I Will Fear No Evil (58 page)

Since plane flight had originated in, and sky dive had started over, Mexican soil, whereas the entire party except the plane had landed in Arizona, it was not clear what laws had been violated or whose, or what nationality the child was—as Miss Maguire’s citizenship was Pakistani, with legal permanent residence in the States. The party surrendered voluntarily to the nearest U.S. immigration officer and Miss Maguire apologized most prettily on videocast for having reentered the country of her choice so informally through an inadvertent error in navigation by her pilot, plus a sudden gust of wind. They were released with a warning but the films were impounded—uselessly, as they seemed to show that the child was born, about fifty-fifty, in
both
countries, but factors of angle and parallax and identification of ground markings—in those film sequences in which the ground showed at all—make it impossible to be certain. Grove Press bought an option on the films, then entered suit to have them released, in the interest of justice.

A notorious sex-change case married her attorney but the newsworthy couple managed to leave for their honeymoon before issuance of their license was noted—a famous scoopsnoop chased them to Canada, only to find that the couple he had traced down were a Dr. & Mrs. Garcia, members of the wedding but themselves of no news value. Mrs. Garcia smiled and let herself be photographed (she was quite photogenic) and was interviewed about the wedding; then the Garcias returned home.

Senator James “Jumping Joe” Jones of Arkansas charged that the drive to repeal the XXXIst Amendment permitting prayer in public schools was a plot by the Devilinspired Pope of Rome and his servile followers. The rebuilding of the Oklahoma State House was halted by labor trouble drummed up (it was alleged) by the underground “Equal Rights for Whites” Action Committee. The contractor’s construction foreman said, “Any honk thinks he’s discriminated, he can take it to the hiring board and get a fair hearing. Trouble is these people they don’t
want
to work.”

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“Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie” (Liberian passports) had the penthouse floor to themselves—three baths, four bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, bar-lounge, drawing room, lanai, garden, swimming pool, waterfall, fountain, garden barpantry, foyer, private lift, magnificent view of the yacht harbor, beaches, estuary, town, and mountains beyond.

But they were eccentric. Their rent included full hotel service but none of the hotel’s staff had been on that level since their arrival. They were not seen at the casinos, nor on the beaches, nor were they known to make use of other attractions of the resort. They sometimes had room-service meals, but the table cart went only as far as the lift; their servants took it up.

It was rumored among the hotel staff that Mrs. MacKenzie liked to do her own cooking, but no one really knew—no one had seen her (save possibly from a copter) and few knew him by sight. Their servants had three suites on a lower floor . . . but were willing to discuss anything but their employers.

She came from the garden into the lounge. He looked up from his book. “Yes, dear? Toc much sun? Or did that copter come back?”

“Neither. Copters don’t worry me; I just turn over on my tummy so that they can’t photograph my face. Jake darling, I want you to see something pretty.”

“Drag it in here, I’m lazy.”

“I can’t dearest; it’s down on the water. A boat of some odd sort, with the gayest, most colorful sails. You were in the Navy; you know about such things.”

“I was in the Navy one hitch fifty years back, so I’m an expert already.”

“Jacob, you always know everything. And it is pretty, and quite odd. Please, sir?”

“Your slightest wish, Madame.” He got up and offered her his arm.

They stopped at the seaward rail. “Now which one? All those boats have colored sails. I haven’t seen a suit of white sails since we got here—you’d think there was a law against it.”

“
That
one. Oh, dear, they’re putting down its sails. And it was so pretty a minute ago.”

“ ‘Dowsing her sails,’ Eunice. If I’m going to be your resident expert, let me expert. When you lower sails suddenly, you ‘dowse’ them. Which this laddie is doing because he’s standing in to anchor about—yes! There goes the hook. And a vessel is
always
‘she,’ never ‘it.’ Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive—and unpredictable.”

“Jake, you’ve always been able to predict what I’m going to do even before I know myself.” (Twin, why tell a whopper like that? He knows better.) (He won’t argue it, hon.) “But what is it?”

“Oh. It’s a trimaran, a yacht with a triple hull. Can’t say that I agree that she’s pretty. A sloop with a triangular mains’l is my notion of beauty.”

“Does look sort of squarish now. But swooping in with all its—sorry!—‘her’ sails up, she was lovely.” (Twin, ask Jake if he thinks there is any way we could go on it?) (On ‘
her
,’ Eunice—not ‘it.’ Are you a sailor, hon?) (Never been on a boat in my life, Boss. But I’m getting an idea, maybe.) (Maybe I have the same idea. Are you thinking about that talk with Jake when he pointed out a farm would mean even more staff and less safety than our house?) (I don’t care who thought of it first, Boss—just make sure that
Jake
thinks of it first.) (I shall, dear—do you think I have to be told that a ship is ‘she’? Or can’t recognize a trimaran? The real question is: Do
you
get seasick? I used to—and it’s miserable. But the fact that we haven’t had the tiniest bit of morning sickness makes me think you might be immune to motion sickness.) (So ‘let’s operate and find out,’ as Roberto says.)

“Oh, trimarans have their points, Eunice. You get a lot of boat for your money. Roomy. And they are almost impossible to turn over—safer than most small vessels. I just wouldn’t award one a beauty prize.”

“Jake, do you think you could get us invited aboard that one? She looks interesting.”

“Oh, there’s some way to swing it. I might start by talking with the manager. But, Eunice, you can’t go aboard a private vessel with your features veiled; it would be rude. Your granddaughters did you no favor when they made you as recognizable as a video star.”

“Jacob, a veil doesn’t enter into it because I
never
want to meet
anyone
as ‘Mrs. MacKenzie.’ I’m Mrs. Jacob Moshe Salomon and proud of it—and that’s the way I must
always
be introduced. Jake, I doubt if our marriage is news any longer; it can’t matter much if I’m spotted.”

“I suppose not. The copters might swarm a mite closer for a while and some would have pixsnoops aboard with telescopic lenses. But I doubt if even your granddaughters are anxious to take a shot at you. If the snoops fret you, wear pants to sunbathe, and in the pool.”

“The hell I will, it’s our pool, Jacob. Anyhow, briefies can’t conceal the fact that I’m pregnant, and the sooner that’s in the news the less it will interest anyone later. Let them sneak a pic, then you have Doctor Bob confirm it—and it stops being news. No huhu, dear; I learned years ago that you can’t ‘get away from it all’—you just have to cope. Is it possible, on a boat of that sort, to have a swimming pool?”

“Not one that size. But I’ve seen trimarans much bigger than that one. Could be done, I suppose, since a trimaran can have so much deck space for its tonnage—I’d have to ask a naval architect. Why the interest, Lively Legs? Do you want me to buy you a yacht?”

“I don’t know. But boats look like fun. Jake, I never had much fun in my life—my other life. I’m not sure how one goes about having fun—except that every day is a joy to me now. All that I’m sure of is that I want to do something utterly different this time. Not be a Hetty Green. And not the gay, mad whirl of ‘society’—
kark!
I’d rather turn whore. Would you like a yacht, Jake? Take me around the world and show me all those places you’ve seen and I never had time for?”

“You mean you didn’t take time.”

“Maybe it’s the same thing. I do know that, if a man acquires too much money, presently it owns him instead of his owning it. Jake, I’ve been to Europe, at least fifty times-yet I’ve never been inside the Louvre, never seen them change the Guard at Buckingham Palace. All I saw were hotels and boardrooms—and those are the same all over the globe. Would you care to repair my education, dearest? Show me Rio?—you say it’s the most beautiful city in the world. The Parthenon by moonlight? The Taj at dawn?”

Jake said thoughtfully. “The trimaran is the favorite craft of the dropout.”

“Excuse me? I missed something. ‘Dropout’?”

“I don’t mean the barefooted bums in the Abandoned Areas, Eunice, nor the ones skulking around the hills. It takes money to drop out by water. But people do. Millions have. Nobody knows how many because it has been subject to an ‘exception’ for years—the government does not want attention called to it. But take those yachts below us: I’ll bet that at least one out of ten has registration papers for some ‘flag of convenience’ and the owner’s passport is as phony as that of ‘Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie.’ He has to be registered somewhere and carry some sort of passport, or the Coast Guard wherever he goes will give him a bad time, even impound his craft. But if he takes care of that minimum, he can dodge almost everything else—no income tax, no local taxes except when he buys something, nobody tries to force his kids into public schools, no real estate taxes, no politics—no violence in the streets. That last is the best part, with the cycle of riots swinging up again.”

“Then it is possible to ‘get away from it all.’ ”

“Mmm, not quite. No matter how much fish he eats, he has to touch land occasionally. He can’t play Vanderdecken; only a ghost ship can stay at sea forever, real ones have to be put up on the ways at intervals.” Jake Salomon looked thoughtful. “But it’s closer to that antithetical combination of ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ than is possible on land. If it suits one. But, Eunice, I know what I would do—if I were young.”

“What, Jake?”

“Look up there.”

“Where, dear? I don’t see anything.”

“There.”

“The Moon?”

“Right! Eunice, that’s the only place with plenty of room and not too many people. Our last frontier—but an endless one. Anyone under the cut-off age should at least
try
to out-migrate.”

“Are you serious, Jacob? Certainly space travel is scientifically interesting but I’ve never seen much use in it. Oh, some ‘fallout.’ Videosatellites and so forth. New materials. But the Moon itself?—why, it doesn’t even pay its own way.”

“Eunice, what use is that baby in your belly?”

“I trust that you are joking, sir. I hope you are.”

“Simmer down, Bulgy. Darling, a newborn baby is as useless a thing as one can imagine. It isn’t even pretty—except to its doting parents. It does
not
pay its own way and it’s unreasonably expensive. It takes twenty to thirty years for the investment to begin to pay off and in many—no,
most
—cases it never does pay off. Because it is much easier to support a child than it is to bring one up to amount to anything.”

“Our
baby will amount to something!”

“I feel sure that it will. But look around you; my generalization stands. But, Eunice, despite these shortcomings, a baby has a unique virtue. It is always the hope of our race. Its
only
hope.”

She smiled. “Jacob, you’re an exasperating man.”

“I try to be, dear; it’s good for your metabolism. Now look back up at the sky.
That’s
a newborn baby, too. The best hope of our race. If
that
baby lives, the human race lives. If we let it die—and it is vulnerable for a few more years—the race dies, too. Oh, I don’t mean H-bombs. We’re faced with far greater dangers than H-bombs. We’ve reached an impasse; we can’t go on the way we’re headed—and we can’t go back—and we’re dying in our own poisons. That’s why that little Lunar colony has
got
to survive. Because
we
can’t. It isn’t the threat of war, or crime in the streets, or corruption in high places, or pesticides, or smog, or ‘education’ that doesn’t teach; those things are just symptoms of the underlying cancer. It’s too many people. Not too many souls, or honks, or thirds—just. . .
too many
. Seven billion people, sitting in each other’s laps, trying to take in each other’s washing, pick each other’s pockets. Too many. Nothing wrong with the individual in most cases—but collectively we’re the Kilkenny Cats, unable to do anything but starve and fight and eat each other. Too many. So anyone who can ought to go to the Moon as fast as he can manage it.”

“Jacob, in all the years I’ve known you I’ve never heard you talk this way.”

“Why talk about a dream that has passed one by? Eunice—Eunice-Johann, I mean—I was born twenty-five years later than you were. I grew up believing in space travel. Perhaps you did not?”

“No, I didn’t, Jake. When it came along, it struck me as interesting—but slightly presposterous.”

“Whereas I was born enough later that it seemed as natural to me as automobiles. The big rockets were no surprise to my generation; we cut our teeth on Buck Rogers. Nevertheless I was born too soon. When Armstrong and Aldrin landed on Luna, I was pushing forty. When out-migration started, with a cut-off age of forty, I was too old; when they eased it to forty-five, again I was too old—and when they raised it to fifty, I was
much
too old. I’m not kicking, dear; on a frontier every man-jack must pull his weight, and there is little use for an elderly lawyer.”