Of Mary, father of Jim and Jane”?
But they closed the cemetery at Fifth and Oak
And put up an apartment block on it.
Ideas, citizen bacillus?
They raised you literate and educated,
Equipped to exercise initiative.
But now our technological society
Insists you behave as a statistic.
Products, citizen bacillus?
It’s not by any means improbable
You possess advanced crafts and skills.
But there’s a tape in the chemical milling machine
Accurate to one molecular diameter.
A son, citizen bacillus?
Apply to the Eugenic Processing Board,
Give them a sample of your genotype.
But be prepared to hear it’s disallowed
And don’t complain in hearing of your neighbours.
No, no, citizen bacillus!
Here is your monument and it stands high!
The cars which you wore out, the clothes you tore,
The cans you emptied, furniture you broke,
And all the shit with which you clogged the drains.
Si monumentum requiris, circumspice …
tracking with closeups (7)
THE TOO MUCH STRAIN
Until very recently Eric Ellerman had thought that this was the worst time of the day, the interval between waking and arriving at his job, spent steeling himself afresh each morning for the ordeal of facing his colleagues. But there seemed to be no “worst time” any longer.
It was purely and simply hell to be alive.
From the breakfast alcove where he was gulping his second cup of synthetic coffee—the three-child tax had taken away his chance of buying the real thing—he could see the morning sun glinting on miles of green-houses, rising from the far side of the valley, climbing up over the hill and vanishing into the next dip. Above them loomed a gigantic orange sign: FOR ME IT’S HITRIP OF CALIFORNIA EVERY TIME, SAYS “THE MAN WHO’S MARRIED TO MARY JANE”!
But how much longer can I live in sight of my work?
Through the flimsy wall separating him from the children’s room came the fractious squalling of the twins, neglected while Ariadne dressed Penelope ready for school. She was crying again too. How much longer before the hammering from the next apartment started? He cast a nervous glance at his watch and discovered that he had time to finish his drink.
“Arry! Can’t you quiet them?” he called.
“I’m doing my best!” came the fierce reply. “If you’d give me a hand with Penny that’d help!”
And, as though the words had been a signal, the banging from next door began.
Ariadne appeared, hair tousled, negligee hanging open to show the way her belly was sagging, shoving Penelope in front of her because the child was rubbing both tear-swollen eyes and refusing to look where she was going.
“All yours,” Ariadne snapped. “And I wish you joy of her!”
Abruptly Penny darted forward, throwing out her arms. One small hand struck the cup Eric was holding and the last of its contents shot across the windowsill and dribbled towards the floor.
“You little bleeder!” Eric exploded, and slapped her with his open palm.
“Eric, stop that!” Ariadne cried.
“Look what she’s done! It’s a miracle she didn’t soak my clothes with it!” Eric scrambled to his feet, dodging the dark-brown liquid as it trickled over the edge of the built-in folding table. “And shut up, you!” he added to his eldest daughter.
“You haven’t any right to call her dirty names!” Ariadne insisted.
“All right, I’m sorry—does that satisfy you?” Eric seized his lunch-bag. “But go and shut up those twins, will you? Before someone comes to the door to complain and sees you in that state! Don’t show yourself outside unless you’re wearing your new corset, for God’s sake. Maybe that’ll quiet some of the lying rumours that are going around.”
“I can’t do more than I’m doing already! I buy my pills at the block store making sure everyone can hear what I’m getting, I carry the Populimit Bulletin under my arm when I go out, I—”
“Yes, I know, I know! There’s no use telling me—try telling some of these sheeting neighbours of ours. But go and shut the twins up, please!”
Ill-temperedly, Ariadne went off to make the attempt, and Eric snatched at his eldest daughter’s hand. “Come along,” he muttered, heading for the front door.
They’re as good as telling me openly now that I ought to get a divorce. And maybe they’re right. I’m damned certain I should have gotten a raise for the work I put into developing the Too Much strain—heaven knows I need it (mustn’t say that, mustn’t, they’ll be convinced that it implies I really am what they think I am)—and maybe I would have but for what they assume about Arry …
He tugged the door open, thrust Penelope out into the corridor, and only then saw what was on the outside under the apartment number. Fixed to the panels with adhesive tape in the form of a rough cross, there was one of the crude plastic Mexican figures of the Virgin Mary which could be had for a dollar in local novelty stores, with a contraceptive pill jammed into its half-open mouth.
Underneath someone had chalked in hasty letters: “What’s good enough for her should be good enough for you!”
“A dolly!” Penelope exclaimed, forgetting her determination to go on crying until she was exhausted. “Can I have it?”
“No you can’t!” Eric roared. He ripped it down and stamped on it until it was a heap of coloured fragments, then scuffed at the chalked letters with the back of his hand to make them illegible. Penelope began howling all over again.
From the end of the corridor came a loud shrill snigger in the voice of a boy about ten or twelve. Eric whirled, but caught sight only of a foot and leg vanishing.
The Gadsden boy again. The little bleeder!
But it was no use making accusations. Smug in the knowledge he would never have more than his one child, clever enough at petty politics to have been elected blockfather thrice running, Dennis Gadsden would scarcely need even to deny the charge against his son.
Could I help it if our second cub turned out to be twins? Did I plan for all three of the bleeders to be girls? Sex-determination is expensive! It’s not illegal anyhow—we have clean genotypes, no diabetes, no haemophilia, nothing!
Not against the law, granted. But a drecky lot of difference that made. There wouldn’t have been—couldn’t have been—any eugenic legislation at all unless public opinion had already come around to the attitude that having three or more children was unfair to other people. In a country of four hundred million inhabitants raised on a dream of wide-open spaces where a man could do as he liked, it was logical enough.
We can’t live here much longer.
But—where else? They teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, thanks to the state tax on families larger than two children. Anywhere else in California the cost of travelling a longer distance to work would be prohibitive—and they’d have to move a good long way before they escaped the legacy of their reputation, even if they were to let one of the twins go for adoption. And although they’d avoid the tax by going over the border into Nevada, precisely because that maverick state had declined to impose child taxes and more than the minimum of eugenic legislation the cost of a home there was double or treble what it was in California.
Although—do I want to keep on at this job?
By a miracle, the elevator to the ground floor was empty apart from him and Penelope. He thought about the idea of quitting his job during the brief descent, and came to the same conclusion as always: unless he moved a long way off, divorced Arry—excessive fertility had been allowed as grounds in a Nevada court, though not yet in California or the other states of the union—and stripped himself of all associations with his family, he wouldn’t stand a chance of getting another post comparable to his present one.