Time Enough for Love (53 page)

It was seven more years before another wagon appeared in Happy Valley—three wagons traveling together, three families with children, true pioneers. We were glad to see them and I was especially happy to see their kids. For I had been juggling eggs. Real eggs. Human ova.

I was running out of time; our oldest kids were growing up.

Minerva, you know all that the human race has learned about genetics. You know that the Howard Families are inbred from a fairly small gene pool—and that inbreeding has tended to clear them of bad genes—but you know also the high price that has been paid in defectives. Is still being paid, I should add; everywhere there are Howards there are also sanctuaries for defectives. Nor is there any end to it; new unfavorable mutations unnoticed until they are reinforced is the price we animals must pay for evolution. Maybe there will be a cheaper way someday—there was not one on New Beginnings twelve hundred years ago.

Young Zack was a husky lad whose voice was firmly baritone. His brother, Andy, was no longer a boy soprano in our family chorus although his voice still cracked. Baby Helen wasn’t such a baby any longer—hadn’t reached menarche, but as near as I could tell it would be any day, any day.

I mean to say that Dora and I were having to think about it, forced to consider hard choices. Should we pack seven kids into the wagons and head back across the Rampart? If we made it, should we put the four oldest with the Magees or someone, then come home with the younger three? By ourselves? Or sing the praises of Happy Valley, its beauty and its wealth, and try to lead a party of pioneers back over the range and thereby avoid such crisis in the future?

I had expected, too optimistically, that others would follow us almost at once—a year or two or three—since I had left a passable wagon trail behind me. But I’m not one to fume over spilled milk after the horse is stolen. What might have been was of no interest; the problem was what to do with our horny kids now that they were growing up.

No point in talking to them about “sin” even if I were capable of such hypocrisy—which I am not, especially with kids. Nor could I have sold the idea. Dora would have been shocked and hurt, and her skills did not extend to lying convincingly. Nor did I want to fill our kids with such nonsense; their angelic mother was the happiest, most ever-ready lecher in Happy Valley—even more so than I and the goats—and she never pretended otherwise.

Should we relax and let nature take its ancient course? Accept the idea our daughters would presently (all too soon!) mate with our sons and be prepared to accept the price? Expect at least one defective grandchild out of ten? I had no data on which to estimate the cost any closer than that, as Dora knew nothing about her ancestry and, while I did know a little about mine, I did not know enough. All I had was that old and extremely rough thumb rule.

So we stalled.

We fell back on another sound old thumb rule: Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds.

So we moved into our new house while it was still not finished—but finished enough that we then had a girls’ dormitory, a boys’ dormitory, a bedroom for Dora and me, with adjacent nursery.

But we did not kid ourselves that we had solved the problem. Instead we hauled it out into the open, made sure that the three oldest knew what the problem was and what the risks were and why it would be smart to hold off. Nor were the younger kids shut out of this schooling; they simply were not required even to audit the course when they found themselves bored with technicalities they were too young to be interested in.

Dora chucked in a frill, one based on something Helen Mayberry had done for her some twenty years earlier. She announced that when little Helen achieved menarche, we would declare a holiday and have a party, with Helen as guest of honor. From then on, every year, that day would be known as “Helen’s Day” and so on for Iseult and Undine and on down the line until there was an annual holiday named for each girl.

Helen could hardly wait to pass from childhood into girlhood—and when she did, a few months later, she was unbearably smug. Woke us all up shouting about it. “Mama! Papa! Look, it’s happened! Zack! Andy!
Wake up!
Come
see!
”

If she hurt, she did not mention it. Probably she did not; Dora wasn’t subject to menstrual cramps, and neither of us told the girls to expect them. Being myself convex instead of concave, I refrain from commenting on the theory that such pains are a conditioned reflex; I don’t think I’m entitled to an opinion—you might ask Ishtar.

It also resulted in me being called on by a delegation of two, Zack and Andy with Zack as spokesman: “Look, Papa—we think it splendid, meet, and fit our sister Helen’s day to mark with joyful sounds and jollity acclaiming this our sibling’s rightful heritage. But soothly, sire, methinks—”

“Chop it off and say it.”

“Well, how about
boys!
”

By gum, I reinstituted chivalry!

Not as a sudden inspiration. Zack had asked a tough one; I had to dance around it a bit before I reached a workable answer. Sure, there are rites of passage for males as well as females; every culture has them, even those that aren’t aware of it. When I was a boy, it was your first suit with long pants. Then there are ones such as circumcision at puberty, ordeal by pain, killing some dread beast—endless.

None of these fitted our boys. Some I disapproved of, some were impossible—circumcision for example. I have this unimportant mutation, no foreskin. But it is a Y-linked dominant, and I pass it on to all my male offspring. The boys knew this, but I stalled by mentioning it again, discussed it in connection with the endless ways in which a male’s transition into beginning manhood was sometimes celebrated—while trying to think of an answer to the main question.

Finally I said, “Look, boys, you both know all about reproduction and genetics that I have been able to teach you. You both know what ‘Helen’s Day’ means. Don’t you? Andy?”

Andy did not answer; his older brother said, “Sure he knows, Papa. It means Helen can have babies now, just like Mama. You know that, Andy.” Andy nodded agreement, round-eyed. “We all know, Papa, even the kids. Well, I’m not sure about Ivar; he’s so little. But Iseult and Undine know it—Helen’s been telling them that she’s going to catch up with Mama—have her first baby right away.”

I controlled the cold chills I felt. Let me cut this short: I did not tell them that this was a bad idea; instead I took a long time drawing answers from them, things they both knew but had not yet thought of quite so personally—how Helen could not have a baby unless one or the other of
them
put it into her; how Helen was still too little for the strain of baking a baby even though “Helen’s Day” marked the fact that she was now vulnerable; how and why, even when Helen was big enough in a few years, a baby out of Helen by one of her brothers could be a tragedy instead of the fine babies Mama made every time.
They
told
me
, Andy’s eyes getting bigger all the time—I simply supplied leading questions.

I was helped in this by the fact that a little mule mare, Dancing Girl, had come into her first estrus when I thought she was not grown-up enough for a colt. So I had had Zack and Andy fence her off—and she kicked a hole in the fence and got what she wanted; Buckaroo covered her. Sure enough, the colt had been too big for her and I had to go in and cut it up and take it out in chunks—a routine job of emergency veterinary surgery but an impressive and bloody sight for two stripling boys who had helped their father by controlling the mare while he operated.

No, indeed, they did not want anything even a little bit like that to happen to
Helen.
No
, sir
!

Minerva, I cheated a little. I did
not
tell them that the way Helen was spreading in the butt and the measurements she already had made it appear to her family doctor—me—that she was even more of a natural baby factory than her mother and would be big enough for her first one much younger than Dora had had Zaccur; I did not tell them that the chances of a healthy baby from a brother-sister mating were higher than the chances of a defective. I certainly did
not!

Instead, I waxed lyrical about what wonderful creatures girls are, what a miracle it is that they could make babies, how precious they are and how it is a man’s proud privilege to love and cherish and protect them—protect them even from their follies because Helen might behave just like Dancing Girl, impatient and foolish. So don’t let her tempt you, boys—jerk off instead, just like you’ve been doing. They promised, tears in their eyes.

I didn’t ask them to promise that or anything—but it gave me the idea: Have “Princess” Helen knight them.

The kids grabbed that idea and ran with it;
Tales of King Arthur’s Court
was one of the books Dora had fetched along because Helen Mayberry had given it to her. So we had Sir Zaccur the Strong and Sir Andrew the Valiant and two ladies-in-waiting—waiting rather eagerly; Iseult and Undine knew that they, too, would be “princesses” as each reached menarche. Ivar was squire to both knights and would be dubbed himself when his voice changed. Only Elf was too small as yet to play the game.

It worked, a stopgap. I suppose “Princess” Helen was protected more than she wanted to be protected. But if she could not lure her faithful knights into the cornfields, they did place her stool for her at meals, they bowed to her rather often, and usually addressed her as “Fair Princess”—considerably more than I ever did for my sisters.

Before the first anniversary of “Helen’s Day” those three new families dropped down the rise and the crisis was over. It was Sammy Roberts, not one of her brothers, who first spread “Princess” Helen’s thighs—certain, as she told her mother about it at once (more of Helen Mayberry’s influence) and Dora kissed her and told her that she was a good girl and now go find Papa and ask him to examine you—and I did and she hadn’t been hurt, not to mention. But it gave Dora some control over the matter, just as Helen Mayberry had guided Dora at about the same age—so Dora had told me, long before that. In consequence our oldest daughter did not get pregnant until she was almost as old as and quite a bit more filled out than Dora had been when I married her. Ole Hanson married her; and Sven Hanson and I, and Dora and Ingrid, helped the youngsters start their homestead. Helen thought the baby was Ole’s, and for all I know she was right. No fuss. No fuss when Zack married Hilda Hanson, either. In Happy Valley pregnancy was equivalent to betrothal; I can’t recall any girl who married without that proof of eligibility. Certainly none of our daughters.

Having neighbors was grand.

(Omitted)

—not only fetched his fiddle over the Rampart but could call. I could call some and, while I hadn’t touched a violin for fifty years or so, I found it came back to me, so we spelled each other as Pop like to dance, too. Like so:

“Square ’em up!

“Salute your lady! Opposite lady! Corner gal! Right-hand gal! Salute your own and make ’er a throne. All stand up and don’t let ’er fall; swing your ladies one and all!

“
‘Moses lived a long time ago.

‘King said Yes; Moses said No!
—form hands, circle right.

‘Phar’oh was dat king’s first name;

‘Made ’em live a life of shame!
—allemande
left!
—with a dosey-doh! Then home you go and
swing
!

“‘…
said Yes and th’ waves did part.
First couple through the Red Sea! Now corner gal and right-hand man! Corner boy, right-hand gal—on around and keep it coming right and left!

“
‘A happy band on th’ opp’site shore,

‘So all form up and swing once more!

‘King weeps alone on Egypt’s shore;

‘Chosen People slaves no more!

‘So kiss your lady and whisper in her ear;

‘Then sit ’er down and get ‘er a beer.’
Intermission!”

Oh, we had fun! Dora learned to dance when she was a new grandmother—and was still dancing when she was a great-great-grandmother. Early years the parties were oftenest at our place because we had the biggest house and a compound large enough for a big party. Start dancing late afternoon, dance till you couldn’t see your partner; then a potluck buffet supper to candlelight and moonlight, then sing a while, and bed down all over the place—all the rooms, the roof, shakedowns in the compound, some in wagons—and if anybody ever slept alone, I never heard about it. Nor any trouble worth mentioning if things got a little loose around the edges.

Next morning there was likely to be a double performance by the Mermaid Tavern Players, one comedy, one tragedy, then it would be time for those who lived farthest away to round up their kids, hitch up their mules, and roll, while those who lived closer helped clean up before doing the same thing.

Oh, I remember one spot of trouble: A man gave his wife a black eye over nothing much, whereupon six men nearest him tossed him out the gate and barred it. Made him so mad he hitched up and left…and headed back up the Great Gorge toward Hopeless Pass—a fact that wasn’t noticed for a while, as his wife and baby moved in with her sister and her husband and their kids, and stayed on, a polygamy—though not the only one. No laws about marriage or sex—no laws about
anything
for many years—except that incurring the disapproval of your neighbors, such as by giving your wife a black eye, meant risking Coventry, about the worst thing that can happen to a pioneer short of being lynched.

But migrants tend to be both horny and easy about it. Superior intelligence always includes strong sexual drive, and the pioneers in Happy Valley had been through a double screening, first in a decision to leave Earth and then in deciding to tackle Hopeless Pass. So we had real survivors in Happy Valley, smart, cooperative, industrious, tolerant—willing to fight when necessary but not likely to fight over trivial matters. Sex is not trivial, but fighting over it is usually pretty silly. It’s characteristic only of a man who isn’t sure of his manhood, which didn’t describe any of these men; they were sure of themselves, no need to prove it. No cowards, no thieves, no weaklings, no bullies—the rare exception didn’t last long enough to count. Either dead like that first three, or ran away from us like that idiot who took a poke at his wife.