Vasper shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. But—well, there are whispers. It would be death to mention it openly, what I have heard. Do not ask me. But in time, listen to the whispers."
Jim Kenley trotted across the great field, looking more cheerful. "Say, I told 'em about baseball and they're willing to take a crack at it. And that tennis business the gals have is red hot. Some swell looking kids around here. Hey Vasper—they ever marry in Taval?"
"If The Three decrees, yes. Otherwise, no."
Jim's face dropped. "Heck, just as I had a redhead squinting at me in that way. Oh well, when I wake up she'll be gone, and I'll probably find I'm fired for this spree. Where to now, friend Vasper."
For days they examined Taval, learned that it took in far more territory than they had imagined. They visited the vat farms, where giant plants grew, blossomed and produced heat in the matter of days, fed by chemicals directly to the roots.
They visited factories, where food was prepared as concentrates, where plastics from elements and vegetable tissue were compounded, all by other machines, not at all like Bob's conception of robots. Indeed, a lot of machines were operated by tiny mechanisms, all lens and coils, capable of being carried around by hand. The Taval ray, Bob learned, was a development starting with the so-called electric eye of the Twentieth Century. And it didn't take him long to recognize many fundamentals created by earlier Americans. Then it was he who came to recognize others, brought into Taval as he. Vasper showed him a stout, slow-moving person called Miller, who had ridden on Fulton's Clermont. Miller was a chemist. And there was a slight figure out of the Twenty Second Century, Gregg by name. He was worrying about the First World Confederacy threatened with breakup when he was removed to Taval. Gregg, Vasper explained, had one of the finest of new minds, and was engaged in sinking shafts into the earth's core, to obtain heat for Taval. As for Jim, he had taken up with a group of young fellows, all of athletic build, and all, strangely enough, imported in recent months. Jim mentioned a boxer, who fought in England while Jackson was President; of a runner who broke the mile record in 1995, and of an Olympic star winning his awards at the turn of the Twenty First century. It amused Bob that Jim appeared to fit in so quickly. Already, by one means or other, Jim actually had organized a baseball team, and was considering bowling. "Too bad they ain't got race horses," he complained to his friend. "They tell me there's one section, south of Taval, that's clean given over to cows and hogs and horses. Funny."
"Heard anything about your duties?" Bob inquired.
"Nope. Got hauled up before your friend Fator the other day. He just asked me if I enjoyed my meals, and minded taking part in the sports. Asked if I'd ever been sick, or had any ailments, and they typed my blood, and a lot of other things."
At Bob's look, Jim laughed, shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, they're doing the same thing to the other fellows. And say, Bob. Soon as I get acclimated, Vasper says, they want me to live at the stadium, with the other beef eaters."