difference. Ned and Bill were working well together, each appreciating the intellect of the other. Snow and Wildflower and Lin were mixing with the women, doing everything from baskets to painting walls, compatibly. The children loved everything about the community. Faience showed Bry around the rest of the garden area, including the heated greenhouse, which could be kept at over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit if required. It seemed that some of their rare medicinal herbs liked that kind of environment. Only Jes seemed a bit out of sorts, but that might be because she was still adjusting to new motherhood.
But there was no avoiding the fact that the community of Dreams did not like the community of Bones, just as Faience had said. The weekly trips into town to see the movie were the only contact between any members of the two, and that was quiet, perhaps unknown to any but the mothers of the two girls. And to Jack, Lin, and Bry, who were not talking about it. There just might be hell to pay if the news got out.
Saturday came. Jack and Lin did not go; they had other things to do, being well wrapped up in community activities. So it was just Bry and Faience—and Tourette.
This time Tourette wore a skirt and blouse. She was indeed a nice figure of a woman. She had done something with her hair, and looked lovely. This time she wore no visible weapon.
Faience jumped down. “I’ll ride in front, this time,” she said, and climbed into the front seat. That left Bry and Tourette together alone in back. There was a screen separating the front seats from the rear of the van, so they had reasonable privacy.
They closed the door and settled down, leaning against opposite sides, their knees up. Tourette’s skirt fell away below, so that her thighs showed. Bry tried not to look, but failed. Actually the van was dark enough inside so that it was mostly shadow down there, but his imagination ran rampant.
Her very presence made his pulse accelerate. He was suddenly shy. “You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“I think—I think we have to talk,” Bry said.
“Before we do, would you kiss me?”
“If I do that, we may never talk.”
“That’s okay with me.”
Bry came to a pained realization. “You think I’m going to—to break it off?”
“I would, in your place.”
“You think—the syndrome? That’s not—”
“Please. Before we get into it. Then I will listen, and there will be no trouble. I promise.” She looked at him, beseechingly.
He moved across, kneeled, and kissed her. The van lurched at that moment, and he caught only half her mouth before he fell over. But she joined him on the floor, laughing. Lying there, they kissed again, hard and long.
Then, embraced, they remained there. Her body against his was wonderful. He felt the motion of her breast when she breathed. “Faience says it’s love,” he murmured.
“She may be right.”
They kissed again. Then she spoke. “I’m not apt at this. I have no experience in romance. But the way I feel—maybe it’s better to be clumsy than silent.” She took his hand and set it on her thigh where the skirt rode up. “Anything you want, Bry. Please.”
“Oh, Tourette, I want everything. I think you’re the greatest girl. But—”
“I know. Two different worlds.”
“We’re—we’re joining the pacifists. Do your folk really go armed all the time?”
“Yes. And we are trained to use our weapons.”
“But you aren’t—”
“Yes I am. Here.” She guided his hand up under her left arm. There, next to her breast, was a flat holster. “Knife. In this outfit, a gun’s too hard to conceal.”
“Why did you dress this way, then?”
“For you. Because I wanted to look nice for you. And to make it possible for you to do anything you might want to do with me. But I still had to be armed.”
“For self-defense,” he said. “Because it’s not safe for a girl alone.”
“You understand?”
“My eldest sister got raped. And my brother’s wife, too. And—well, Lin needs protection. My sister Jes is always armed, even now with her baby.”
“But you can’t be that way, in Dreams.”
“But I don’t mind if you are. I mean, each person makes his own decision, doesn’t he?”
“No. At Bones, you train in martial art. You go armed. Always. Even when sleeping.”
“So if I visited, I’d have to have a gun, or something?”
“Yes.” Sh
e moved his hand across her blouse, so that it touched her warm breast. “Anything you want, Bry. But I am what I am.”
“You mean you think I’ll dump you, but you’ll give me everything anyway?”
“Yes. Now, while I can. I think I love you.”
“I think I love you, too. But I know these things take time. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. My brother’s first wife was beautiful, but—it just takes time. Maybe I should meet your father, or something.”
“No. He would see to it that I never saw you again.”
“Oh, Tourette, I couldn’t bear that!”
“He may find out anyway. He has ways of knowing. I love him, but he’s a hard man. I don’t mean he’s bad; he’s tough but fair. Mom can stand up to him, but I can’t. So this may be our only chance. I hope not, but I don’t want to gamble.”
“You want—to have sex—because you may never see me again?”
“Please. I might twitch a bit, but that will pass. As I said, I dressed to make it possible.”
She had actually planned for this! Yet he balked. How much of this was love, and how much was desperation, if she thought she would never again be with a man? Any man? “I can’t do that. I must see you again.”
“You don’t know. Dad’s away now, but when he returns in a few days, he’ll know. Then I won’t go to town any more.”
“But don’t you have any choice?”
“Not in such a case. We—we aren’t a democracy, Bry. My father is the headman. What he says, goes. I will have the chance to embarrass him only once.”
“If you don’t come out,” Bry said with sudden resolve, “I will go in to find you.”
“Oh, Bry, don’t do that! You have no idea! Please, just love me and let me go, if that’s how it has to be.”