by Carol
They ate their lunch, and then stretched out on the grass.
“There’s a pretty cloud,” said John. “It looks like a big dog. It was dark at first this morning and I thought we wouldn’t be able to go, but then it got to be very nice out, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Anthea, staring up at the sky.
“Anthea, do you think we could be married? A lot of the men who work with me are married, but their wives aren’t at all like you. But I like playing with children. I want some of my own so I can play with them all the time. Can we have children?”
“They’d be very beautiful,” said Anthea.
“How do people do it?” asked John. “Where do children come from?”
Anthea leaned on one elbow and looked at him as he lay beside her.
“I daresay,” she said slowly, “that you’ll find out.”
She thought about the only adult life she could remember. So far as she knew, she was as virginal as John. There were so many memories, memories of people, places, things, houses, animals, books, illness; but they did not include the physical expression of love.
The purblind leading the blind, she thought. Or perhaps it is better this way. Suppose I’d been Madame Pompadour or Nell Gwynn; I’d feel like a child-molester. At least we’re starting this together.
She kissed him on the lips.
He wouldn’t let her go. He kept kissing her, and he put his arms around her.
“I didn’t know there was any such thing,” said John, finally, gazing at her face which was so much like his own face. “I’ve seen people kiss in the movies, but I didn’t know it made you feel so different. Is this the way they feel? How can they do it so often? I don't suppose they really love the people they're kissing, though. I really love you”
“I love you, too,” said Anthea. She stayed quite still for a while and remembered gratefully that Johns mind was a good deal younger than his body. As her mouth stayed on his, his hands moved all along her hair, her face and then her own body, and he didn't seem to require any schooling. Physically he was an unusually strong, healthy thirty-year-old man, and this was how he reacted.
She shut her eyes and didn't try to keep back the tears of gratitude.
The first words between them occurred a long time later when she said, “No, wait. I—I feel a little tired.”
“It was only four times,” said John simply. “I'm not tired.”
But he fell asleep and so did she. When they woke it was getting cool; they gathered up the picnic things and went back to her house.
Anthea's bed was large and smelled nicely of the country and the night. Her clothes and John's were all in a heap at the bottom of the bed.
“Tell me about your childhood,” said Anthea. The cottage was quite dark except for a theatrical ray of moonshine. John was entwining his left foot with Anthea's right foot.
“What?”
“Tell me about your childhood. Was it happy? Do you have brothers and sisters? Were you rich or poor?”
John turned himself around so that Anthea's foot was under his chin.
“I don’t know.”
“You don't know what?”
“Are all girls soft? Little ones, I suppose. But old women? Are they soft?”
“No. Not really,” said Anthea. “Their skin gets dry and full of wrinkles. It hurts them most of the time.”
“Oh. Yours is so soft.”
“Did you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“What were your parents like?”
“Why don't men have breasts?”
“Because they don't need them to feed babies with. Unless, these days, all that's going to be changed. Who knows?”
“Do you—no; I mean, well, do women ever have anything like this?"
“No. That’s the difference between men and women.”
“You mean you’ll never have one? Even when you're older?”
“Never.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. No girl does?”
“No girl.”
“And all men? They all have one?”
A confused and unpleasant memory of space and time, in a night of isolated experiment, without sequel, returned to Anthea.
“They all have one, but some are better than others. Now. Answer me. Please, don’t you remember anything about your family?”
“No.” Then John sensed that he was disappointing her. He thought hard. Then he turned around again and buried his face in her neck.
“I remember something,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I remember that I have a brother ... he's older and he's ... that’s all.”
“Where did you live?”
“Not here,” said John, raising himself to shake his head earnestly. “Not here or in America. But I don't know the number.”
“You mean,” said Anthea slowly, “that sometimes you get the feeling that you were somebody else, that you really don’t belong here?”
“I don’t belong anywhere,” said John. “Anthea, don’t talk now.”
“I want to go to sleep ,” said Anthea a little later, stretching. “Good night.”
“No,” cried John. “I’m not sleepy. I won’t go to sleep now.”
“I’m sleepy,” said Anthea. She kissed him. “Really good night.”
“Anthea.”
“What?”
John spoke very low. “Would you read me a story first?”
“Not now. I’m too sleepy. Last one asleep’s a rotten egg.”
John laughed. “First asleep,” he said proudly.
At about five thirty in the morning John awoke. He couldn’t remember where he was at first, then he smiled as he was aware of what was lying not beside, more inside, the contours of his body. He shook her.
“Wake up,” he said.
She yawned. “Good morning, darling. Did you sleep well?”
“No, I had a lot of dreams,” said John. “I kept waking.”
“I slept like a baby,” said Anthea, and felt vaguely self-conscious for having uttered the word “baby.” “Sorry,” she murmured.
John made love to her and said, “Anthea, we must get married right away so we can have our children.”
“We could have them without being married,” said Anthea.
“No, I don’t think so,” said John, then politely changed the subject to something she’d be more familiar with. “Are we going in to work today?”
“Oh, good Lord, I almost forgot about that.” Anthea sat up. John put his arms around her. “No,” she said absently, “let me think. Yes, of course, we must go in. People will talk. You’ll be impeached or whatever they do to store presidents. How stupid of me to keep you away like this. You may get into trouble. There’ll be gossip.”
“Why don’t girls have one?” asked John.
When they got to the store Wanger and Branch hadn’t shown up yet. John went reluctantly into his own office and Anthea ran to hers. She immediately picked up the telephone and dialed a number, so she could look busy if anyone passed; as she received the weather forecast she tried to think. Obviously John could not go home with her every night; obviously he would expect to. People would see them, and the slimy directors would do something unpleasant. It was an awkward situation, and John would scarcely be able to think of a way out. Anthea listened to the forecast and tapped her pencil against her perfect teeth. No good blaming John for not thinking straight. There wasn’t anybody who could solve this particular problem. It was exciting and wondrous to be in love, but what would she and John talk about on long winter nights? Motor cars? Ice cream? Card tricks?
Of course, this was not as special a hardship for Anthea. In what seemed to be a process of devolution, there soon wouldn’t be anybody left on earth, at the rate it was disintegrating, to talk to or to respect. Where were the world leaders, the peacemakers, the artists, the thinkers? The best and brightest had been replaced by the loudest and ugliest, the precious by the cheap. John was no good
whatever as a talker, but he wasn’t covered with meretricious glitter, which seemed to be the unpleasant aura of most celebrities.
It was splendid to have found out what love was really about. Perhaps in any form, in any lifetime, Anthea would have had to settle for only one firstrate facet of life and skimp on all others. Once she had been surrounded by superb intelligence (and a good deal of poverty), but there had been no warmth, no excitement (and no financial horn of plenty).
There’s a lack of attention somewhere, she thought, and replaced her telephone receiver. The most accurate summary of human experience would have to be in the nature of a long and eventually pointless practical joke.
Her telephone rang.
“Anthea, please come to my office now,” said John. “I’m really lonesome for you. Please come. There’s a couch here.”
“John, this is your grown-up life. We can’t—”
“Well then, just come and talk to me. Please.” He sounded as though he was on the verge of tears, and of course he was.
Anthea walked along the corridor that looked like any corporate empire’s office setup in any city of the world. In New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Copenhagen, Moscow, and probably Dubrovnik, the total anonymity of conglomerates had replaced character.
John was waiting at the door. He grabbed her hand and pulled her in. He began kissing her wildly. She pushed him.
“Now, look,” she said. “You’ve simply got to learn something. Whatever we do at home is our business and it’s all right, but that’s personal. This concerns other people.”
John smiled and raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“It’s nicer this way,” he said, touching her breast. “Anyway, most of the people here, the directors and all, are too old.”
“Ho, ho,” said Anthea.
John looked amazed. They sat on the edge of the black leather couch together and he took both her hands as he asked, “Do you mean that the men who work for me, those men in their forty-years-old and their fifty-years-old, DO IT, TOO?”
“I should imagine so.”
“That’s nasty,” said John. “They shouldn’t. They’re ugly. Why would they want to?”
‘That’s the way most of the world is, and in that respect always has been,” said Anthea. “Sex has—”
“What is sex?”
“That’s what you were asking me about. The difference between our bodies. Everybody doesn’t look like us, but it doesn’t stop them from wanting each other, and-”
“Sex,” repeated John. “Sex.” He walked over to the window, “That’s a little word, it’s a baby word. It doesn’t explain at all how we feel when—”
He came back to where she was sitting. He touched her hair.
“I so much like to touch you,” he said.
“Well, I like to touch you, too, but I’ve told you, it isn’t possible to do it here.”
John pushed her a little so that she was leaning back against the arm of the sofa. He drew himself against her. The door to his office opened.
Branch and Wanger had been arguing most of the morning.
“First it’s the goddam gummint making our lives miserable, playing dirty tricks on each other so it’s good old private enterprise keeps the gummint going, then ...” Branch stopped.
Wanger grabbed his arm.
“What did I tell you?” he said. “Orgies! Bight there, right in front of you, at eleven o’clock in the morning! Orgies!”.
... “I want to go home” thought Dix. “Why does he keep thinking of things to say just as Vm leaving. I know I’m going to fail. He doesn't have to go into long speeches about it. He's being conceited.”
“... some of your pets have come closer than they know in their phrase ‘runs of luck’ Of course, that’s the only hope they have. When they have a run of luck it means simply that you are paying attention. When a bird flashes by you or a song is sung their luck ‘runs out,' or, more accurately, you have forgotten them for the moment. Moment ... a curious word. However, the experiment is a failure. It is difficult for me to see how you could be given a passing mark. There have been on occasion suggestions that might have worked. Christianity, for example, or communism. As that intelligent Irishman said, what a pity neither of them was ever really tried. But—”
Dix felt a buzzing against his side. His signal was going bee-bee-wee very softly. Little Brothers signature. It had been a terrible day. Now something was very likely going wrong at home. On days like this it really seemed probable that somewhere, in another civilization, on another plane in spacetime, at another dimension, a race of giants was manipulating Teachers and pupils here, much as Dix was manipulating his Earth dolls. (A foolish concept, he told himself, and quite heretical.)
But the Teacher was not quite through. “Since we are nearing the inevitable failure of the project, I wanted to point out some of the idiocies going on in your globe at—let us use that meaningless word ‘moment' once more. Aside from the large disasters and wars, in large cities, at this moment, there are four thousand several hundred rapes and assaults ... many fires, some floods, countless burglaries, and innumerable private offenses. No spot on your project is free of crime, corruption and stupidity. Children are either abused or made too much of, the young are not trained to anything that will benefit their fellows, the middleaged are insulated in greed and self-pity, the old are neglected and derided. As you know, in any structure, from amoebae to our very selves, a social pattern always manifests itself. The social pattern of 'Earth' has entered a final stage of rot.
“Your project must receive a grade of Inferior. I'm sorry. Next semester you must start a new program.”
Dix walked home. The signal was becoming stronger. The reason for it became apparent. Little Brother was in the project room. Beside him were two dolls, two pretty little things the size of Dix's seventh finger.
“Dix, I wanted to help you, I didn't do anything wrong, I wanted to help, so I got them away. If I hadn't pulled them up right this minute they would really have got into a lot of trouble. Somebody was going to find out about them ..”
“Anthea, where are we? Are we in heaven?”
I'm sure I don’t know. It’s probably a tandem dream.”
‘What?”
“Nothing. It’s not a very reassuring dream.”
Little Brother pressed a button. Now he could hear the amplification of their tiny voices. The female one was doing the talking.
“It wouldn't have been any use.” Little Brother picked Anthea up and spoke to her. “John would have had to stay six years old for a billion years of your time, and that wouldn't have been any good to you.” “Where are we, what are you going to do?” asked Anthea. She was sitting in Little Brother's hand.
'Well, I'm going to put your memory-bank back where it belongs—quick, before Dix sees me—and I'll put John near you. Then when I get to be in Dix's stage I'm going to ask the Teacher if I can start the project again. Z don't have as many Deficiency Ratings as Dix, so he'll probably let me. I think more clearly and I'm much kinder.”
Before Dix could absorb what teas happening, Little Brother disassembled the dolls and put their files in the proper places.
The Earth itself was traveling its little path around Sun.
“Why, you—you—” Dix slapped his brother. “How dare you fool with my pets? How did you get these two up here? Do you know Toe failed? That 1 was marked Inferior?”
Little Brother looked downward. There was nothing to say.
Dix took the rotating globe out of its little universe. He held the dripping, pulsating thing in both hands.
Then, with a savage and timeless older-brother gesture, he hurled it straight at Little Brother. It hit Little Brother in the stomach and made him gasp.
“Oof” said Little Brother, as
The End
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Carol and Frederik: Pohl are the editors of Jupiter and the SF: The Golden Years anthologies. Carol Pohl is primarily an artist, who has done covers and interior illustrations for science-fiction magazines. Frederik Pohl is the only person to have won science fiction s top award, the Hugo, both as writer and as editor. In addition to anthologies, their joint production includes four children: Ann, Karen, Kathy and Frederik IV.
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