World Without Children
By DAMON KNIGHT
Paradise on Earth would be a life without war or death or want. Agreed! But what if the price for individual survival means—no posterity allowed?
I
THE last diapers were in museums, along with teething rings, layettes, formula bottles, perambulators, rattles and teddy bears. Swings and trapezes, slides and jungle gyms had been broken up for scrap. The books, most of them, had been junked: Baby and Child Care, Black Beauty, Obstetrics for the Millions, Tom Swift and his Rocket Glider, What Every Boy Should Know, What Every Girl Should Know, Diseases of Childhood, The Book of Knowledge, Manners for Teeners, One Hundred Things a Boy Can Make.
The last recorded birth had been two hundred years ago.
That child—who had also been the last to wear a snowsuit, the last to cut his finger playing with knives, and the last to learn about women—had now reached the physiological age of twenty-five years, and looked even younger owing to his excellent condition. His name was George Miller; he had been a great curiosity in his day and a good many people still referred to him as The Child.
George did his best to live up to the name. Everything he did was essentially outré; everything he wore was outlandish; everything he said was outrageous. He got along better with most women than with most men. He said the sort of things to women that made them say, “Oh, George!” half wincing, half melting.
At the moment he was busy explaining to Lily Hoffman, head of the Human Conservation League, why he had never permanently given up drinking or smoking.
“Oh, George,” said Lily.
“No, really,” said George earnestly. “You say having fun will take ten per cent off my life. Well, but Art Levinson tells me that my present life expectancy is probably somewhere around three thousand years. So if he’s right, and you’re right, my disgraceful habits won’t catch up to me until 5062 A.D. and by that time I expect to be glad enough to lie down.”
Lily tilted her careful blonde curls forward to avoid a drink in the hand of a wandering guest. “That’s an average, George,” she said. “And of course it’s only a guess, because nobody who’s had the longevity treatments early in life has passed away from old age yet. Now I personally believe that it’s possible to live for ten thousand years or more. And, George, just suppose you did pass away in 5062 from overindulgence, and the very next year they found a way to extend the life-span even more!”
“Good Lord,” said George, looking distressed. “That would be a laugh on me, wouldn’t it?”
“Really, George, this is a serious—”
George put his hand on her arm. “You’re right,” he said, with fervor. “I might be throwing away the best centuries of my life. I’ll stop this very minute.” He took a beautifully chased silver cigarette case out of his breast pocket and emptied it into his hand. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, rising, “I’ll go and throw these in the fireplace so as not to be tempted.”
She called after him, “George, stick to it. That’s the important thing. You’ve quit before, you know.”
“I know,” said George humbly.
Carrying the cigarettes at arm’s length, as if they were a clutch of poisonous serpents, he maneuvered his slender body among the standing, sitting and perambulating guests until he reached the fireplace.
“Hello, Luther,” he said to a gray-haired, comfortably plump man wearing rimless spectacles. “I’m enjoying your party.” He dropped the cigarettes ceremoniously behind a charred log.
“Again?” asked Luther Wheatley amiably.
“Lily talked me into it,” George told him. “You ought to try virtue some time, Luther. It gives you a sort of intense feeling, an I-am-the-master-of-my-fate kind of thing. Besides, it’s an inexhaustible source of conversation. And then when you finally succumb, you have such a delightful sense of wickedness. I think everybody ought to abstain from everything once in a while, just to keep from taking it for granted.”
“George,” said Luther, frowning in concentration, “I believe that is the same discovery that you first announced to me when you were about twenty-three. How do you manage to - shall I say—keep your mind so fresh?”
“How do you manage to remember every damned thing I’ve said over the course of a hundred and fifty-odd years?” George countered irritably.
“You always say the same thing.” One of Luther’s cats wandered by, and Luther stooped to pick it up. It was a pretty thing marked like a Siamese, but with long, light fur. It stared at Luther with offended dignity and mad a noise in its throat.
“Haven’t seen that one before, have I?” George asked.
“No. She’s a distant descendant of Mimi, though—sixteen generations removed. You remember Mimi.”
“I do, indeed. A great cat. Luther. You weren’t worthy of her. Pity they’re so short-lived, isn’t it?”
“That’s why I like them,” Luther said, letting the cat drip from his hands like golden taffy. “People are so inconveniently permanent… . Art! Is that you? I thought you were in Pasadena for the season.”
A stocky, owl-faced man with a shining bald pate put his hand on Wheatley’s shoulder. “I flew in especially to see you, Luther,” he said. “Hello, George. You, too.” He shook hands with them in turn. “Can we go somewhere and talk? It’s important. Is Morey here?”
Luther peered across the room.“ He’s around somewhere.” He stopped a man carrying a tray of cocktail glasses and said, “Find Mr. Stiles for me, will you? Tell him I’d like to see him in my study.” He took the owlish man’s arm and gently propelled him toward the door, leaving George to trail along. “How are you, you dog-robber? How are the famous Levinson fruit-flies?”
“How are the cats?”
“Esthetically rewarding, which is more than I can say for your noxious pets.”
Luther opened the study door and ushered them in. It was an almost fanatically tidy place, like the rest of Luther’s apartment. There was a small window looking out on the roof-tops of Venice; the Rio Foscari was on the opposite side of the building. There were a desk, a work table, an easy chair and two straight chairs. The walls were covered with shelves of books: mostly history and genetics, with the usual peppering of salty novels.
Two cats were in the easy chair, one in each of the straight chairs, and one asleep on the table.
“Dump them off,” said Luther, setting an example and easing himself into the one comfortable chair. “You can sit on the table, George—you’ve got the youngest and most resilient ligaments.”
A man with the long, cartilagenous face of an honest son of toil appeared in the doorway. His collar was too big and too stiff, his tie creased and askew, and his short iron-gray hair was fiercely rumpled like a eagle’s nest. He looked as if he might bite, until he smiled; then he looked unexpectedly shy and friendly.
His voice was a subdued rumble: “Hello, Art. Glad to see you. What’s the bad news?”
“It’s bad, all right,” said Levinson. His round face was serious as he bit off the end of a cigar with a quick, nervous gesture. “Shut the door, will you, Morey?”
He looked at the unlit cigar and put it down. “Listen,” he said, “I could build up to this gradually and spare your nerves, but I haven’t got the patience. I found out something last week that scared me to my toenails.” He stopped and glanced at each of them. They seemed impressed. George did, too, but grim seriousness always impressed him. It made him feel uncomfortable enough to want to drive it off with a facetious remark, but before he had a chance to think of one, Luther said to Levinson, “You really are upset, Art, and that’s something you don’t do easily.” He looked just above George’s head. “Are you sure we’re the ones you want to tell?”