Free Vectors by Charles Sheffield Page B

work?"
    "The on-off switch is on the left," said Sarah. "Volume is on the right."
    "I don't mean that!" Carl was exasperated. "I mean, how can it work, with the science we are taught. Where do the signals come from, and how do they make a picture? Most people don't seem to care, but I want to understand how ."
    Sarah came back into the living-room. "Well, you're asking the wrong person." She had changed into a soft green woolen sweater and knee-length fawn skirt, her legs bare except for soft leather slippers. Carl looked at her pale knees and smooth, shapely calves, still holding the faint ghost of a summer tan, then turned his eyes away in confusion. She handed him a great armful of assorted clothing.
    "Here, go into the bedroom and try your luck with these. I don't have any shoes for you, but here's a pair of oversocks that should keep you warm enough." She threw more logs on the fire. "I don't know how to answer your questions. Have you looked in the library at the school for your answers?"
    Carl's grunt of disgust sounded from the bedroom. "I've been through the whole library, and I've asked all the teachers. They're useless. Even on basic things. Look, even in your arts courses you must have covered evolution. How long did they tell you it took to go from mud to man?"
    "I don't know. Billions of years, I think they said."
    "All right. That means the sun must have been shining, more or less the way it is now, for all that time. Where does it get the energy? I've calculated how much heat it must give out in a year, and there's no way it could keep that up for a billion years with anything we've been taught. Burning won't do it, gravitational contraction won't do it, nothing can do it."
    She was startled by the conviction in his voice. He came back into the living-room, a gawky stork-like figure in a robe ten sizes too small for him. Sarah suppressed a smile.
    "Mechanics and physics sound all right, Sarah," he went on, oblivious of his appearance. "A perfect logical structure—until you take a close look, and try and synthesize. Look at electricity. We have it, but where does it come from?"
    She hesitated. "From the dam and turbines at the head of the valley, doesn't it? The water turns the wheels and the wheels drive the generators."
    "That's what we're told. But if my estimates are right, all those generators produce less than a hundredth of what we use. Where do we get the rest of it? There must be a tremendous energy-producing plant near here, but you never hear a word about it."
    "Don't harangue me. It's not my doing, Carl. Anyway, does it matter? The important thing is that we have the energy we need."
    "No, it's not. I thought you would understand. We are given simple, pat pictures of the world. They may be enough for somebody who has trouble mastering the multiplication tables, but they aren't the full story."
    She nodded thoughtfully. "I can't say I really understand you, but I do believe you." She walked about the living-room, setting their wet clothes out to dry. "If you think there may be answers in the forbidden books, I'll get mine for you. I keep it hidden in the attic."
    The book she produced was well-preserved and entitled simply 'The Feynman Lectures on Physics.' The language was archaic, more wordy yet less formal than the modern axiomatic instruction texts. Carl settled down in front of the window, with Sarah reading over his shoulder. After ten minutes or so she left him and began to prepare a meal. He was gone, off in a rapt concentration of his own. "Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end," thought Sarah, and smiled to herself as she prepared meat, herbs and vegetables and set them on the stove.
    The smell of cooking finally got through to Carl where words could not. He had sat like a statue for four hours, moving only to turn pages. Sarah moved quietly about the house, cleaning and cooking, and from time to time stopping to read a page over his shoulder. At last he lifted his head, sniffed,