More and more he pondered the question of who was to succeed him. It was a weighty question: Anderson was perhaps the last leader in the world—a king almost, undoubtedly a patriarch.
Though generally he believed in primogeniture, he wondered if a difference of only three months might not be construed charitably in favor of the younger son. He refused to think of Neil as a bastard, and he had therefore been obliged to treat the boys as twins—impartially.
There was something to be said for each of them—and not enough for either. Neil was a steady worker, not given to complaimngs, and strong; he had the instincts of a leader of men, if not all the abilities. However, he was stupid: Anderson could not help but see it. He was also… well, disturbed. Just how he was disturbed or why, Anderson did not know, though he suspected that Greta was in some way responsible. Considering this problem, he tended to be vague, to eye it obliquely or as through smoked glass, as we are told to observe an eclipse. He did not want to learn the truth if he could help it.
Buddy, on the other hand, though he possessed many of the qualities lacking in his half-brother, was not to be relied upon. He had proven it when, in the face of his father’s sternest disapproval, he had gone to live in Minneapolis; he had proven it conclusively on Thanksgiving Day. When Anderson had found his son in, as he supposed, the very commission of the act, it had become quite clear that Buddy would not succeed to his own high place. Anderson, in passing from early manhood to middle age, had developed an unreasoning horror of adultery. That he had once been adulterate himself and that one of his children was the fruit of such an union did not occur to him now. He would, in fact, have denied it outright—and, he would have believed his denial.
For a long time it had seemed that no one could possibly take his place. Therefore, he would have to carry on alone. Each time his sons had shown new weaknesses, Anderson had felt a corresponding growth in strength and purpose. Secretly, he had thrived on their failings.
Then Jeremiah Orville had entered the scene. In August, Anderson had been moved by reasons which were obscure and (it now seemed) God-given to spare the man. Today he trembled at his sight—as Saul must have trembled when he first realized that young David would supplant him and his son Jonathan. Anderson tried desperately both to deny this and to accommodate himself to his apparent heir. (He constantly feared that he would, like that earlier king, war against the Lord’s annointed and damn himself in the act. Belief in predestination has decidedly some disadvantages.) As by degrees, he bent his will to this unpleasant task (for, though he admired Orville, he did not like him); his strength and purpose quitted him by equal degrees. Orville, without even knowing it, was killing him.
It was night. That is to say, they had once again journeyed to exhaustion. As Anderson was the arbiter of what constituted exhaustion, it was evident to everyone that the old man was being worn down: as after the vernal equinox, each day was shorter than the day that had gone before.
The old man scratched at his flaky scalp, and cursed something, he couldn’t remember exactly what, and fell asleep without thinking to take a count of heads. Orville, Buddy and Neil each took the count for him. Orville and Buddy both arrived at twenty-four. Neil, somehow, had come up with twenty-six.
“But that’s not possible,” Buddy pointed out.
Neil was adamant: he had counted twenty-six. “Whadaya think—I can’t
Since Greta’s departure, a month or so had gone by. No one was keeping track of the time any longer. Some maintained it was February; others held for March. From the expeditions to the surface they knew only that it was still winter. They needed to know no more than that.
Not everyone went along. Indeed, besides Anderson, his two sons and Orville, there were only three other men. A permanent base of operations was again being maintained for those, like Maryann and Alice, who could not spend the day crawling through the roots. The number of those who deemed themselves incapable had grown daily until there were just as many lotus-eaters as before. Anderson pretended to ignore the situation, fearing to provoke a worse one.
Anderson led the men up by the usual route, which was marked by ropes that Maryann had braided. It was no longer possible for them to find their way about by the Ariadne’s thread of broken capillaries, for in their explorations they had broken so many that they had created a labyrinth of their own.
