The Green Book Read Online Free PDF Page A

sleep, for now the work of plowing began. There was fuel enough in the land truck to draw the plow this time. In later years, it would have to be pulled by teams of men, but we hoped that in later years the ground would be easier to turn than it was this first time.
    The gray glass grass broke and crumbled and disappeared into the black earth under the plowshare. Peter and Malcolm tried to sow the wheat by scattering it in handfuls, as Father said had once been done on Earth, before anything useful had been invented. But they soon stopped, because it was lying in clumps, and some was getting lost over the edge of the plowed ground, and it was so precious we wanted every single grain to grow. So we began to plant it, dropping it seed by seed. The children were better at this job than grownups, because they had such small fingers and thumbs to take the seeds between, but it was terribly slow going. And Father didn’t come to help. For three days he just wasn’t there when the work was being done, and people began to notice and make remarks about him, and Jason’s mother even asked the Guide what the rules were about people not working, and the Guide said the rules had run out, as the fuel was doing, and we had to get along without any.
    Father was making a seed drill. He got the idea out of his book on technology, and he made it out of wood. It was a box on wheels—Father got some wheels from a trolley from the spaceship, and put them on his box. It had a row of holes in it which dribbled a little trail of wheat grains neatly into five furrows at a time. When the drill began to work, everyone stopped grumbling about Father, and congratulated him.
    At supper that night, he began to talk to Joe and Sarah, and Pattie too, though perhaps he thought she was too young to understand him.
    â€œI plan to be the contriver, the maker for this planet,” Father said. “The plan brought Peter and Malcolm to be experts, and Arthur who knows about farming, and so on…You know how the plan goes. But when that spacecraft runs down, it is only metal junk, useful metal junk. Peter won’t have any computers to be expert about. We want a different kind of expert—the kind who long ago helped the poor people on Earth. They needed, not machines exactly, but gadgets— things you can make out of wood and string, things you can make and mend yourself, like the seed drill. The book I brought is full of ideas like that one. I will be a maker. When the harvest is in, I’m going to make a loom, and a spinning jenny, and find something we can spin and weave.”
    â€œWe aren’t short of clothes and cloth, Father,” said Sarah. “And I think there are three sewing machines. Funny ones—you have to turn them by hand.”
    â€œWe will be short, Sarah,” Father said. “How long do clothes last? How often did you need new jeans and T-shirts at home?”
    â€œAnd you mean we won’t farm, we’ll make and sell stuff?” she said. “Is that fair?”
    â€œWhy, no, my dear,” he said. “We’ll do our share of the work. And we’ll share what we make, as long as the others share with us. But we will be important. We will be very respectable citizens here. We will hold our heads high. You don’t realize, I think, how divided and snobbish the old world was. Nobody counted for anything without a degree in math and computer science, and ecology, and I was just a plain mechanic. Did you wonder why we were chosen for the escape? I’m just population fodder—no wife, and three healthy children with good genetic makeup, that’s why. We are just muscle power in the plan, just laborers. But I reckon different. I thought, in a world without machines, science wouldn’t be so useful; make do and mend would count for more. Humble gadgets; practical things…I’m good at those. Those will be my contribution, and your contribution, and we will be