PILGRIMS' PROJECT
By ROBERT F. YOUNG
Illustrated by EMSH
_A man under sentence of marriage
would be lucky to have a girl like
Julia assigned to him--or would he?_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity June 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
ROBERT F. YOUNG _works in a machine shop by day, and at night
goes home and writes anti-machine stories!_ Pilgrims Project _is
different: not so much anti-machine per se, it is still a vigorous
argument in favor of the individual human spirit and against
standardization. It is also, of course, a thoroughly exciting
story--with one of the most intriguing villains in all sf!_
CHAPTER I
"I'd like to apply for a wife," I said.
The Marriage Administration girl inserted an application blank into
the talk-typer on her desk. Her eyes were light blue and her hair was
dark brown and she was wearing a Mayflower dress with a starched white
collar.
"Name and number?"
"Roger Bartlett. 14479201-B."
"Date of birth?"
"January 17, 2122."
"What is your occupation, Mr. Bartlett?"
"Senior Sentry at the Cadillac Cemetery."
She raised her eyes. Her hair was combed tightly back into a chignon
and her face looked round and full like a little girl's.
"Oh. Have there been any exhumings recently, Mr. Bartlett?"
"Not at Cadillac," I said.
"I'm glad. I think it's a shame the way the ghouls carry on, don't you?
Imagine anyone having the effrontery to rob a sacred car-grave!"
Her voice sounded sincere enough but I got the impression she was
ridiculing me--why, I couldn't imagine. She could not know I was lying.
"Some day they'll rob one grave too many," I said flatly, "and earn the
privilege of digging their own."
She lowered her eyes--rather abruptly, I thought. "Last place of
employment?"
"Ford Acres."
The longer I looked at her, the more she affected me. The little-girl
aspect of her face was misleading. There was nothing little-girlish
about her lithe body, and her stern, high-bosomed dress could not
conceal the burgeoning of full breasts or the breathless sweep of waist
and shoulders.
Illogically, she reminded me of a landscape I had seen recently at a
clandestine art exhibit. I had wandered into the dim and dismal place
more out of boredom than curiosity, and I had hardly gone two steps
beyond the cellar door when the painting caught my eye. It was called
"Twentieth Century Landscape."
In the foreground, a blue river flowed, and beyond the river a
flower-flecked meadow spread out to a series of small, forested hills.
Beyond the hills a great cumulus formation towered into the sky like
an impossibly tall and immaculate mountain. There was only one other
object in the scene--the lofty, lonely speck of a soaring bird.
An impossible landscape by twenty-second century standards; an
impossible analogy by any standards. And yet that's what I thought
of, standing there in Marriage Administration Headquarters, the
stone supporting pillars encircling me like the petrified trunks of a
decapitated forest and the unwalled departments buzzing with activity.
"Can you give us some idea of the kind of wife you want, Mr. Bartlett?"
I wanted to say that I didn't want any kind of a wife, that the only
reason I was applying for one was because I was on the wrong side of
twenty-nine and had received my marriage summons in yesterday's mail.
But I didn't say anything of the sort. It wasn't wise to question
Marriage Administration procedure.
But I didn't take it lying down. Not quite. I said: "The wife I want is
a pretty remote item from the one I'll probably get."
"What we want consciously is invariably different from what we want
unconsciously, Mr. Bartlett. The Marriage Integrator's true benefit
to humanity arises from the fact that it matches marriageable men and
women in accordance with their unconscious rather than with their
conscious desires. However, any information you may care to impart will
be entered on your data card and _might_ influence the final decision."
"I don't know," I said.
And I didn't. The celibacy I had endured rather than apply for a wife
before reaching the maximum age of twenty-nine had resulted in the
total sublimation of my sexual desires. Women had lost reality for
me--at least, until this morning.
* * * * *
I looked around the huge chamber in search of inspiration. The various
departments were cramped with desks and marriage officials, enlivened
here and there by gray- or black-garbed secretaries. The department
next to the one in which I stood constituted the headquarters for the
Marriage Enforcement Police and less than ten feet away from me a gaunt
MEP captain brooded behind an austere marble desk.
Apparently he had been fasting, for his charcoal gray coat hung loosely
on his wide shoulders. His cheeks were cadaverous, his thin lips pale.
His thin nose jutted sharply from his narrow face, giving him a bleak,
hungry look, and his deep, somber eyes intensified the impression.
Those eyes, I realized suddenly, were gazing directly into mine.
So far as I knew, there was nothing about my appearance to pique the
interest of an MEP official. My Roger Williams suit was conventional
enough; I had doffed my black, wide-brimmed hat upon entering the
building and now held it at my waist in the prescribed manner; I was
above average in height, but not noticeably so, and if my yellow hair
and gray eyes failed to match the dour decorum of my clothing, I could
hardly be held responsible for the defection. Nevertheless, there
was something about me that the MEP captain found disagreeable. The
disapproval in his eyes was unmistakable.
"Do you have any ideas at all, Mr. Bartlett?"
The girl's cool blue eyes were a relief after the somber brown ones.
It was like returning from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ to the carefree
_L'Allegro_ of his youth. Abruptly, the inspiration I'd been searching
for materialized--almost at my fingertips.
"Blue eyes," I said. "I'd definitely want her to have blue eyes--and
dark brown hair to go with them. And then I'd want her to have a
round, full face, and shoulders that look good even in a Mayflower
dress."
I saw the telltale pinkness come into her cheeks and I caught the tiny
fluttering of a pulse in her white temple. But all she said was: "What
else, Mr. Bartlett? I presume she would have intellectual as well as
physical qualities."
"Naturally." I knew I was being presumptuous, that I was probably
violating some of the law-enforced mores of the Age of Repentance. But
for once in my life I felt reckless.
I concentrated on the piquant face before me. "I'd want her to be a
little on the sophisticated side," I said softly (the MEP captain
had big ears). "Well-versed in the Five Books of course--and perhaps
acquainted with one or two of the forbidden ones. And then I'd want
her to like children and maybe be willing to have three--or even
four--instead of one or none. But most of all I'd want her to be
able to freeze any wrong thoughts a man might have about her, not
by recourse to the law, or by saying or doing anything; but just by
looking the way she does, by being the way she is--if you know what I
mean."
The pinkness of her cheeks had darkened to deep rose. "Is that all, Mr.
Bartlett?"
I sighed. My recklessness had netted me nothing. "Yes," I said.
She withdrew the application from the talk-typer and initialed it. She
raised her eyes. "I censored your reference to the forbidden books,"
she said. "It would have rated you at least two years in Purgatory
if the Marriage Administrator had seen it. You really should be more
careful about what you say, Mr. Bartlett."
I'd forgotten all about the meticulous little machine tap-tapping
silently away on the desk. I felt like a fool. "Thanks," I said.
"One of the reverend psychiatrists will interview you on the top floor.
You'll find a waiting room at the head of the staircase."
I started to turn, then paused. I didn't know why I paused; I only knew
that I couldn't let it end like that.
"I wonder," I said.
"Yes?"
"You obtained a lot of information from me but I don't know a single
thing about you. Not even your name."
The blue eyes had become arctic lakes. Then, suddenly, they filled with
the sparkling warmth of spring. A smile dawned on her lips and her face
became a sunrise.
"Julia," she said. "Julia Prentice."
"I'm glad to have known you," I said.
"And I, you, Mr. Bartlett. And now if you'll please excuse me, there
are other applicants waiting."
There were--a whole benchful of them. I walked past them glumly, hating
them, hating myself, hating a society that would not permit me to
choose my own mate; but most of all hating Big Cupid, the mechanized
matchmaker that would choose for me.
I paused at the foot of the stone staircase, turned for a final look at
Julia. She was interviewing the next applicant. She had forgotten me
already.
But someone else in the departmented chamber hadn't. The gaunt MEP
captain was more absorbed in me than ever. And, judging from his
expression, he no longer merely disapproved of me--he despised me.
Why? Had he overheard my conversation with Julia? I did not think so.
With the confused murmur of hundreds of other voices all around him, he
could scarcely have singled out mine, especially in view of the fact
that I had spoken softly.
But perhaps not softly enough. In any event, he was looking at me as
though I were a hopeless habitué of Vanity Fair desperately in need
of an Evangelist. I felt like walking over to his desk and asking him
the way to the Coelestial City. But I didn't. You don't make flippant
remarks to MEP officers, particularly when those remarks involve one of
the Five Books. You don't, if you want to stay out of Purgatory.
Instead, I turned and started up the stairs to the eyrie of the
reverend psychiatrists.