Mother answered. “It means we can have a water ration. It also means anyone who’s a five or higher can’t.”
Father cleared his throat and shook himself, as though to shed whatever mood he’d been in. “Margaret, I think we’ve had enough of this discussion. We need to take a family walk, get out of here. Right, Louise?”
Mother, looking very pale, nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes. Let’s get out of here. Let’s give ourselves a treat of some kind…”
I looked from one to the other, frightened at their tone. “Is something wrong?”
Her father said, “Everything’s all right, Margaret. You can have water, you can even have a family when you’ve grown up.”
“That is, if you pick the right husband,” said Mother tartly. “One who hasn’t used up all his quota sowing wild oats. No, no, Margaret, don’t ask me to explain wild oats.”
I felt something squeezing my stomach and farther down, in my belly. As the three of us took our rare, almost unprecedented walk, I looked into every store window we passed while my insides cramped and jumped as though I’d swallowed something alive that was trying to get out, split off from me. My skin felt damp. I thought I saw a shadowy presence moving around, reflected in the window, standing just behind me, but there was nothing there except my own white and frightened face staring back. After a time, I stopped looking and trudged along, eyes fixed on my feet.
Who Is Margaret?
It seemed to me I dreamed the proctor came, just as he had. I dreamed everything he had said and we had said, up until the point where the proctor turned to me to say, “Fluency in ET languages is valuable, but few families are sensible enough to let their children learn them early, when it’s easy for them.”
“It was Mother’s idea,” I said. “She says she wishes she’d learned languages when she was little, like her brother Hy.”
“You mean her uncle, Hy?” said the proctor.
I stopped. Why had I said that?
Mother said, “My uncle Hy, yes…”
The machine interrupted with a harsh, buzzing sound. It spoke: “Duplicated reference to unverified identity, name Hy, maternal kinsperson. Possible data variance. Hold! Hold!”
The proctor sat back, his lips tightly compressed, as printed forms began to flow across the screen. He muttered, “We always compare with former records, just to be sure. There seems to be a record discrepancy.”
“Discrepancy?” Mother faltered. Her hand shook on the arm of the chair. I had started toward her, but when I saw the fear in her eyes, I stayed frozen in place.
The flow of forms stopped, leaving only one on the screen.
“A medical record,” said the proctor in a chill voice. Ma’am, your middle name is, I believe, Hazel? We have a record here of a perinatal death on Mars, specifically on the Phobos Station. Some twelve years ago. To Hazel Bannon, your maiden name, I believe?”
Mother tried to speak and couldn’t.
Father said, “It wasn’t on Earth. The emigration laws only pertain to Earth.”
The proctor shook his head, nostrils pinched. “When the Mars projects were closed, their records were subsumed into ours. During this interview, your daughter twice mentioned an unverified identity. That triggered a universal search by the data system, all medical records and all identity banks.”
Mother’s eyes were so full of fear that I cried out, “Mother! What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong,” said the proctor, “is you, young lady. You are not a four. You’re the second born of twins. You’re a five.”
“What does that mean?” I cried.
Mother sobbed, “Oh, Margaret!”
“You could be prosecuted for attempted falsification of records,” said the proctor.
“We didn’t know,” Father cried. “Phobos never counted. We never thought we’d be coming back to Earth!”
“Well, sir. Earth is where you are. You and your wife may remain here, but your daughter, Margaret, will be required to report to the shipping point within the next ten days. The shipping officers will be in touch.”
The dream was like watching a play. It was clear. The words were clear. In the dream, the proctor went away. When the door hissed shut behind him, Mother screamed, “I told you they’d find out, Harry!”
Father yelled at me for mentioning Hy’s name.
I cowered, wept, then howled, halfway between fear and fury, “You’re sending me away!”
Mother shouted, “They’re taking you away!”
“You knew about this,” I yelled. “You told Daddy they’d find out, so you knew I wasn’t a four! Why did you go ahead and have me if you were just going to let them do this…”
It was as though they hadn’t really thought of me until that moment. Mother fell to her knees and put her arms around me. Father stooped above us both, tears flowing.
I felt something squeezing my stomach and farther down, in my belly. I cried out with the pain, scrambled away from between them, and fled to the bathroom, where I stood, looking into the mirror while my insides cramped and jumped as though I had swallowed something alive that was trying to get out and split off from me. My skin felt damp. I thought I saw a shadowy presence moving around. For a moment I thought I could see it in the mirror, standing behind me, but there was nothing there except my own chalky white, scared face staring back at me.
From somewhere outside myself I heard something, or someone, saying very firmly, slowly, in a commanding voice: “It’s all right, Margaret. Just take a deep breath, it’s going to be all right.”
I don’t remember the subway trip to the South American elevator center, I just remember being there. It was huge, surrounded by sprawling dormitory and office buildings and centered on the immense reinforced and raised platform that anchored the elevators, some dozens of them, their transport ribbons virtually invisible, their translucent cargo pods making dotted lines that faded into invisibility, interminate fingers pointed at the silver shimmer of the staging platforms and the geosynchronous
