As their guides led the way toward the vehicles, Heidekopfer said, "One thing surprises me, if you don't mind a snap judgment. I would have expected to find more of a city around your port."
Behrmann turned his head with a smile. "We have no cities," he said. "They are destroyers of nature, and without communion with nature there is no happiness."
That was good Tolstoi, all right, thought Heidekopfer, and said to Ann, "They don't take very good care of their roads here, do they?"
"I should say not—and my mud-shedders are all nicely packed in the baggage, too." She lifted a neatly clad foot that was already plentifully marked with black Venusian mire. "Their trees are nice, though, and look how even the rows in that field are." She aimed the camera at it for a moment, and spoke to Behrmann in Russian; "Where are the fishermen for the boats?"
"Oh, this is Thursday," he said, standing aside so she could get in the droshky. "On this day they work in the fields. It is good to work in the fields, and we have a law that all who follow other forms of work shall do so for one day a week."
"That's not a bad law for an agricultural community," observed Heidekopfer. "I suppose you are practically all agriculture? But what do you do for manufactured articles—like shoes and glass and newspapers?"
In the droshka ahead Vikhranov raised his hand; both drivers shouted something like "Ya-ya!" simultaneously, cracked their whips tremendously, and the procession was off along a dirt road in a decidedly poor state of repair.
"I am not sure I understand your question," said Behrmann. "Shoes or glass, when we want them we make them. As for newspapers, they are forbidden by the word of the Master. I know there must be such things, because they are mentioned, but I have never seen one and do not really know what they are."
The road had begun to rise toward a cut in a range of low hills. "Uh-huh," said Heidekopfer, "and I suppose radio falls under the prohibition on newspapers. Well, let me put it this way; suppose someone had an idea for a new kind of machine. Would he have to make all the parts himself?"