So we sat out the whole time of the visicast, side by side on the
window-couch, holding hands. I'll say this for the neighbors--they must
all have known, for Hal was the first to be selected from Homefield in
nearly 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 on
us. Not even that snoopy student from Venus in 47-14, who's always
dropping in on other tenants and taking notes on "the mores of Earth
Aboriginals." People can be very decent sometimes. We needn't have
worried about coming home in the Lydna Project bus.
It was no good trying to keep my mind on anything else. Whether I wanted
to 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 both
losing and gaining. We were losing our whole lives for 21 years past; he
was, too, but he was entering a new life we would never know anything
about. No word ever comes from Lydna; that's part of the project. Nobody
even knows where it is for sure, though it's supposed to be one of the
outer asteroids.
Both boys and girls are sent and there must be marriages and
children--though probably the death-rate is pretty high, for every year
they 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 made
his childhood happy. But at 21, faced with a great, mysterious adventure
and an unknown and exciting future, a boy can't be expected to be
drowned 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't
learned to decondition children early from parental fixations. But no
youngster today would possess that kind of unwholesome dependency. If he
did, 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 child
far 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 of
the spaceport, with this year's 200 selectees there from all over Earth,
each with the relatives and whoever else had permission to make the last
visit. I suppose it's a matter of accommodations and transportation, for
nobody's allowed more than three. So it was mostly parents, with a few
brothers, sisters and sweethearts or friends. The selectees themselves
choose the names. After all, they've had two weeks after they were
notified 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 fix
forever in my memory every last detail of him. We have dozens of sound
stereos, 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 help
noticing with a professional eye some of the rest of the selectees.
(This farewell visit is a private affair, and the press is barred, which
is why I'd never been there before.)
There were two kinds of selectees that stood out, in my mind. One was
those who had nobody at all to see them off. Completely alone, poor
kids--orphans, doubtless, with no families and apparently not even
friends near enough to matter. But, in a way, they would be the
happiest; life on Earth couldn't have been very rewarding for them, and
on Lydna they might find companionship. (If only companionship in
misery, I thought--but I shied away from that. In our business, there
are always leaks; we know--or guess--a few things about Lydna nobody
else does, outside the authorities themselves. But we keep our mouths
shut.)
The ones that tore my hearts were the boys and girls in love. They never
take married people for Lydna, but a machine can't tell what a boy or
girl is feeling about another girl or boy, and it's a machine that does
the 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 and
murders.
* * * * *
You could tell the couples in love. Not that there were any scenes. If
there had been any in the two weeks past, they were over. But anybody
who has learned to read human reactions, as I have, could recognize the
agony those youngsters were going through.
[Illustration]
I felt a deep gratitude that Hal wasn't one of them. He'd had his share
of adolescent affairs, of course, but I was sure he was still just
playing around. He'd seen a lot of Bet Milen, a girl a class ahead of
him in school and college, but I didn't think she meant more to him than
any of the others. If she had, she'd have been along to say good-by, but
he'd asked for only the two of us. She was now a laboratory assistant in
our hospital and could easily have gotten the time off.
It was growing late, almost midnight, and Lucy and I had to be at work
tomorrow, no matter how we felt. I forced myself to talk, with Lucy's
silent pain smothering me like a force-blanket. I made an effort and
cleared 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," she
said, 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 Hal
than 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 both
Lucy'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 she
didn't even wipe them away. "Are you _certain_?"
"Positive. And I got word to him. We'd agreed on a code. That's why he
didn't want me there today--we couldn't trust ourselves not to betray
it, either way."