Love Conquers All Page 5

  “We know that,” said Ann with impulsive honest sympathy.

  “Eventually I’ll find her,” Art insisted. “You know I’m going to bring her home. You think I’ll just let her drop out of my life for six or seven months? And what about the children, are they going to stay here for that length of time? Timmy should be starting kindergarten . . . it’s an insane scheme and I won’t allow it. In any case Family Planning will put a stop to it if I don’t. Don’t you suppose they can quickly track her down? Isn’t there a law against conspiracy to commit parturition that they could prosecute her under already?”

  “Not without more evidence than her dropping out of sight for a few days,” Ann said quickly. “Not without a lot more evidence than that.”

  “For a few days? I don’t understand. What does she hope to accomplish by doing that?”

  Ann fell silent again. George waved a hand and seemed about to speak, but then only sat down again and stared into his new fireplace.

  “Will somebody tell me, please?”

  “You see,” Ann began slowly, “once nine months have passed since conception, no doctor is allowed to put the baby to death for any reason, without the direct petition of the mother or other surviving next of kin. The Supreme Court was very clear on that several decades ago, and the decision still stands. And what does a conspiracy indictment matter to a mother who can save her baby’s life?”

  Baby? Oh, of course, she was talking about the fetus. Art was no longer sure that anything being said made sense. It was well after midnight, and they must all be tired. He was, certainly. Eros, but Rita too must be tired this midnight, wherever she might be.

  Ann said: “Art, your room is ready. Whenever you want to go up.”

  “In the morning, then,” Art told her. “But never doubt that I’m going to find her and take her home.”

  IV

  FRED Lohmann woke up with someone’s smooth arm thrown across his bare chest and someone’s delicate breath snoring gently in his left ear. Where was he? Oh yes, the YPPC hotel, in Chicago. Yesterday he had checked out of the Parrs’ plush new house, more or less urged on by his sister Ann, and anyway not anxious to get himself involved in whatever had brought Rita Rodney in weeping from California. Rita had looked pregnant, far enough along to show a little. Say, didn’t the Rodneys have two kids already?

  Anyway, all that was none of Fred’s affair. He had big problems of his own, and important events were scheduled for today. First of all, this morning Fred as a newly independent and adult citizen was going to collect his first Basic Income check from Uncle Sam, the check covering the month that had passed since his graduation from high school in California. And that first BI check might well be his last; he sublimatin’ well hoped it would be anyway, for this afternoon he was going to have a real workout with George and if things went well at the dojo he might be a jobholder by tomorrow. And that would prove a lot of people wrong.

  Now, what about this sleeping arm that weighed so gently on his breathing? In a moment he remembered, her name was Marjorie. She too was a newcomer to Chicago, looking for a job, and last night the desk clerk at the Y had assigned her and Fred to sleep together. The atmosphere at the Young Persons’ Play Club was certainly different from what it was at the Parrs’. Ann and George might get a chuckle out of it when he told them. Behind the front desk in the lobby was a big sign on the wall reading PURE THOUGHTS ARE THE MARK OF A DIRTY MIND. And they weren’t trying to be funny, either, they were really that old-fashioned here. They had a strict house rule requiring at least two people in every bed. Marjorie, though she herself was by all indications a conservative, well-brought-up, lascivious girl, had agreed with Fred last night that the sign was funny, and they had shared a little laugh about it. She was a good sex partner, too, so things had worked out all right. He might have been paired with someone a lot less congenial.

  Fred disentangled himself from Marjorie’s naked body and got out of bed without awakening her. The bed folded down on both sides of the wall that separated his tiny room from hers. Ingenious, Fred thought. When the bed was raised it completed the wall and the rooms were separated, allowing either party to have privacy for business or social reasons. A hole was created through the wall, connecting the rooms, whenever the bed was lowered for use. Last night Fred had discovered that the bed mechanism made it impossible to raise or lower either side independently; if you wanted to lie down, you had better be ready for sex, or at least a polite attempt at sex, with your appointed partner. George was going to have a good laugh when Fred told him. Except George seemed to have a lot on his mind just lately.

  After a quick visit to the alcove that held his toilet and shower, Fred came back to the center of his small room, studied his tall, muscular body in the wall mirror, and did a few light exercises, just loosening and testing a little, making sure the knee and elbow joints moved freely and with plenty of snap. He tensed his corrugated belly muscles and snapped his rocklike fist at his solar plexus, leaving a small red mark. He told himself he looked older than eighteen; the beard was coming along okay. But he hadn’t really worked out in more than a week, and though he tried not to admit it to himself he was scared by the thought of this afternoon’s pending test with George.

  Would George take his word for it that he really had a brown belt ranking, or might George call California to check, and catch him in a lie? The idea was to do really well in the workout, show George some real good moves, and he wouldn’t bother to check up. He would hand Fred a brown belt to wear and put him to work instructing novices. Meanwhile he would work out all he could, and in a few months start to think about moving up to black . . .

  Marjorie stirred in her sleep and seemed on the point of waking up, and Fred hastened to get his codpiece and shorts from the chair and put them on. She seemed like a nice girl, and so Fred was treating her with respect; he wouldn’t want to display to her his unmannerly shriveled lack of arousal on this nervous morning.

  . . . all the same, though, you never knew. Some guys who had been around said that the nice girls like this one could really be the coldest chillers once they let themselves go. Looking down now at Marjorie’s still-sleeping form, Fred could easily imagine it covered, blurred into sexlessness. Her figure was almost boyish in repose, without the padded bra that she had thrown off last night, and it was years since he had felt any lust for boys. He could picture her eyes opening, their clear and penetrating gaze (so he imagined; last night he had not noticed) pushing lust aside, piercing through his hard male body, seeking to touch him . . .

  FRED gave himself a mental kick and looked away. Not that he felt guilty. Twins, every normal guy had thoughts about chastity and sublimation, and enjoyed them, too. It was just that today Fred didn’t want to get himself into a difficult emotional state.

  Still it was impossible not to notice how childlike Marjorie looked in her sleep. In his imagination he found himself putting a long, snowy, opaque gown around her . . . he kicked himself again, and went on getting dressed.

  She woke up, turning and stretching, before he was ready to leave. He looked around at her and swallowed hard, for suddenly the clear-eyed gaze he had imagined was quite real.

  “Good morning—Margie. You don’t mind if I call you by your first name?” He had forgotten what her last name was.

  “No, I don’t mind. Uh . . .”

  “Fred, Fred Lohmann.”

  “Yes, certainly, Fred.” She rolled over onto her back and gave a routine wiggle of her hips. “Burning with lust this morning, that’s me.” But her tone made the invitation no more than a polite .form.

  “Me too.” His tone was even more casual than hers. “Too bad, but I gotta get an early start on some business today.”

  Her eyes seemed to chill, sending something like a sensation of real cold along his back. She murmured softly: “What is a poor girl going to do, when the man she’s with says he just won’t screw?” The verse from which the line came was latrine doggerel, ancient and more than mi
ldly dirty.

  If Fred had ever heard encouragement, this was it. Even Basic Income and karate could wait. “Well, then, how about it, girly?” he asked boldly. “How about you and me just frosting things a few degrees?”

  He had been too bold too soon. “Just don’t rush it,” Marjorie said crossly, with a curve of her spine becoming all sex again. Who could tell anything about women? She rolled out of the bed on her side, into her own room, where she reached for a transparent robe.

  “I’m sorry,” Fred muttered, bending slightly to look at her through the bed-gap in the wall. “Don’t get sore.” Sublimation, was she going to complain to the management now? Would he be thrown out?

  Somewhat mollified, she paused in the act of raising the bed between them. “Just don’t rush things, okay?” Her eyes had lost their coldness, but at least she was smiling.

  “I’ll be around tonight!” Fred called through to her. He helped her lift the bed-barrier into place, and gave his side of it a jovial pat as it sealed him off.

  An hour later he had found his way to the nearest branch of the Social Security office and was standing in line. Having no permanent address since leaving California, he had arranged to have his first Basic Income check held for him in the Social Security data bank until he called at an office somewhere to pick it up. For whatever reason, a number of other people seemed to be making similar arrangements. The line was eight or ten people long, and not moving very fast.

  The jobholders in the office sat snugly fortified behind their desks and counters and computer consoles, or else walked by, giving the impression that they were up to something important. Chastity, it was just that they had some kind of political pull, or they’d be the ones standing in line. They seemed to have little regard for the people they were processing so slowly. Fred lit up a small cigar.

  Now the window at the head of the line was being closed for some reason, and a man came to divide the line and lead its fragments to different windows.

  “No smoking in here!” he snapped at Fred. He was a paunchy, waddling man who reminded Fred of a particularly unpleasant high school teacher he had suffered under only a few months ago. “No smoking, I said! Put it out at once or you’ll have to leave the office.”

  “I got a right to my check,” Fred muttered, but so weakly that it was doubtful if the officious man even heard him. At the same time Fred was crushing out his cigar on the sole of his sandal, for he knew very well that he was never going to win an argument with the paunchy jobholder. Not here. Now, if they ever met somewhere else . . .

  Fidgeting and waiting, thinking vague and sullen thoughts, Fred inched forward with the line. At last he reached the window, gave his name and federal identity number, and held the tips of his fingers on a scanner-plate. After a few seconds there came a machine-gun clacking from a printed device beside the clerk who was processing Fred, and some official looking papers emerged.

  “Well, this is your first check, Fred. Do you have a permanent address to give us yet?”

  “No. I’m staying at a YPPC now.”

  “Address?”

  “It’s here in Chicago. The one on North State Street.”

  The clerk made a note with a stylus on a computer input plate, then pulled more pieces of paper from beneath the counter. “Take these booklets, Fred, they’ll tell you more about your rights and responsibilities under the Basic Income law. If you win more than two hundred dollars’ prize money in any state or national lottery or government-sponsored competition in any calendar month, or obtain gainful employment, or acquire ownership of more than fifty shares of corporate stock, you are required to notify us so that your Basic Income can be adjusted. There are penalties for failing to notify.”

  There was a little more he had to listen to. When at last they released him by handing over his check—he supposed it was enough to scrounge along on for a couple of weeks until the next one came, if scrounging along was your idea of life—he hurried from the office, dropping the booklets into a trash receptacle as he went through the door. He’d notify them, all right, as soon as he moved up to jobholder. The sooner he could tell them that, the better.

  Since he had such a good chance for a job, there was no use hoarding his money like a miser. Two weeks scrimp-along money could buy a couple of nights of real fun. After that . . . well, nobody starved.

  A kind of gravitational pull was leading him onto a particular slidewalk, one that would carry him in the direction of a run-down neighborhood he had noticed not far from the Y. There he should be able to hit a coffeehouse bar or two. He could get some lunch there as well as anywhere. There was plenty of time before he had to meet George at the dojo. And Fred wanted to see about getting hold of some gladrags, in case it turned out tonight that Marjorie was not just teasing but was really in a willing mood. If you went to the right place and asked the right person, a few dollars could always buy a pair of plastic cloaks, thin, but stiff and perfectly opaque, folded together into a pocket-sized carton.

  ART AWOKE with a start in the Parrs’ guest room bed, looked at his watch, and saw that it was a little after nine o’clock. He sat up blinking. On the barren tile floor in one corner of the sparsely furnished room lay a pair of men’s translucent disposable trousers, apparently used and ready for the discard. The length of one extended leg indicated that the garment would be too big for either him or George. Oh yes; Fred Lohmann had been staying here, before Rita. Conceivably Fred would know something of her present whereabouts, if Art could find a chance to question him. Art remembered him as a wild-looking adolescent, tall and awkward.

  Before retiring Art had bought himself some disposal clothing from the block’s vending machine, and now after a quick shower and beard-trim he dressed in fresh shorts and shirt. Still only a quarter after nine. While buttoning his shirt he peeked into the children’s room and found the four of them still sleeping. Must have been allowed to stay up late last night, playing together. A door chimed and very shortly thereafter voices drifted up from downstairs, one Ann’s, the other belonging to a man whom Art did not recognize. Standing in the upstairs hall he could understand only a stray word or two.

  Going down as soon as he had finished dressing, Art turned first into the kitchen. He was liable to feel sick unless he ate something as soon as he got up. In the refrigerator he found a cinnamon-flavored protein bar, and on the elaborate new stove he dialed himself coffee. Five minutes, while the low dialogue continued in another room, and he had the indispensable minimum of breakfast in his stomach. Chewing on a toothmint; more or less ready to face the world, Art walked into the living room.

  The low voices stopped. A lean, stooped man wearing a conservative transparent business jacket above his shorts was standing just inside the door that had been closed last night and which Art now realized must provide access to a lower-level garage. The man looked up at Art with keen interest, or perhaps he was only glad of any interruption.

  Ann, her pretty chin somewhat higher than usual, turned with arms folded from her stance of confrontation with the visitor. “Art, this gentleman claims he’s a Mr. Hall. From Family Planning. George has gone out.” Her tone managed to imply that George, if at home, would have beaten this probably fraudulent intruder to a pulp, and Art was welcome to do the same if he liked.

  “My name is Hall, and I am from the Family Planning office.” The intruder had a determined voice, though not angry or flustered (Aha, Ann, have you met your match at last?), and his eyes were sharp. “I take it you’re Mr. Rodney?”

  “I am.”

  “I was hoping to run into you here. Our California office has asked us to make a routine investigation into your wife’s case.”

  “Her case? My wife hasn’t broken any laws.”

  “That’s fine! Then if you’ll tell me where I can get in touch with her, we can clear all this up promptly and with as little inconvenience as possible.”

  The protein bar in Art’s stomach had suddenly gone lumpy. He supposed that criminals must h
ave terrible chronic digestive problems. Or maybe they got used to it. He could think of nothing to say to Mr. Hall, and just stood there like a guilty fool.

  Hall’s determined voice kept coming at him. “I understand you didn’t accompany your wife to Chicago, you followed her here?”

  “I—yes, what of it?” Surely, thought Art, he had the right to refuse to answer these questions. To talk to a lawyer first, at least. But once he refused to answer, Hall’s suspicions, that possibly were no more than suspicions now, would surely be confirmed.

  “Mr. Rodney, is there some reason you don’t want to tell me where your wife is at the moment?”

  “I don’t know where she is.” It was Ann’s fault, and George’s, and Rita’s too, that he had to conduct this argument in ignorance. Their fault, not his, if he got them all in deeper trouble. Meanwhile he marveled greatly at how fast the deadly pits could open beneath one’s feet in the dull corridor of life.

  “You don’t know?” The interrogator’s tone implied that Art must be a fool or a knave, or both, to hope to get away with such an answer.

  Art folded his arms in unconscious imitation of Ann. “That’s right.”

  Mr. Hall glanced toward Ann, who with her own arms still folded was obviously quite ready for him. He appeared to stifle a faint sigh, and then turned back to Art. “Mr. Rodney, our California office has received medical testimony indicating that your wife is pregnant for the third time.”