World Without Children

II

SUNLIGHT, divided by the prism high in the arched ceiling, struck full on the paintings that lined either side of the long, curving gallery, and left the center, the moving strip with its divans, its cafe tables and chairs, in a soft, restful gloom.

“Here we come around again,” said George. “Another of the same?” Joe Krueger looked at his; empty glass. “Yes, but this round’s mine. You’ve been paying for everything.”

“That will complicate things, though,” objected George. “Tell you what. You can buy our tickets to the shadow plays tonight.”

As they approached the checker in his little booth, George took the green disk with the tab that said TOM COLLINS and the orange and white one that said SCOTCH/SODA and stuck them into the clip on the table’s center pole.

Around the center pole were four illuminated plastic cylinders which reeled off the names of the paintings as they passed. Picasso, they were saying, MASK AND BONES, OIL ON CANVAS, 2073. TSCHELETCHEW, FLIGHT FORMS #6, INK AND CRAYON, 2105. SHAHN, INCUBATORS, OIL ON CANVAS.

“I’d like to see more of his,” said Joe, looking at the Shahn. “His stuff seems more vital than most, somehow. More—” He hunted for a word, gave it up with his usual embarrassed shrug.

“He’s younger,” said George. “Picasso, Tscheletchew and all that bunch were old men when the longevity treatment came in. They’re still turning out the same thing, pretty much, that they were doing three centuries ago. It does get tiresome, I admit, but who’s interested in art when there are other things to do and see? We’ve gone a long way in more important directions, if you ask me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Joe emphatically.

“Besides, the Culture Commissioner tells them what to turn out. Works fine for everybody.”

The serving station came around. The white-jacketed waiter stepped neatly aboard, smiled, deposited their drinks, and stepped off again. The cylinders announced, RENOIR, BAIGNEUSE, OIL ON CANVAS, 1888.

George stirred his drink moodily. Joe was now watching the paintings attentively, and he felt free to let his thoughts wander. After Hilda had gone home last night — not with George, worse luck! — the four of them had gathered in the study again for a council of war. This time it had been, Morey Stiles who had led the discussion. He had pointed out that the project couldn’t possibly be managed on a small scale, that in spite of the danger they had to have an organization. He was right, of course; after all, they’d need an enormous staff who would have to know what was going on, not to mention the several thousands of women who would have to be persuaded to give birth.

Luther, warming to the problem, had been all for secret meetings in basements, and an elaborate organization based on the ancient Communist system. He had been voted down. The plan, as they finally evolved it, centered around doctors—specialists in women’s complaints, for preference—who were to be recruited and sworn in by Levinson. It would be their job to test their patients for fertility, carefully sound out the pick of the lot, and recruit them in turn. Meanwhile Morey, as the team’s best administrator, would be drawing up plans’ for the birth centers, inspecting locations, bribing officials, and so on. Luther, who had the widest acquaintance among monied men, would scout for more capital.

There had seemed to be nothing left for George to do but to pony up when required and to keep his mouth shut. Levinson had told him, however, that there would ultimately have to be a somewhat risky attempt to reach the public, and George, because of his youth and daring, would be very valuable in that phase of the conspiracy. When? Levinson didn’t know.

And Hilda, who had only just got into town, was off again to some mysterious destination for an unspecified length of time.

Anyhow, he had Joe to feel superior to; he ought to be grateful for that. He felt mildly ashamed of himself when he glanced at the man and saw the eagerness in his face. Perhaps that was the answer to the question of ennui, he thought—get yourself knocked on the head, or have your memories surgically excised somehow, and start all over again.

That wasn’t such a foolish idea as it might seem, he told himself. After all, nobody knew yet what real longevity was like; nobody was older than three or four centuries. What would happen when they were all three thousand or more?

There was plenty of time to worry about it, at least.

He said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

Joe repeated, “I’ve been reading histories like mad, but I can’t seem to take it all in. Things are so much the same, in some ways, and yet so different.” He shook his head. “I suppose I’m trying to get it too fast.”

“Well, there isn’t exactly any rush,” said George cheerfully. “Anything in particular bothering you?”

“No children, chiefly, I guess. It’s hard for me to understand how that could possibly be enforced. In my day, population was always increasing to meet the available food supply; it was supposed to be some kind of natural law. And now you’ve stopped it cold.”

“Had to,” said George. “You see, the fellows who perfected the longevity techniques published their work, and the newspapers took it up, and the thing got completely out of control in the next fifty years. Normal birth rate— higher, as a matter of fact—and the death rate way down. That was the time of the big blowup—famines, riots, and the Last War on top of it. When we came out of that, we had three things: longevity, a strong world government, and a greatly improved birth control technique. Those pills, you know, that everybody has to take.

“Well, what else was there to do? They had to cut down the birth rate, at least, or in a century or so we would have been standing on each other’s shoulders. And that would have been unenforceable, you know — restricted breeding. You can’t tell anybody that he’s not as fit as the next man to have children. So they stopped it altogether, made childbirth a capital crime. As a result, the total population has shrunk a good deal in the last three hundred years, but we’re still over what’s regarded as the optimum figure. Or so they say.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, restricted breeding is an awfully hot potato. We’ll have to come to it eventually, but I don’t think anybody in the government is happy about the prospect. If we started reproducing in any quantity, the whole economic balance would be upset. Tremendously complicated problem. I don’t know enough about it to explain to you properly.”

“I should think it would be particularly hard on the women,” said Joe thoughtfully.

“Well, there were a lot of people, men and women both, who couldn’t adjust to longevity it -self, let alone the other problems. In the first century after the war, I understand suicide accounted for something like fifteen per cent of the death rate. Looking at it from one angle, that was a good thing for the race. I mean to say, if a person has any fundamental instability, it’s going to come out in two centuries or less. And people for whom there simply wasn’t any room in the society. Without children consuming and not producing, you know, our production rate is enormously higher. There was a lot of unemployment, too, in that first century. Some starvation, I’m afraid. And crime waves. But that’s all settled down now, and as you see we have a very stable setup, and a high living standard. That’s why it’s going to be so difficult to change when we have to.”

“Umm,” said Joe, seriously.

It occurred to George that he had been talking rather seriously himself, not exactly the best line to take for a man with knowledge he was supposed to conceal. He smiled cheerfully and said, “But I don’t think anybody should work up an ulcer over it just yet. You can generally lick a problem if you have a few thousand years to mull it over.”

Joe nodded enthusiastically. “That’s one of the things that awes me, whenever I think about it. In the old days—I mean, in my day—” He shook his head. “I keep getting my terms of reference mixed up. Anyhow, it used to be that a man could learn enough to do what he wanted to do by the time he was thirty, and then his life was half done. Now—” He looked baffled. “It’s hard to take in. Tell me, Miss Place said something about rocket flights to the stars—?”

“Oh, yes. They got to the Moon in 1954. That must have been a year or two after you blanked out Mars ia 1961, I think it was, and Venus the year after. Moons of Jupiter in 1969. All uninhabitable, of course.”

“Yes, but I meant interstellar flights?”

JUST one. Alpha Centauri, along about the turn of the century. The trip took something like six years each way, I understand. They found a very Earthlike planet, and I believe there’s some talk of putting a small colony there.”

“Lord!” said Joe Krueger. “But—all this time, and they haven’t done anything more about it?”

“Well, it’s really a hobbyist’s kind of thing,” said George thoughtfully. “A good many people, with more time and more capital to play with, have turned to space-flight who wouldn’t have been much involved with it before. But it hasn’t any economic base, you see. No really urgent reason for anyone to tackle it.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” said Joe, creasing his brow into an anxious frown. “Wouldn’t it solve the problem we were just talking about?”

“It might, at that,” said George, trying valiantly to see the question from the other man’s viewpoint. “But it hasn’t come to that yet, and probably won’t for a good long time. As things stand, human life is a very precious thing, much more than it was even in the Western countries in your day. That’s understandable, isn’t it? It’s like betting at roulette—if you haven’t got much to lose, you may as well risk it all; but if you’ve got a lot, you’re a fool to gamble it away. So that’s one reason we don’t have war— another argument against breeding that I forgot to mention—and we play a good deal of tennis and squash and so on, but no football; and we’re not anxious to risk our necks on exploring expeditions. You had something in mind like the colonization of the Amazon basin and so on, didn’t you?”

Joe nodded. “All habitable areas.”

“Not the same thing, though—we have no population pressure, no economic pressure. Things are good here for everybody. Why should anybody want to leave? There’s more room in the Americas, but I like Europe and who needs more room just for himself?”

Joe grinned wryly. “I see it— in theory, anyhow. But I’m damned if I feel that way about it. Me, I’d like to go.”

“I’ll see if I can wangle an introduction to Clarke, the Rocket Society high lama. Luther knows him, I think.”

Joe was saying, “That would be wonderful,” when George’s wrist phone buzzed. He said, “Excuse me,” and swiveled the disk into his palm so that the receiver covered his ear and the transmitter pickup touched his throat, making eavesdropping impossible.

“George Miller,” he said.

“George, this is Art Levinson,” said the tiny voice rapidly. “I’m about to be arrested by the Security Police. I tried to reach the others, but they’re both out of phone range.”

“The Security—that’s impossible,” George protested. “We haven’t done a thing. They couldn’t know!”

“I told you I spoke to Van Dam, the Public Health Commissioner,” said the voice impatiently. “He must have figured I’d do something about the sterility situation, so he evidently had my rooms wired and put a detail of police on my trail. Everything we said in our conference must be on official tapes.”

“Good God!” George exclaimed. “Then we’re all in danger!”

“Of course. Don’t tell me you haven’t got anybody trailing you.”

George glanced around apprehensively. Everybody suddenly looked suspicious, but there was no one he could specifically identify as a Security Policeman.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Where are you?”

“In Luther’s bedroom. I locked myself in. They’re trying to break the door down. Good-by, George. Just pass the word along. That’s all you can—”

“Hold on! How long can you keep them out of there?”

“Another few minutes, if that. Don’t try to do anything foolish. George. There’s another of them in a copter outside the bedroom window. Just tell—”

“Wait!” said George excitedly. “Hold them off as long as you can. Throw a fit. Do anything.” He broke the contact and said to Joe’s astonished face, “Something urgent. Pay the check for me, will you? I’ll call you later.”

He fumbled a bill out of his wallet, stood up and leaped off the moving strip, dashing past indignant patrons of the arts to the roof exit.

Thoughts blurred in his head. He didn’t know what he could do, but he intended to do something. He couldn’t let Levinson stand off the police by himself. The excitement was somehow pleasant—the adrenalin squirting through his veins, his chest filling massively with air, his shoulders knotting with the expectation of a fight. It was astonishing. He couldn’t think of anyone who wouldn’t avoid danger at absolutely any cost; with his conditioning, it was hard to believe that he was being so foolhardy.

Yet George felt rather proud of himself. He’d wondered why Levinson had included him in the original tiny group of conspirators, had resignedly assumed it was actually because of his money. Now he knew at least part of the reason and respected Levinson’s shrewdness.

He was, he thought quickly, about two minutes away from Luther’s apartment by air—if he could get a cab.

The roof was crowded with private ’copters, and for a moment George debated the idea of stealing one. Impossible. They were all stowed in parking clips, and he couldn’t get one out past the attendant anyhow, even if some fool had left his keys in the dashboard console. He ran on, reaching the cab section just in time to see a red-and-green ’copter lifting away. He thought it was empty, but he couldn’t be sure.

He shouted futilely, then swung his wrist-radio out, dialed it to “Directional” and sighted carefully at the rising ’copter. After a long moment the instrument clicked and said, “Signor?” The cab steadied and hovered.

“Down here,” said George. “Where you just came from—the Modem Museum.” Apparently he had lost the contact, for the ’copter hung annoyingly where it was. Then he could see the tiny dot that was the driver’s head. He waved madly, and in a moment the cab settled back to the landing stage.

George piled in and said, “Get up—quick.” As the ’copter lifted again, the driver’s mustachioed face turned to regard him quizzically. He said, “The Penaldo Building on the Rio S. Polo. You know the place I mean?”

“Surely, signor.”

“Then hurry, will you?” George waved a hundred-lira note, on second thought added another. The ‘driver’s eyebrows went up the merest trifle; philosophically, he headed the machine into the northbound traffic level and fed power to the rotors.

George looked anxiously at his phone. He didn’t have Art’s call number, worse luck. But if they had already broken down the door when he got there, he’d know soon enough. He forced himself to relax, then exploded into motion the next instant as the cab settled on the Penaldo Building’s roof. He thrust the money at the driver, shouted, “Good work, thanks!” and ran across the roof to the canal-side parapet.

He looked back once to make sure that the cab had taken off, then peered cautiously over the parapet. There was the police ‘copter, sure enough, hovering outside the window of Luther’s top-floor bedroom. Underneath, five stories down, a white gondola was rocking in the surge of a small power boat. The gondolier’s ancient automatic curses drifted faintly up to him.

Now what? He had had a Vague notion that if he could eliminate the ‘copter somehow, he could get Art out through the window before the other Security men broke in. But eliminating the ’copter looked tough now, if not a impossible.

He risked another look. There was only one man in the ‘copter; that was a point in his favor, though he wasn’t sure how. But just to begin with, he couldn’t attract the man’s attention by shouting; he’d never be heard over the noise of the ’copters rotors. And he couldn’t very well show himself. As for the phone—

Wait a minute! The police would almost certainly be talking to each other by phone; in fact, he was positive of it. And these small transmitters didn’t reproduce intonations very well. It could work. Anyway—

George aimed the phone carefully at the man in the ’copter and said briskly, “On the roof! Quick!” Then he ducked out of the man’s visual range and watched the rotor blades. When they began to rise, he leaped away from the parapet and got behind the stairway entrance.

The door was open, and George could hear muffled banging sounds down the corridor. Good for Art, he thought abstractedly; he must have piled furniture against the door.

He looked around the corner of the entrance and saw the ’copter’s tail level with the parapet, Instantly he faced the other way, put his palm against the door frame and shoved himself violently backward.

He toppled out into view, legs going furiously to try to keep, his balance; then he let himself go and landed with a bone-crushing thump on the hard roof. He scrambled to his feet again, drew an imaginary knife from his jacket, and lunged back behind the entrance.

There was a thump as the ’copter landed on the roof, and then footsteps pounded toward him. George ducked around the opposite side of the entrance and ran silently, on the balls of his feet, completely around to the blind side again.

The policeman, a depressingly burly young man in pearl-gray jacket and shorts, was leaning half into the doorway, listening to the sounds from down the hall. Without hesitation, George launched himself at his back.

They tottered a moment. Then the policeman’s grip was torn away and they plunged together down the stairs. They landed with a jar that shook George from skull to knees. He sorted himself out and saw that the young policeman was also getting up, with a dazed expression on his face. George hit him on the point of the jaw, as hard as he could. The policeman collapsed and slid down another four steps.

Panting, George slid down beside him and took his gun. He could still hear the pounding down the hall. Evidently the others hadn’t heard the crash when they came down the stairs, though it had sounded loud enough to wake a regiment.

George hit the recumbent policeman thoughtfully behind the ear with the butt of his gun. He would have liked to get him out of the way, but strongly doubted his own ability to lug that steak-fed hulk any distance. He went back up the stairs, past the idling ‘copter, to the parapet again.

It was a good fifteen feet down to the window and no way to get there. He couldn’t take the ’copter down and simply invite Art to climb in; the rotor blades wouldn’t have enough clearance.

Swearing to himself, George ran back to the ’copter and rummaged inside it. In a locker just forward of the door, he found a rope ladder. But it took him what seemed like five anguished minutes to locate the hooks—diabolically hidden over the door inside the cab—which were designed to support it.

He climbed in and took the ’copter up, past the parapet and over, dangerously close, letting the ladder dangle against the window. For another agonizing interval, nothing happened. George was about to haul the ladder up again and tie a wrench to it, when the window suddenly swung open and Art’s red, wild-eyed face appeared.

George leaned out and gestured wildly. Art nodded, grasped the ladder, and swung precariously out into space.

George hovered carefully until Art was halfway in. Then he took the ’copter up and away in a wild swoop that nearly made Art fall out again.

Art closed the door and Jackknifed himself into the tiny space to right of the pilot’s seat. When he got his breath back, he said, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said George. “Did they want you very badly, Art?”

“Afraid so. Didn’t give them a chance to tell me. Ducked into the bedroom and locked the door when I saw them.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “Where to now?”

George felt an unexpected glow of satisfaction. Imagine anyone asking him what to do next!

“I’m looking for an empty landing stage,” he said. “We’ll ditch the ’copter there, and then get ourselves as thoroughly lost as we can.”