“So you two planned it all?” asked the astonished young man.
“Just about. Of course we didn’t know how you two would work out the details. We knew that you would have to get beyond the reach of the government to even start. If the authorities found out where you were and what you had done, you would probably be placed in solitary confinement for life, though that is a punishment that has not been necessary for a thousand years. In this case, however, they would feel that it was imperative. Suppose your conduct became known? What if the young people adopted it as the latest fad? You can readily see that the entire economy of the human race would be disrupted. Of course you can depend on two old men to keep your secret, but as far as the world is concerned, you’d better consider yourselves dead, for you must not come back.”
“We don’t want to come back, but I can’t see what harm it would do!’
“Just this: it would disrupt our present civilization. Suppose Elizabeth has a child. The last birth occurred in 3009. But before that, for hundreds thousands of years every child was born with a mother. The desire to give birth to a child was as much a part of their lives as the desire to eat and sleep. For nearly a thousand years, all women have been sterile and have had to be content with synthetic babies, but do you suppose that the desire to have babies of their own has disappeared from their mind and soul? No, indeed! It is still there and it is a powerful desire even though it is dormant and subconscious. If Elizabeth should appear in Washington, carrying her baby, if it became known that she had actually given birth to the child and that she had a husband who was the child’s father, the women would wreck the government. The older women would go wild because they had been deprived of what would seem to them to be the greatest privilege and blessing of their sex, while the young girls would refuse to accept the dictates of our government and would try just as hard as they could to follow Elizabeth’s example. There would be chaos.”
“Then why did you secretly urge us to go on with it?”
“For two reasons. First as a retribution to your mothers, who decided to kill themselves rather than go through with the operation, and second, because, as scientists, we wanted to make sure it was still possible for a woman to have a child.”
“Do you mean that you thought there was a doubt?”
“Certainly! For at least forty generations these physiological functions of both sexes have been unused. We were unable to tell what would happen if a normal man married a normal woman. We did not even know if there were normal people anymore. We tried to find out what the physicians and biologists thought about it, but there again we were in trouble. No one had thought about such a thing for so long that they could only guess, and, being scientists, they felt that each had to guess differently.”
The young man laughed. “I think we’ll be able to tell you the answer some time.”
“That’s the pity of it. You’ll be able to tell my friend and you can tell me, but you can’t tell the world. We should be pleased if you had a child, and we’d try to arrange to secretly get you a child of the opposite sex so they could grow up together and marry at the right time. If we were only younger, we might even assist you in founding a small race, but it would have to be a race of savages, educated savages, but none the less composed of individuals who must live under the same conditions that savages used to. Well, we’ve talked enough and I know you’re anxious to return to your wife. Let’s go and get whatever you need from my private museum. I want you to take anything you need. We do not want Elizabeth to suffer in any way. Tell her the story I have told you. Tell her we love her and want her to be a brave girl. Just as soon as you go, I’ll step over to see her grandfather. Be sure to leave me a good map of just where you are. I wish there were some way of communicating with you, so we could be sent for if you get into trouble of any kind. We’ll prepare you a medicine chest.”
An hour later the young man jumped into his plane, kissed the old man goodbye and started out for his long trip back to the cave. In the monoplane were a number of things that would help make the winter more endurable. As soon as he left, the librarian started out to make a midnight call on his old friend and the two talked till morning; and the things they talked about were the things that had interested young folks thousands of years ago.
* * * *
The winter was severe. With all his education and effort and even with the use of a lot of common sense, Leuson could not keep the winter from being a hard one. The chimney smoked, the food spoiled, the roof of the cave leaked, the wolves ate their little pig, their few chickens refused to lay, the traps did not catch rabbits regularly, and never a day passed without some new form of trouble, unforeseen and unpreventable. Yet Leuson Hubler was happy with his wife, Elizabeth Sellers, because they lived in a home and the thing that made the cave a home was love.
The winter passed and the spring came. The young man wanted to make another trip to Washington—to see if he could get help, advice, or medicine. His wife refused to let him go; she believed she would die if she had to spend a night alone. Together they studied the old books and tried to prepare themselves as best they could for the event they now were certain had to be faced. Leuson captured and tamed a wild goat and in May she gave birth to a kid. He felt easier. No matter what happened, there would be milk. Elizabeth laughed and said she would tend to that part of the program, but Leuson only took better care of the goat, and learned to milk it. He also ventured to send a radio message to the librarian.
June was warm. Elizabeth rarely went beyond the mouth of the cave. For over three weeks she had not been down on the meadow. Every day Leuson drove the goat and kid down to the pasture. Finally he decided to keep the goat in the cave and bring it grass. He did not want to lose the animal. Elizabeth kept on laughing at him. He would laugh back and then go down the path with sorrow in his face and fear in his heart.
On the last of June, Elizabeth remained in bed. Leuson stayed by her side. They talked and now and then he gave her milk, warm from the goat. He did all he could for her and she helped herself as well as she was able to remember the instructions in the old books, and all through the night she kept on telling him that she had been happy in her home and their love and that she was glad she was going to have the baby and how proud she was that he was the father of the baby and how much she loved him and how proud they were going to be of their child—and when morning came she died.
The cause of her death was a simple matter. The average physician of the nineteenth century could have saved her. The only reason for her death was that she had given birth to a baby and there was no one there who knew how to care for her in a scientific manner.
Leuson Hubler, the first father that the world had known for a thousand years, picked his daughter up and carried her into the sunshine. There, on the rock ledge, the kid was nursing the goat. The goat was bleating from hunger and the joy of nursing. Leuson gave her a handful of grain and let the baby drink with the kid.
As he knelt there, giving his daughter her first food, two old men toiled up the steep path. The librarian and his friend were bringing the medicine that would have saved the life of the first mother.
They were just a little too late.
* * * *
That fall, in the city of Washington, the National Society of Federated Women held their annual meeting. Five thousand of these leaders had gathered for the meeting and every woman in the nation was listening to the proceedings over the radio. It was the one time in the year that the women were fully sex-conscious. All through the year they believed they were the equal of the male, but during this week they knew they were superior in every way. The usual program was presented, the usual leaders of the feminine sex introduced. It was not till Thursday afternoon that the unusual occurred.
A man was introduced to the great audience. It was a distinct novelty. Rarely was a man invited to participate in the conference.
Leuson Hubler walked out onto the platform, carrying a basket which he placed behind th
e President’s chair. Then he started to talk in a voice so clear and musical that there was hardly any need of the loud speakers, and even as he talked to the five thousand leaders of womankind, many more thousands of women in all parts of the land listened over the radio.
He started to tell them about the old days. He talked in simple language, with well chosen words. Largely he repeated what he had said to his bride the first evening in front of the cave. He told about the increase of unrest in the women and selfishness in the men and how with the companionate marriage had come a steady deterioration of the human race. He went on to explain the progression of the Sterilization Laws and how finally the synthetic baby was thought not only necessary, but highly scientific. Next he told of the disappearance of the home and the gradual death of family love. With the home and love had disappeared the father. There remained only houses in which lived men and women who were “married” companions and nothing else. They had children, the seed of dead women, who had never known a husband’s love. The children were loved only as permit children could be loved.
On and on he talked and as he talked there arose in the hearts of the women who listened a strange unrest and hunger for something that had once been their heritage. They listened and yearned for something they had lost a thousand years ago. Then he told them about Elizabeth and himself: how they were the children of two women who had killed themselves rather than be denied their rightful inheritance. He told how they had loved each other as boy and girl and as young man and woman had fled to the wilderness rather than submit to the laws of the land. He related how they lived and loved in the cave, and how they had wondered whether it was still possible for a woman to give birth to a living child; how they had tried to prepare for the emergency—about the goat in case anything happened.
The five thousand women rose silently to their feet; they crowded around the platform where he was weaving his magic spell—and he told about that first night and then about the last night—how she had said that no matter what happened she was repaid by the love and happiness that had been hers that year in the cave-home—and then he told how she had died, but that she might have been saved—and that even in death she had proven to the world that a normal woman could give birth to a normal child—and then—
He reached down into the basket and, picking up his daughter, held the baby high above the heads of the five thousand women and showed them a baby, born of the love of a man and a woman in a home. For a moment the hall was silent.
The women looked at the baby, and as the tears streamed down their cheeks, they knew at last what they had been wanting all those thousand years. They knew, but they needed a leader to tell them.
And Dr. Helen Sellers Gowers, large, efficient, determined, shouldered her way to the platform and stood by the man and the baby and said, “This is the child of the woman I called my sister. She is dead, but we will never forget what she has taught us. I know what I feel and I know what you feel. It is too late for many of us, but it is not too late to save our boys and girls. There must be no more synthetic children, no more companionate husbands, no more mere houses. We can rule the country. Because we are the stronger. Let us go to Congress and tell the men what they must grant us.”
And as they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, the women of the nation cried in unison: “Give us back our homes, our husbands, and our babies!”
FREE AS THE AIR
Originally appeared in Amazing Stories, June 1931.
“When are you going to buy me a plane?”
It was not the first time that Jane Jordan had asked her husband this question. The discussion of the advisability of adding an airplane to the possessions of the Jordan family was almost a favorite indoor sport with the young people.
William Jordan wearily turned oft the radio.
“You know how it is,” he at last replied. “We’ve gone over the matter so many times you ought to know. We ought to save our money. No telling what may happen; we aren’t rich enough to go into the air, and you know it.”
“But every married woman in our set has her own plane. We’re absolutely the only ones in this apartment who aren’t air minded.”
“I know that, and I know about the husbands. There are Smathers and Jenkins and Peterson—every one of them head over heels in debt.”
“But they have a large income!”
“Certainly, but what difference does that make if they spend it all, and more too? Where are those fellows after a year of hard office work? In debt. Now, if we can just keep our expenditures where they are, we will be ahead at the end of the year, actually have some money in the savings account.”
“Turn on the radio!” demanded the irate bride. “At least, let me hear some jazz, even if I can’t live it. If I had known that married life was like this, I would have—”
“Married William Jordan just the same,” said her husband with a smile, as he finished the sentence for her.
The Jordans were living on the fifty-second floor of an ultra-modern apartment house up in the two hundreds of New York City. They occupied what was called, by courtesy, a one room apartment. It was a place where two persons could exist for a few hours out of every twenty-four. Under no circumstances could it be said that they lived there. As both Jordan and his wife worked all day and only used the apartment for an occasional meal and a place to sleep, the size made but little difference to them, except on Sundays and holidays. On those days life was almost intolerable to the hyperactive bride.
In the same apartment house, by actual count, there lived seven hundred and ten men and their wives. The word family can not be used in speaking of any of these couples, as there was not even one child in the enormous pile of structural steel and cement. Every marriage contributed two workers to the insatiable maw of downtown New York. The day’s income just paid for the day’s expenses. Under such a financial system, sickness was a great misfortune and parenthood a titanic disaster. In the economy of these companionate marriages, there was provision for a continuance of life, an abundance of amusement, and an obliteration of space, through agencies such as radio, television, and air travel; but only two groups could afford children, the very rich and the very poor. The white collar group was practically childless.
The next morning was blue Monday. Jane and William Jordan had their usual breakfast of health toast and caffeine-less coffee, and joined the other fourteen hundred and eighteen laborers in their mad dash down the express elevators and from them to the subway. There followed minutes of terrific compression in poorly ventilated cars in such proximity to masses of humanity that none could retain either pride, self respect, or even a sense of decency. Then a mad rush out into underground passages, up in express elevators, packed to resemble sardine cans, and at last the office.
William Jordan arrived a few minutes before it was time for him to start work. Other clerks were there, smoking a last cigarette. Stenographers applied the last touch of face powder and rouge, amid a chatter of, ‘I says to him, and then he says to me, and I told him to stop, but how could I jump out and walk home when we were two thousand feet in the air?’” Jordan beckoned to one of his best friends to join him by an open window.
“Were you up in the air yesterday, John?” he asked.
“Sure. We go every time we can and that isn’t often enough for Lil. Went to Quebec yesterday.”
“Pretty scenery?”
“Didn’t see a thing. Fog all day. But we made the port easily. That new bus of mine has all the latest dofangles. I hardly know their names but what difference does that make! Just foolproof, you know. If they weren’t, there would be ten thousand deaths a day.”
“You and Lil like it?”
“Certainly. She’s wild about it.”
“Does it cost much?”
“All we have, and more too. A man can’t be up in the air and save anything; but what’s the use of saving. Make it and spend it! That’s the way Lil and I feel about life.”
“Come up to our apartm
ent some time, John. What say to having a good talk some evening, just the four of us?”
“You mean a conversation?”
“Yes, exchange ideas about things we’re interested in—the way we live, our hopes, ambitions.”
John started to laugh. “Might do for the two of us, but all Lil knows to talk about is buying things and going somewhere.”
“Jane is a little that way,” remarked Jordan, “but she’ll stay in the apartment and listen to the radio. She’s restless though and keeps on teasing me to buy a plane, and honestly, I can’t afford it.”
“What has that to do with it? None of us can afford it. But if she wants to go up in the air, why not take her on one of the Sunday excursions? Cheap, and cover a lot of ground.”
“Good idea. Be a change for her. Well, time to start work.”
Jordan bought the tickets for an air excursion, New York to Washington, Mount Vernon, Arlington, returning to the Metropolis via Gettysburg, everything included in the price of the ticket, special stress being placed on the lunch and two bottles of soft drinks served during the day. He kept the secret well and when Sunday came Jane didn’t have the least idea where the day was to be spent. It didn’t dawn on her till they arrived at the air station. There, thousands of Sunday pleasure seekers were filling hundreds of commercial passenger planes, each holding one hundred and ten persons. Naturally, the seats were narrow, close together, and only those on the outside rows were able to see anything. Plane after plane, filled with pleasure seekers, darted in different directions through the air. Once a passenger was seated, it was impossible to move. Each one, wedged in his seat, tried to relax and imagine he was having a good time. The passengers were the poor of the city, those unable to own their own plane, men and women who had starved all week for the necessities of life in order to indulge in a grand splurge on Sunday and to be able to boast to their neighbors that they had been up in the air.
The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D. Page 4