Zach Hughes: The Stork Factor

forty million people died during the first five years of the Second Republic, he was shocked. True, there were over a billion people on the North American continent and forty million was only a small portion of the sum total, an acceptable

sacrifice for the good of the whole. He could see that and agree with it, but still he was shocked to learn that the Brothers had eliminated the opposition by violence and by starvation. Yet, it was for the good of all. «Would you want to be forced to go to school if you didn't want to?» his instructor asked. «I guess not,» Luke admitted. «Would you like to see masses of people hungry?» «No.» «Would you think it fair for the Techs to have two cars while the Fares and the Tireds had only one?» «Of course not,» Luke said. The right to own a car was one of the more basic freedoms, something not to be tampered with. «Some of the Techs, back in the old days, had as many as three or even four cars,» the instructor said. «They, some of them, lived in penthouses, whole floors of buildings for maybe two or three people.» That Luke couldn't imagine. Whole floors? He and his father shared a tiny ten-by-ten cubicle. Their common bath was shared by perhaps two dozen families. A whole floor for two or three people? Waste. Unheard-of waste. «Would you like to hear one of your instructors stand before this class and tell you that God is dead?» «Oh, no,» Luke said, horrified, looking up nervously to see if the sky were going to fall even at such a supposition. «They did. They said God was dead. They outlawed God in the classroom and in public places. They said man had the freedom not to believe in Him.» «Gee,» Luke said. Because he was not a Brother by birth, Luke was determined to show them at the University how the son of one of the members of Baxley's Army could achieve. He chose the roughest course of all, a course which required that he learn the meaning of the archaic lettering on paper. Reading, they called it. Look, Look, see the car? The car goes fast. And he would have made it if the other cadets hadn't made life a misery for him. He was getting to the point where he could make some sense out

of the simplified Bible when the persecutions of his fellows began to be too much for him and he found escape in his father's Soul Lifter. Kyle Murrel was the worst of his tormentors. He was a big, husky boy who always picked Luke as his opponent in gym. Colonel Baxley insisted on physical training, some of it on a primitive basis of actual face-to-face competition. In hand combat, Kyle Murrel would choose Luke as his opponent and, instead of pulling his blows as he was supposed to do, he would chop and hack and kick with intent to hurt. He often did. Luke would leave the mats with a bloody nose, with bruises and aches and hate in his heart. Finally, one day when Kyle chopped him under the eye and left what Luke knew would be a supermouse, Luke's hatred overflowed. He had always been able to hold his own in street fights, but he didn't do too well at the precision, sissy, stand-up hand-to-hand combat. But anger and hate boiled up in him with the new pain and he lowered his head and charged into the grinning Kyle and wrapped him in strong arms, bearing him to the mat. Before the instructors could pull him off, he'd returned the mouse and had almost severed one of Kyle's ears from his head with a set of strong, white teeth. For that he was called before the dean and made to march three punishment tours. But Kyle didn't ask for Luke any more as his opponent. Kyle took a different route. A rash of stealing broke out in the quarters and some of the loot was discovered under Luke's bunk. He swore tearfully, his hand on a Bible, that he hadn't put it there. They had to accept his word. When a man swears on the Bible, he's putting his life on the line, for a lie under those sacred circumstances meant instant death by lightning bolt or worse. But he was kept under close watch and, thus, was detected twice in formation while still high on Soul Lifter. He was on probation when Kyle Murrel decided that he wanted to steal Luke's doll. The doll was a cute little girl, daughter of one of the maintenance men. Since she wasn't Brother, she was below the social level of born Brothers like Kyle Murrel, but Murrel decided he wanted her just because she was Luke's doll. Funny, Luke couldn't even remember the little girl's name. He could remember her long, blond hair and her sweetness. She was sympathetic. When Luke came out of the hand-to-hand combat class with bruises, she oohed and ahed and told him it was all right, that he shouldn't let the Brothers get him down, that soon he'd be a Brother, himself. Their relationship was pure. In the first place, Luke knew nothing about sex other than what he'd heard as a child in the canyons of Old Town. Sex was something which was reserved for married people. Sex was something slightly dirty and very mysterious and sinful. So Luke had no designs on the purity of his doll. He liked her for what she was, a sweet, sympathetic human being to whom he could tell his troubles. He had never so much as kissed her. Often, in his dreams, he kissed her, a sweet, mysterious kiss on the cheek with their bodies not even touching, but he knew no trace of carnal desire for her. He fought one of Kyle Murrel's friends who said his girl was bad, a Jezebel. His punishment for fighting was garbage detail. He had to go through the quarters and clean the waste

receptacles of each cadet. Kyle and his friends saw to it that he had plenty to clean. They saved food until it was rank and then poured it into the receptacles. Kyle even made waste in his receptacle and threatened to report Luke when Luke refused to empty the stinking mess. Luke had no choice. He was already on probation. But when he discovered that Kyle had been giving presents to his girl and talking to her about what a lowlife Luke was, he could no longer control himself. He faced Kyle in the quad and told him that if he didn't leave his girl alone he would kill him. Kyle grinned and walked away. Things were quiet for a few days and Luke hoped that the Brother cadets had tired of baiting him. Then Kyle stood before Luke's desk while Luke was studying his reading and said, «I had your doll today.» «Huh?» There was a strange smirk on Kyle's face. «Don't you know what that means?» Kyle asked, laughing, turning to his audience of several gathered Brother cadets. «Sure I know,» Luke said. «It means, stupid, that I knew her sexually.» Luke felt his face go red. «You're a liar.» «Am I?» Kyle laughed. «Why don't you ask her?» «I will,» Luke said. «I just will.» He ran from the building. He ran across the quad, through the class buildings, down to the quarters of the working staff of the University. His doll's father answered the door. «What do you want?» her father answered angrily, when Luke opened his mouth to ask if he could see the girl. «Haven't you people done enough to her?» «I didn't do anything,» Luke said. «God knows, I didn't do anything.» The man's face softened. «No, I guess you didn't. It was them Brother bastards.» Luke felt scared. His stomach was aching. «What did they do?» «You know damned well what they did,» her father said. «No, no, I don't. Honest.» «Well.» He swallowed. «They raped her.» Luke didn't know the word. «Raped?» «He's a nice boy,» the girl's mother said, coming up behind the father. «You can see he's a nice boy. He doesn't know such nasty words.» «What is it?» Luke asked. «What did they do to her'» «They hurt her,» the father said. «Rape means they did something awful to her,» her mother said. «Something—sexual.» Luke blushed. «Well, didn't you report them?» The man looked down at his feet. «I'm only a Lay,» he said. «What's that got to do with it?» Luke asked. «If they hurt her—» «Kyle Murrel's father is Secretary of the Republic,» her father said. «Do you think they'd believe me or my daughter against the son of the Secretary of the Republic?» «But if they hurt her—» Luke said again, feeling helpless. «Son,» her father said, «you're from Old Town, right?» «That's right, but I don't see—» «How many fights you seen on the streets? Ever see a Tech or a Brotherfuzz kill someone?» «Sure,» Luke said, «but that's—» «The way things are,» the man said, «you being a cadet, you should know that.» «But hurting a girl?» Luke asked. «He told her to tell us that if she squealed he'd swear that she propositioned him.» «Huh?» Luke asked. «That she was the one who asked for—sex,» the father said. «They would believe him.» Luke couldn't believe it. He went to one of his more sympathetic instructors, a young Brother who seemed to have an interest in Luke. «Kyle Murrel raped my girl,» Luke said. «And her father says he can't report it.» «Her father is wise,» the instructor said. «Well, then I'm going to report it,» Luke said. «I wouldn't,» the instructor said. «You're not even Brother. They wouldn't believe you.» But Luke went to the Brother dean and made his report. Kyle Murrel was called into the same room. He denied even knowing the girl. Kyle Murrel said that Luke—he called him that stupid Lay—had probably gone crazy and raped the girl himself and was trying to shift the blame. The