As they left the auditorium he could hear the shouting and struggling, Jase on the microphone trying to calm them, and the coldly murderous voices that screamed for “no monkey Grandchildren.”
He tried to turn his head toward the distant sound of argument as Elise set the bone and injected quick-healing serums. She took his face and kissed him softly, with more affection than she had shown in months, and said, “They’re afraid, Harry.” Then kissed him again, and led him home.
Doc raged inwardly at his jaw that week. Its pain prevented him from joining in the debate which now flared in every corner of the colony.
Light images swam across his closed eyes as the sound of fists pounding against wood roused him from dreamless sleep. Doc threw on a robe and padded barefoot across the cool stone floor of his house, peering at the front door with distaste before opening it. Jase was there, and some of the others, sombre and implacable in the morning’s cool light.
“We’ve decided, Doc,” Jase said at last. Doc sensed what
was coming. “The children are not to breed. I’m sorry, I know how you feel—” Doc grunted. How could Jase know how he felt when he wasn’t sure himself? “We’re going to have to ask you to perform the sterilizations…” Doc’s hearing faded down to a low fuzz, and he barely heard the words. This is the way the world ends.…
Jase looked at his friend, feeling the distaste between them grow. “All right. We’ll give you a week to change your mind. If not, Elise or Greg will have to do it.” Without saying anything more they left.
Doc moped around that morning, even though Elise swore to him that she’d never do it. She fussed over him as they fixed breakfast in the kitchen. The gas stove burned methane reclaimed from waste products, the flame giving more heat control than the microwaves some of the others had. Normally Doc enjoyed scrambling eggs and woking fresh slivered vegetables into crisp perfection, but nothing she said or did seemed to lift him out of his mood.
He ate lightly, then got dressed and left the house. Although she was concerned, Elise did not follow him.
He went out to the distillery, where Greg spent much of his time under the sun, drunk and playing at being happy. “Would you?” The pain still muffled Doc’s words. “Would you sterilize them?”
Greg looked at him blearily, still hung over from the previous evening’s alcoholic orgy. “You don’t understand, man.” There was a stirring sound from the sheltered bedroom behind the distillery, and a woman’s waking groan. Doc knew it wasn’t Jill. “You just don’t understand.”
Doc sat down, wishing he had the nerve to ask for a drink. “Maybe I don’t. Do you?”
“No. No, I don’t. So I’ll follow the herd. I’m a builder. I build roads, and I build houses. I’ll leave the moralizing to you big brains.”
Doc tried to say something and found that no words would come. He needed something. He needed…
“Here, Doc. You know you want it.” Greg handed him a canister with a straw in it. “Best damn vodka in the world.” He paused, and the slur dropped from his voice. “And this is the world, Doc. For us. For the rest of our lives. You’ve just got to learn to roll with it.” He smiled again and mixed himself an evil-looking drink.
Greg’s guest had evidently roused herself and dressed. Doc could hear her now, singing a snatch of song as she left. He didn’t want to recognize the voice.
“Got any orange juice?” Doc mumbled, after sipping the vodka.
Greg tossed him an orange. “A real man works for his pleasures.”
Doc laughed and took another sip of the burning fluid. “Good lord. What is that mess you’re drinking?”
“It’s a Black Samurai. Sake and soy sauce.”
Doc choked. “How can you drink that?”
“Variety, my friend. The stimulation of the bizarre.”
Doc was silent for a long time. Senses swimming he watched the sun climb, feeling the warmth as morning melted into afternoon. He downed a slug of his third screwdriver and said irritably, “You can’t do it, Greg. If you sterilize the children, it’s over.”
“So what? It’s over anyway. If they wanna let a drunk slit the pee pees of their…shall we say atavistic progeny? Yeah, that sounds nice. Well, if they want me to do it, I guess I’ll have to do it.” He looked at Doc very carefully. “I do have my sense of civic duty. How about you, Doc?”
“I tried.” He mumbled, feeling the liquor burning his throat, feeling the lightheadedness exert its pull. “I tried. And I’ve failed.”
“You’ve failed so far. What were your goals?”
“To keep—” he took a drink. Damn, that felt good. “To keep the colony healthy. That’s what. It’s a disaster. We’re at each other’s throats. We kill our babies—”
Doc lowered his head, unable to continue.
They were both silent, then Greg said, “If I’ve gotta do it, I will, Doc. If it’s not me, it’ll be someone else who reads a couple of medical texts and wants to play doctor. I’m sorry.”
Doc sat, thinking. His hands were shaking. “I can’t do that.” He couldn’t even feel the pain anymore.
“Then do what you gotta do, man,” and Greg’s voice was dead sober.
“Will you…can you help me?” Doc bit his lip. “This is my civic duty, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help.”
A few minutes passed, then Doc said drunkenly, “There’s got to be a way. There just has to be.”
“Wish I could help, Doc.”
“I wish you could too,” Doc said sincerely, then rose and staggered back to his house.
It rained the night he made his decision, one of the quick, hot rains that swept from the coast to the mountains in a thunderclap of fury. It would make a
