The Planet Savers Including the Waterfall (19 page)

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       "Like I say; you're one of the lucky ones. This morning I've got to tell a deep--space communications expert with absolutely no other skills, that his job is completely obsolete for at least ten generations, and offer him a choice of agriculture, carpentry, or blacksmithing!"

       As MacAran left the office, his thoughts flew again, compulsively, to Camilla. Was this what lay in store for her? No, certainly not, any civilized group of people must have some use for a computer library of information! But would Moray, with his grim priorities, see it that way?

       He walked through the midday sunlight, pale violet shadows, the sun hanging high and red like an inflamed and bloodshot eye, toward the hospital. In the distance a solitary figure was toiling over rocks, building a low fence, and MacAran looked at Father Valentine, doing his solitary penance. MacAran accepted, in principle, the theory that the colony could spare no single pair of hands; that Father Valentine could atone for his crimes by useful work more easily than by hanging by the neck until dead; and MacAran, with the memory of his own madness lying heavy on him (
how easily he could have killed the Captain, in his rage of jealousy!
) could not even find it in his heart to shun the priest or feel horror at him. Captain Leicester's judgment would have done justice to King Solomon; Father Valentine had been commanded to bury the dead, those he had killed, and the others, to create a graveyard, and enclose it with a fence against wild beasts or desecration, and to build a suitable memorial to the mass grave of those who had died in the crash. MacAran was not certain what useful purpose a graveyard would serve, except perhaps to remind the Earthmen of how near death lay to life, and how near madness lay to sanity. But this work would keep the Father away from the other crewmen and colonists, who might not have the same awareness of how near they might have come to repeating his crime, until the memory had mercifully died down a little; and would provide enough hard work and penance to satisfy even the despairing man's need for punishment.

       Somehow the sight of the lonely, bent figure put him out of the mood to keep his other appointment in the hospital. He walked away toward the woods, passing the garden area where New Hebrideans were tending long rows of green sprouting plants. Alastair, on his knees,

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was transplanting small green shoots from a flat screened pan; he returned MacAran's wave with a smile.
They were happy at the outcome of this, this life would suit them perfectly
. Alastair spoke a word to the boy holding the box of plants, got up and loped toward MacAran.

       "The padrõn--Moray--told me you were going to do geological work. What's the chances of finding materials for glassmaking?"

       "Can't say. Why?"

       "Climate like this, we need greenhouses," Alastair said, "concentrated sunlight. Something to protect young plants against blizzards. I'm doing what I can with plastic sheets, foil reflectors and ultraviolet, but that's a temporary makeshift. Check natural fertilizers and nitrates, too. The soil here isn't too rich."

       "I'll make a note of it," MacAran promised. "Were you a farmer by trade on Earth?"

       "Lord, no. Auto mechanic--transit specialist," Alastair grimaced. "The Captain was talking about converting me to a machinist. I'm going to be sittin' up nights praying for whoever it was blew up the damn ship."

       "Well, I'll try to find your silicates," MacAran promised, wondering how high, on Moray's austere priorities, the art of glassmaking would come. And what about musical instruments? Fairly high, he'd imagine. Even savages had music and he couldn't imagine life without them, nor, he'd guess, could these members of a singing folk.

      
If the winter's as bad as it probably will be, music just might keep us all sane, and I'll bet that Moray--cagey bastard that he is--has that already figured out
.

       As if in answer to his thought, one of the girls working in the field raised her voice in low, mournful song. Her voice, deep and husky, had a superficial resemblance to Camilla's and the words of the song rang out, in question and sadness, an old sad melody of the Hebrides:

                 My Caristiona,

                 Wilt answer my cry?

                 No answering tonight?

                 My grief, ah me...

                 My Caristiona...

      
Camilla, why do you not come to me, why do you not answer me? Wilt answer my cry…  my grief, ah me …

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                 Deep my heart is grieving, grieving,

                 And my eyes are streaming, streaming...

                 My Caristiona... wilt answer my cry?

      
I know you are unhappy, Camilla, but why, why do you not come to me... ?

       Camilla came into the hospital slowly and rebelliously, clutching the examination slip. It was a comforting hang-over from ship routine, but when, instead of the familiar face of Medic Chief Di Asturien (
at least he speaks Spanish!
) she was confronted with young Ewen Ross, she frowned with irritation.

       "Where's the Chief? You haven't the authority to do examinations for Ship personnel!"

       "The Chief's operating on that man who was shot in the kneecap during the Ghost Wind; anyway I'm in charge of routine examinations, Camilla. What's the matter?" His round young face was ingratiating, "won't I do? I assure you my credentials are wonderful. Anyhow, I thought we were friends--fellow victims from the first of the Winds! Don't damage my self-esteem!"

       Against her wilt she laughed. "Ewen, you rascal, you're impossible. Yes, I guess this is routine. The Chief announced the contraceptive failure a couple of months ago, and I seem to have been one of the victims. It's just a case of putting in for an abortion."

       Ewen whistled softly. "Sorry, Camilla," he said gently, "can't be done."

       "But I'm
pregnant
!"

       "So congratulations or something," he said, "maybe you'll have the first child born here, or something, unless one of the Commune girls gets ahead of you."

       She heard him, frowning, not quite understanding. She said stiffly, "I guess I'll have to take it up with the Chief after all; you evidently don't understand the rules of the Space Service."

       His eyes held a deep pity; he understood all too well. "Di Asturien would give you the same answer," he said gently. "Surely you know that in the Colonies abortions are performed only to save a life, or prevent the birth of a grossly defective child, and I'm not even sure we have facilities for that here. A high birth rate is absolutely imperative for at least the first three generations--you

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surely know that women volunteers aren't even accepted for Earth Expeditionary unless they're childbearing age and sign an agreement to have children?"

       "I would be exempt, even so," Camilla flashed, "although I didn't volunteer for the colony at all; I was crew. But you know as well as I do that women with advanced scientific degrees are exempt--otherwise no woman with a career she valued would ever go out to the colonies! I'm going to fight this, Ewen! Damn you, I'm not going to accept forced childbearing! No woman is
forced
to have a child!"

       Ewen smiled ruefully at the angry woman. He said, "Sit down, Camilla; be sensible. In the first place, love, the very fact that you have an advanced degree makes you valuable to us. We need your genes a lot more than we need your engineering skills. We won't be needing skills like that for half a dozen generations--if then. But genes for high intelligence and mathematical ability have to be preserved in the gene pool, we can't risk letting them die out."

       "Are you trying to tell me I'll be
forced
to have children? Like some savage woman, some walking womb from the prehistoric planets?" Her face was white with rage. "This is completely unendurable! Every woman on the crew will go out on strike when they hear that!"

       Ewen shrugged. "I doubt it," he said. "In the first place, you've got the law wrong. Women are not allowed to volunteer for colonies unless they have intact genes, are of childbearing age and sign an agreement to have children--but women
over
childbearing age are occasionally accepted if they have medical or scientific degrees. Otherwise the end of your fertile years means the end of your chance to be accepted for a Colony--and do you know how long the waiting lists are for the Colonies? I waited four years; Heather's parents put her name down when she was ten, and she's twenty-three. The Overpopulation laws on Earth mean that some women have been on waiting lists for twelve years to have a
second
child."

       "I can't imagine why they'd bother," Camilla said in disgust "One child ought to be enough for any woman, if she has anything above the neck, unless she's a real neurotic with no independent sense of self-esteem."

       "Camilla," Ewen said very gently, "this is biological. Even back in the 20th century, they did experiments on

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rats and ghetto populations and things, and found that one of the first results of crucial social overcrowding was the failure of maternal behavior. It's a pathology. Man is a rationalizing animal, so sociologists called it "Women's Liberation" and things like that, but what it amounted to was a pathological reaction to overpopulation and overcrowding. Women who couldn't be allowed to have children, had to be given some other work, for the sake of their mental health. But it wears off. Women sign an agreement, when they go to the colonies, to have a minimum of two children; but most of them, once they're out of the crowding of Earth, recover their mental and emotional health, and the average Colony family is four children--which is about right, psychologically speaking. By the time the baby comes, you'll probably have normal hormones too, and make a good mother. If not, well, it will at least have your genes, and we'll give it to some sterile woman to bring up for you. Trust me, Camilla."

       "Are you trying to tell me that I've
got
to have this baby?"

       "I sure as hell am," Ewen said, and suddenly his voice went hard, "and others too, provided you can carry them to term. There's a one in two chance that you'll have a miscarriage." Steadily, unflinching, he rehearsed the statistics which MacAran had heard from Moray earlier that same day. "If we're lucky, Camilla, we have fifty-nine fertile women now. Even if they all became pregnant this year, we'll be lucky to have twelve living children... and the viable level for this colony to survive means we've got to bring our numbers up to about four hundred before the oldest women start losing their fertility. It's going to be touch and go, and I have a feeling that any woman who refuses to have as many children as she can physically manage, is going to be awfully damned unpopular. Public Enemy Number One isn't in it"

       Ewen's voice was hard, but with the heightened sensitivity he had known ever since the first Wind blasted him wide open to the emotions of others, he realized the hideous pictures that were spinning in Camilla's mind:

      
not a person, just a thing, a walking womb, a thing used for breeding, my mind gone, my skills useless... just a brood mare
...

       "It won't be that bad," he said in deep sympathy. "There will be plenty for you to do. But that's the way it's got to be,

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Camilla. I'm sure it's worse for you than it is for some others, but it's the same for everyone. Our survival depends on it." He looked away from her; he could not face the blast of her agony.

       She said, her lips tightening to a hard line, "Maybe it would be better not to survive, under conditions like that."

       "I won't discuss that with you until you're feeling better," Ewen said quietly, "it's not worth the breath. I'll set up a prenatal examination for you with Margaret--"

       "--I
won't
!"

       Ewen got quickly to his feet. He signaled to a nurse behind her back and gripped her wrist in a hard grip, immobilizing her. A needle went into her arm; she looked at him with angry suspicion, her eyes already glazing slightly.

       "What--"

       "A harmless sedative. Supplies are short, but we can spare enough to keep you calmed down," Ewen said calmly. "Who's the father, Camilla? MacAran?"