Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

Martie shook his head. The book. He had meant to ask about one at Harvard, and he’d forgotten. “The baby. You think it will be able to … The other two? Are they both … ?”

“The only concern we have now is for the successful delivery of the child that your wife is carrying. We suspect that it will be one of us. And we need it. That forty percent I mentioned runs through the population, young and old. Over forty, give or take a year or two, they can’t stand the treatments. We don’t know exactly why yet, but we will eventually. We just know that they die. So that brings us down to roughly twenty-five percent of the present population. We need the babies. We need a new generation of people who won’t be afraid of death from the day they first grasp the meaning of the word. We don’t know what they will be, how it will change them, but we need them.”

“And if it isn’t able to take the RNA?”

“Martie, we abort a pregnancy when it is known that the mother had German measles, or if there is a high probability of idiocy. You know that. Unfortunately, our technique for testing the foetus is too imperfect to be certain, and we have to permit the pregnancy to come to term. But that’s the only difference. It would still be a therapeutic abortion.”

Martie and Julia lay side by side, not touching, each wakeful, aware that the other was awake, pretending sleep. Julia had dried tears on her cheeks. Neither of them had moved for almost an hour. “But goddam it, which one is Cro-Magnon and which Neanderthal?” Martie said, and sat upright.

Julia sat up too. “What?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep, honey. I’m getting up for a while.”

Julia swung her legs off the bed. “Can we talk now, Martie? Will you talk to me about it now?”

Martie muttered a curse and left the room.

This was part of the plan, he knew. Drive them apart first, make it easier for him to join them later. He sat down in the kitchen with a glass half filled with bourbon and a dash of water.

“Martie? Are you all right?” Julia stood in the doorway. She was barely showing her pregnancy now, a small bulge was all. He turned away. She sat down opposite him. “Martie? Won’t you tell me?”

“Christ, Julia, will you shove off! Get off my back for a while?”

She touched his arm. “Martie, they offered you the treatment, didn’t they? They think you could take it. Are you going to?”

He jerked out of the chair, knocking it over, knocking his glass over. “What are you talking about?”

“That was the crudest thing they could have done right now, wasn’t it? After I’m gone, it would have been easier, but now …”

“Julia, cut it out. You’re talking nonsense… .”

“I’ll die this time, won’t I? Isn’t that what they’re planning? Did they tell you that you could have the babies if you want them? Was that part of it too?”

“Has someone been here?” Martie grabbed her arm and pulled her from the chair.

She shook her head.

He stared at her for a long time, and suddenly he yanked her against him hard. “I must be out of my mind. I believed them. Julia, we’re getting out of here, now. Tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t know.”

“Martie, we have to stop running. There are physical limits to how much I can run now. But besides that, there’s really no place to run to. It’s the same everywhere. You haven’t found anyone who will listen to you. One check with your personal data file and that’s it. We may never know what they put on your record, but it’s enough to make every official pat you on the head and say, ‘Don’t worry, Dr. S. We’ll take care of it.’ We can’t get out of the country, passport requests turned down for medical reasons. But even if we could … more of the same.”

Julia was pale, with circles under her eyes. It was early in November, cold in Chicago, where the apartment overlooked Lake Michigan. A flurry of powdery snow blew in a whirlwind across the street.

Martie nodded. “They’ve covered everything, haven’t they? Special maternity hospitals! For the safety and protection of the mother and child. To keep them from the filthy conditions that exist in most hospitals now. Keep them safe from pneumonia, flu, staph… . Oh, Christ!” He leaned his head against the glass and watched the dry dustlike snow.

“Martie …”

“Damn. I’m out of cigarettes, honey. I’ll just run out and get some.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“Want anything?”

“No. Nothing.” She watched him pull on his coat and leave, then stood at the window and watched until he emerged from the building and started to walk down the street. The baby kicked and she put her hand over her stomach. “It’s all right, little one. It’s all right.”

Martie was only a speck among specks standing at the corner, waiting for the light to turn. She could no longer pick out his figure from those around him. “Martie,” she whispered. Then she turned away from the window and sat down. She closed her eyes for a moment. They wanted her baby, this baby, not just another child who would become immortal. They were too aware of the population curve that rises slowly, slowly, then with abandon becomes an exponential curve. No, not just a child, but her particular child. She had to remember that always. The child would be safe. They wouldn’t let it be harmed. But they wouldn’t let her have it, and they knew that this time she wouldn’t give it up. So she’d have to die. The child couldn’t be tainted with her knowledge of death. Of course, if it too was unable to tolerate the RNA, there was no real problem. Mother and child. Too bad. No cures for … whatever they’d say killed them. Or would they keep her, let her try again? She shook her head. They wouldn’t. By then Martie would be one of them, or dead. This was the last child for her.

“So what can I do?” she asked.

Her hands opened and closed convulsively. She shut her eyes hard. “What?” she whispered desperately. “What?”

She worked on the red sandstone on the ground floor of the barn. It was too big to get up to her studio, so she’d had her tools, bench, table, everything brought down. It was drafty, but she wore heavy wool slacks and a tentlike top, and was warm.

She whistled tunelessly as she worked… .

Julia stood up too fast, then clutched the chair for support. Have to remember, she told herself severely. Work. She had to go to work. She picked up her sketch pad, put it down again. Red sandstone, 10x10x8. And red quartzite, 4x3x2. She called her supplier on Long Island.

“Funny, Mrs. Sayre. Just got some in,” he said. “Haven’t had sandstone for … oh, years, I guess.”

“Can you have it delivered tomorrow?”

“Mrs. Sayre, everyone who’s ever touched rock is working. Had to put on an extra man. Still can’t keep up.”

“I know. And the painters, and composers, and poets …” They settled for the day after her arrival home.

She reserved seats on the six P.M. flight to New York, asked for their hotel bill within the hour, and started to pack. She paused once, a puzzled frown on her forehead. Every one of her friends in the arts was working furiously. They either didn’t know or didn’t care about the disastrous epidemics, the travel bans, any of it.

Martie walked slowly, his head bowed. He kept thinking of the bridge that he had stood on for an hour, watching filthy water move sluggishly with bits and pieces of junk floating on the surface: a piece of orange, a plastic bag, a child’s doll with both arms gone, one eye gone. The doll had swirled in a circle for several minutes, caught in a branch, then moved on out of sight. Of no use to anyone, unwanted, unloved now. Imperfect, cast away.