* * *

Karen met them at the door. The mere sight of her blond vivacity lifted Wayne’s spirits. “Hello, gentlemen,” she said. “Guess what?”

“I wouldn’t know,” answered Wayne.

“Government jet was here today. We’re going to get regular air service.”

“No kidding!”

“Honest Injun, I have it straight from the pilot, a colonel no less. I was down by the port, on the way to market, about noon, when it landed, and of course forced my way into the conversation.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” said Wayne admiringly.

“Flatterer! Anyway, he was informing the mayor officially, and a few passers-by like myself threw in their two bits’ worth.”

“Hm-m-m.” Wayne entered the house. “Of course, I knew the government was starting an airline, but I never thought we’d get a place on it even if we do have a cleared area euphemistically termed an airport.”

“Anyway, think of it. We’ll get clothes, fuel, machinery, food—no, I suppose we’ll be shipping that ourselves. Apropos which, soup’s on.”

It was a good meal, plain ingredients but imaginative preparation. Wayne attacked it vigorously, but his mind was restless. “Funny,” he mused, “how our culture overreached itself. It grew top-heavy and collapsed in a war so great we had to start almost over again. But we had some machines and enough knowledge to rebuild without too many intervening steps. Our railroads and highways, for instance, are gone, but now we’re replacing them with a national airline. We’ll likewise go later directly from foot and horseback to private planes.”

“And we won’t be isolated any more, contacting the outside maybe four times a year. We’ll be part of the world again.”

“Mm-m-m—what’s left of it, and that isn’t much. Europe and most of Asia, they tell me, are too far gone to make intercourse worthwhile or even possible. The southern parts of this country and the greater part of Latin America are still pretty savage. Most people who survived the war migrated there later, to escape cold and hunger. Result—overcrowding, more famine, fighting and general lawlessness. Those who stuck it out here in the north and stayed alive came out better in the end.”

“It’ll be a curious new culture,” said Karen thoughtfully. “Scattered towns and villages, connected by airlines so fast that cities probably won’t need to grow up again. Stretches of wild country between, and—well, it’ll be strange.”

“Certainly that. But we can hardly extrapolate at this stage of the game. Look, we here in Southvale, and a lot of similarly circumstanced places, have been able to relax for some ten years now. Blights and bugs and plagues pretty well licked, outlaws rounded up or gone into remote areas—Well, we’ve been back on our feet that long. Since then, the process of re-integrating the country has gone ahead pretty steadily. We’re no longer isolated, as you said. With the government center in Oregon as a sort of central exchange, we’ve been able to trade some of the things we have for what we need, and now this regular airline service will be the way to a national economy. Martial law was…ah…undeclared nine years ago, and the formal unification of the United States, Canada, and Alaska carried out then. You and I helped elect Drummond to President last time, when the poll plane came around.”