ONE WAY
By MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD
Illustrated by Irv DOCKTOR
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionMarch 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: I thought of every way to save Hal from the Lydna Project andfailed ... but the women didn't!]
We had the driver let us off in the central district and took acopter-taxi back to Homefield. There's no disgrace about it, of course;we just didn't feel like having all the neighbors see the big skycarwith LYDNA PROJECT painted on its side, and then having them drop incasually to express what they would call interest and we would know tobe curiosity.
There are people who boast that their sons and daughters have beenpicked for Lydna. What is there to boast about? It's pure chance, withinlimits.
And Hal is our only child and we love him.
Lucy didn't say a word all the way back from saying good-by to him. Lucyand I have been married now for 27 years and I guess I know her about aswell as anybody on Earth does. People who don't know her so well thinkshe's cold. But I knew what feelings she was crushing down inside her.
Besides, I wasn't feeling much like talking myself. I was rememberingtoo many things:
Hal at about two, looking up at me--when I would come home dead-tiredfrom a hard day of being chewed at by half a dozen bosses right up tothe editor-in-chief whenever anything went the least bit out ofkilter--with a smile that made all my tiredness disappear. Hal, when I'dpick him up at school, proudly displaying a Cybernetics Approval Slip(and ignoring the fact that half the other kids had one, too). Hal theday I took him to the Beard Removal Center, certain that he was a man,now that he was old enough for depilation. Hal that morning two weeksago, setting out to get his Vocational Assignment Certificate....
That's when I stopped remembering.
It had been five years after our marriage before they let us start achild: some question about Lucy's uncle and my grandmother. Most parentsaren't as old as we are when they get the news and usually have otherchildren left, so it isn't so bad.
* * * * *
When we got home, Lucy still was silent. She took off her scarf andcloak and put them away, and then she pushed the button for dinnerwithout even asking me what I wanted. I noticed, though, that she wasordering all the things I like. We both had the day off, of course, togo and say good-by to Hal--Lucy is a technician at Hydroponics Center.
I felt awkward and clumsy. Her ways are so different from mine; Iexplode and then it's over--just a sore place where it hurts if I touchit. Lucy never explodes, but I knew the sore place would be thereforever, and getting worse instead of better.
We ate dinner in silence, though neither of us felt hungry, and had thetable cleared. Then it was nearly 19 o'clock and I had to speak.
"The takeoff will be at 19:10," I said. "Want me to tune in now? Lastyear, when Mutro was Solar President, he gave a good speech before thekids left."
"Don't turn it on at all!" she said sharply. Then, in a softer voice,she added: "Of course, Frank, turn it on whenever you like. I'll just goto my room and open the soundproofing."
There were still no tears in her eyes.
I thought of a thousand things to say: Don't you want to catch a glimpseof Hal in the crowd going up the ramp? Mightn't they let the kids wave alast farewell to their folks listening and watching in? Mightn'tsomething in the President's speech make us feel a little better?
But I heard myself saying, "Never mind, Lucy. Don't go. I'll leave thething off."
I didn't want to be alone. I wanted Lucy there with me.
So we sat out the whole time of the visicast, side by side on thewindow-couch, holding hands. I'll say this for the neighbors--they mustall have known, for Hal was the first to be selected from Homefield innearly 40 years, and the newscast must have announced it over and over,but not a single person on the whole 62 floors of the house butted in onus. Not even that snoopy student from Venus in 47-14, who's alwaysdropping in on other tenants and taking notes on "the mores of EarthAboriginals." People can be very decent sometimes. We needn't haveworried about coming home in the Lydna Project bus.
It was no good trying to keep my mind on anything else. Whether I wantedto or not, I had to relive the two last hours we'd ever have with Hal.
It couldn't mean to him what it meant to us. We were losing; he was bothlosing and gaining. We were losing our whole lives for 21 years past; hewas, too, but he was entering a new life we would never know anythingabout. No word ever comes from Lydna; that's part of the project. Nobodyeven knows where it is for sure, though it's supposed to be one of theouter asteroids.
Both boys and girls are sent and there must be marriages andchildren--though probably the death-rate is pretty high, for every yearthey have to select 200 more from Earth to keep the population balanced.We would never know if our son married there, or whom, or when he died.We would never see our grandchildren, or even know if we had any.
* * * * *
Hal was a good son and I think we were fairly good parents and had madehis childhood happy. But at 21, faced with a great, mysterious adventureand an unknown and exciting future, a boy can't be expected to bedrowned in grief at saying good-by to his humdrum old father and mother.It might have been tougher for him 200 years ago, when they hadn'tlearned to decondition children early from parental fixations. But noyoungster today would possess that kind of unwholesome dependency. If hedid, he would never have been selected for Lydna in the first place.
That's one comfort we have--it's a sort of proof we had reared a childfar above the average.
It was just weakness in me to half wish that Hal hadn't been so healthy,so handsome, so intelligent, so fine in character.
They were a wonderful lot. We said our good-bys in an enormous room ofthe spaceport, with this year's 200 selectees there from all over Earth,each with the relatives and whoever else had permission to make the lastvisit. I suppose it's a matter of accommodations and transportation, fornobody's allowed more than three. So it was mostly parents, with a fewbrothers, sisters and sweethearts or friends. The selectees themselveschoose the names. After all, they've had two weeks after they werenotified to say good-by to everyone else who matters to them.
Most of the time, all I could keep my mind on was Hal, trying to fixforever in my memory every last detail of him. We have dozens of soundstereos, of course, but this was the last time.
Still, it's my business at the News Office, and has been for 30 years,to observe people and form conclusions about them, so I couldn't helpnoticing with a professional eye some of the rest of the selectees.(This farewell visit is a private affair, and the press is barred, whichis why I'd never been there before.)
There were two kinds of selectees that stood out, in my mind. One wasthose who had nobody at all to see them off. Completely alone, poorkids--orphans, doubtless, with no families and apparently not evenfriends near enough to matter. But, in a way, they would be thehappiest; life on Earth couldn't have been very rewarding for them, andon Lydna they might find companionship. (If only companionship inmisery, I thought--but I shied away from that. In our business, thereare always leaks; we know--or guess--a few things about Lydna nobodyelse does, outside the authorities themselves. But we keep our mouthsshut.)
The ones that tore my hearts were the boys and girls in love. They nevertake married people for Lydna, but a machine can't tell what a boy orgirl is feeling about another girl or boy, and it's a machine that doesthe selecting. There's no use putting up an argument, for, once made,the choice is inexorable and unchangeable. In my work as a newsgatherer,I've heard
some terrible stories. There have been suicide pacts andmurders.
* * * * *
You could tell the couples in love. Not that there were any scenes. Ifthere had been any in the two weeks past, they were over. But anybodywho has learned to read human reactions, as I have, could recognize theagony those youngsters were going through.
I felt a deep gratitude that Hal wasn't one of them. He'd had his shareof adolescent affairs, of course, but I was sure he was still justplaying around. He'd seen a lot of Bet Milen, a girl a class ahead ofhim in school and college, but I didn't think she meant more to him thanany of the others. If she had, she'd have been along to say good-by, buthe'd asked for only the two of us. She was now a laboratory assistant inour hospital and could easily have gotten the time off.
It was growing late, almost midnight, and Lucy and I had to be at worktomorrow, no matter how we felt. I forced myself to talk, with Lucy'ssilent pain smothering me like a force-blanket. I made an effort andcleared my throat.
"Lucy, go to bed and turn on the hypno and try to get some sleep."
Lucy stood up obediently, but she shook her head. "You go, dear," shesaid, her voice firm. "I can't. I--"
The roof buzzer sounded. Somebody had landed in a copter and wanted us.
"Don't answer," I said quickly. "There's nobody we want to see--"
But she had already pushed the button to open the door.
It was Bet Milen, the girl Hal used to go around with.
I braced myself. This might be bad. She might have cared more for Halthan we had guessed.
But she didn't look grief-stricken. She looked excited, and determined,and a little bit frightened.
She scarcely glanced at me. She went right up to Lucy and took bothLucy's hands in hers.
"Well," she said in a clipped, tense voice, "we made it."
Then Lucy broke for the first time. The tears ran down her face and shedidn't even wipe them away. "Are you _certain_?"
"Positive. And I got word to him. We'd agreed on a code. That's why hedidn't want me there today--we couldn't trust ourselves not to betrayit, either way."
I stood there staring at them, bewildered.
"What's this all about?" I demanded. "Have you two cooked up some crazyscheme to rescue Hal? I hope to heaven not! It would ruin all of us,including him!"
* * * * *
The wild daydreams I'd had myself flashed through my mind--the drug thatwould seem to kill him and wouldn't, the anonymous false accusation ofsubversion, the previous secret marriage. All impossible, all fatal.
Lucy disengaged her hands from the girl's and slipped her arm throughmine.
"You tell him, Bet," she said gently. "You're the one who should."
I'd never noticed how pretty the girl was till then, when she stoodthere with her face flushed and her eyes straight on mine. A pang wentthrough me; if only she and Hal could have--
"No, Mr. Sturt," she said, "we haven't rescued Hal. He's gone. But we'verescued part of him. I'm going to have his baby."
"Bet's going to live with us and be our daughter, Frank," Lucyexplained. "Hal and she and I worked it out in these two weeks, afterthey came to me and told me how they felt about each other. We couldn'ttell you till we were sure; I couldn't bear to have you hope and then bedisappointed--it would be enough for me to have to suffer that."
"That is, I'll come if you want me here, Mr. Sturt," said Bet.
I had to sit down before I could speak. "Of course I want you. But whatabout your own family?"
"I haven't any. My mother's dead and my father's an engineer on Ganymedeand gets home on leave about once in three years. I've been living in ayouth hostel."
"But look here--" I turned to Lucy--"how on Earth can you know? Twoweeks or less is no time--"
Lucy gave me a look I recognized, the patient one of the scientist forthe layman.
"The Chow-Visalius test, dear. One day after the fertilized ovum startsdividing--"
"And I ran it myself every day for over a week. That's one of my jobs inthe lab and it was easy to slip in another specimen. And it didn't, andit didn't and I went nearly out of my mind--"
"Every time Hal entered the apartment, I'd look at him and he'd shakehis head," Lucy interrupted. "It meant everything to him. And it wouldjust have broken my heart--"
"Mine, too," Bet said softly. "And his. And today was the last chance. Iwas scared to try it. This afternoon at 14:30, just before the farewellvisits, was the deadline for viz messages to any of them. If I'd had tosend mine without the word we'd agreed on that would tell him it was allright--But it was, at last! And now he knows, even if I never--even ifwe never--Excuse me, please, it's been a strain. I'm afraid I'm going tobawl."
* * * * *
We let her alone. Kids nowadays hate to be fussed over.
Us, we'd lost our son, and that was going to stay with us forever. Butnow we would have his child to love and--
An appalling thought struck me suddenly. I can't imagine why I hadn'trealized it sooner. All this emotion, I suppose.
"Good God!" I cried. "An illegal child! We can't keep it!"
"Nobody's going to know," Lucy replied calmly. "Bet's going to live withus, and when it starts to show, she's going to take her allowed leave.We'll take ours, too, and we'll all go on a trip--to Mars, maybe, orVenus--one of the settled colonies where we can rent a house. Babiesdon't _have_ to be born in hospitals, you know; our ancestors had themright at home. She's strong and healthy and I know what to do. Thenwe'll come back here and we'll have a baby with us that we adoptedwherever we were. Nobody will ever know."
"Look," I said in a voice I tried to keep from rising. "There are fourbillion people on Earth and about 28 billion in the colonized Solarplanets. Every one of those people is on record at Central Cybernetics.How do you suppose you're going to get away with the phony adoption of anon-existent child? The first time you have to take it to a baby clinic,they'll find it has no card."
"I thought of that," Lucy said, "and it can be done, because it must.Frank, for heaven's sake, use your wits! You're a newsgatherer. You knowall sorts of people everywhere."
"I don't know any machines. And it's machines that handle the records."
"Machines under the supervision of humans."
"Sure," I said sarcastically. "I just go to my ex-newsgatherer pal whofeeds the records to Io or Ceres and say, 'Look, old fellow, do me afavor, will you? My wife wants to adopt a baby from your colony, so justmake up the names of two people and give them a life-check, invent theirancestors back to the time Central Cybernetics was established, and thenslip in cards for their marriage, and the birth of their child--I'll letyou know later whether to make it a boy or a girl--and then theirdeaths; and then my wife and I can adopt that made-up baby.'
"What kind of blackmailing hold do you think I have on any recordofficial," I asked angrily, "to make him do a thing like that and keephis mouth shut about it? I could be eliminated for treason for evenmaking such a suggestion."
"Frank, _think_! Surely there must be _some_ way!"
* * * * *
And then it struck me. "Wait! I just got an idea. When I said 'treason,'just now--It might barely be possible--"
"Oh, what?"
"It would have to be Mars, the North Polar Cap colony. The K-AlphConspiracy messed things up there badly."
"I remember, Mr. Sturt!" Bet said excitedly. "They wrecked everything inthe three months before the rebellion was crushed, didn't they?"
"Everything including their cybernetics equipment. Central doesn't wantit known, but I have inside information that it's still not in goingcondition. That colony is full of children who have never beenregistered. And I doubt if it will be in 100 per cent shape for the bestpart of another year. Those hellions really did a job. Let's see--thisis the end of Month Two. We'd have to get away around Month Eight at thelatest and the baby would be born--when exactly, Bet?
"
"Early in Month Twelve. We could all be back here again by the first ofnext year, or even by the end of Month Thirteen."
"Well, I have enough accumulated leave for that and I guess you havetoo, Lucy; neither of us has taken more than two or three weeks foryears. But what about you, Bet? You've been working less than a year."
"I can borrow it. Our director is crazy about travel and she'll be allfor it when I tell her I have a chance to go to Mars for a long visit.Besides, she knows about Hal and me--I mean the way we are about eachother--and she'll understand that I'd want to get away for a while now."
Asher, my editor-in-chief, would feel the same way, I thought, and sowould Lucy's boss.
"I knew you'd find a way," remarked my wife complacently.
I looked at the telechron.
"We've all got to be at work in seven hours," I said, "if we expect toget through before the end of the afternoon. What say we turn in?"
"You stay here with us, Bet," said Lucy. "You parked your copter in ourport, didn't you? Frank, I think we need a drink."
I pushed the buttons. Nobody said anything, but somehow it was a toastto Hal. I know the liquor had