From the promised short history he finds out more about the epidemic. It seems to have been an airborne quasi-virus escaped from Franco-Arab military labs, possibly potentiated by pollutants.
"It apparently damaged only the reproductive cells," be tells Dave and Bud. "There was little actual mortality, but almost universal sterility. Probably a molecular substitution in the gene code in the gametes. And the main effect seems to have been on the men. They mention a shortage of male births afterwards, -which suggests that the damage was on the Y-chromosome where it would be selectively lethal to the male fetus."
"Is it still dangerous, Doc?" Dave asks. "What happens to us when we get back home?"
"They can't say. The birthrate is normal now, about
two percent and rising. But the present population may: be resistant. They never achieved a vaccine."
"Only one way to tell," Bud says gravely. "I volunteer."
Dave merely glances at him. Extraordinary bow he-. still commands, Lorimer thinks. Not submission, for Pete's sake. A team.
The history also mentions the riots and fighting which swept the world when humanity found itself. sterile. Cities bombed, and burned, massacres, panics,:. mass rapes and kidnapping of women, marauding armies of biologically desperate men, bloody cults. The;. crazies. But it is all so briefly told, so long ago. Lists of honored names. "We must always be grateful to the brave people who held the Denver Medical Laboratories-2' And then on to the drama of building up the helium supply for the dirigibles.
In three centuries it's all dust, he thinks. What do-. I know of the hideous Thirty Years War that was three centuries back for me? Fighting devastated Europe for two generations. Not even names.
The description of their political and economic, structure is even briefer. They seem to be, as Myda. had said, almost ungoverned.
"It's a form of loose social credit system run by consensus," he says to Dave. "Somewhat like a permanent:' frontier period. They're building up slowly. Of course they don't need an army or air force. I'm not sure if they even use cash money or recognize private ownership of land. I did notice one favorable reference to early Chinese communalism," he adds, to see Dave's mouth set. "But they aren't tied to a community. They, travel about. When I asked Lady Blue about their police anal legal system she told me to wait and talk, real historians. This Registry seems to be just that, it's not a policy organ."
"We've run into a situation here, Lorimer," Dave ` says soberly. "Stay away from it. They're not telling` the story."
"You notice they never talk about their husbands?"Bud laughs. "I asked a couple of them what their husbands did and I swear they had to think. And they all have kids. Believe me, it's a swinging scene down there, even if old. Andy acts like he hasn't found out what it's for."
"I don't want any prying into their personal family lives while we're on this ship, Geirr. None whatsoever. That's an order."
"Maybe they don't have families. You ever hear'em mention anybody getting married? That has to be the one thing on a chick's mind. Mark my words, there's been some changes made."
"The social mores are bound to have changed to some extent," Lorimer says. "Obviously you have women doing more work outside the home, for one thing. But they have family bonds; for instance Lady Blue has a sister in an aluminum mill and another in health. Andy's mother is on Mars and his sister works in Registry. Connie has a brother or brothers on the fishing fleet near Biloxi, and her sister is coming out to replace her here next trip, she's making yeast now."
"That's the top of the iceberg."
"I doubt the rest of the iceberg is very sinister, Dave."
But somewhere along the line the blandness begins to bother Lorimer too. So much is missing. Marriage, love affairs, children's troubles, jealousy squabbles, status, possessions, money problems, sicknesses, funerals even-all the daily minutiae that occupied Ginny and her friends seems to have been edited out of these women's talk. Edited… Can Dave be right, is some big, significant aspect being deliberately kept from them?
"I'm still surprised your language hasn't changed more," he says one day to Connie during their exertions in the gym.
"Oh, we're very careful about that." She climbs at an angle beside him, not using her hands. "It would be a dreadful loss if we couldn't understand the books. All the children are taught from the same original tapes, you see. Oh, there's faddy words we use for a
while, but our communicators have to learn the old texts by heart, that keeps us together."
Judy Paris grunts from the pedicycle. "You, my dear children, will never know the oppression we suffered," she declaims mockingly.
"Judys talk too much," says Connie.
"We do, for a fact." They both laugh.
"So you still read our so-called great books, our fiction and poetry?" asks Lorimer. "Who do you read, H. G. Wells? Shakespeare? Dickens, ah, Balzac, Kipling, Brian?" He gropes; Brian had been a bestseller Ginny liked. When had he last looked at Shakespeare or the others?
"Oh, the historicals," Judy says "It's interesting, I guess. Grim. They're not very realistic. I'm sure it was to you," she adds generously.
And they turn to discussing whether the laying hens are getting too much light, leaving Lorimer to wonder how what he supposes are the eternal verities of human nature can have faded from a world's reality. Love, conflict, heroism, tragedy-all "unrealistic"? Well, flight crews are never great readers; still, women read more… Something has changed, he can sense it. Something basic enough to affect human nature. A physical development perhaps; a mutation? What is really under those floating clothes?
It is the Judys who give him part of it.
He is exercising alone with both of them, listening to them gossip about some legendary figure named Dagmar.
"The Dagmar who invented the chess opening?" he asks.
"Yes. She does anything, when she's good she's great."
"Was she bad sometimes?"
A Judy laughs. "The Dagmar problem, you can say. She has this tendency to organize everything. It's fine when it works but every so often it runs wild; she thinks she's queen or what. Then they have to get out butterfly nets." All in present tense-but Lady Blue has told him the Dagmar gambit is over a century old.
Longevity, he thinks; by god, that's what they're hiding. Say they've achieved a doubled or tripled life span, that would certainly change human psychology, affect their outlook on everything. Delayed maturity, perhaps? We were working on endocrine cell juvenescence when I left. How old are these girls, for instance?
He is framing a question when Judy Dakar says, "I was in the creche when she went pluggo. But she's good, I loved her later on."
Lorimer thinks she has said "crash" and then realizes she means a communal nursery. "Is that the same Dagmar?" he asks. "She must be very old."
"Oh no, her sister."
"A sister a hundred years apart?"
"I mean, her daughter. Her, her grand-daughter." She starts pedaling fast.