Tentatively the three Visitors reached out into its mind. The thoughts were comparatively clear and steady.
When the figure had passed the Visitors chorused: Agreed, and headed back to their ship. There was nothing there for them. Among other things they had drawn from the figure’s mind was the location of a ruined library; a feeble-minded working party of a million was dispatched to it.
Back at the ship they waited, unhappily ruminating the creature’s foreground thoughts: “From Corey’s Gin you get the charge to tote that bale and lift that barge. That’s progress, God damn it. You know better than that, man. Liberty Unlimited for the Lonely Man, but it be nice to see that Mars ship land . . .”
Agreement: Despite all previous experience it seems that a sentient race is capable of destroying itself.
When the feeble-minded library detail returned and gratefully reunited itself with its parent “lives” they studied the magnetic tapes it had brought, reading them direct in the cans. They learned the name of the planet and the technical name for the wave-train entities which had inherited it and which would shortly be its sole proprietors. The solid life-forms, it seemed, had not been totally unaware of them, though there was some confusion: Far the vaster section of the library denied that they existed at all. But in the cellular minds of the Visitors there could be no doubt that the creatures described in a neglected few of the library’s lesser works were the ones they had encountered. Everything tallied. Their nonmaterial quality; their curious reaction to light. And, above all, their dominant personality trait, of remorse, repentance, furious regret. The technical term that the books gave to them was: ghosts.
The Visitors worked ship, knowing that the taste of this world and its colony would soon be out of what passed for their collective mouths, rinsed clean by new experiences and better-organized entities.
But they had never left a solar system so gratefully or so fast.
<>
* * * *
RICHARD WILSON
Richard Wilson and C. M. Kornbluth, teamed by the accident of juxtaposition in this collection, have been teamed many a time before in closer harness still. Item: Their first published fiction appeared in the same issue of the same magazine something over a decade ago—less of a coincidence than it might seem, since it happened to have been a story they wrote in collaboration. From the apartment they then shared (if it is revealed that the joint pen name they used for the story was “lvar Towers,” can you guess what their apartment was called?) they went their separate ways through World War II, found themselves together at the beginning of the peace in Chicago University, worked for a time for the same press wire service, followed each other back east and now have each a rural farmhouse, a wife and a family in upstate New York. Wilson, it is true, has one more child than Kornbluth; but Kornbluth has twice as many chickens. And while Kornbluth was writing his eight novels, Wilson was tooling up to produce such splendid short stories as-
Friend of the Family
They had passed a law making babies illegal. It was on account of the food shortage, the district agent had explained. Everyone had known for decades that the time would come, one year, when there simply would not be enough food to support the mushrooming population of Earth; and now that time was here.
Thad and Annie had a farm back in the hills and hadn’t been able to get to the village that day the agent had explained. The news was brought to them by a neighbor.
“It don’t pertain to children that are already born,” the neighbor, Lacy, told them. “They’re okay. And so are kids that’ll be born during the next eleven months. But after that, havin’ babies has to stop.”
Lacy spoke oracularly, as if he himself represented the government that had made the law. Lacy was an old bachelor who lived by hunting and trapping and trading.
“What are they going to do if people keep on having babies anyway?” Thad asked.
Lacy didn’t really remember. He hadn’t listened too closely because he wasn’t directly concerned. Besides, he’d been doing a bit of dickering for a coonskin, back at the edge of the crowd in the village square, when that point had been covered. But he spoke up without hesitation in answer to Thad’s question.
“Destroy ‘em, of course. Law’s law.”
“Oh, no,” said Annie.
“Yep,” Lacy said. “That’s what they’ll do. Just like they did with the little pigs back when they had that Blue Eagle law.”
“That’s pretty drastic,” Thad said.
“Gotta be,” Lacy said. “Otherwise nobody’d have enough to eat. The agent, he says it’s because conservation didn’t work out like it was supposed to. Everybody had their chance. But they didn’t do their part, so now they gotta be drastic.”
“No more babies ever?” Annie asked. “After a while they wouldn’t have any more people, if they did that.”
“Not ‘ever,’“ Lacy said. “He didn’t say ‘ever.’ He said ten years. By that time, he said, things’d be back in balance.”
Thad’s shoe made marks in the dust in the clearing in front of their cabin.
“We ain’t had no babies yet, Annie and me,” he said. “We’d sure admire to have one before it got illegal.”
Lacy leered at Annie, who was looking down at the marks her husband was making with his shoe.
“Well,” Lacy said with a grin, “you’d better get crackin.’“
* * * *
Somehow, Thad and Annie didn’t have a baby while it was still legal. Maybe they tried too hard. The eleven months passed, and then a year. A year and a half later, when it was illegal, Annie realized she was pregnant.
She didn’t tell Thad, but after a while he noticed, of course.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Well, we ain’t going to turn ourselves in,” Thad said. “That’s for sure.”
“But they’ll take it away from us when they find out.”
“Then they won’t find out,” he said. “That’s all. We’re far enough away from most folks. The ones that do come around—we just won’t let them see you.”
“That Lacy,” she said. “He comes nosing around and everybody knows he’s got a mouth as big as a barn door.”
“You just leave Lacy to me,” her husband said.
The baby picked a thunderstorm to be born in. Annie had a rough time, with no midwife, but after a while the baby was tucked away in a little cradle Thad had made. Annie was asleep, finally, under a thick pile of covers, and Thad was crooning self-consciously to his mite of a son, when there was a knock at the door.
Thad jumped up, almost tipping over the cradle, and the baby woke with a cry. He soothed it, while the knocking continued, until the infant was quiet again, then pulled a screen in front of the cradle and went to the door.
“Who’s there?” he said, opening it a crack and peering out into the rainy darkness.
“Me,” said Lacy’s voice.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want? What do you think I want? I want to come in out of the rain.” He pushed against the door.
Thad held it in place.
“You shouldn’t have been out in the rain in the first place.” Thad wondered if Lacy had heard the baby cry.
“What kind of talk is that, Thaddie?” He pushed against the door again. “Let me in. I’m soakin’ wet.”
“No,” said Thad. “Go away.” He pushed the door shut and latched it, then put the bar across it.
He heard Lacy’s voice, hollering and swearing, for a while; then there was silence.
A flash of lightning made Thad turn toward the window and he saw, silhouetted in it, the figure of a man. Then the man was running across the clearing. He was alone and from his gait Thad recognized him as Lacy. He disappeared into the woods.
Thad went back to the cradle. He stared down at the sleeping infant, clumsily tucked in a loose blanket end, and said:
“We’re going to have trouble with that Lacy, son.”
&
nbsp; * * * *
Thad was at the far edge of his cornfield. It was hot. He took off his hat and mopped his face and neck.
Lacy ambled out of the woods. He had a couple of skins at his belt and carried a sack over his shoulder.
“How’s the corn?” he asked.
“Comin’ along,” said Thad.
“Purty slim pickin’s for me. Glad to see somebody’s prosperous.”
“We get by.”
“How’s Annie and-”
Thad looked at him sharply.
“She’s fine.”
“And-?”
“And what?” Thad asked. “What are you hintin’ around at, Lacy?”
Lacy smiled, not looking at Thad. He broke off an ear of corn and peeled the husk down and smelled the yellow kernels.
“Purty good corn,” he said. “I’d like to have about half a dozen ears a day. And a couple o’ turnips. And maybe a few tomatoes. A man needs fresh vegetables in his diet.”
Thad’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right,” he said. “I guess we could make a deal. What have you got to offer? We could use some rabbit meat, maybe.”
Lacy spat and hit a beetle. “Wasn’t thinkin’ o’ that kind of a deal, where I had to give you somethin’.”
“That’s no kind of a deal, that way.”
“No?” asked Lacy. “Ain’t it?”
“Talk up, man, if you got something to say.”
Lacy smoothed the husk back over the kernels and put the ear in his sack. He pulled off another ear.
“Cut that out,” Thad said.
“I heard some talk in town,” Lacy said, taking six ears in all, “about there bein’ a bounty on babies. Illegal babies.”
He paused and peered around to see how Thad reacted. Thad managed to keep his face expressionless.
“I collected a bounty once, on a wolf,” Lacy said. “It made a handy piece of change. Never dreamed at the time, of course, that some day there’d be a bounty on babies, too.”
Thad clenched his fists at his side to keep himself from smashing them into Lacy’s evil face.
“Now, about them turnips and tomatoes,” Lacy said.
* * * *
The Director of the Population Planning Agency was reporting to a Congressional subcommittee.
“There has been splendid co-operation in the urban centers,” he said. “Progress in the rural areas has been generally satisfactory, too, with the percentage of those who have not conformed to the law no higher than we had expected. Steps are being taken to insure an increasingly better percentage.”
“What kind of steps?” asked the committee chairman. “I’ve heard rumors that a bounty has been offered for infants born after the grace period.”
“That is false,” the director said. “Absolutely incorrect. It is true that remuneration has been offered for information leading to the recovery of illegal infants, but this is in no sense a bounty.”
“To many people,” the chairman said, “it might appear to be a distinction without a difference.”
“When the infants are—uh—recovered,” another congressman asked, “what becomes of them?”
The director nodded significantly in the direction of the press table. “That is a question I should prefer to answer in closed session,” he said.
* * * *
Thad first saw the stranger one morning as he was leading their one cow out to pasture.
Matilda, the cow, had been plodding along, swinging her tail at the flies on her flanks and chewing her cud in rhythm with her steps. The way led through a stand of young trees and leaning against one of them so it bent under his weight the stranger lolled, a twig in his mouth and a funny kind of round hat on his head.
Matilda shied as she saw him and gave a rumble of alarm.
“ ‘Morning,” said the stranger to Thad.
“ ‘Morning,” said Thad, surprised but polite.
The stranger was a foot under Thad’s height, which made him less than a five-footer. He wore stiff new dungarees and a brand new work shirt with the creases still in them from the way they had been folded in the store. He wore high work shoes that were covered with a film of dust but were also brand new. The round hat was the only thing that looked as if it had been worn for more than a few hours. It was a bright green and Thad couldn’t tell whether it was cloth or leather or what. It might even have been metal. It fitted snug on the stranger’s head, coming down almost to the ears on the sides and the eyebrows in front.
Only the stranger didn’t have any eyebrows. He didn’t have hair anywhere on his head, from what Thad could see.
He had a pale color, too, as if he wasn’t out in the air much, and there was something about the nose that wasn’t quite right.
But Thad’s manners prohibited staring. He patted Matilda on the rump to comfort her and said:
“My name’s Thad Coniker. I don’t believe I’ve seen you anyplace before.”
“Probably not,” the stranger said. “I just came.”
“I make you welcome,” Thad said. He refrained from pointing out that the stranger was trespassing on his land. “What do folks call you?”
“Green,” the stranger said.
“Like your hat,” said Thad.
“Like my hat, yes,” Green said, smiling and nodding.
“You’re not from the government.” Thad made it a statement and realized consciously for the first time that he had no suspicions of the stranger.
“No.”
“Do you have a place around here?”
“Not around here.”
“Then you must feel free to come to ours—Annie’s and mine.”
“And the boy’s,” Green added. “Thank you.”
Thad was not alarmed. If Lacy had said that, Thad would have had to clench his fists and grit his teeth against the bitter knowledge, but with Mr. Green it was all right. He didn’t understand why; he just knew it was.
“Yes, it’s the boy’s, too,” Thad said. “We’d all be proud to have you come.”
“I will,” Mr. Green said. “I think I will be able to help you.”
“Maybe you could. But I wouldn’t want you to come only on that account.”
“I’ll come with pleasure.”
“Anytime,” said Thad.
He clucked at Matilda and the cow moved on. The stranger continued to lean against the young tree. He looked after them as they went.
When they were out of sight he spat the twig out of his mouth, unfastened his nose, scratched the skin under it and began to walk back the way Thad had come. It was not until he came in sight of the cabin that he seemed to remember that he was still carrying the nose in his hand. He replaced it quickly, then went on toward the cabin.
* * * *
Annie said later:
“He knocked and I said who is it and he said Mr. Green, I met your husband, Mrs. Coniker, and I don’t know why but I knew it was all right and I made him welcome. He was very polite and talked about the weather a little and the crops and remarked on how well the cow looked and then he saw the baby and he made a big fuss over him.”
“And you didn’t feel scared?” Thad asked.
“Not even a bit. It was like he was some kind old uncle —though it’s hard to guess how old he is.”
“What did the baby do?”
“Gurgled like a fool and grinned. He never paid us the attention he paid Mr. Green. He just seemed to come all alive for the man, acting about three times as old as he rightly should at his age.”
“He told me he’d help us,” Thad said, “and the way he said it made me believe him. Did he say anything like that to you?”
“Yes. He said he’d be here when we needed him. He said that just before he left. He didn’t say where he was going.”
* * * *
Lacy came around to say he wanted a dozen ears of corn a day, instead of half a dozen. He also wanted twice as many tomatoes and turnips. He’d take some milk, too, he said.
Thad told him he couldn?
??t have them. “I been giving you what was fair, if blackmail’s fair,” Thad said. “We wouldn’t have enough for ourselves if I gave you any more.”
“You’ll give them to me,” Lacy said, “because you have to. Remember about the baby bounty.”
“It’s more than you can eat. Why should you take away from folk that need it?”
“No law says I can’t sell the extra, is there? I want it, starting today. And don’t forget the milk. I got a gallon jug in my sack.”
Thad tried to be reasonable. “Not the milk,” he said. “I’ll give you the other, but not the milk.”
“You’ll give me the milk, too,” Lacy said. His voice and his face were ugly. “You’ll do everything I say, if you want to keep the younker.”
So Thad had to give him the milk, too.
* * * *
Mr. Green, sitting that night at their table with his hat on, spread the home-churned butter carefully and thinly across the slice of home-baked bread.
“It’s excellent, Mrs. Coniker,” he said, chewing with pleasure. Then he said, turning to Thad, “Why don’t you kill him?”
Annie looked at Thad in alarm, but her husband said: “My boy’s got enough trouble. When he’s grown up a bit he can pass for older than he is and nobody need know he’s illegal. It’ll be bad enough having to lie to keep him alive. I don’t want him to grow up with a father who’s a murderer.”
“It seems to me,” Mr. Green said mildly, picking up a crumb from the tablecloth and popping it into his mouth, “it wouldn’t be murder in Mr. Lacy’s case. It’d be like killing some beast that came out of the woods to threaten your home.”
“Killing an animal’s just killing,” Thad said. “But killing a man is murder.”
“In my place,” Mr. Green said, “we don’t look at it that way. Would it help you out any if I killed Mr. Lacy?”
“No.” said Thad before Annie could say anything, as she had seemed about to. “Lacy’s my problem, not yours.”
“But I said I’d help you, and that makes it my problem, too.”
“That wouldn’t be the way, Mr. Green, thanks all the same.”