[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
bluenoses emotionally, but I'm not going to try to put them out of business. I still don't dare to praise them
publicly, but I can tell you off the record that I'm rather glad there are more and more lamaseries and
nunneries these days."
There was silence, except for Barnaby clearing his throat. He seemed to be giving some point a deep
reconsideration. "Really," he said at last. "I didn't come here with the main objective of getting your help
against the blue-noses. I know I let them upset me too much. I can see, they do help you in your difficult
job. But we've helped you even more, haven't we? For many years? I like to think that we in the League
are your favorite citizens, so to speak. That there's a large backlog of goodwill built up between us."
"Of course." Grill sighed, left the window, and walked back to his desk. He did not want to watch
another riot.
Privately, he had no more emotional sympathy for homosexuality than he did for chastity. Professionally,
he was glad to accept all the help, from every quarter, that Family Planning and the world could get. The
human world was in danger of collapsing by the weight of its own numbers, though you might not be able
to tell that by what went on in Illinois.
On the walls of Grill's office the computer-drawn curves of the world demographic charts showed the
danger in the form of the ever-worsening pressure of population. More people inevitably ate more food,
and while around the world the food suppliers struggled to get ahead, sometimes they could not even
manage to keep up. There were now laws restricting births in every country on the planet. It was
mathematically, physically, inevitable that at some future time, by some combination of peaceful or violent
forces, the world's population growth would finally be stopped obviously it could not continue until
human beings stood jammed shoulder to shoulder on every square meter of solid land. The
approximately eight billion people who inhabited the world today could all, in theory, probably be stored
within Chicago's borders, standing indoors and out, leaving the rest of the earth on which to grow their
food.
Frighteningly many of the eight billion were hungry and sick today, and more would be tomorrow.
Science had boosted the world's supply of available energy beyond all foreseeable needs by achieving
controlled atomic fusion; by harnessing, as the" popularizers of science put it, the power of the H-bomb
and of the sun itself. The problems of producing and distributing adequate food, and providing medical
care, were not so amenable to research and engineering. The leaders of the have-not nations spent their
time in power in states of chronic desperation, weighing and selecting gamblers' moves to keep
themselves in power and sometimes this came first to help their countrymen.
One aid toward staying in power was to point out a scapegoat or two on which the people could vent
their hate and dissatisfaction. If there were any justification for the choice of scapegoat, so much the
better. Another gamblers move was the utterance of overt or implied threats. Often the threats were,
serious, even when spoken by the leader of a poor but desperate nation against a wealthy and much
more powerful one. Today at least eighty nations Were theoretically capable of producing atomic
weapons, and fifteen or twenty of these had technologies sufficiently sophisticated to perhaps enable
them to hide such outlawed weapons from the UN inspection teams. Delivery of a nuclear bomb could
be accomplished by stealth if not by missile or aircraft. Biological weapons were easier to make, conceal,
and deliver, and could be just as deadly if not as quick as nuclear blasts. Thus the voices of the have-nots
must be heard in all the greatest capitals of the world. Thus if a new-born baby in Chicago consumed,
statistically, three times the food of one new-born in India, it was considered only just and decent to limit
the number of newborn Chicagoans, and the same with Londoners, Muscovites, babies of Peking and
Tokyo. The starving child in the Indian village might never see a bite of the food thus theoretically saved
for him, but who could say it was not just to offer him at least a chance? Thus, even among the haves,
compulsory sterilization and abortion for women who could not limit their fertility in any other way. Thus,
the illegitimacy of the third child. We may not feed the world, we may lack the knowledge or the will or
the material wealth for that, but we will not let it watch us overeat.
Again, as he looked now at the charts, there darted across Grill's mind the question of why the latest
population forecast had been delayed. He felt a foreboding chill.
"It seems to me," Barnaby was saying to him, "that in fact you owe us a real debt. Very few of the
League's members have brought any children at all into the world as yet."
Something in Barnaby's tone brought Grill's thoughts back firmly to his office. "As yet? Why do you put it
that way?"
Barnaby did not answer at once. An alien hardness had come into his face. He continued to stand beside
the window, watching Grill.
As Grill stood waiting beside his desk his mind started to relate that odd phrase "as yet" to the chain of
Barnaby's odd visits, and to certain other terrible hints that Grill had lately received from other sources,
the hints concerned recent advances in surgery, and in hormonal chemistry; until now, Grill had managed
to avoid confronting their implications face to face.
Barnaby, as if reading the director's mind, was nodding slowly and solemnly now. "Maybe you've heard
something about it? True male to female sex reversal is going to be possible. There've been doctors
working on it in Sweden, and lately in Japan, and both groups seem to have been successful."
"Well. That's fine. I suppose many members of the League will want to avail themselves of the operation,
to become practically complete women."
"Not just practically, Oscar. Truly complete. I want that. Does that surprise you?" Paradoxically, as he
spoke of becoming a woman, Barnaby looked more normal than before, a male trapped in a masquerade
costume he could not shed, a man grown weary and desperate beyond all words. "Does it make you
laugh, to hear that I will want to bear a child? Two children, if I can."
Grill was far from laughter. "This is beyond belief."
"Not to me." Barnaby's husky voice quavered. He spoke now as if confessing some terrible crime. "All
my life, since I was a child myself, the thought has been in my mind that somehow if I could have a
son what do you know about me, anyway?"
Like the first thunder of an unexpected storm, the sounds of rioting burst up abruptly from the street
outside; Director Grill hardly noticed them. He moved behind his desk and sank slowly into his chair,
without taking his eyes off Barnaby. "So," Grill said in a faint voice. "Today you have come here on
business."
* * *
Art, while inside the building and knotted in his own problems, had forgotten completely about the
demonstrations being organized outside. When he emerged from the lobby, practically at a run, he was at
once caught up between chanting swirls of picketers and counter-picketers. When he pushed his way
free he had been turned around, and stood still for a moment, disoriented, in the middle of the statwalk.
A short fat man carrying an armload of cheaply made, stick-mounted signs appeared at once beside Art,
haranguing him. "Get yer sign, get yer placard here! Do yer part, sir, only a dollar." STOP MORAL
FREE FALL, said the signs, or some of them at least. Others, interleaved, bore the proud legend LOVE
CONQUERS ALL.
"I'm not involved in this," Art muttered, trying to get free of the peddler, not knowing which side the man
thought he was on, or even what the two contending forces were. As soon as Art spotted a small gap
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plalternate.pev.pl
|
