But what if I had never been offered that booby-trapped job? One can always "what ifÄ" but I think that it is at least fifty-fifty that, after shopping as I had planned, I would still have wound up on Botany Bay.
"There is a destiny that shapes our ends" and I have no complaints. I like being a colonial housewife in an 8-group. It's not formally an S-group here because we don't have many laws about sex and marriage. We eight and all our kids live in a big rambling house that Janet designed and we all built. (I'm no cabinetmaker but I'm a whee! of a rough carpenter.) Neighbors have never asked snoopy questions about parentageÄand Janet would freeze them if they did. Nobody cares here, babies are welcome on Botany Bay; it will be many centuries before anyone speaks of "population pressure" or "ZeePeeGee."
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This account won't be seen by neighbors because the only thing I intend to publish here is a revised edition of my cookbookÄa good cookbook because I am ghost writer for two great books, Janet and Georges, plus some practical hints for young housewives that I owe to Goldie. So here I can discuss paternity freely. Georges married Matilda when Percival married me; I think they drew straws. Of course the baby in me fell under the old test-tube-and-knife sayingÄa saying I have not heard even once on Botany Bay. Maybe Wendy derives some or most of her ancestry from a former royal house on The Realm. But I have never let her suspect it and officially Percival is her father. All I really know is that Wendy is free of exhibited congenital defects and Freddie and Georges say that she doesn't carry any nasty recessives either. As a youngster she was no meaner than any of the others and the usual moderate ration of spankings was enough to straighten her out. I think that she is quite a nice person, which pleases me as she is the only child of my body even though she is no relation to me.
"The only..." When I got her out of the oven, I asked Georges to reverse my sterility. He and Freddie examined me and told me that I could get it done... on Earth. Not in New Brisbane. Not for years and years. That settled thatÄand I found that I was somewhat relieved. I've done it once; I don't really need to do it again. We have babies and dogs and kittens underfoot; the babies don't have to be from my body any more than the kittens do. A baby is a baby and Tilly makes good ones and so does Janet and so does Betty.
And so does Wendy. Were it not impossible I would guess that she gets her hominess from her motherÄme, I mean. She had not yet turned fourteen the first time she came home and said, "Mum, I guess I'm pregnant." I told her, "Don't guess about it, dear. Go see Uncle Freddie and get a mouse test."
She announced the result at dinner, which turned it into a party because, by long custom, in our family whenever a female is officially pregnant is occasion for rejoicing and merriment. So Wendy had her first pregnancy party at fourteenÄand her next one at sixteenÄand her next one at eighteenÄand her latest one just last week. I'm glad she spaced them because I reared them, all but the newest one; she got married for that one. So I have never been short
of babies to pet, even if we didn't have fourÄnow fiveÄno, sixÄ mothers in this household.
Matilda's first baby has a number-one fatherÄexcellent stock. Dr. Jerry Madsen. So she tells me. So I believe. Like this: Her former master had just had her sterility reversed, intending to breed her, when he got this chance to sell her services for a high-pay fourmonths' job. So she became "Shizuko" with the shy smile and the modest bow and chaperoned meÄbut conversely I chaperoned her without intending to. Oh, had she tried, she might have found a little night life in the daytime... but the fact was that she spent almost twenty-four hours of each day in cabin BB to be sure to be there whenever I came back.
So when? The only time that it could happen. While I was huddled under that turbogenerator, half frozen, with Percival, my "maid" was in my bed with my doctor. So that young man has fine parents! Joke: Jerry now lives in New Brisbane with his sweet wife, DianÄbut Tilly has not let him suspect that he has a son in our household. Is this another "startling coincidence"? I don't think so. "Medical doctor" is one of the contribution-free professions here; Jerry wanted to get married and stop spacingÄand why would anyone choose to settle down on Earth when he has had opportunity to shop the colonies?
Most of our family go to Jerry now; he's a good doctor. Yes, we have two M.D.s in our family but they have never practiced; they used to be gene surgeons, experimental biologists, genetic engineersÄand now they are farmers.
Janet knows who are the fathers of her first child, tooÄboth her husbands of that time, Ian and Georges. Why both? Because she wanted it that way and Janet has a whim of steel. I've heard several versions but it is my belief that she would not choose between them for her first child.
Betty's first one is almost certainly not a knife job and may be legitimate. But Betty is such a slashing outlaw that she would rather have you believe that she caught that child at a gang bang during a masquerade ball. New Brisbane is a very quiet place but no household that has Betty Frances in it can ever be dull.
You may know more about the return of the Black Death than I
do. Gloria credits my warning with having saved Luna City but it is more nearly correct to credit it to BossÄmy short career as soothsayer was as Trilby to his Svengali. -
Plague did not get off Earth; that was surely Boss's doing... although once, at the critical time, New Brisbane signaled that a landing boat could not land unless it was first exposed to vacuum, then repressurized. Sure enough, this treatment killed some rats and miceÄand fleas. Its captain stopped talking about charging the drill to the colony after this showed up.
Contributions: Mail between Botany Bay and Earth/Luna takes four to eight months, round-tripÄnot bad for a hundred and forty light-years. (I once heard a tourist lady ask why didn't we use radio mail?) Gloria paid my contribution to the colony with all possible speed and was lavish in setting me up with capitalÄBoss's will gave her leeway. She didn't send gold here; these were bookkeeping entries in the colony's account in Luna City, under which farm implements or anything can be shipped to Botany Bay.
But Pete had little on Earth to draw on and Tilly, a quasi-slave, had nothing. I still had a piece left of that lottery windfall and all of my final paycheck and even a few shares of stock. This got my fellow jumpers out of hockÄour colony never turns back a jumper but it may take him years to pay his share in the colony.
They both fussed. I fussed right back and worse. Not only is it all in the family but without the help of both Percival and Matilda I almost certainly would have been caught, then wound up on The RealmÄdead. But they still insisted on paying me.
We compromised. Their payments and some from the rest of us started the Asa Hunter Bread-Upon-the-Waters Revolving Fund, used to help jumpers or any new chum.
I no longer think about my odd and sometime shameful origin. "It takes a human mother to bear a human baby." Georges told me that long ago. It's true and I have Wendy to prove it. I'm human and I belong!
I think that's all anybody wants. To belong. To be "people."
My word, do I belong! Last week I was trying to figure out why I was so short on time. I'm secretary of the Town Council. I'm program chairman of the Parents-Teacher Association. I'm troop mistress of the New Toowoomba Girl Scouts. I'm a past president of the Garden Club, and I'm on the planning committee of the community college we're starting. Yes, I belong.
It's a warm and happy feeling.