Mack Reynolds - Equality - In the Year 2000

“My heart is bleeding for you,” Barry West snarled. “Get your pay and get off the ship.”

“Mr. West, the amount of pay I have coming isn’t even enough to get me back to Miami and my family.”

“That’s no damned skin off my nose,” Julian’s father said. “Come on, Jule.” He pulled the boy by the hand.

Julian looked back over his shoulder in despair.

His friend said, “Good-bye, Julian.”

“Good-bye, Edward,” Julian responded miserably.

“Shut up and keep moving,” said his father.

It was then the dream ended. With the realization that he did not like his father and mother, Julian woke up.

He was not in the usual sweat brought on by the nightmares filled with memories of blood and horror and human suffering, but he was quite distressed.

Edith, her head on the pillow next to him, asked, “What’s wrong, Jule?”

“Bit of a nightmare, I guess,” he told her. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You mean to tell me you have upsetting dreams?”

“’Upsetting dreams’ is a gentle way of putting it. I’ve had them all my life, these nightmares. They’re evidently more vivid than most people’s from what all the headshrinkers have told me.”

She sat up in bed. She hadn’t bothered to put on a nightgown before they fell asleep. Her body was superb, but right now he was in no mood for sex.

She said, “We must go and see Father immediately!”

“Why?”

But she had already hurried from the bed in the direction of the apartment’s order box to send for clothing. She said over her shoulder, “To tell him about your dreams.”

He shrugged, but got himself up and went into the bath. He in no way wanted to discuss his nightmares with Dr. Leete, but he supposed there was no choice. Supposedly he was still under medical care.

Dressed, they didn’t take their breakfast in his apartment but headed immediately down the hall to the Leete quarters. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what Edith’s father and mother thought about his relationship with their daughter. In his own time, people had at least paid lip service to appearances. But here he was, sleeping with Edith, and seemingly it was of no importance whatsoever to them. Well, at least hypocrisy wasn’t involved; certainly that was progress in the development of human relations.

The academician, his expression disgruntled, was staring into the library booster screen on the living room desk. He looked up when Edith and Julian entered.

“Ridiculous!” he said, gesturing at the screen.

“What’s ridiculous. Father?” Edith asked.

He looked at her, closing one eye in disgust. “My looking at the news. Every time I do, I become irritated.”

She sighed as though she had been through this before. “What is the world currently doing that you disapprove of?”

“This star probe to the Alpha Centauri system. Ridiculous!”

Julian asked with some surprise, “Has the space program gotten to that point?”

“No. That’s why it’s ridiculous,” Leete said. “Do you know what that robot spacecraft will find when it gets to Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, assuming that the two companion stars have habitable planets?”

“No. What?”

“It’ll find men who have been there possibly for years.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Father?”

“About going off half-cocked. Why not wait another decade or two until we know more about space drive? What’s the hurry? It’s the same story all over again. Back in the 1950s when the United States and the Soviet Union began exploring space, instead of getting together—and utilizing German and British science as well—America went racing off. Billions upon billions of dollars, billions of man-hours of our top scientists and technicians, millions of tons of materials that were needed elsewhere.”

Julian said, “They made it, though. Landing a man on the moon was one of the biggest events in my time.”

The academician flicked off the screen in a gesture of disgust. “They made it; they put a man on the moon—two men, as I recall. Now, suppose they had taken their time, amalgamated their efforts with the Russians and any other interested countries: united effort would have cut the cost in half, and twice as much probably would have been learned.”

Edith said patiently, “What has that got to do with the Alpha Centauri probe?”

“It’s the same situation. What’s the hurry? In ten years we will have twice the information we have now. For all I know, we’ll have figured out a faster-than-light drive. By the time this ridiculous robot space probe gets to the vicinity, there’ll already be men there, waiting for it—if there’s any suitable place there for waiting.”

Julian was out of his depth, as usual.

“All right,” Edith said. “According to Stephen Dole, the F2 to Kl stars are of the spectral classes that might be suitable for the nurturing of planets habitable by mankind, planets that can be colonized. Sooner or later, we’ve got to reach out. This is the first step.”

“But premature! What is the damned hurry? Only twenty-five thousand years ago, we were painting bison and deer on the walls and ceilings of our caves. Why can’t we slow down a bit these days and wait until we’ve progressed a little further before sending out inadequate expeditions that will be anachronisms five years after they’ve taken off?”

Edith said, “Perhaps you’re right. However, we’ve got another problem on our hands at this moment. Jule has recurring nightmares.”

“Nightmares? In this day and age?”

Julian said wearily, “Remember, I’m not of this day and age.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Edith interrupted, “I’ve got an errand to run for Jule. When this project began, our job was to take care of him as if he were a four-year-old child. Now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re running around on his projects.” She grinned at him to take the edge off her words, then turned to leave. “I’ll pick up breakfast somewhere along the way. I want to get to the museum when it first opens.”

When she was gone, the doctor waited for Julian to begin.

“It’s nothing important. I’ve had them since I was a kid. Very vivid. I usually wake up sweating. I saw an auto accident once when I was about twelve years old. Four people killed. They looked like mincemeat. The first dead persons I had ever seen. I’ve dreamed about it since then about once every two months. I know it’s abnormal, but I’ve been to a multitude of doctors, from psychiatrists to acupuncture specialists, and it’s never done me any good.”

“But that was over thirty years ago, Julian. Today, we can not only cure you of your nightmares but give you a new set of pleasant dreams to order.”

“Give me dreams?”

“Yes, of course. Programmed dreams. Anything from pleasant dreams of childhood, to dreams of heroic deeds with you the hero. How would you like to be Horatius at the Bridge? Or we can give you erotic fantasies beyond your wildest dreams.” The academician chuckled at his own joke. “Now, I’m not suggesting that you turn to sleep to get your sexual release, but it can and has been done.”