But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr Polk nor myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire work was contracted for. The second volume was promised for delivery some eighteen months hence. My notes for it were complete; this was no question of revising, but of wholly re-examining, revaluing and probably discarding them for an entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger than the original, one so discouraging, I felt I couldnt face it. It would be corrupt to produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none.
Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in a way at once heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “youre changing and developing, and for the better, even though I love you as you were. Don’t be afraid to put the book aside for a year—ten years if you have to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the publishers or the public say. But Hodge, you mustnt, in your anxiety, or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustnt try any shortcuts. Promise me that.” “I don’t know what youre talking about, Catty dear. There are no shortcuts in writing history.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge. Oh, remember it.”
17. HX-1
I could not bring myself to follow the promptings of my conscience and Catty’s advice, nor could I use my notes as though Dr Polk’s letter had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence—without deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the haven were not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced all sorts of revolutions in the stables and barns, I still managed to wander about, fretful and irritable, keeping Catty from her work, interrupting the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss my problems with him—and generally making myself a nuisance. Inevitably I found my way into Barbara’s workshop.
She and Ace had done a thorough job on the old barn. I thought I recognized Kimi’s touch in the structural changes of the walls, the strong beams and rows of slanted-in windows which admitted light and shut out glare, but the rest must have been shaped by Barbara’s needs.
Iron beams held up a catwalk running in a circle about ten feet overhead. On the catwalk there were at intervals what appeared to be batteries of telescopes, all pointed inward and downward at the center of the floor. Just inside the columns was a continuous ring of clear glass, perhaps four inches in diameter, fastened to the beams with glass hooks. Closer inspection proved the ring not to be in one piece but in sections, ingeniously held together with glass couplings. Back from this circle, around the walls, were various engines, all enclosed except for dial faces and regulators and all dwarfed by a mammoth one towering in one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished reflector.
There was no one in the barn and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding the mysterious apparatus. For a moment I meditated, basely perhaps, that all this had been paid for with my wife’s money. Then I berated myself, for Catty owed all to the haven, as I did. The money might have been put to better use, but there was no guarantee it would have been more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years I’d seen many promising schemes come to nothing.
“Like it, Hodge?”
Barbara had come up, unheard, behind me. This was the first time we had been alone together since our break, two years before.