“Hardly. There has always been a religious backbone to the illusion of individual liberty. Western governments never had to make laws about population control because their churches did it for them. Especially once the fundamentalists gained power and civil law became intermixed with religious dogma.”
“But the New Morality and the other fundamentalist groups are against family planning,” Holly pointed out.
“Officially, yes. They realize that overpopulation leads to poverty, and poor people are easier to control than wealthy ones. Still …” Wilmot tilted his head slightly. “There are ways to get the churches to look the other way. Particularly if you are a generous donor to said churches.”
“So the rich stay rich and the poor have babies.”
“And remain poor.”
Holly could feel her brows knitting. “So how do we handle population growth here in Goddard?” she asked. “We can’t keep this ZPG protocol much longer.”
Wilmot drained his cup, then set it down with a delicate clink on its saucer. “My dear young lady, I’m afraid that problem is one that you are going to have to deal with. I have no wisdom from on high to impart to you.”
She almost smiled at his words. “I was hoping you did.”
With a shake of his head, Wilmot said, “You are dealing with the most fundamental of human drives, my dear. There are no pat solutions to the problem. You—and the rest of our population—will have to work out your own salvation for yourselves.”
Glumly, Holly said, “I guess.”
“Indeed,” said Wilmot, thinking, This will be the most fascinating anthropological study since Margaret Mead’s early work in Samoa. Will these people be able to produce a workable solution, or will they tear themselves and this habitat to pieces?
18 February 2096: Evening
Despite Berkowitz’s assurances, Holly felt wired tighter than a bomb as she stepped before the video cameras. There was no one else in the studio. She had chosen to give her first political speech from the communications center, alone, without a claque of an audience to applaud her words. I don’t have a following, she realized. Not like Malcolm. Not yet.
Pancho, Wanamaker, Wunderly and several other friends had offered to come with her, but Holly had told them all that their presence would only make her more nervous. In truth, the only person she wanted to have there was Raoul, but he hadn’t said more than six words to her that morning in the simulations lab, when the power failure had struck.
So now she stood nervously in front of a trio of cameras with their unblinking lenses focused on her. Berkowitz was smiling benignly at her from behind the central camera. There had been a couple of other technicians in the studio when Holly had come in, but they seemed to have disappeared now.
“Your introduction is prerecorded. I’ll set it going and then give you a five-second countdown,” Berkowitz said. “When I point to you like this”—he aimed a stubby forefinger at her—“it’ll be time for you to start.”
“’Kay,” Holly said. “I click.”
There was a monitor screen beside the camera on her right. Holly thought she looked terrible: strung tight and eyes staring like a skinny, frightened waif. Slightly to her left, another monitor displayed the words of her speech in oversize capital letters.
The seconds dragged by, until at last Berkowitz began, “Five … four … three … two …” He pointed dramatically.
Holly tried to make a smile as she began, “Good evening. I’m Holly Lane, and I’m running for the office of chief administrator. Until yesterday I was your director of human resources, but I was fired from that job, prob’ly because the guy who’s currently chief administrator got sore that I decided to run against him.”
She took a breath, saw her next paragraph scrolling up on the monitor, then focused her eyes on Berkowitz, rocking up on his toes and down again as he smiled and nodded encouragement to her from behind the center camera.
“I’d like to tell you why I decided to run against my former boss. It’s because of a certain married couple who came to me to ask permission to have a baby. They made me realize that there must be a lot of women in this habitat of ours who want to have children.
“Now, I know we live in an enclosed environment with limited resources. And I know we all signed onto to the Zero Population Growth protocol when we first joined this habitat. But I feel that it’s time to examine that protocol and see if there isn’t some way we can allow our population to expand—within the limits of our resources, naturally. More than half of our habitat is empty, unpopulated, unused. I believe that with care, we can allow our population to grow. I believe that we have the intelligence and the courage to allow controlled population growth. I don’t think that this habitat of ours should continue to be barren and childless.”
Berkowitz continued to nod and smile at her. The monitor had scrolled to her final, wrap-up paragraph.
But Holly ignored it and blurted, “And I also believe that there’s absolutely no acceptable reason for power outages like we had this morning. That’s inexcusable. We need to pay much more attention to the equipment that keeps us alive. That’s all I’ve got to say. For now. I’ll have more later on. Thank you.”
Holly thought she could hear Eberly’s howl of anguish from halfway across the village.
19 February 2096: Midnight
And where have you been?” Urbain snapped.
Coolly stepping to the chair before his desk and sitting in it, Yolanda Negroponte brushed a tress of ash-blonde hair from her face and said, “A group of us had a little political discussion over supper.”
Habib, already seated in front of Urbain’s desk, looked puzzled. “What group?”
“The women of the scientific staff,” Negroponte replied, smiling faintly. “Didn’t you watch Holly Lane’s speech earlier this evening?”
Shaking his head, Habib answered, “I was here, going over these ghost tracks—”
“Where you should have been,” Urbain said sternly to Negroponte. “A break for supper should not take three hours.”
“As I said,” Negroponte replied, unflinching, “we had a political discussion over our meal.”
Before the two of them fell into an actual argument, Habib pointed to the display on the wall screen and said, “We’ve been trying to piece together these ghost tracks from Alpha.”
The display of Titan’s surface was the only light in Urbain’s office. As Negroponte turned in her chair to look at the screen, Urbain noticed that Habib was watching her, not the smart wall. She is a well-proportioned woman, Urbain noticed. Slightly fleshy, big as an Amazon. Habib seemed fascinated by her.
“If those faint traces in the ground actually are the remains of Alpha’s tracks,” Habib said, “maybe we can use them to find the beast.”
Urbain bristled at his “if,” and even more at his referring to Alpha as a beast.
Negroponte was shaking her head, which made that troublesome lock of hair fall across her face again. “There’s something else involved here,” she said. “Something more important.”
Urbain felt his brows rise. “More important than finding Alpha?”
“If those smooth areas are the remains of Alpha’s tracks, then the question is, what smoothed the tracks?”
Habib said, “You mentioned this before, the idea that something is actively smoothing over the beast’s tracks. Something in the ground.”
“Actively smoothing the tracks,” Urbain repeated.
“Within a matter of days,” said Negroponte. “Perhaps only hours.”
Despite himself, Urbain felt intrigued. “It could be erosion from rainfall.”