Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

I loved Wally like a brother. No really. That’s a remark the conditioners say is okay and proper. I delighted in Wally’s being. I won’t say he was a friend or a pal or my best buddy. Lately I’ve begun to see things in a clear light. To hell with them all, I loved Wally, period.

This week I delivered twenty babies. One was a boy. I held him, cherished him, grieved. How could She do this to him?

Last night the committee executed Fraser. It was their last official act before they dispersed. He had been so vehement about keeping the silence, had talked so long and earnestly about how the women would view this as the supreme victory and how they would interfere with our trying to find a cure. Fraser had been wrong and they killed him.

There were too many female medics and scientists, and the whole thing suddenly blew wide open. It didn’t matter. The chances of our having found a solution had been very, very small and we ought to have realized it. Maybe we did. Maybe we knew. The felled giant may have had to be bludgeoned a few more times before he got the message. Anyhow, the human race fought its last big war in a quaint little place called ovaries. There was no bloodshed to speak of.

Charlotte gave birth this morning.

“Do you want me to kill it?”

I stood beside the bed and looked down at her. This was what Fraser couldn’t understand. He had refused to believe they would be willing to go to any lengths because of love. They would even murder their own children, knowing full well that it would serve no practical purpose, simply to let us know how much we meant to them.

With tears in my eyes, I said, “That’s a beautiful healthy baby and I hope she lives to be a hundred.”

“I don’t give a damn what my grandchildren a thousand years from now will be like, or what they’ll be doing,” she said.

We were all in it together. The men and women of the world were united in fear. For the first time in history no one looked to their children for a better future.

“Did you kill any women or babies?” she said.

I lied and said yes. There were many demented souls who had killed. I allied myself with them without hesitation. I always was a pushover for lost causes.

My daughters look like my mother. So do I. My father resembled his father, and that used to please me until I saw a photograph of grandfather’s mother. Everywhere I turned I saw women.

A computer might have said Nature’s plan was sensible. That is a word I always viewed with wariness. Subconsciously I may have suspected the truth all along. A thing is born and it is weak and unformed. The Maker knows this thing will be worthy one day (another suspect word, “worthy”; beauty is in the eye of the beholder; I wonder if She is myopic). Anyway, this thing must endure until it can stand alone. A helpmeet is what is needed. Pfft. There he is.

I feel as if I’m Everyman. I worked so damned hard, knocked myself out, turned up my toes early while the ballbusters continued. I made war, but I don’t know why. I seemed to exist on a high-tension wire while the ballbusters lazed and got fat. At times I was an aberration, in which case I would seek out a woman alone and then I’d open my overcoat and show her my nakedness. Or I’d rape. Or I’d beat.

I refute the above. I haven’t done those things. The idiots, the depraved, are the guilty, and I’m ashamed that we’re related.

Never once did I imagine that I, Everyman, my sum total, might be an aberration.

Often at night I get up and turn on the lamp. I sit on my bed and watch Charlotte sleep. In adjoining rooms the girls snore. They frequently have nightmares, which makes me wonder. Do they dream more than we? Charlotte has a habit of going to bed early. She doesn’t mess the bed by tossing and turning. Usually she sleeps on her back with the covers tucked under her chin. She looks like a papoose or a cocoon. Someday the adult will emerge from under the covers. Will it be a great deal like this woman or will it be different?

Thousands of women are coming to hospitals and clinics for abortions. This will solve nothing and they know it, but they do it anyway. This afternoon a big ugly fag threw her arms around my neck and cried. Little ones sit on curbs and watch with sad eyes. Rarely do I go out but that a group of women gathers and silently follows me. Teenagers come up to me and stare. They look so stunned.

Jim Thorne is cracking. He bought a rifle and in the evenings he stands by his upstairs window and draws a bead on every women who passes by. So far he hasn’t pulled the trigger.

I’ve been going to visit my mother a great deal. I sit on the floor beside her rocking chair and rest my head in her lap. She fondles my hair, and sometimes she weeps and tells me everything will be all right. I feel at peace with her. Like me, she is a thing of the past. Life, time, have abandoned both of us. For neither the son-lover nor the son will there be a tomorrow.

I stand in the middle of my house and listen to the darkness. It is all around me. Outside a low breeze sweeps along the street. I’m cold.

THOUGH I AM not a finicky eater, there are certain foods I do not like to eat in public. The sandwich, for example, embarrasses me because I cannot resolve the issue of how gracefully to dispose of that final corner. Usually I just pop it into my mouth after glancing over the area; this is done with practiced casualness.

Four months ago I had the added misfortune of sharing my table with an ingenuous-looking, curly-headed lad, whose eyes were directed toward observing me ingest my food. For days he stared at my mouth with fixity. As a result, I rescheduled my meals to allow me, instead of my regular lunch at twelve, a snack, the neatest and least obtrusive being one quart of milk, sipped through a short, narrow straw. I was then comfortable in his presence. But I noticed one disadvantage: since my entire mouth was not engaged in eating, he assumed I would be interested in speaking with him.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “your teeth have a particularly glossy whiteness. Calcium deposits, of course,” he remarked, “if they’re real. Are they?”

“Certainly. I have always taken assiduous care of my teeth.”

After I said that, I pressed my tongue over the surface of each tooth and presented a glossier, whiter set.

He responded. “Ah, yes, I can see that.”

Since he had an annoying habit of unfurling his fingers in front of his mouth while speaking, I asked if he would repeat what he’d said.

“Of course,” he answered, “I said, ‘Ah, yes, I can see that.’ “

His lips hardly parted, and the words were squeezed out with much effort.

“You must be wondering why I’m concerned about your teeth,” he offered, flushing at his urgent need to explain.

“What?” (Sometimes I imagine that the fact of my beautiful teeth is related to the fact that I am slightly deaf. Psychologists acknowledge compensatory phenomena in the world of emotion, and one seeks analogies in all realms, especially if he is interested, as I am, in the Universal Oneness Hypothesis.)

He reiterated, adding that he is an avid student of orthodonture who delights in perfect teeth. Before he had time to explicate, I interrupted him with a basic tenet of the U. O. Hypothesis.

“Isn’t it remarkable that Imperfection superimposes Perfection on all it knows, thereby judging according to what it can’t know?” I extended my hand across the table as if passing him a microphone. He reacted as if I had.

“Well, teeth, when perfect, are naturally white, undefiled units, thirty-two ... in two rows ... in one mouth. We know that as perfection ... in teeth.”