The panel game was nearing its end. Somebody had won eight thousand dollars and the studio audience was applauding wildly, and presently the commercials will come on and smooth young men and women will talk about detergents and gasoline and cider and margarine. And Anne will withdraw slowly from the world of the small screen and condense, as it were, into a living human in the here and now. Time is short for private thought: soon must come the small talk and the phrases of affection crystallizing into the inevitable pseudo-romantic atmosphere of bedtime.
But why pseudo? And pseudo to whom? What in the last analysis was romance, practical functioning romance of the kind that welded married people into an integral bisexual unit? To what extent was romance a projection of sexual aspiration? Or was that begging the question: was sex, after all, the common denominator of all male-female relationships, and was the fumbling confusion of individual relationships a synthesis of that basic instinct, sublimated and distorted into planes of feeling and emotion that have no fundamental objective reality?
Gorste was in an analytical mood, and for the moment his wife is as distant and impersonal as the rectangular clock over the fireplace. But soon she will unfreeze into warmth and motion and he would respond as always, in accordance with the established pattern of behaviour He would take over where the TV left off.
Supposing I told her I am sterile, he thought. How would she react? She wants a child, the child that Drewin was ever able to give her. Would she retreat into herself, sealing her emotions and assuming a static frigidity, or would she be sympathetic? It was Drewin’s fault, after all, but one could hardly mention that. And how important was sterility, anyway? If the basis of romantic feeling between two individuals was sexual, as it must be, then how could the fact of sterility affect it or modify it in any way. Sterility as such was a long-term physiological factor. It didn’t influence the short-term personal relationship between a man and a woman. It was, in fact, a kind of contraceptive, and as such was fourth dimensional in effect, being a function of time. Each act of amorous relationship was in itself unaffected by the fact of sterility, but the poison accumulates in the months that follow, in the absence of conception and pregnancy. To a man, thinks Gorste, it might not matter; but to a woman it might be all important.
The panel game was ended, and the commercials were under way. Anne stirred, returned to life. She turned and smiled faintly at her husband.
“Sandra Graham was good wasn’t she, darling? And Cheryl Dawn, too. The way they answered that question about the theodolite. I nearly screamed.”
I didn’t notice it, Gorste told himself. I didn’t notice any thing. The scream, if ever it came near to existence, was still born. Sterile reaction. Electronic emotion.
“Kiss me,” said Anne.
Gorste moved over to her chair and kissed her.
“Again,” she said.
He complied. In a moment, he thought, her fingers will take my hand and place it over her breast, and she will say let’s go to bed, and the opening gambit will begin in the orthodox way, and I will make my move and she will make hers, and presently we shall go to bed because we want to and not because we have to, for that’s the way it is when television is finished.
The detergent had given way to gasoline, and in a moment Anne’s fingers closed around Gorste’s hand and moved it downwards towards her breast.
Gorste said nothing about his sterile condition that night.
It was partly lack of courage, and partly lack of opportunity, for Anne adhered strictly to the rules of romantic progression, almost systematically, Gorste told himself, and there was not a spare instant for any kind of talk outside the normal established run of dialogue. And even the dialogue faded into silence as the demands of the body overruled the needs of the mind. And when the body finally relinquished its obsessive requisition of thought and feeling and physical response, there was nothing left, and the mind, in the ensuing flowing blankneses, sank exquisitely into unconsciousness. That’s how it always had been, and presumably that’s how it always would be. There was no room for truth and confession and serious talk about the future.
Anne was still asleep when Gorste left for the laboratory the next morning. He sensed a certain regret and frustration in his failure to broach the subject of sterility to his wife, although, he told himself consolingly, it wasn’t so much a failure as an absence of conversational opening. There was always tomorrow, and tomorrow always seemed to be a better day than today for performing unpleasant duties. There might be time this evening, perhaps. After television, of course.
He met Rinehart in the corridor leading to the laboratory. Rinehart made cryptic motions at him with both hands, then whisked him into his office.
“Sit down, Gorste.”
Gorste sat down on a steel tube and canvas chair. Rinehart hovered around him like a adventurous moth round a flame.
“The board is pressing things a little,” Rinehart said in a tentative manner. An understatement, Gorste thought. “Naturally the commercial side of things requires a great deal of planning. To market a product successfully may need a year or more of advance thinking and discussion at different levels.
“Two minutes late, Gorste. Let’s hope E.J. didn’t notice.” Gorste made no comment. All eyes seemed to be focused on him for a few seconds, and then E.J.’s voice cut astringently through the silence.
“Very well, gentlemen. Let us begin.” She riffled a sheaf of papers without looking at them “Subject: estrogen derivative; formula: three nine two.”
“Three nine three,” said a man called Lowery apologetically.
E.J.’s eyes seemed to click as they swung towards Gorste. His voice broke into spontaneous sound.
“Three nine two, E.J. We shan’t be ready for the three nine three dissections for several weeks.”
E.J.’s eyes held his for a brief embarrassing moment. Those eyes, green and wide, possessed a certain hypnotic quality; they contrasted with the rich cream of her complex ion and the bronzed auburn of her hair. It was as if E.J. had noticed him for the very first time, and the reaction modified his heartbeat.
“According to the early biophysical reports,” said E.J. crisply, “it would seem that formula three nine two has the characteristics we require for a commercial product. Isn’t that so, Mr. Gorste?”
Gorste attempted to resurrect the stubbornness that seemed to have died within him. “We are still in an experimental stage,” he said lamely. “The indications are good, but we are still working on monkeys. It may be that…”
“Indications are enough,” E.J. cut in brusquely. “We are here to make long-term plans on the assumption that formula three nine two or a subsequent development of it will be suitable for marketing as a commercial product in, say, a year. All I need to know at this stage is this: does formula three nine two produce sterility?”
“Yes,” said Gorste.
“And will it produce sterility in a human female?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“About six months, I think. Perhaps a little more.”
“One hundred percent sterility?”
“Yes.”
E.J. nodded in satisfaction. For a woman of fifty, Gorste thought, she wasn’t at all bad. Too positive in manner, perhaps, but still feminine. It seemed strange to hear a woman discussing sterility so candidly and impersonally.