style="font-size:15px;"> “Corruption,” he said, unsteadily. It wasn’t so much the thought that he was going to have to use his bare hands to attack the root-processes as the thought that he was going to have to stand calf-deep in the rising tide of filthy water while he did it. He knew that he would have to snap one of the slimmer rootlets, and the thinnest ones were all close to ground-level.
He looked down at Steven, who was lying on his back like a stranded beetle, kicking his legs and screaming as if he were about to burst.
“All right,” he said. “I’m going.”
He stepped down into the murky water, feeling it ooze unpleasantly into his soft-soled shoes. Two squelching strides took him to what looked like a suitably fragile bundle of root-fibers, and he managed to get his forefinger around a single filament that was no thicker than Steven’s smallest digit.
He pulled at it. Then he heaved upwards with all his strength, bracing himself with his feet. He fully expected the rootlet to break, but his expectation was not based in experience—he had never before had any occasion to try the experiment. The root was far tougher than it looked, and more elastic. It stretched a little, but it didn’t snap.
Rick didn’t bother to swear. He simply forced a second finger around the rootlet, and gathered all his strength, making sure that he would exert the maximum leverage of which he was capable.
He heaved.
The pain in his fingers was indescribable, but he did not relax until he was convinced that it would take less force to tear them off than it would to snap the rootlet. He extracted the two digits with difficulty, and nursed them tenderly while he looked down, furiously, at the stubborn filament. While he watched, there was a sudden surge in the flow of turbid water, and a wave swamped the rootlet.
He realized that he was knee-deep, and that the flow was fast becoming a flood. Four hours had been a hopelessly optimistic estimate even at the time. Now, though he did not pause to measure and calculate, he figured that he had less than forty minutes.
We’re going to drown! he thought, wildly. We’re really going to drown!
Rick was fifty-three years old; nine-tenths of his life still lay before him. Steven was less than six months old…but in spite of the fact that he really did love the child, Rick could not help thinking that his own tragedy was the greater. Steven had hardly begun to be aware of the world, and had no sense whatsoever of the magnitude of his possible loss. To Steven, the present situation was no worse than being offered a bottle with an unfamiliar teat, but to Rick.…
Rick had never been in mortal danger before. He had never felt that he was in mortal danger before. The fact that he was in his own home, and that the only baby he was likely to be licensed to look after for at least two hundred years was with him, depending on him, made the feeling ten times worse than it could have been had he been somewhere out in the wild and still-slightly-dangerous world.
He looked around desperately, cursing the strength and economy of modern design and the careful tidiness of his co-parents. There was not a single object lying around loose, and everything built into the house’s systems was built to last, resistant to any and all attempts at vandalism. He couldn’t see anything that might be used as a lever or a club.
Steven howled and kicked on the top step. Again he struck that horrible, hellish note.
Don’t panic! Rick told himself, knowing that it was already too late; he was in no condition to take such advice.
It had to be something dead, Rick instructed himself, trying against the odds to be reasonable. The problem with the rootlet was that it was part of the living structure of the house, as was everything wooden—even the stairs. On the other hand, all the house’s inorganics were buried deep inside the living tissues, except.…
He struggled back to the foot of the stairway, and up it. His eyes were fixed on the mute and useless screen beside the door. His breathing was ragged and his heart was racing.
He didn’t know how strong the plastic screen might be, but he had seen people hurl objects through offending screens on half a hundred vid-shows, so he knew that it could be done, and that it produced shards with sharp edges.
He also knew that he had nothing to hit it with but his fist, and that those sharp edges were going to do nasty things to his knuckles, but he wasn’t about to wait around hoping that it wouldn’t be necessary.
Rick came back to the second step and braced himself again, laying his left palm flat against the unopenable door. He balled his fist up as tight as he could, ignoring the pain in his two damaged fingers, and psyched himself up for the punch, telling himself sternly that he must follow through, hitting with all his might.
Steven’s howling seemed to grow even louder as Rick focused his attention and let fly.
His fist rebounded.
The shock of the reaction sent a wave of pain through his hand into his wrist and all the way up his arm and he howled in agony. He cursed volubly, not bothering with the customary euphemisms. He felt that he was about to burst into tears, although he could not tell whether it was pain or terror that had brought him to that pitch of anguish.
As soon as the pain began to die down, though, he started thinking again, madly and furiously. He knew that his shoes were too soft, and that there was no way he could contort himself into such a position that he would be able to lash out at the screen with his bare heel. If he was to hit the screen again he would have to use either his fist—the left, this time—or his head.
Rick had no idea how hard his head was, or how much force he could get into a butt, but he knew that it would give him a terrible headache if the screen didn’t break. He cursed the wonderful resilience of modern materials, and the marvelous ingenuity of modern technics. He inspected the keyboard beneath the screen, wondering if there might be a weak spot anywhere there. He tried inserting his fingernails into all the cracks and crevices, but he was too well-manicured to have much effect. He thumped the keys a few times, not too heavily, just in case the keys might respond to the extra pressure, but nothing happened.
He conceded that he was going to have to hit the screen again. He tossed up, mentally, between head and hand. Hand won.
He moved right to the edge of the step, shoving Steven a little closer to the wall. Again he braced himself; again he psyched himself up. Then, perversely, he looked down at the rising tide of filth, which was now only one step down. He could see that if the screen didn’t break this time, he was going to have to pick Steven up and hold him, to keep him out of harm’s way.
He turned back towards the screen, and stared at it as though it were something utterly loathsome, which had to be destroyed. He felt that his entire nervous system was screaming—resonating with that dreadful note that only Steven could produce, and which only he in all the world could properly appreciate.
He launched his left fist at the screen, with every last vestige of his strength, howling aloud in fury.
The screen imploded, bursting into fifty or a hundred shards, some of which peppered his face before falling. Only a handful hit Steven, and none did him any damage.
Oddly enough—or so it seemed—the successful blow did not hurt Rick’s hand nearly as much as the unsuccessful one had, but the shards did indeed cut him in a dozen different places, and blood began to ooze out everywhere. The biggest, sharpest triangular shard was still stuck to the rim of the casing, but Rick pulled it out easily. Then he
