Hella ignored her neighbor with a glazed sweep of eyes and lit another cigarette.
The new girl was listening to the chatter of the bright-eyed accountant opposite. The words were coming quickly,
"-and she's supposed to have been in the Vault - actually in the Vault, you know - when Seldon spoke - and they say the mayor was in frothing furies and there were riots, and all of that sort of thing, you know. She got away before the Mule landed, and they say she had the most tha-rilling escape - had to go through the blockade, and all - and I do wonder she doesn't write a book about it, these war books being so popular these days, you know. And she was supposed to be on this world of the Mule's, too - Kalgan, you know - and-"
The time bell shrilled and the dining room emptied slowly. The accountant's voice buzzed on, and the new girl interrupted only with the conventional and wide-eyed, "Really-y-y-y?" at appropriate points.
The huge cave lights were being shielded group-wise in the gradual descent towards the darkness that meant sleep for the righteous and hard-working, when Bayta returned home.
Toran met her at the door, with a slice of buttered bread in his hand.
"Where've you been?" he asked, food-muffled. Then, more clearly, "I've got a dinner of sorts rassled up. If it isn't much, don't blame me."
But she was circling him, wide-eyed. "Torie! Where's your uniform? What are you doing in civvies?"
"Orders, Bay. Randu is holed up with Ebling Mis right now, and what it's all about, I don't know. So there you have everything."
"Am I going?" She moved towards him impulsively.
He kissed her before he answered, "I believe so. It will probably be dangerous."
"What isn't dangerous?"
"Exactly. Oh, yes, and I've already sent for Magnifico, so he's probably coming too."
"You mean his concert at the Engine Factory will have to be cancelled."
"Obviously."
Bayta passed into the next room and sat down to a meal that definitely bore signs of having been "rassled-up." She cut the sandwiches in two with quick efficiency and said:
"That's too bad about the concert. The girls at the factory were looking forward to it. Magnifico, too, for that matter." She shook her head. "He's such a queer thing."
"Stirs your mother-complex, Bay, that's what he does. Some day we'll have a baby, and then you'll forget Magnifico."
'Bayta answered from the depths of her sandwich, "Strikes me that you're all the stirring my mother-complex can stand."
And then she laid the sandwich down, and was gravely serious in a moment.
"Torie."
"M-m-m?"
"Torie, I was at City Hall today - at the Bureau of Production. That is why I was so late today."
"What were you doing there?"
"Well..." she hesitated, uncertainly. "It's been building up. I was getting so I couldn't stand it at the factory. Morale just doesn't exist. The girls go on crying jags for no particular reason. Those who don't get sick become sullen. Even the little mousie types pout. In my particular section, production isn't a quarter what it was when I came, and there isn't a day that we have a full roster of workers."
"All right," said Toran, "tie in the B. of P. What did you do there?"
"Asked a few questions. And it's so, Torie, it's so all over Haven. Dropping production, increasing sedition and disaffection. The bureau chief just shrugged his shoulders - after I had sat in the anteroom an hour to see him, and only got in because I was the co-ordinator's niece - and said it was beyond him. Frankly, I don't think he cared."
"Now, don't go off base, Bay."
"I don't think he did." She was strenuously fiery. "I tell you there's something wrong. It's that same horrible frustration that hit me in the Time Vault when Seldon deserted us. You felt it yourself."
"Yes, I did."
"Well, it's back," she continued savagely. "And we'll never be able to resist the Mule. Even if we had the material, we lack the heart, the spirit, the will - Torie, there's no use fighting-"
Bayta had never cried in Toran's memory, and she did not cry now. Not really. But Toran laid a light hand on her shoulder and whispered, "Suppose you forget it, baby. I know what you mean. But there's nothing-"
"Yes, there's nothing we can do! Everyone says that - and we just sit and wait for the knife to come down."
She returned to what was left of her sandwich and tea. Quietly, Toran was arranging the beds. It was quite dark outside.
Randu, as newly-appointed co-ordinator - in itself a wartime post - of the confederation of cities on Haven, had been assigned, at his own request, to an upper room, out of the window of which he could brood over the roof tops and greenery of the city. Now, in the fading of the cave lights, the city receded into the level lack of distinction of the shades. Randu did not care to meditate upon the symbolism.
He said to Ebling Mis - whose clear, little eyes seemed to have no further interest than the red-filled goblet in his hand - "There's a saying on Haven that when the cave lights go out, it is time for the righteous and hard-working to sleep."
"Do you sleep much lately?"
"No! Sorry to call you so late, Mis. I like the night better somehow these days. Isn't that strange? The people on Haven condition themselves pretty strictly on the lack of light meaning sleep. Myself, too. But it's different now-"
"You're hiding," said Mis, flatly. "You're surrounded by people in the waking period, and you feel their eyes and their hopes on you. You can't stand up under it. In the sleep period, you're free."