The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) (9 page)

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs as he left by the balcony. Suggs took a last look at the body.

‘Don’t worry, Scotty,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’ll get the bastards for making me do this. So help me.’

Though the television newscaster seemed hysterical, Susie Suggs was not agitated in the least. She was not really watching the screen of her portable TV; it served only as a flat weight on her tummy, while she did her deep breathing exercises according to
Lady Fair
magazine. The exercises made her sleepy, and the voice of the little figure seemed to dwindle to a mosquito hum. It was almost as if he were a little man growing right out of her tummy; but this idea was so vaguely disquieting that it brought her fully awake. Forgetting to count her breaths, Susie began actually watching.

‘Is it a Russian sneak attack? Is it one of our own secret weapons gone somehow horribly wrong? Or is it something we are even less prepared to face—an invasion of beings not of this planet? We’ll have the whole story in just a moment, after this message from the Vortex Corporation.’

The screen went white, then displayed a large white missile sitting in a mesh of black iron railings. Fire swelled from under it as, trembling, the giant cylinder rose into darkness.

‘This is … the Moloch !’ intoned a solemn announcer. ‘America’s newest power punch ! Just look at this baby go !’ The missile rose, tilted, and headed off into the night. ‘Now watch the Moloch destroy this mock-up of an enemy village !’ Something white flashed downward into a grass village, and both exploded together—‘
Wow!
’ said the announcer—in one instant of blinding glare.

The scene changed to a complicated laboratory, where a group of men in white coats listened to earphones and watched, on a dozen little TV screens, the destruction re-enacted.

‘These capable, experienced men designed Moloch. They are the members of Vortex Missile Group, just one of Vortex’s “Keep America Tough” programmes. Every man here is a genius, dedicated and committed to our ever-expanding missile

programme. They have solved the launch and guidance problems of the Moloch—and of
seventeen other
military missiles. Yes, at Vortex, retaliation is a way of life.

‘Vortex is many things to many people. Here we see a steel mill run by computers from Vortex Instrument Group. And here’, he said, and Susie took more interest in the next scene, for it was an operating room, ‘here is Dr. Toto Smilax performing open heart surgery—using a scalpel made by Vortex Cutlery Group.

‘
Vortex!
’ exclaimed the announcer in conclusion. ‘First in war and first in peace—and first in the hearts of its countrymen.’

The newscaster returned. ‘Altoona, Nevada,’ he said. ‘Until today, just another ordinary American city in the West. Now—who knows? Life
may
be going on as usual in Altoona—
as far as we know
. But since early this morning there has been a news blackout imposed by the joint efforts of the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency. We have been unable to contact anyone within the city.

‘What has happened? Frankly, we don’t know. It could be, as some hint, a Russian invasion, or even an invasion from outer space. Calmer sources believe it to be a test of some sort, and at least one reliable source indicated that it might be a secret weapon gone wrong.
We just don’t know
.’ Every time he used this phrase, the newscaster’s face seemed a little more crumpled, a little closer to tears. For another fifteen minutes he told Susie of all the things we don’t know. Then the announcer with the soothing voice (that sent nice warm ripples over Susie’s tummy) returned to demonstrate the two-stage Hermes-Aphrodite missile. Advertising was so silly, Susie thought, resuming her breathing exercises.

By her
Lifetime
watch, she noted how late it was getting. She was going to have to hustle to be ready for her date with Ron. And she had meant to study for her Organic Chem test Monday morning. Here it was Saturday night and she hadn’t opened the book !

Quickly Susie showered with
Nice
, the 24-hour soap that gets at odours other soaps just seem to miss, and rolled on plenty of
SHUR
, to be sure about those offensive odours. After dusting all over with Lady Clinge talc, she slipped on her
Modaform
6-way-stretch panty girdle that b-r-e-a-t-h-e-s, her Deepline
Modaform
Sport-support bra, and began applying
Classique
Parfum, the scent that makes every woman an empress, every

man a slave.

Drawing on her black sweater and black skirt, Susie seated herself at the vanity table to do her face. After covering her golden freckles with
Blanc
foundation, she powdered with Rubella Gorne’s
Klown
powder. To her Greekly perfect mouth, she applied a white lipstick called
Eraser
.

For her eyes, Susie selected her usual assortment of Nora Hart shades, chiefly oyster and sylph-green, but blending in touches of burgundy and bronze. Then, after brushing her hair and applying a liberal amount of
Airnet
, there remained only jewellery.

On a velvet bar in Susie’s vanity kit were pinned Bob’s ΔKE pin, Len’s Young Republican pin, and Jim’s Vietnam button. Her fingers passed over these, nor paused at the Pepsi
Come Alive!
, the
Go Gophers!
, or the
Win With Dewey
buttons, went on to the end of the bar and selected the peace mandala Ron had given her. As she pinned it on, her mother came to the door.

‘That awful creature Ron is here,’ she stage-whispered. ‘Oh, I’m sorry I don’t like him, dear, but he’s so—so shifty. And he always wears old clothes. And now—now he’s even growing a
beard
! Ugh !’

Fighting down her own repulsion at the idea, Susie said, ‘But mother, he’s one of the richest boys in the city of Santa Filomena. Surely you want me to have a good future?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ Madge’s tanned face deepened its seams with worry. ‘I married your father because he had a good future with the insurance company. Now look at me.’

Susie looked at her mother and saw an attractive middle-aged woman right from the pages of
Lady Fair
, to which Madge subscribed: dark hair, streaked with silver, a slim, girlish figure, and the only clue to her years being the lines in her face. Susie fervently wished that she herself, at thirty-five, would look as good.

Madge went on, ‘I guess I shouldn’t try to tell you how to run your life, after I’ve made such a mess of my own. Every time I think of that bastard—how he’s enjoying himself over there with his harem girls—not even a postcard, in over three months ! Well, I saw the lawyer today, and I’m suing him for a divorce. If he can live it up, so can I ! Sauce for the goose ! While the cat’s away !’

Madge seemed to have been drinking. She lurched to the

mirror and examined her eyes, pulling the loose flesh beneath them this way and that. She scarcely seemed to notice that Susie had drawn on her white felt boots, kissed her goodbye and said, ‘That’s the spirit, Mommy ! Kick him in the—the seater ! ’Bye.’

Near the campus of the University of California, at Santa Filomena, one street featured four well-patronized coffee houses, but none so popular as The Blue Tit. To avoid difficulties with university officials the owner of the coffee house, Kevin Mackintosh, had painted a bluebird on the café’s sign. As on all weekend nights, a crowd had crammed itself into The Blue Tit to listen to folk music and poetry, but tonight, it was a sullen, heavy-spirited crowd. Many of them had arrived, as had Susie and Ron, on motorcycles in the drizzle, and the room was filled with steam and sour smell of wet wool.

On a raised dais at the rear of the narrow room, a poet was reading aloud from a sheet of paper held close to his face. As he turned to catch the light, Susie recognized Kevin Mackintosh.

‘
Timepoem
number fourteen,’ he read.

‘Golly !’ Susie exclaimed. ‘Explosives reminds me, I ought to be studying for that Organic Chem test Monday.’

‘Ssh,’ said Ron. ‘There isn’t going to be any day after tomorrow.’

‘I don’t know the Geneva naming system or anything.’

Ron smiled. Kevin Mackintosh looked at her, incredulous. ‘The Geneva naming system is done,’ he said. ‘So is the Geneva convention. So is Geneva.’

‘It’s the end of the world,’ Ron explained.

‘That’s right,’ said someone else. ‘The crack of doom has been sounded.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Susie, smiling a little. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘It’s the end of the whole works, baby,’ Ron said. ‘Like they

tell us on the radio. Didn’t you hear the news?’

‘This is our end-of-the-world party,’ announced Kevin Mackintosh, ‘Bring your own.’

Someone snickered, but the poet was not smiling.

‘Will someone please tell me what this is all about?’ Susie asked. She thought and thought, but was unable to recall just what she had seen on the six o’clock news.

‘That thing in Altoona, Nevada,’ Ron explained, ‘is either a Russian missile, Something Horrible from outer space, or one of our own screaming nightmares. If it is a Russian missile, we retaliate. Then they retaliate. Et cetera, the end.

‘If it is a thing from outer space, why does the government keep it so quiet? Because it is something pretty horrible, like a thing that digested the whole town, or atomic monsters, shooting X-rays all over. Something we can’t stop, that’ll take over.

‘If it is some weapon of our own out of control, what would it be? Some bomb? Not likely, or other countries would be raising hell. More likely a nasty disease—say universal contagious cancer.’

Everyone in the room had grown silent. It was as if they huddled together in the gloom actually waiting for a quick blinding light to illumine and transfigure them for one final instant. The most important actions and words were pointless; the most trivial were full of meaning, elevated almost to sacraments.

Tears came to Susie’s eyes. It all seemed so unfair. She was seventeen years old and still a virgin, and now it was too late. She wanted more than anything to give up pointless, silly virtue now, near the end of All, but it was somehow too small a sacrifice (then, too, there was always the outside chance that the world would
not
end—and then how in the world would she explain things to Madge?). Susie hated the old End-of-the-world suddenly and furiously. She wanted to just scratch its eyes out !

‘Why—why I think we ought to go out and protest !’ she declared, standing up. The others looked at her, not catching her meaning. ‘They have no right to do this to us ! They have no right to take away the world like this, the selfish pigs !’

There was a sudden high-pitched explosive laugh from one youth. ‘What do you think we ought to do about it?’ he mocked. ‘Write our congressmen?’

‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘But I don’t think we’ll solve anything by just sitting around here moping, for Pete’s sake ! We ought to

go out and—and protest ! We ought to march on this Alt—this wherever it is and tell them what we think of them, in no uncertain terms !’ She stamped her little boot. ‘Or are we going to let them take
everything
away?’

The room was in an uproar. Some people were egging her on, while others were thinking over her words. Susie’s scorn was magnificent. In vain did someone try to point out that protest against the inevitable is useless.

‘Well of course it’s useless,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not as dumb as all that ! But it certainly isn’t any use just sitting around here just—steaming, is it?’

‘I think she has something,’ said Ron, grinning. ‘Why the hell not go down there and protest? It’s only ten hours’ drive.’

‘Protest what?’ asked Kevin. ‘The end of the world?’

‘Sure, why not?’ Ron said. ‘Like in
Attack of the Fungamen
, everyone protested the dangerous experiments, right? Like in
Goz
, they demonstrate against the army’s impotence, remember? And in
The Day the Earth Caught Cold
—’

‘All right, all right, but what are we protesting?’ Kevin asked. ‘If I may be so stupid.’

‘How about the sealing off of an American city by the CIA, and the violations of freedom of speech involved? Come on, we’ll make some signs, and we’ll get some people who have cars in on this.’

Kevin gave in. ‘We’ll let your girl run the show,’ he suggested. ‘It was her idea. But I never thought I’d spend my last hours making signs.’

‘Or getting arrested,’ Ron added. ‘The friends won’t like this at all.’

‘If I see any fuzz,’ said the poet, ‘I’m going to suddenly have a business deal in Tangier. I’ll only go so far for a joke.’