Imperial Stars 3-The Crash of Empire (21 page)

"You know that I do."

The churchman pondered something invisible which had obtruded between himself and the old woman. He cleared his throat. "His Holiness was unusually stern when he dispatched me on this mission. He instructed me to plead immediate reclassification of the four million inhabitants of the Nile Delta. He urged me strongly not to take 'no' for an answer."

Victoria Duiño looked solemn. "Then the stern Father must discover that he has an equally stern daughter," she said. "My answer must be . . . no. Battles are never without casualties; grain shipments to Egypt have already halted."

"I warn you; he has spoken of excommunication."

The old woman grew very pale, very calm. "And do you expect me to be intimidated by such a threat?"

"I do not. I have known you too long."

"I am literally amazed that the Holy Father would stoop to attack me personally, would choose to threaten damnation of my immortal soul in order to destroy me professionally. Were he to carry out this awful threat, it would mean absolutely nothing to the Triage Committee or its works. Doesn't he realize that?"

"I'm not . . . sure."

Victoria fingered her crucifix. "Louis, what have we come to? The Church, our Church, has grown quite permissive on the question of homosexuality, now countenances therapeutic abortion, even condones euthanasia when the pain of life becomes too great for her sons and daughters to bear, yet obstinately faces away from the fact that without triage judgments our planet will
never again
be a fit environment for the human species."

"Discussion is painful to me. I must ask you for a definite answer, Victoria."

"You have had it. Tell His Holiness that the Matriarch of Death considers eternal fire a small price to pay for the work she does, and must continue to do."

The Cardinal's eyes were misted. He bowed. "Then I will bid you good-bye, my dear Victoria. I sincerely hope that our next meeting will be more pleasant."

"I hope so."

 
The causal chain of the deterioration is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much CO2—all can be traced easily to too many people.

Dr. Paul Ehrlich,
The Population Bomb

Monique's package arrived in late forenoon the following day, Dr. Duiño sent two of the suspect birth-control tablets to the UN lab for analysis, receiving a report in less than one hour. Properly stamped with the infertility symbol, the placebos lacked the chop of any pharmaceutical house, and were therefore quite illegal. If found, the seller would be liable to harsh prosecution.

After an evening snack of thin vegetable soup and soya toast, Sra. Duiño retired to her quarters high on the two-hundredth floor, feeling roughly battered by life. She had been attacked from the left and the right, from above and below.

She pondered Monique's problem all evening, sitting alone in the cramped two-room suite. She rarely left the UN Tower nowadays; there would be little purpose in it. Almost everything that remained in her life was here: her meager creature comforts, the small chapel on the twelfth floor where she heard mass and went to confession—more and more infrequently of late—and her work.

Sudden nostalgia spun her mind back to the early days in Argentina when Vicky Ortega, a serious-minded medical student newly risen from the tumbled shacks and endemic poverty of a Buenos Aires
barrio
, had visited the clinic and been lovestruck at first sight of a young doctor named Enrique Duiño. Love had come in the blink of an eye, in the macrocosmic slice of eternity it had taken for the handsome doctor to look at her infected throat and prescribe three million units of penicillin and bedrest.

Oh, she had pursued him; no mistake about that—two months of thoroughly premeditated "accidental" encounters, while her studies went neglected and she lived in terror of losing him.

But she remembered the miraculous day when she had led Enrique up a crooked, debris-strewn alley to the ramshackle lean-to her parents and brothers and sisters called home, the day Enrique had turned his hat brim slowly, nervously in his deft surgeon's hands while he asked her father's permission to make her his bride. Later, mentioning the five children she'd prayed God would allow them to have, Vicky had received the lecture which was to change her life.

In those days, Enrique had been a walking encyclopedia, stuffed with demographic statistics, facts and figures on family planning, on the fantastic rate at which the world's population was doubling, on the coming extinction of fossil fuels, and on and on. They, he had insisted, would have
one
child—two at most. At first, Vicky had been horrified, then resentful, then fascinated.

Their first decade together had been an exciting hodgepodge: the missionary hospital in Bolivia; their studies together in Madrid, and at the Sorbonne, and later in Mexico; finally, the years in America and, somewhat late in life, the birth of young Hector Duiño. That had been the richest, most tranquil period, Victoria reflected. Enrique and she had practiced in San Francisco, and in New York; the boy had grown to manhood almost overnight, so it seemed. And when Enrique's crusading articles won him selection as a delegate to the third International Population Control Convention in New Delhi, she had been so proud, even though her practice had kept her home in New York.

Curiously enough, Enrique had always tended to neglect his own health. When the cholera epidemic erupted, he had refused to be flown home with the majority of other delegates, staying on in India to lend what help he could. The first prognosis from the hospital where they had taken him had been favorable. But Victoria had had an ugly premonition. All her prayers had gone unanswered; her beloved had come home in a plain wooden casket.

The ensuing years of loneliness melted into a blur—long years of struggle and disappointment. She had carried on Enrique's great work, making a nuisance of herself by shouting his message into deaf political ears. But at last—not too late, perhaps; but
very
late—after the Mideast conflagration which all but destroyed Israel and placed the whole of Islam under Russia's thrall, she and the other criers-in-the-wilderness had at last been heard. After much panicking and pointing of fingers, the UN peacekeeping troops had been bolstered and united into a true international armed force. Then—could it be nearly twenty-five years ago?—UNDEP's Triage Committee had been formed. Dr. Duiño had been its first and only chairperson.

The old woman raised withered hands. There were times when she imagined she could see light streaming through the mottled parchment stretched over her bones. Where was pretty little Vicky Ortega now? Submerged in this twist of exhausted flesh, she supposed.

She rose with the aid of her bamboo cane and shuffled to the window. It was after midnight, and fairly clear. She looked up at the few visible stars for a time, then stood gazing far out over the inky wash of the Atlantic into the depths of night.

Two days later, a preliminary report arrived from the UN Intelligence Agents who were investigating the bogus birth-control tablets. The assistant manager of Gilbert's Pharmacy, thirty-third layer, twelfth sector, northwest quadrant of the gargantuan arcology complex where Monique and her husband lived, had recently applied for parenthood. Pressure was brought to bear— and a hint of amnesty if full cooperation were forthcoming. During the ensuing week, the trail led from the pharmacy to a disreputable retired chemist in Cleveland, to a thrice arrested though never convicted Philadelphia dealer in black-market pharmaceuticals, to a drug wholesaler with shady connections in Trenton, and finally to the legman for a prominent Congressman. A second week passed before the UN Intelligence Director called Sra. Duiño and mentioned a name.

"Are you certain?" she asked, stiffening.

"No, madame. There's no way short of a trial to be certain, and I doubt whether the DA would indict upon the sort of evidence we've managed to gather."

"Are you yourself certain?"

"I . . . yes, madame. I myself am quite certain."

"Thank you for all your efforts," she said. "Please make sure your findings remain confidential."

Dr. Duiño snapped off the vidicom and sought her cane. She stumped from the office, startling Harold and three VIP's who were waiting to see her. She rode upward in the private lift, failed to acknowledge everyone who greeted her in the corridor, and spent the remaining afternoon hours closeted with her fellow Triage Committee members behind closed doors.

Late the following day, Victoria entered Bennett Rook's anteroom, breezing past his receptionist unannounced.

The inner office was crowded: Rook was at the chalkboard, running over some statistics with a group of underlings. He telescoped the collapsible pointer he had been using. "Dr. Duiño. To what do we owe this honor?"

"I must speak to you at once in private." She shooed them out with her cane, causing a concerted fumbling for notebooks and other papers. The UNDEP employees filed out, studiously avoiding one another's eyes.

When the door closed behind the last straggler, she said, "Is this room safe?"

"Quite safe, Victoria."

The old woman inspected Rook analytically. "Well, is it to be 'wroth in death, and envy after'? Or will you bargain?"

"Pardon me?"

"Come, come, Rook; bluffing was never your forte. If for some reason I should choose to step down," she said, speaking slowly, distinctly, "will you allow my granddaughter to bear her child in peace?"

"Why, certainly, Victoria. As I once told you, I'm not a hypocrite."

"No," she said, "merely a . . . !" She choked off the gutter term that came to her lips. "May I ask what I have done to you to deserve
this?
"

"Personalities aren't involved," he said. "It's the job—the job you are
failing
to accomplish. You left me no choice."

The old woman swayed, leaning heavily on her cane. Rook moved as if to help her, but she fended him off, saying sharply, "Please keep your hands to yourself."

Settling herself in a chair, Victoria Duiño looked up at the man, her eyes bright. With measured intonation, she enumerated certain facts concerning an assistant pharmacy manager, a Cleveland chemist, a Philadelphia dealer in pharmaceuticals, a drug wholesaler, and a Congressman's stooge.

Rook was nonplused. "Thorough," he said smoothly. "You've been very thorough, as I anticipated. You realize, of course, that such 'evidence' would never hold up in court."

"No district attorney, judge, or jury will ever hear it."

"Then, how—?"

"Tomorrow morning," directed the old woman sternly, "you will personally arrange official parenthood sanction for my granddaughter and her husband. Spare me the seamy details of how the deed is to be accomplished."

"And . . . if I refuse?"

Victoria's smile was thin, totally lacking in humor—the smile of a canary who has successfully evaded the cat. "I visited with the other seven members of our committee yesterday, Rook. They all seemed quite eager to see things
my
way. Persist in your endeavor, and you will find yourself out on the street, looking in. Discovering another meal ticket might become a serious problem."

Bennett Rook took a moment to digest this information. "Then I suppose you have won," he said at last.

"Yes, I suppose so. As such things are reckoned."

"Do you blame me?" Rook sounded the injured party. "I'm not really an orge, Victoria. You've lived long, worked hard; you've seen the world change into something ill and decrepit. Was it so despicable to try and force you to lay down your burden and rest?"

"It was," she said, "though I don't expect you to understand why. You are not a flesh and blood creature, Rook; no juices of life flow within you. You are cold and rational—both a superb asset, and a potentially terrible liability to triage activities."

"I'll make the necessary arrangements tomorrow," he said.

Victoria Duiño nodded. "Good. Now that we understand one another, I have a bombshell for you; the Matriarch of Death has at last decided to abdicate. Not, however, because of your foolish blackmail scheme.

"You were correct, Rook: I am indeed old, feeble, and used up. And tired—very tired. You strike at me through my grandchild; His Holiness attacks me through my faith; my name is anathema from Antarctica to Greenland, and all around the world."

"You've managed to amaze me, Victoria."

"Furthermore," she went on, disregarding his incredulous stare, "had you refrained from this silly coup, you might well have been elected Chairperson of the Triage Committee next week. As it is, while eminently qualified, you have proved yourself utterly unworthy."

"Bitter gall." Rook grimaced. "That does sting, Victoria. But don't count me out just yet. I—"

"Hear me, Bennett!" She twisted the cane savagely in her hands. "This will be our final encounter, and I intend to have the last word. I want to clarify something, now and forever; something you
must
comprehend.

"You have repeatedly condemned my triage philosophy as being too lenient, too soft. It is not. Triage is, and has always been, a concession to the inevitable, not premeditated mass-murder. Twenty-five years ago, in the white heat of a new crusade, we set a rather idealistic goal: semi-immediate reversal of runaway overpopulation. We were dismayed to find it not that simple. How can an illiterate Third Worlder, whose single recreation in an otherwise drab existence is sex, be persuaded to remain chaste during his wife's fertile period?

"But now, whether you care to acknowledge it or not, a dim glow brightens the far end of the tunnel. We faced cold facts, long ago, asking ourselves whether it would be wiser to disrupt every socioeconomic system on Earth by seeking a quick solution, or to wage a strategically paced, long-range war. The latter policy is saner, more practical, and far more humanitarian; the ultimate solution may lay farther in the future, but victory is also much more assured.