William Tenn - A Man of Family

“Heredity is one thing,” Ed pointed out. “Environment’s another. One can’t be changed—the other can. And let me tell you, mister, the thing that makes the biggest change in the environment is money. M-O-N-E-Y: money, cash, gelt, moolah, wampum, the old spondulix. Enough money, and, the FPB figures your kid has to have a good start in life—especially with it supervising the early years. Your deal Stew. Hey, Stew! You in mourning for that last pot? You haven’t said a word for the past fifteen minutes. Anything wrong? You didn’t get fired today, did you?”

Raley tried to pull himself together. He picked up the cards. “No,” he said thickly. “I didn’t get fired.”

Marian was waiting with the family jetabout at the landing field. Fortunately, she was too full of gossip to be very observant. She looked oddly at him only once, when he kissed her.

“That was a poor, tired thing,” she said. “You used to do a lot better than that.”

He dug his fingernails into his palms and tried to be whimsical. “That was before I was a poor, tired thing. Had a real hard day at the office. Be sweet and gentle with me, honey, and don’t expect too much.”

She nodded sympathetically and they climbed into the small craft. Lisa, twelve years old and their first child, was in the back seat with Mike, the latest. Lisa kissed her father resoundingly and then held up the baby for a similar ceremony.

He found he had to force himself to kiss the baby.

They shot up into the air. All around them, the jetabouts radiated away from the landing field. Stewart Raley stared at the suburban roofs rushing by below and tried to decide when he was going to tell her. After supper, that would be a good time. No, better wait until the children were all in bed. Then, when he and Marian were alone in the living room—

He felt his stomach go solid and cold, just as it had that afternoon after lunch. Would he be able to bring himself to tell her at all, he wondered?

He had to. That was all there was to it. He had to—and tonight.

“—if I ever believed a word Sheila said in the first place,” Marian was saying. “I told her: ‘Connie Tyler is not that sort of woman, and that’s enough for me.’ You remember, darling, last month when Connie came to visit me in the hospital? Well, of course, I knew what she was thinking. She was looking at Mike and saying to herself that if Frank had only become head of the Ganymede department and had a two-thousand territ raise instead of you, she’d be having her fourth child now and I’d be visiting her. I knew what she was thinking, because in her place I’d be thinking exactly the same thing. But when she said it was the cutest, healthiest baby she’d ever seen, she was sincere. And when she wished me a fifth child for next year, she wasn’t just being polite: she really meant it!”

A fifth child, Stewart Raley thought bitterly. A fifth!

“—so I leave it up to you. What should I do about Sheila if she comes around tomorrow and starts in all over again?”

“Sheila?” he asked stupidly. “Sheila?”

Marian shook her head impatiently over the controls. “Sheila Greene. Ed’s wife, remember? Stewart, haven’t you heard a word I said?”

“Sure, honey. About—uh, the hospital and Connie. And Mike. I heard everything you said. But where does Sheila come in?”

She turned around now and stared at him. The large green cat’s-eyes, that had once pulled him across a dance floor to the side of a girl he didn’t know, were very intent. Then she flipped a switch, letting the automatic pilot take over to keep them on course. “Something’s wrong, Stewart. And it’s not just a hard day at the office. Something’s really wrong. What is it?”

“Later,” he said. “I lltell you later.”

“No, now. Tell me now. I couldn’t go through another second with you looking like that.”

He blew out a chestful of breath and kept his eyes on the house-after-house-after-house beneath him.

“Jovian Chemicals bought the Keohula Mine today.”

“So. What is that to you?”

“The Keohula Mine,” he explained painfully, “is the only mine on Ganymede in full operation.”

“I still—I’m afraid I still don’t understand. Stewart, please tell me in words of one syllable, but tell me fast. What is it?”

He looked up, noticing how terrified she was. She had no idea what be was talking about, but she had always had remarkable instincts. Almost telepathic.

“With the Keohula Mine sold, and for a good price, Solar Minerals feels it is uneconomic to maintain an installation on Ganymede. There are therefore shutting it down, effective immediately.”

Marian raised her hands to her mouth in horror. “And that means—that means—”

“That means they no longer need a Ganymede Department. Or a Ganymede Department Chief.”

“But they won’t send you back to your old job!” she cried. “That would he too cruel! They couldn’t demote you, Stewart, not after you’ve gone and had another child on the strength of your raise! There must be another department, there must be—”

“There isn’t,” he told her with a tongue that felt like cardboard. “They’re shutting down operations on all the Jovian satellites. I’m not the only one affected. There’s Cartwright of the Europa desk and McKenzie of Io—they both have seniority over me. From now on, Solar Minerals is going to lean heavily on its holdings on Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, and light everywhere else.”

“Well, what about those planets? They’ll need department heads at Solar Minerals, won’t they?”

Raley sighed helplessly. “They have them. And assistant department heads. Good men who know their work, who’ve handled it for years. And as far as your next question goes, honey, I’ve spoken to Jovian Chemicals about a transfer. No go. They already have a Ganymede Department and the man handling it is very satisfactory. All day I kept trying one angle after another. But tomorrow, I’ll be back in Ore Shipments.”

“At your old salary?” she whispered. “Seven thousand territs a year?”

“Yes. Two thousand less than I’m getting now. Two thousand less than the minimum for four children.”

Marian’s hands crept up to her eyes, which filled, abruptly, with tears. “I’m not going to do it!” she sobbed. “I’m not! I’m not!”

“Honey,” he said. “Honey-baby, it’s the law. What can we do?”

“I absolutely—I absolutely refuse to decide which—which one of my children I’m going to—to give up!”

“I’ll get promoted again. I’ll be making nine thousand territs in no time. More, even. You’ll see.”

She stopped crying and stared at him dully. “But once a child is put up for adoption, the parents can’t reclaim it. Even if their income increases. You know that, Stewart, as well as I. They can have other children, but they can’t ever have the superfluous child back.”

Of course he knew that. That regulation had been framed by the FPB to protect the foster-parents and encourage adoption into higher-bracket families. “We should have waited,” he said. “Damn it, we should have waited!”

“We did,” she reminded him. “We waited six months, to make certain your job was secure. Don’t you remember the night that we had Mr. Halsey to dinner and he told us that you were working out very well and were definitely on your way up in the organization? ‘You’ll have ten children yet, Mrs. Raley,’ he said, ‘and my advice is to get started on them as soon as possible.’ Those were his exact words.”

“Poor Halsey. He couldn’t meet my eyes all through the executive conference this afternoon. Just before I left the office, he came up and told me how sorry he was, how he’d look out for me in the very next promotion list. But he pointed out that practically everybody’s retrenching these days: it’s been a bad year for extra-terrestrial products. And when I move back into my old job in Ore Shipments, I bump back the man who took my place. He moves down and bumps back somebody else. It’s hell all around.”