Love Conquers All

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Yes, I know about that.”

  “We have no record that she’s made any appointment with a physician to have this pregnancy terminated. And the first trimester must be nearly over.”

  “I, ah, know nothing about that.”

  “Well, I’d like you to at least give me your opinion on the subject, Mr. Rodney. Do you think your wife is planning not to have it terminated normally, to carry it on to parturition?”

  There was no way he could admit it. “No, I don’t think that,” he had to say. Then he had to pause, for a nervous, choking swallow. Ann was just standing by, letting him flounder, confident that they had told him no secrets and so there were none he could betray. Triplets, but he hated her at the moment.

  When he had his throat under control again he said: “I’m sure Rita means to have it terminated properly, she’s, uh, probably just gone away by herself for a few days to think things over. You see . . . our psychologist has recommended against her being sterilized. After Paula, our youngest, was born, Rita had an IUD inserted but her body kept expelling it. She always takes her pills. I’m sure there was just a chemical failure somewhere. I’m sure she didn’t plan the pregnancy. Unless it was subconscious.” There seemed to be stories in the newsprints every day about apes avoiding prison sentences by pleading their subconscious compulsions. If they could do it, why couldn’t she? Lay the groundwork for it now. But he was talking too much, he had better shut up.

  As soon as he quieted, however, Hall was after him again. “Mr. Rodney, is it like Rita to go off by herself for days at a time? When was the last time she made a similar disappearance?”

  “I . . .” He was cornered. Once he started making up a string of lies, Hall would have it knotted around his neck in no time at all. “No, I can’t say it’s like her,” he said in desperation. “I tell you, I don’t know where she is. If I knew where she was I’d be with her right now.”

  Mr. Hall shuffled his feet, which were no doubt tired from standing, and glanced again at Ann, and sighed once more, more openly this time. “Mr. Rodney, will you walk me back to my car?”

  “There’s no need for you to do that, Art,” Ann put in.

  “All right, Mr. Hall,” Art said, since the alternative was to go along with Ann’s instructions.

  Ann was not going to argue with him, not in the face of the enemy. “I’ll have breakfast for you when you get back,” she promised, holding the door. She gave Art a ritual kiss as he went out, but offered no kiss or caress to Hall, who in turn contented himself with a barely polite pelvic thrust in her direction.

  AS THEY were walking down the stairs to the garage, with no one else about, Hall said quietly: “Mr. Rodney, I hope you don’t think of us at Family Planning as out to get your wife. Believe me, we’d like to help her; I think she’s a woman who can use some help.”

  Art was silent. They emerged at the foot of the stair into the garage. A variety of vehicles were berthed in a series of numbered, gate-protected stalls. Other areas were marked for delivery vehicles and visitors’ parking. At the moment there was still nobody else in sight.

  Hall stopped, facing Art. “If I can’t get a chance to talk to your wife, it’s going to be awfully hard for her to stay out of trouble. And you yourself can be in trouble if you’re deliberately withholding information. There is the federal conspiracy law. We may not like the world in which all these laws are necessary, but it’s the only world we have.”

  “I’ve been telling you the truth.”

  “Another thing.” Hall very slowly resumed his walk toward the visitor’s parking area. “Giving birth is a somewhat risky proposition at best—I’m sure you realize that, as the father of two legitimate children. In some of these birth-mills a full-term parturition, or even a fetiparous one, can be downright dangerous, believe me.”

  This time it was Art who stopped, a few slow paces later. “Even a,what?”

  Hall was silent. He seemed to be trying to read Art’s face.

  Art repeated: “Even a what? What kind of parturition, live birth, is there except full term? Do you mean premature?”

  Hall continued his intent gaze at the mystified Art for a long moment, and then relaxed. “I think you and I are really on the same side in this case, aren’t we, Mr. Rodney?”

  “I want my wife at home with me, not getting into trouble. And I don’t want the world overcrowded with my progeny, I’m willing to respect the rights of others.”

  “Fine.” Hall was suddenly more relaxed and friendly. “Then I’d better tell you something you may not know about. Just recently there has come into use a method for removing a first-trimester fetus or embryo from the womb in such a way that it can be kept alive. The midwifer usually freezes it—”

  “Alive?”

  “If you can call it that. Alive in potential. It can later be reimplanted in the woman’s body again, or in the body of another woman, or put into an artificial womb, and it will grow and develop eventually into a child. In experiments on animals normal young have been produced by this method for several decades now.”

  “Oh.”

  “You begin to see. Now if we at Family Planning seize a frozen fetus of embryo, our legal situation is tricky, because federal law states that if nine months have passed since conception, the fetus has become a child. The law goes back several decades to when termination of surplus pregnancies was first required in this country. Some women who were about six months or so along claimed that they were already in labor when their pregnancies were terminated by FP doctors, and there was a lot of fuss. The law is really outmoded now, but we’re still stuck with it.”

  “I don’t quite see . . .”

  “The thing is, we can’t legally destroy a frozen fetus unless we can prove it’s less than nine months old. Calendar age, not stage of development, is the way the law reads. We’re trying to get it changed, of course. There have been several articles lately in the newsprints on all this, and stories on television. I would have thought perhaps you would have heard or read something about it.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Art said. “Not keeping up much with the news.” Probably it was another example of his subconscious avoidance of hearing or remembering, like the exact wording of the federal conspiracy law.

  “You see, with just a frozen fetus in our hands, we have a purity of a time proving its exact age. Can’t even take a tissue sample for proving the parenthood, since that would constitute damage. If we can’t prove it’s a superfluous third, and nobody claims it, why then believe it or not it has to be regarded as an unidentified orphan child. Treated as a human being in potential, which means taking it to an orphanage. Some of these religious and so-called humanist institutions will take them right in. They’re building artificial wombs at a furious pace, without permits of course, and they have plenty of money and manpower for clandestine research on freezing and revival techniques, or so it seems.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You may have heard something about the riot just recently in Iowa, where a Christian monastery was destroyed. I understand the ringleaders of the riot are now in jail, as they should be. Can’t have people taking the law into their own hands. But there’ll have to be proper legal action against those cultists too. Some of their priests were aut there building cryogenic devices and freezing fetuses.”

  Art, without realizing it, had started walking again, on newly shaky legs. Cultists. He thought of the carven image on the wall above the children’s beds. He knew Ann. He thought of the scream coming out of the woods, and he thought of Rita. “But then . . . suppose, as you say, that the fetus is thawed and put into an artificial womb and a child results. What then? Could the mother claim it?”

  “Probably not without spending a prison term, and undergoing sterilization.” Hall was looking at his watch. “I suppose there might be all kinds of devious means, adoption and so on. But a third live birth is still a criminal offense by the woman, no matter what subterfuges she employs. I really can’t understand the
woman who does such a thing. Setting aside the legal problems, anywhere that she and her husband live afterwards, the neighbors are going to be able to count: one, two, three children. You couldn’t very well pretend one of them is adopted. There aren’t enough adoptable children to even match the childless couples who want one, let alone go to people who have two of their own. So it’ll be obvious to all that the parents had three kids, and pretty soon that third one is going to know that he or she is superfluous and unwanted by the world. That’s a very cruel thing to do to a child, in my estimation.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “No, I just don’t understand these women who go to midwifers.” Hall had reached his car and now he unlocked a door and pulled it open. “There’s just one more thing I wanted to mention to you, Mr. Rodney. Several times a year we in Family Planning get a massive detailed population forecast for the whole world, and for our own areas in particular; we get it right from the UN computer center. Right now the latest forecast is several days overdue; the rumor is that it’s been delayed for re-checking, because it’s a real shocker.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Hall got into his car, slammed the door, and then peered out the window. “I hope I can rely on you, Mr. Rodney.”

  “Certainly I mean to do all I can—”

  “That’s fine.” With a tiny wave and a half-smile, his mind probably already at work on his next case, Mr. Hall upped his window, faced forward, and drove off—but I don’t even know where she is. Art stared in silent protest after the car already zooming up the exit ramp.

  V

  AFTER Hall’s departure, Art wandered to an escalator and rode it up from the garage, emerging just inside one of the block’s pedestrian entrances. He was jogged partially out of his dazed state by Timmy and Paula, who ambushed their father as he made his way back toward the Parrs’ patio. The children were munching protein bars with which they smeared his clothes. Overriding his requests for a delay, they pulled at him to get him moving on a tour of the block’s central park. He gave up and went along. He reassured himself that his children were well and then tentatively questioned them about Mommy. About all he could find out was that she had said she would come back to get them soon.

  The tour got as far as the nude pool before its directors deserted to join the Parr boys, who were already in the water. Art sank down on a grassy bank nearby and tried to think, now and then waving mechanically at his offspring when they clamored for his attention.

  There were other distractions too. No other men were at the pool—probably most of those who lived in the block were busy this morning, at jobs or tending to their investments—but several women had come to swim. Ann was obviously not the only bluenose radical in this small community; probably people with similar attitudes tended to get into the same blockhouse corporation. Anyway these women came to the nude pool wearing long, loose, only dimly translucent jackets, and they swam as bare as babies, without so much as a sequin pasted on to emphasize their sex. It was hard to say which was the more antierotic, being almost completely covered or completely bare. Some of them cast suspicious glances at the male stranger, who in turn waved at his children to show that he had a good reason for hanging around, and then frowned thoughtfully into space. But only his face was truly thoughtful. His brain was getting nowhere.

  In half an hour or so the kids were ready to do something else, and Art walked home with the four of them, reminding them to gather up their clothes. When he got back to the house he found George there, and promptly took him aside.

  “George, have you seen her this morning or heard from her?”

  “No, Art, I swear.”

  “I’ve got to find her. She’s my wife and I have a right to talk to her.”

  George stood there for a while, looking glum and uncertain about it all. Then he said: “I have to agree with that.”

  Emboldened, Art pushed harder. “I don’t want to get you, or anybody, into trouble. But if I can’t find her I’ll have to go to the police and report her missing. It’s that important to me.”

  George came to a decision. “All right. After lunch you and I will go out and see about making contact.”

  “How about right now?”

  “Just come along and we’ll do it my way. After lunch.” .

  So a couple of hours later, after Art had spent some more time with his children, and Ann had fed them all some more sandwiches, the two men went out and got on the slidewalk together, George explaining that he didn’t have a car right now, what with one expense and another.

  After a couple of kilometers’ ride, Art saw a vast domed stadium looming up ahead of them. At about the same time, George came up from deep thought to say: “Understand, it may take a little time to find out exactly where she is. There are several people I want to talk to about it.”

  “Just so I get a chance to see her, before she commits any irrevocable foolishness. Where are we going now?”

  “I expect one of the people will be at the ball game today. You just stand by and let me talk to him.”

  “All right.”

  Another kilometer and the slidewalk, by now fairly thick with passengers, deposited them before one of the entrances to the stadium. George said: “Let’s not forget to pick up tickets. A dollar is a dollar.”

  They accepted time-stamped tickets from the jaws of a machine as they passed in through a turnstile. George led Art through cavernous passageways to an outfield grandstand, where they emerged squinting into the sun. A sizeable crowd was filling a good proportion of the seats. The stadium’s domed roof had been opened like a set of gigantic jaws and the people were in a good humor under the warm sun.

  George chose seats high in the rear, and kept looking around him at the crowd. “I think I see our man,” he said after a minute. “You just watch the game, and I’ll go talk to him.” George moved away.

  Art watched the game, which was just beginning, and the crowd as well. The Cubs, the home team, took a one-run lead in the first inning, and gambling in the grandstand promptly became fierce and steady, conducted by arm-waves and cryptic shouts. Ushers and police ignored the betting; Art wasn’t sure whether it was legal here or not. There seemed to be no bookies, no formal organization, and no wagers more than ten dollars, but small money passed through hundreds of hands with every pitch. One of the busier gamblers was the man George had engaged in low-voiced talk, who seemed able to keep his gaming and his conversation going at the same time. They were sitting too far away for Art to be able to tell if George was learning anything. Their talk just went on steadily.

  So things went until the top of the fourth inning, when the Cubs blundered themselves four runs behind. The emotional climate in the stands changed radically with the score. The majority of the spectators, grown men and late adolescents who wore the gaudy codpieces and indefinable look of the jobless, lost most of their enthusiasm for betting and brooded in sullen silence. Here and there a few gamblers persisted more energetically than ever, jumping and shouting like fanatics when they won, but joyless even then.

  GEORGE finished his conversation abruptly and stood up, motioning to Art that it was time to leave. They met on the moving ramp going down to street level. A number of other men were heading restlessly in the same direction, taking to the exits early. In the lines forming at the exits there was some jostling for position, and some police were standing by alertly. A huge, disheveled man standing in the next queue glared across a railing at Art and George and murmured something unpleasant about jobholders. In present company Art felt secure enough to glare right back, until the man decided he was getting nowhere and turned away.

  “Three innings, dollar and a quarter,” droned the Bureau of Sports agent in the booth where Art presented his ticket. Art picked up the coins that came clattering toward him from under the bullet-proof glass. Probably watching a whole game would be worth three seventy-five. He wondered if they paid overtime for extra innings.

  As soon as they were clear of the sta
dium crowd, riding a westbound slidewalk into a part of the city Art had not visited before, he asked eagerly: “Did you find out where she is?”

  “We’re on the trail. I told you, I’ll have to talk to a couple of people.” George, shaking his head, turned back to look at the slowly receding stadium, its roof-jaws gaping at the sky. “I was afraid we might have a little riot. It gets bad in there sometimes when the home team loses.”

  Controlling his impatience, Art looked back too. “They can get paid now just to sit and watch a game and keep out of trouble. Or there are a thousand things people can do to win prizes. They don’t have to be intelligent or educated, they can win by bowling or pitching horseshoes. Everyone can win a prize at something. I don’t know what they want.”

  George faced forward again. “Did I tell you, I may be going on television? Probably not, though, I think I blew the audition.”

  “No.” Art was surprised.

  “That’s where I was this morning, auditioning. Just a local station. Oh, it’s a real triplet of a mess. They have this monstrous clumsy machine, made up like a woman, for a man to fight. Let’s change to the high-speed walk here, the next place I want to stop is way out in a slumburb.”

  At the interchange, the walk they had been riding flowed briefly beside an acceleration strip. This strip was of viscous plastic that remained cohesive and hard-surfaced though it flowed like water, the circular stream of it running thick and deep and slow beside the slow slidewalk, and thin and fast to match speeds with the express. With no more balancing than it took to mount a stair, the passengers made the changeover. Once whizzing westward aboard the fast, long-distance belt, Art and George sat down on the continuous bench that jnoved with their new conveyance.

  “So what about this television program?” Art asked, his curiosity aroused.

  “It’ll be garbage. They want somebody to jump through the air like an idiot and scream, and beat up this giant woman . . . There could be a good karate program, showing how the human mind and body can work together. I’d like to do a good one someday but I don’t suppose they’d ever let me. I guess I’ll do this one if they want to hire me. I can use the money.”