OUT OF a small crowd a lean, stooped man was coming toward them, plodding with slow weariness as if he waded through mud; that was not pure figure-of-speech, George saw, for the man was wet as if he had just fallen into the lake. From the business socks inside his sandals a little puddle sloshed out at every step, and water plastered down his thinning hair and dripped from his translucent shorts and jacket. Simmons jumped to meet him, asking excited questions.
“That fat fathering breeder!” was all Hall said at first, in a voice choked with anger, as he stood there trying to press the water out of his clothes. “That quintuplet-siring crowder!” Some of the onlookers gathered at a little distance smiled or giggled at the earnest vileness of the man’s speech, while one or two appeared sincerely shocked.
Simmons was holding his wrist-radio ready. “If he shoved you in the water I can put in a call and charge assault and resisting arrest. That’ll get us some more manpower out here. Which way did he go?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t care to press those charges.” It seemed that a little strong language had served to discharge Hall’s anger. He put up a hand as if to ward off the detective’s glare and exclamations of disgust. “He didn’t hurt me. I don’t think he even intended to knock me in the water, just to get away.” Hall had taken off his jacket and now began to wave it like a distress signal, trying to dry it in the morning breeze. “I called out to him, when I saw that I had him cornered on a moored boat, I said just hand over the specimen and save yourself a lot of trouble. You and your wife and the whole world will be better off, I said. But then he came off the boat with this picnic cooler under his arm like a football. Just put down his head and charged, and he must weigh ninety kilos . . .”
Hall had looked at Rita several times, but had offered her no recognition until now. “Well, Mrs. Rodney, I suppose you and your husband and brother here are getting yourselves a lawyer. From the way you sit there looking so serenely into space, I suppose too that you’ve heard about the report.”
Rita, chin high, was studying the horizon. George asked: “Report?”
“The new population forecast from the UN. The one we’ve all been afraid of. A real surprise. If the latest trends continue, world population is going to reach a peak of around ten billion in the next forty years and then start down, maybe even a rather sharp decline. Not that that will help the people who are going to go hungry in the next forty years, of course, but it’s going to make it a little harder to convict people like yourselves before a jury.” Mr. Hall was now standing nude and shivering slightly in the dawn, wringing out his shorts, his dripping codpiece slung over one shoulder.
“World population’s going down?” said the detective, sounding rather dumb. He couldn’t seem to grasp it right away. George couldn’t either.
Hall said: “Oh, we all knew it had to happen someday, one way or another. The only question was how and when. Still, when it does happen, we feel surprise.”
Simmons was busy with his radio. George asked: “But what is it? The Homo Leagues? I know they’re growing fast.”
“They were allowed for in previous forecasts. No, the thing that tipped the balance, that wasn’t foreseen, was all this religious celibacy. Half a dozen religions booming today, young people pulling themselves out of the reproductive pool by the tens of millions. People will think it will ease the population pressure right away, though of course it won’t. It was hard enough before to get convictions, with bleeding-heart lawyers and frozen fetuses to cloud the issue. Now this. But we’re going to try, sir, we’re going to try. I’ll see you in court, whether we manage to recover the specimen or not.”
George, riding north along the Outer Drive in the back of the police car, going to some police station where they would have to let him see a lawyer before he said a sublimatin’ thing, held his sister’s hand and looked out over the lake. The waves were coming in stronger now with a freshening breeze, starting to crest into whitecaps near the shore. The fog had gone. Get through, Art, get through. Loyola School of Medicine, cryogenics lab, ask for Gwen or Larry. I’ve killed a man to save that kid, and you’d better not lose him now. I’d kill any other son of a bitch who tried to kill my nephew.
He smiled a little for the new man born so strangely into the world, and at the same time he was very worried. The waves came in from the clear horizon, cresting into white. The crest of the wave has been reached. And now, to see which way the world slides down.
Love Conquers All Page 22