SOUNDLESS EVENING
The holovision was turned low, its play of colors muted to soft pastels, and the accompanying music barely audible. The windows, set at translucent, glowed with the warmth of the twilight beyond them. The ventilating system fed the room with air that was fresh and pure, pumped directly from outdoors. All the world was soft, and warm, and comfortable.
Settled in his favorite easy chair, Winston Adamson sipped a fresh vegetable-juice cocktail and spied on his daughter from the corner of his eye. He felt a pleasant amusement in watching her.
She stood beside the cat’s bed, gazing with rapt curiosity at Tammy and the kittens. Five of them in the litter. Mewling, squirming little furry lumps of life. Tammy’s first offspring. Even where he sat, Winston could hear Tammy’s soft contented purring.
The child, Lorette, was Thea and Winston Adamson’s third at the present. Not the third-born. There had been two others between the first two and this little girl. He found himself suddenly thinking of those two. Jimmy and Beth. Both gone now. But there was still Lorette. She had the same brightness of eye, the same small pouched mouth, the eager hands—always curious, always exploring. The pleasure he took in watching her was the same.
Charming children, he told himself with pride. It was a shame that kids couldn’t stay that way—all cute and cuddly and small.
Something vaguely unpleasant touched the edge of his contentment, drawing a withered brown line along it. His oldest boy, Bob, wasn’t turning out at all the way he had hoped. The boy was full of foolish ideas about wanting to change the world. Change perfection!
Dammitall, why?
But as the question formed itself, Winston shoved it away. He refused to examine it. He didn’t like questions. He rarely asked them of himself. Most had been answered for him long before it might have occurred to him to ask. It was better this way. The chair was comfortable. The house was comfortable. The world was comfortable. Winston was satisfied. He couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t just as content.
Now his older daughter, Nancy, made perfectly good sense. She never seemed to think of anything but boys. A few more years, and she’d be married, with offspring of her own in the making. It pleased him to think of her.
Lorette glanced toward him. Catching his eyes on her, she smiled. He knew he was going to miss that smile, just as he missed Jimmy’s. And Beth’s. But he was still young. There would be more children, other smiles.
A bell chimed as the front door opened. That would be Thea back from her errands. As she came in from the entryway, Lorette ran to her. She gave the child a quick peck of a kiss, then turned to the mirror at her side. A light flicked itself on, illuminating her face. She removed her hat carefully, not disturbing the precise pattern of curls that capped her skull.
Lorette left her mother, returning her attention to the little life forms sucking strength from their own mother’s body.
Thea said, “I confirmed our names on the waiting list, but it may be years before anything turns up.”
“Too bad,” Winston muttered with a shrug. “I’d rather have liked to keep this one.”
Thea nodded, but she seemed distracted. Her eyes glittered. “You should have seen the people at Life Administration. Some of them were actually begging for permits. I mean it, Win, actually begging.”
She dropped into her favorite chair with a sigh, and went on, “One woman cried. In public. Believe me, it was humiliating to see. And it’s not as if they didn’t know . . .”
Just the idea of seeing a person cry was disquieting. Winston recoiled from the thought. He didn’t want to hear about it. But Thea seemed to be taking morbid delight in telling him all of the sordid details. He sat still, trying not to hear the words she poured at him.
The image of a woman crying in public persisted in his mind. He railed at it, resenting it. The woman had no right to do such a thing. She’d certainly known beforehand what the situation was. Everyone knew.
It was all so simple, so logical, so reasonable. There was a limit to the population the planet could support in comfort. That limit had been reached long ago. For a time, during the age of the Emotionalist Revolution, there had been chaos. But when the furor died down, cooler heads prevailed. With the return to sense and sanity, a logical solution had been sought—and found.
A life permit was issued to every individual. It entitled him to reproduce and rear one offspring—one human to take the place of one human. A pair of children to each couple. Simple. One for one.
Since not every individual did reproduce a replacement for himself, the permits of those who died childless could be redistributed, allowing some couples to rear a third child to its adulthood. The population balance was maintained constant.
But children were so—well—cute.
With or without logic, people wanted children. They wanted to fondle baby forms, cuddle toddlers, bask in the unquestioning and unqualified love given by the very young. So there was no official attempt to limit the number—not of little ones.
After all, very small children took up very little space and were a very small drain on the world’s resources. It wasn’t until they grew—not officially until they reached the age of five—that they were considered to become individuals, and a concern of society as a whole.
Lorette would be five tomorrow.
“I brought the capsule and arranged the pickup,” Thea said.
Winston nodded. Looking toward his daughter, he said, “It’s bedtime, honey.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
“Can’t I watch Tammy’s babies? Just a while more?”
“No.”
She pouted, but she didn’t argue.
“Give daddy a big hug,” he told her.
She came to him, throwing her arms around his neck. He felt the warmth of her body, and he remembered Jimmy and Beth.
“Come along to bed.” Thea took the child’s hand.
Laughing, Lorette began to tell her mother some story about Tammy and the kittens.
“Be sure you drink all your milk,” Winston called after them as Thea led the child from the room.
He leaned back, sipping his cocktail and not thinking anything at all. He reclined in quiet, blank comfort, hardly aware of the soft music and Tammy’s steady purr.
When Thea returned, he asked, “You gave her the capsule?”
Thea nodded. Wordlessly, she passed by him and went on into her bedroom.
He found himself getting to his feet. For no reason he went to Lorette’s room. She was curled on her side in the bed, her hair in a loose tow tousle, her face soft and smooth by the dim nightlight. Small pink lips. Long pale lashes. A tiny ear, perfectly formed, half-hidden under stray hair. The sheet over her stirred slightly at the gentle shallow motion of her breathing.
Even as he watched, the motion stopped.
He turned his back. The collection service would be here soon. They would take care of everything now, just as they had twice before. It was all very simple.
He walked back into the living room. Tammy was still purring. The silence seemed very deep, the purr very loud. He looked down at the squirming suckling pieces of Tammy’s self that worked their dim-formed forepaws at her belly.
Suddenly, for no reason at all that he could understand, Winston began to cry.