Forbidden Thoughts
Page 31
“Every black male?” she asked, puzzled, wondering how the world hadn’t risen in revolution.
Joe twirled the little electronic paper in his hands. “No. Of course not. Just those that are genetically predisposed. They tell you that here. The race is just an aggravating factor.”
“But....” She sat beside Joe. She’d ridden home in a haze, hoping that it would all turn out to be a nightmare, that Joe would tell her a way to get around it. She could feel the baby alive within her, not a weight yet, but a presence, a living presence. Joe’s baby, her baby. She loved Joe. She wanted this baby. Though she had nothing in the abstract against abortion—unlike Joe with his Catholic faith—she had never thought of applying it to herself. Damn it, other creatures in this stage of development might be fetuses, but this was a baby and she wanted him.
“But I thought the genetic determinants of violence were not so well defined. I mean, we’ve never managed to define them that well in Marstown.” She forbore to say that their health services were better and their screening more sophisticated. Which, at any rate, Joe already knew. “I mean, the same genes that, according to this print out code for violence, I learned in school as potential coders for risk taking and creativity.”
Joe shrugged. “They can’t code them any better than that, no. They use genetic clues, but then the rest is statistics. So, any potential black babies with these genes that might or might not indicate violent tendencies but that are often found in violent criminals get aborted.”
“They can’t do that, can they?”
Joe had stared at her, held her hands. “I’m afraid they can, babe. But there’s this organization. It’s called Daughters of Rachel and they shelter women who.... Well.... See, after the baby is born, he’s a citizen and they can throw us in jail—or they can throw me in jail and deport you. But they can’t kill him.”
She didn’t want to be at the mercy of any Catholic organization. “Why didn’t you tell me to use contraceptives?” she asked.
He looked at her, looked away, and she felt very stupid. Of course. Of course. Joe couldn’t have. His Catholicism wouldn’t allow it. But, damn it.... It was better than this.
She felt very mad at him for a moment. For just a moment.
“It could have been a girl,” he whispered. “A little girl. Our little girl.”
That whisper broke Ingrid’s rage. That soft sound of longing in his voice spoke of how much he wanted her to have his baby, how much he wanted their child.
She took in breath sharply and wondered how anyone could possibly think this man was violent.
And they’d made love on the narrow bed in their studio.
The fly sped through the air, with the police cruiser giving chase.
“They won’t shoot,” Joe said. “Don’t worry. They’d never shoot. If they kill us it’s murder. They wouldn’t do that. They will kill us before birth, but not after.”
Ingrid hadn’t even thought they could be in danger of being shot at. All she could think was that Joe looked angry.
His clenched teeth made his face look harsh, hard, every plane, every angle too clearly defined.
He turned the fly car on manual, moving very fast amid the tall buildings in the tourist area of Goldport.
“It makes it harder for them to shoot,” Joe said, with a quick look at Ingrid. He looked as though afraid of what the acceleration would do to her. “If they should forget themselves. Cheer up, babe. You’re going home.”
She didn’t have time to think about it. At the end of the street loomed the tunnel.
It stood out in the open air, with ticket takers—and visa checkers—on either side of it.
People walked through it, of course. After getting their papers checked, of course.
They didn’t have papers.
Ingrid realized they weren’t stopping the fly either. The tunnel was big enough, oh, big enough—a ragged opening like a burn in the scenery, ten feet high, twenty feet wide—and at the bottom the figures of little people walking across.
The tunnels had to be that big for some physics reason. Ingrid recalled her lesson on this in elementary school. But she couldn’t remember the reason.
“We can’t fly into it,” Ingrid screamed.
Joe grinned.
“Watch me.”
Antisocial, she thought.
Antisocial. Maybe Earth authorities were right. Maybe Mars authorities were right. Undesirable characteristics.
It was all his fault the baby wasn’t right. All his fault.
Ingrid opened her mouth to tell him that, but the wave of something, like a strong gust of wind, hit her as they entered the tunnel.
Below her, she could see the astonished, up-turned faces of people looking up, guards and commuters and everyone, everyone.
The wave, a vague tingly feeling while walking, crushed and rattled the fly as it dashed through at top speed, to careen, nose first, into the sands of a wide Martian plain.
Ingrid whipped forward and lost consciousness.
The news holo showed Joe, in his best clothes, the same black pants and shirt that Ingrid had first seen him in.
The woman interviewing him was all but visibly licking her lips, and Ingrid smiled, in amusement, as she held her son up at her shoulder. She’d just finished nursing, and patted the baby, trying to make it burp.
“So, you say that the antisocial characteristics that Earth identifies are actually based on statistics?” the newswoman asked.
“Well,” Joe shrugged. “This has been going on for two hundred years, this type of thought. Only the form changes. Why should it surprise you now? Ever since profiling started influencing police work, it’s been a double-feed system: more people of certain ethnic backgrounds get investigated, therefore more get arrested, therefore statistically they appear to commit more crimes. Genetics is just a new dressing for an old wound. If you give government enough power, they end up dividing people in groups. Statistical groups. Setting group against group, so none will challenge their power.” He spoke glibly, but his eyes looked soft and sad, in the way Ingrid knew so well. “Holding the power of life and death over the individuals they refuse to see. The more power any state has, the more indiscriminate its use, and the more they’ll enshrine the prejudices of its people into law. Or even create prejudices, for the sake of power.”
“And it took yours and your wife’s escape here to make our government realize this and stop denying visas to Earth citizens because of such profiling?”
“Right,” Joe said. In public he wouldn’t speculate on whether Marstown officials knew too well what they were doing. He’d done it often enough in private to Ingrid. But he wouldn’t alienate Marstown public opinion. The public opinion that had kept him from being deported, and rallied around this well-known artist and his very pregnant wife who had so romantically flown through the tunnel and into Mars.
That Joe had spent three days in the hospital with a concussion hadn’t hurt either. Or that Ingrid’s family had spread the story as far and wide as they could.
The newswoman, a polished piece with an expensive haircut, shook her head over the idea of certain people being persecuted solely for their race. “And you? Are you going to make your life here on Mars now that you’ve been granted a visa?”
Joe hesitated.
Ingrid, watching the cast, knew how much he missed Earth and saw his desire to return in that little flinch of his, that tiny hesitation.
“We’ll stay here. My wife and myself. At least for a while. But my son might want to go back eventually.”
The newswoman smiled and licked her heart-shaped lips. “Your son. What did you call him again?”
Joe looked straight at the camera and smiled, as though his smile were aimed at Ingrid, in their small suburban Marstown home, and at the baby she held.
Which it was.
“Moses,” he said. “We called him Moses.”
CONTRIBUTORS
Milo Yiannopoulous
Ben Z
wycky
Nick Cole
E.J. Shumak
Ray Blank
Matthew Ward
Joshua M. Young
David Hallquist
A. M. Freeman
Larry Correia
Brad R. Torgersen
Pierce Oka
Chrome Oxide
John C. Wright
Tom Kratman
Jane Lebak
Vox Day
Brian Niemeier
L. Jagi Lamplighter
Sarah A. Hoyt