FOREVER IS NOT SO LONG
By F. Anton Reeds
Given that much-sought knowledge of
the future, how many would have courage
to enjoy what life was to be theirs?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science-Fiction May 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
September, 1931.
The lights of Europe still burned.
The black hulk of Ploving Manor was broken by the squares of brilliant,friendly light from its many windows that gave the old country seatalmost a cheerful aspect. From the stone terrace to the south ofProfessor Ploving's study long strings of bobbing, soft-glowinglanterns stretched across the close-cropped lawn to the dark outline ofthe orchard. Beyond the orchard was the pounding beat of the Channel.
On a platform under the lights young men and young women danced to thestrange new throbbing music from the Americas. It was a pulsing tom-tombeat, that music, that called for a measure of gay abandon and a greatdeal of muscular dexterity. But not quite the same sort of abandonthat their mothers and father had known. For those lovely women at theterrace tables and the gray-templed men at their sides had been thefabulous, almost forgotten "lost generation" of an almost forgotten"post-war" period. These youngsters dancing under the English starsand pressing hands in the orchard's shadow were the fortunate chosenones who would build at last the brave new world that had been theirfathers' dream.
Stephen Darville stood in the shadows of a great clump of rhododendronsat the terrace edge watching the swirl of color on the lawn, his eyessearching the laughing crowd for a sight of Jean. His eyes found herand followed her across the lawn. When she came near he called her name.
She hurried to him and took his hands in a friendly tug.
"One dance together, Steve, before you go out to the workshop."
He shook his head.
"Just one," she pleaded.
He pressed her hands, watching the way the stiff sea breeze ruffled thegay silk kerchief at her throat.
"There's no time. Your father's waiting for me now."
"Confound father, confound you and confound science."
She laughed, but there had been a note of real annoyance in her voice.
Darville looked at the soft curve of her throat and the high-lightedsheen of her close-cropped brown hair and beyond the moving figures onthe lawn. He suddenly wanted it all; the music and the laughter and thegaiety and the feel of her in his arms. But he wanted the other, too;the thing that awaited him out there in John Ploving's workshop. Thefeel of metal cold in his hands, metal that his own hands had helped toshape, and the crazy swaying of the thin needles on the control boardbefore him. The age-old call of the twin, conflicting fires in theblood of youth—Duty and Romance.
She, too, was looking out toward the dancing couples. He took herimpulsively in his arms and for a moment she clung to him.
"You can come back to me later on this evening when you and father arethrough," she whispered.
He wanted to crush her to him, wanted to whisper "If I do come back,if there is a 'later on this evening' for me." But he only pressed herfingers lightly.
"Save me a dance," he said, and hurried away down the narrow path toProfessor Ploving's shop.
The things that Professor Ploving and his young assistant did there inthe shop were known only to themselves; even those in the immediatefam