“I can’t say that makes me feel too desperately suicidal,” Keith said, smiling, settling himself on the sofa next to Patricia.
“The bishop had it wrong,” Venice said. “At this conference Edgar went to, they told him the real reason for the lack of christenings. You’d better tell Keith, Ed, since it affects him and there will be an official announcement anyway at the weekend.”
With a solemn face, Edgar said, “The bishop had no babies to christen simply because there are no babies. The contraction of the van Allen belts brought every human being in contact with hard radiation.”
“We knew that, but most of us have survived,” Keith said. “How do you mean this affects me personally?”
“Governments have kept very quiet, Keith, while they try to sort out just what damage this — er, accident has caused. It’s a tricky subject for several reasons, the chief one being that the effects of exposure to different types of radioactive emissions are not clearly understood, and that in this case, the exposure is still going on.”
“I don’t understand that, Ed,” Venice said. “You mean the van Allen belts are still expanding and contracting?”
“No, they appear to be stable again. But they made the whole world radioactive to some extent. There are different sorts of radiation, some of which entered our bodies at the time. Other sorts, long-lived radio-isotopes of strontium and cesium, for example, are still in the atmosphere, and soak into our bodies through the skin, or when we eat or drink or breathe. We cannot avoid them, and unluckily the body takes these particles in and builds them into our vital parts, where they may cause great damage to the cells. Some of this damage may not yet be apparent.”
“We ought to all be living in shelters in that case,” Keith said angrily. “Edgar, you put me off this drink. If this is true, why doesn’t the government do something, instead of just keeping quiet?”
“You mean why doesn’t the United Nations do something,” Patricia said. “This is a world-wide thing.”
“It is too late for anyone to do anything,” Edgar said. “It was always too late, once the bombs were launched. The whole world cannot go underground, taking its food and water with it.”
“So what you’re saying is that we’re not going to have just this temporary dearth of kids around, but we’re going to have lots of cases of cancer and leukaemia, I suppose?”
“That, yes, and possibly also a shortening of individual lives. It’s too early to tell. Unfortunately we know much less about the subject than we have pretended to know. It is a very complex one.”
Keith smoothed his unruly hair and looked ruefully at the women.
“Your husband has come back with a cheery bag of news,” he said. “I’m glad old Arthur isn’t here to listen in — he’s depressed enough as it is. I can see us having to give Jock Bear the push and turn to making crucifixes and coffins instead, eh, Pat?”
Edgar had pushed his drink aside and sat on the edge of his arm-chair, his eyes and stomach both rather prominent, as if he was winding himself up to say more. He looked about the comfortable commonplace room, with its Italian cushions and Danish lamps, and said, “The effects of radiation must always strike us as freakish, particularly in the present case, when we have been subjected to a wide spectrum of radiations of comparatively mild dosage. It is our misfortune that mammals have proved most susceptible to them, and of mammals, man.
“Obviously it won’t mean anything to you if I go into it too deeply, but I’ll just say that just as the destructive force of radioactive material may concentrate on one kind or phylum of life, so its full fury may focus on a single organ — because, as I said, bodies have efficient mechanisms for capturing some of these materials. The human body captures radioactive iodine and uses it as natural iodine in the thyroid gland. A sufficient dosage will thus destroy the thyroid gland. Only in the present case, it is the gonads which are destroyed.”
“Sex rearing its ugly head,” Keith exclaimed.
“Perhaps for the last time, Keith,” Edgar said quietly. “The gonad, as you seem to know, is an organ that produces sexcells. The still-births, miscarriages, and monstrosities born since May last year show that the human gonads have collectively sustained serious damage from the radiation to which we have been and are still subjected.”
Venice stood up and began walking about the room.
“I feel as if I were going mad, Edgar. Are you sure of your facts? I mean this conference… You mean to say that no more babies will be born anywhere?”
“We can’t say yet. And the situation could improve in some unforeseen way next year, I suppose. The figures are hardly likely to be one hundred per cent. Unfortunately, of the seven Australian children mentioned by Bishop Aitken, six have died since christening.”
“This is terrible!” Venice stood in the middle of the room, clasping her forehead. “What seems so crazy to me is to think that half a dozen rotten bombs could do anything so — so catastrophic. It isn’t as if they let them off on Earth! How can these damned van Allen layers be so unstable?”
“A Russian Professor Zilinkoff suggested at the conference that the belts may indeed be unstable and easily activated by slight radioactive overloads from either the sun or the Earth. He suggested that the same contractions that have hit us now also took place at the end of the Cretaceous Era; it’s a bit fanciful, but it would explain the sudden extinction of the ancient orders of land, sea, and air dinosaurs. They died off because their gonads were rendered ineffective, as ours are now.”
“How long before we recover? I mean, we will recover?” Venice said.
“I hate to think I’m like a dinosaur,” Patricia said, conscious of Keith’s gaze upon her.
“There’s one ray of comfort,” Keith said brightly, holding up a finger of promise to them. “If this sterility stunt is going on all over the world, it won’t half be a relief to countries like China and India. For years they’ve been groaning about their population multiplying like rabbits! Now they’ll have a chance to thin the ranks a bit. Five years — or let’s be generous and say ten years — without any more kids born, and I reckon that a lot of the world’s troubles can be sorted out before the next lot start coming!”
Patricia sprawled on the sofa beside him, clutching his lapel.
“Oh, Keith darling,” she sobbed, “you’re such a comfort always!”
They were so engrossed in talk that they did not hear Doctor MacMichael’s knock at the front door. He hesitated there a moment, hearing their voices within and reluctant to enter. Keith Barratt had left the door slightly ajar. He pushed it open and stepped dubiously into the hall.
On the stairs, half hidden in the darkness, a small figure in pyjamas confronted him.
“Hello, Toad, what are you doing there?” the doctor asked affectionately. As he went over to Algy, the boy retreated a step or two and held up a warning finger.
“Ssh, don’t make a noise, doctor! They’re talking very seriously in there. I don’t know what it’s about but I should think it’s about me. I did something awful today.”
“You’d better get up to bed, Algernon. Come on, upstairs with you! I’ll come too.” He clutched the child’s hand and they went up the rest of the stairs together. “Where’s young Jock Bear? Is he creeping round the house without a dressing-gown too?”
“He’s already in bed, for all the good he is. I thought you were Daddy. That’s why I crept downstairs. I was going to say I was sorry to him for what I did wrong.”