“It must have seemed like Bella upholding our country’s flag.”
His whole face warmed into smiling. The death shadows fled for that moment of his saying, “Had I told you her name? Yes, I brought the record cylinder away, and left there only something that would perish.”
“You make a fetish of that oath you swore!”
“It isn’t because of the oath. Why should I take an empty fame out of the world with me? Should I rest the better?”
“You think only of yourself. But there’s the gain to science. What right have you to deprive the world of that?”
He smiled. “You speak like a green girl, or like a newspaper. Forgive me! But you don’t realize. The gain to science is the by-product. The true gain is to the human soul. You don’t believe me? Read the most inspiring books ever written about the arctic.”
“Perhaps I have. Who wrote them?”
“Franklin, Greely, and De Long—the three who failed. Here’s to them!” He lifted up the cup, emptied it, and dropped it with a ringing of rusty tin, an eye cleared and preternaturally bright. “In the past it was all different, you know. Enough and to spare in the physical world to be conquered. But the things to be conquered in the future, do you know what they are?”
Voiceless she shook her head.