The girl ran toward him, as she replied, “I’m so glad. Do they tell what we want to know? Were you able to read them?”
He took her in his arms and kissed her before answering. “I believe so. Of course, the language is peculiar and there are lots of words that I don’t know. You see I’ve been reading for only two years, but I brought along a good dictionary of obsolete words and I believe we can work it out. It will be a lot of fun to do it together.”
She looked at him trustfully.
“Yes, Leuson, that’s the right word. From now on we’re going to do everything together. I have all my things ready and, best of all, I’m ready for the new life with you.”
Without loss of time, he helped her pack her various bundles into the plane and then securely fastened her into the passenger’s seat. He took the aviator’s position in front of her. They were ready to start, but for some reason he delayed. He was not sure of the wisdom of the adventure on which they were starting. They waited a little too long, for an older couple came out of the house and walked toward the monoplane. They were the celebrated biologists, Dr. Hardner Gowers and his wife, Dr. Helen Sellers Gowers. It was hard to tell which was the more learned. In early life they had been poor but each had attained fame and wealth by the sheer force of their powerful intellects. Following their companionate marriage, they had assumed all responsibility for their sister, Elizabeth Sellers, and also had claimed the right to control the details of her daily life, much to the annoyance and disgust of that young lady, who wanted to do as she pleased, when she pleased, and as often as she pleased.
“Hullo, Leuson,” called Dr. Gowers, “Going out riding with Elizabeth? The air looks fine but Helen and I have been so busy lately, we haven’t been up for ages. We’ve been hunting for you, Beth. We have news that I’m sure will please you. Your sister and I have decided to apply for a baby!”
“About time!” replied the young lady, sarcastically. “After you’ve done everything that you wanted to do, you finally make up your mind to apply for a child. You should have done that years ago.”
“Now, Elizabeth,” replied the older woman, “we’ve talked that over and over and you know I just had to finish my special line of investigation before I could devote my time to a child. You have no idea what it means. Even with the most competent nurses, it takes time. I’ve been fortunate in locating three excellent women who have had a lot of experience in the Government Nurseries, and were asking for a four-year-old child. It will not be so hard on me then as it might be under different circumstances. Some women are even attempting to take care of a baby without help, but of course, they’ve never done any research work. I’m willing to give the child as much as an hour a day and will do all I can for its future health and happiness.”
“You see it’s this way, Leuson,” said her husband. “You and Beth are very young and naturally you cannot see the responsibility of applying for a child—it’s something you can’t comprehend as we do. My wife has been very wonderful about it and has repeatedly promised that she would join in an application for a child just as soon as she completed her investigations into the life history of the Cryptobranchus Alleghaniensis. This work, in two hundred and ten moving picture reels, is now completed; when it was shown to the International Society of Biologists, they voted her a life membership, an honor that has never before been given to any woman. It’s true that she spent over twenty years at this work, but she has enjoyed every minute of it. She is just entering middle-age and is well qualified in every way to supervise the care of a child. We are able to employ the best of help and can buy the most modern electrical equipment. We’ll welcome the child and give it every possible social and educational advantage.”
“That’s fine, Dr. Gowers,” said the young man, enthusiastically. “If you were in my place, what would you advise me to do?”
The old doctor smiled paternally, as he replied, “Select an intelligent lady you can harmonize with and hand in your application for your papers and arrange for the preliminary treatment. You have a Government position and no doubt your wife could secure a place in the same office; then you can have a companionate marriage. I believe in early marriages and shall be glad to help you in any way I can. It may be, by the time you’re thirty-five, you can apply for a baby.”
“I shall be glad to avail myself of your help,” replied the young man. “Now we shall have to be going; so we can have a long day’s trip.”
“Don’t get tired, Elizabeth,” advised the older sister. “You know you’ve passed all the examinations and the day for your operation has been set for next month. It is a great honor and I want you to be in the best physical condition.”
Amid the roar of the engine, Elizabeth called back, “Good-bye, Sis. When we come back you’ll see us.”
Rising rapidly into the air, the monoplane made certain circular movements and then started westward along the Potomac. Although the machine was capable of three hundred miles an hour, Leuson seemed satisfied with a much slower pace, and they did not reach Pittsburgh till late in the afternoon. At that time there were less than ten thousand people in that city for there was but little demand for coal or steel in the new age of atmospheric electricity and glass. Leaving the plane on the aviation field, the young people walked to the office of the local judge. This official had been in office for so long that he had become careless of details and obsessed with the idea that he could not make a mistake. For this reason he did not thoroughly examine the papers Leuson handed him, but asked gruffly, “So you want to enter a companionate marriage?”
“Yes, sir,” was the double reply.
“Are you able to support yourselves individually?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have permits, vaccination certificates, life insurance, health, accident, tornado, air, and happiness insurance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You each consent to an immediate and complete divorce in case you are unhappy living together?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I pronounce you man and wife. Sign these papers so I can send them to the Central Matrimonial Office. Is this your first experiment?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was married eleven times before I found a woman I could live with. I understand that is not an unusual experience.”
The young people rushed from the office, and hurried back to their plane. Leuson looked a little worried, as he said, “I’m sorry that I had to forge some of those papers, but let’s go.”
The monoplane, avoiding the usual air lanes, sped steadily westward, finally landing on the grass of an isolated meadow among the peaks of Ozark Mountains. There was sunshine here and a little singing brook and while three sides of the meadow were sheltered by dense woods, the other side was guarded by a sheer cliff of overhanging rock, which rose some hundreds of feet above the cleared field. The young people seemed completely at home. As a matter of fact, they had made frequent visits to this field and had thoroughly prepared, as far as they could, to make this place their permanent home.
Travelling all day and night, they had reached the meadow just as the sun was first kissing the tree tops. They were tired, but they were far too excited to rest, so at once they started to unload the plane and carry their packages up a narrow, winding mountain path which the boy had constructed, and which ended in a cave one hundred feet above the level of the field. After everything had been carried, the plane was wheeled under the trees and covered with waterproof canvas. They never intended to use it again, but they felt that it might be useful in an unexpected emergency. Finally the necessary things were all done and the boy and girl, for they were little more, sat down to rest on the narrow rock shelf in front of the doorway of their new home. They dissolved several synthetic food tablets in a pint of spring water and slowly sipped their meal.
They put a few pillows behind them and sat there looking toward the west. The girl shivered but it was from cold rather than fear.
“Now, tell me, de
ar, just what you have really found out about it all.”
He drew her closer to him as he started to talk.
“Of course we’re just youngsters, Elizabeth, but I guess we are old enough to know our minds, and decide what we want. I’ve been reading a lot of the history of the thing and I was just fortunate enough to be able to find some real old books and take them out of the Congressional Library.
“Years ago, when we first found each other and realized we were in love and wanted to be different from other folks, we knew that unless we learned to read we should have to receive the same mass education that all the young people received. Even then we were tired of looking at the educational moving pictures and listening to the same lectures given over the radio. It was this that prompted us to seek positions where we could learn to read and have access to the old books. Do you remember how we used to talk about it? How in those back rooms in the library were printed books that no one had read for centuries and yet which were carefully guarded under lock and bolt so no one would get them?
“It seems odd, but we found that it was a fact that the citizens of a supposedly free country have had no choice in their education or amusements for over a thousand years. Every home has its radio, its movie, its television box; but every fact and picture that came to them was approved and censored by the National Board of Education and Amusement. No one had a right to a private opinion; everyone had to think like everyone else. There was a gradual death of individuality. Whenever a change in mass opinion or action was desired, an educational propaganda was started. Finally, all thinkers were engaged by the central government. If they wanted to make any statement to the world, they just had to have their message passed by this National Board. The entire learning of past ages, put into books, was a closed secret, save to a few who were taught to read, that the art might not be entirely lost.
“As you know, we were both fortunate enough to secure this special education. Then finally my chance came and I was selected as the night watchman. After months of search, I located the books I wanted—and stole them and stole you. Now I want to tell you the history of this problem.
“This is June, 3928. A great many centuries ago life was very different in this world. Everything has changed during the last twenty centuries. But I want especially to talk about love, marriage, and babies, and to give you some idea of the changes in these three important divisions of the human economy.
“Twenty centuries ago there were lots of babies and they were all born. That is just a four letter word that means nothing at all to you now, but at that time it was the only way whereby the existence of the human race could be maintained. A man and a woman married one another and in the course of time a baby was born to them. Strange as it may seem to us now, the baby was the actual child of the two persons who called themselves its father and mother. These babies all reached the breathing stage of existence at the same age, they all looked alike, they all had the same average intelligence, and it took a lot of care and love to raise them—also a lot of intelligence—and as a consequence, a great many of the little things died the first year. What I want you to understand is the fact that any two persons who were married had a right to have children. The license to marry automatically carried with it the right to have as many children as they wanted to. This was centuries before the National Child Permit Act was passed.
“There were so many babies in so many families in those days that it was quite a problem to raise them. The amount of detail and care each baby required must have been terrific. If a child was intelligently tended twenty centuries ago, it took fully six hours a day of the mother’s time! At least, so I’ve read in the old records. The condition is nicely illustrated in the old patents applied for at that time. Some are hard to understand but all seem to have for their object the lessening of the time that had to be given daily to each baby. Life for parents in those days must have been one continual round of duty.
“Yes, I’m satisfied that there must have been a lot of trouble twenty centuries ago with babies, having them the way they did and having to care for them. Then, too, there was such a scatter of the babies. Some families had a dozen and some had none or perhaps just one. Many of the infants were not well; they had a lot of diseases that we haven’t seen for over fifteen hundred years and some doctors made a living just treating sick children. The sad part about it all was the fact that those who were wealthy and intelligent seemed to have the fewest children. It was only the poor and ignorant who had large families.
“Just about two thousand years ago a judge, in what was then the United States, wrote a book about companionate marriage. I translated this into modern English and waded through it with a great deal of interest. Of course it’s very far behind the times but we must give the judge credit for starting something. He had a law enacted which allowed a man and woman to marry each other and live together as long as it was mutually agreeable. They weren’t supposed to have any babies born to them until they were fairly sure that they’d want to live together for life.
“One hundred years later a law was passed to the effect that no woman was to have a child until she and her husband secured a permit from the Baby Board, and it was thought that this would diminish the number of babies in poor families. All children were supposed to be born in government hospitals, and a woman wasn’t admitted without her baby permit. Naturally, lots of babies were born surreptitiously without permits. It all worked out very unsatisfactorily.
“By the twenty-seventh century the human race was in a pitiful condition. All the so-called savage races had been blotted out of existence by new and deadly diseases. The Caucasian race saved themselves after a death rate of fifty percent. Those who remained alive were almost degenerates in many ways. The extensive use of the automobile came near withering the legs of the genus Homo. The only perfect form of man or woman was of marble in the art galleries. The hospitals for the insane and feeble-minded and epileptic were crowded to their utmost capacity. As a final resort Congress passed a National Sterilization Act, affecting those who should be found unfit to have children.
“For a while it worked and then it was discovered that so many people were being sterilized because they were unfit to be parents, that the human race was rapidly shrinking in number. Sterilization solved so many problems of modern life that it became too popular—almost a fad. When a man and woman entered into a companionate marriage they thought they’d feel a lot happier if they knew they would never have babies. This condition of affairs existed in and around 2800. The people actually abused the law and took advantage of the National Sterilization Board. You see, before a person could receive a sterilization permit, the Board had to be convinced that the applicant was mentally and physically incompetent to have children; and many bright, intelligent men and women went before the Board and took the examination pretending to be feeble-minded just so they’d receive the permit. Those were the very people who should have had children; yet they were the ones who didn’t want them. Having a baby in those dark ages was almost as bad as death itself.
“At that time the human race was not only degenerating as individuals but disappearing as a species. It was then that our scientists began to talk about synthetic babies. A lot of research and experiments were done on the lower forms of life. It was found that a piece of heart muscle from a chicken embryo could be kept alive indefinitely and growing in an incubator. Later surgeons were able to keep entire organs like the liver and spleen alive, and transplant them into the site of similar diseased organs. It was determined that the eggs of the sea urchin would grow into mature adults without the aid of the male; all that was necessary was to put them in water containing certain salts at a certain temperature. These experiments finally resulted in the discovery that the human ovary could be kept alive and functioning under certain conditions in a glass vessel. Such an ovary was able to develop and expel a perfect ovum every twenty-eight days. By a process similar to that used with the eggs of the sea urchin, these ova co
uld not only be kept alive but could be developed into fully matured babies. At a certain point in their growth, they were taken out of the sterile glucose solution and respiration started with a pulmometer. As far as any tests were concerned, they were just like all the other babies.
“A great many of these synthetic babies were made and allowed to grow up under ideal conditions. It was soon discovered that they could be kept free from all childhood diseases, they could grow into vigorous adults, and compare very favorably with the best of the race—provided they came from the ovary of a woman who was perfectly normal. That caused a lot of thinking and the thinking ended in the rapid collection of material and building of large numbers of special laboratories in which to grow these synthetic babies.
“When all was ready, the Universal Sterilization Law was passed. All young people were required to spend a few minutes under a special form of radium ray when they reached a certain age and no one was allowed to enter into a companionate marriage until this had been done. The continued supply of material for future use was provided for by one of the sections of this act which stated that all young women were to take an examination and those who were nearly perfect were required to submit to an oöphorectomy and were compensated for this by special pensions and privileges denied other women. In regard to this, I need not remind you that that test was one of our reasons for running away from modern civilization. It was a danger that threatened you in all its horror.
“Anyway, the machinery was finally set in motion. The records show that the last child was born on the western continent on July 4th, 3009. Since then the race has been kept alive by the production of synthetic babies. About one hundred and fifty thousand babies are produced every year. They are all perfect because any who show early defects are not allowed to develop. The government keeps them in nurseries till they are applied for. We saw how that happened in the case of your sister and brother-in-law. After they were forty years old, they decided to apply for a permit to take a baby and they asked for a four-year-old child.
The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D. Page 2