The Margarets

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “It doesn’t work that way,” said Mother, nervously licking her lips. “Any child born alive is counted, whether the child lives or not. That isn’t…isn’t important. The Gentherans claimed it’s the fairest way to reduce population. It doesn’t cut off any genetic line and it leaves the gene pool as broad as possible.” She paused, her hands knotted. “Finally, Earthgov passed the two-three-four laws, but they did it secretly.”

  Mother wiped moisture from the corners of her mouth with one knuckle of her clenched hands. “Earthgov was debating how to publicize the laws and begin enforcing them when the Mercans and the Omnionts showed up. You know what happened then! The Combine and the Federation said they’d salvage us. We begged for help. They offered to buy our people for water. Earthgov shilly-shallied, as usual. They thought they had a choice.

  “They didn’t have a choice! They couldn’t get it through their stupid heads that there was no choice! ISTO says a living planet is more important than the members of any race on it, and if a race of barbarians or animals threatens a planet, the race has to be ‘reduced,’ and they were about to reduce us. It couldn’t be kept a secret any longer. The story broke everywhere at once: the offer to buy our people, the threat from ISTO, the laws that had been secretly passed…” She fell silent, staring at nothing for a time. I waited. “And what they’d been afraid would happen, did happen! The anti–population control people started rioting. Those opposing them began rioting back! Some religious fanatics took advantage of the disorder to start a biowar. That was the Great Plague of 2082 that killed a billion people while those huge ships just hung up there, watching.”

  “They didn’t help?”

  “Gentherans help. Omnionts observe. Mercans profit,” her mother snarled. “At least that’s what the Gentherans tell us.”

  “That’s why…it was the terrible eighties?”

  Mother wiped her eyes. “That was the start of them. While the plague was going on, all the local wars joined into one big war among former nations and states and tribal areas. That was the so-called Eight-Week War that killed another billion people.”

  “I wasn’t even born.”

  “No. The war happened right after your father arrived on Phobos. It’s a good thing we were there. Otherwise, we might not be alive today.” Her voice, already unfamiliarly shrill, went up another half tone. “We might have been just two more of the two billion people the plague and the war had killed, which still wasn’t enough to suit ISTO, which started an inquiry…”

  “Into what?”

  “If the plague had been started purposely by Earthgov, ISTO would have regarded it as a good-faith effort to reduce population; if the plague was simply a crime or accident, it wouldn’t have helped our rating at all. Everyone knew Earthgov hadn’t started the plague, because the fanatics who did it had told the whole world their god had commanded they do it! However, the fanatics were all dead by that time, so they couldn’t prove they’d done it, and that gave the Gentherans a loophole through which they negotiated with ISTO. They claimed that Earthgov had known the plague was going to start and had chosen not to stop it. That turned out to be ‘reasonable grounds’ for classifying us as semicivilized.

  “ISTO agreed, but only if we immediately started enforcing our own laws by selling all our over-fours to the Combine and the Federation.”

  “They’d never been enforced.”

  Mother shrilled: “How could they have been! What with the plague and the war, nobody could enforce anything! ISTO said either comply at once, or the robot slaughterers would start arriving.” Her voice rasped, she coughed, before going on in her piercing, unfamiliar voice:

  “Earthgov declared martial law and began shipping people out, and that bought us provisional status as a semicivilized and threatened world. We’ve been shipping people ever since, and we’re still provisional.”

  Mother’s tone and expression were forbidding, but I wanted to know! I said, “I still don’t understand why we can’t talk about it!”

  Tears pouring down her reddened face as she grated through clenched teeth, “Have you been listening to me, Margaret? I sound like a—a crazy person! I’m screaming! Even telling you about it makes me crazy! The war happened, and the plague happened, and even in the middle of all that, the proliferators just went on having child after child after child! Other people, those who called themselves the limiters, they blamed the others, the lifers, for destroying the world. If you want to know all the awful details, I’ll remove the block on your didactibot and you can look up the Lifer-Limiter Uprising!

  “Your father and I weren’t here, but we’ve heard about it from people who were! The hostility was everywhere, in everything. Pregnant women were stoned! Obstetricians’ offices were bombed. Hospitals were bombed. Mentioning babies in public could get you killed! We still can’t talk about it!”

  The door opened, and Father came back into the room, his face drawn. “I’m sorry, Louise. I just…”

  “I know,” she croaked. “I know.”

  The looks on their faces actually frightened me. I said placatingly, “I suppose if you were somebody with lots of children, it would be terrible to lose them.”

  Mother and Father exchanged a long look, and when Mother turned to look at me again, her face was gray. “It would be terrible, yes, even to lose one.”

  I Am Margaret/on Earth

  As Mother pointed out, I was twelve years old, a grown-up young woman who would behave herself, who would not blush at the proctor’s title when he arrived, for we needed the proctor’s approval to get our permanent water ration cards.

  “If the Omnionts are bringing water, and we’re shipping out the over-fours, why do we need rations?” I wanted to know.

  Father looked up from his desk. “Because until the sterilization laws were passed and enforced, every time we shipped someone away, we had two new ones popping up. That didn’t stop until the Mercan Combine started buying toilet-trained toddlers as pets for the K’Famir.”

  Mother turned pale and left the room quickly.

  In due time the proctor arrived, a narrow, sharp-edged sort of man who didn’t even give us his name. He merely nodded once at each of us as he put his access-and-data console on the table. It clicked and flipped open in several directions, spreading itself across the entire surface before uttering an imperative beep. When the proctor hit a key, its purple screen fetched up a lengthy form.

  “Now,” the proctor said, drawing a chair up to the table and seating himself at the console. “Let’s start with the simple things. Your names. Dates of birth. Identity numbers. Names of all siblings, living and dead. Parents’ names and their dates of birth, and their identity numbers, and the names of all their siblings, living and dead. Places of birth, if known.”

  Mother took a deep breath and started out, “We are Louise and Harry Bain…”

  Between them they came up with all the names and most of the dates, either from memory or from the family record book.

  “Good,” said the proctor. “Now, to your knowledge have you or have any of your siblings ever used a name other than the one they were given on their birth registry?”

  “Mama’s brother Hy,” I offered, when no one said anything.

  There was a pause. The proctor looked up, as did I. Mother’s face was very still, as though she had been paralyzed.

  Father said, “Hy wasn’t her brother, though he was young enough to have been her sibling. He’s Louise’s uncle. Margaret’s great-uncle.”

  Mother found her voice. “Hy was named for his father, Hyram, a name he hated. He…he doesn’t live on Earth, however. Hy has always lived in the Lunar Colony.”

  The proctor, turning to Father, “And you, sir? Any aliases? Pseudonyms? Noms de guerre?” He winked, making a face, and for no discernible reason, a shiver ran up my back.

  “Not that I know of, no,” said Father with a frozen smile.

  There were other questions, where people had lived, how long they had lived there. Mot
her and Father weren’t always sure about the details, but the database filled in most of the gaps once it had people’s identity numbers.

  “Now your daughter,” said the proctor. “Name, date of birth, identity number? Fine. Now we’ll do your DNA.”

  He took sterile scrapers from a tube, scraped the insides of our cheeks, and dropped the samples into an analysis slot on the console. “All three of your DNA codes will be checked for familial consistency, that is assuming pregnancies were normal and unassisted?”

  Father looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, sir?”

  “Twenty years ago my former partner had twins that died at birth. We were separated at the time, and I had no knowledge of them until later. I don’t know the particulars.”

  The proctor said, “If you’ll give me the woman’s identity number.”

  Father shrugged. “I don’t know. When I learned the children hadn’t survived, I didn’t even ask for genetic verification. It was a long time ago…”

  The proctor nodded. “That’s all right, we’ll find the data on the previous reproductive history and we’ll do the GV. Just tell me her name and where she lived at the time.”

  Father muttered, the proctor nodded and entered the data. “And your pregnancy, ma’am?”

  Mother flushed. “Margaret’s conception was unassisted.”

  “Very good. That’s all we need. Your family will be filed as a unit. You’ll be provided with the code at the time of filing, so you’ll have it for reference if it’s ever needed.”

  As his console refolded itself, the man turned to me to ask, “What were you studying on Phobos, Margaret?”

  “I started learning ET languages,” I murmured. “I know some Pthas, some Omniont, and quite a bit of Mercan Trade Tongue.”

  The proctor nodded. “I’m impressed. Fluency in ET languages is valuable, but few families are sensible enough to let their children learn them early, when it’s easy for them.”

  I said, “Mother encouraged me. She says she wishes she’d learned languages when she was little.”

  The machine made a quiet sound, like a hiccup, and produced a screenful of figures. The proctor pressed a button, a machine voice said, “Clear.”

  “Very well,” the proctor said, pressing a button. “We always compare, just to be sure. In your case, everything agrees with everything else. Provisionally, until we receive the information on your previous history, your registration rating, sir, is a two. You, ma’am, are a four. Your daughter a four.”

  “We’re in good shape, then,” said Father in a relieved voice.

  “You are indeed, sir,” said the proctor.

  When the door closed behind the proctor, I whispered, “What did he mean, that we’re in good shape.”

  Mother answered. “It means we can have a water ration. It also means anyone who’s a five or higher can’t.”

  Father cleared his throat and shook himself, as though to shed whatever mood he’d been in. “Margaret, I think we’ve had enough of this discussion. We need to take a family walk, get out of here. Right, Louise?”

  Mother, looking very pale, nodded. “Yes. Oh, yes. Let’s get out of here. Let’s give ourselves a treat of some kind…”

  I looked from one to the other, frightened at their tone. “Is something wrong?”

  Her father said, “Everything’s all right, Margaret. You can have water, you can even have a family when you’ve grown up.”

  “That is, if you pick the right husband,” said Mother tartly. “One who hasn’t used up all his quota sowing wild oats. No, no, Margaret, don’t ask me to explain wild oats.”

  I felt something squeezing my stomach and farther down, in my belly. As the three of us took our rare, almost unprecedented walk, I looked into every store window we passed while my insides cramped and jumped as though I’d swallowed something alive that was trying to get out, split off from me. My skin felt damp. I thought I saw a shadowy presence moving around, reflected in the window, standing just behind me, but there was nothing there except my own white and frightened face staring back. After a time, I stopped looking and trudged along, eyes fixed on my feet.

  Who Is Margaret?

  It seemed to me I dreamed the proctor came, just as he had. I dreamed everything he had said and we had said, up until the point where the proctor turned to me to say, “Fluency in ET languages is valuable, but few families are sensible enough to let their children learn them early, when it’s easy for them.”

  “It was Mother’s idea,” I said. “She says she wishes she’d learned languages when she was little, like her brother Hy.”

  “You mean her uncle, Hy?” said the proctor.

  I stopped. Why had I said that?

  Mother said, “My uncle Hy, yes…”

  The machine interrupted with a harsh, buzzing sound. It spoke: “Duplicated reference to unverified identity, name Hy, maternal kinsperson. Possible data variance. Hold! Hold!”

  The proctor sat back, his lips tightly compressed, as printed forms began to flow across the screen. He muttered, “We always compare with former records, just to be sure. There seems to be a record discrepancy.”

  “Discrepancy?” Mother faltered. Her hand shook on the arm of the chair. I had started toward her, but when I saw the fear in her eyes, I stayed frozen in place.

  The flow of forms stopped, leaving only one on the screen.

  “A medical record,” said the proctor in a chill voice. Ma’am, your middle name is, I believe, Hazel? We have a record here of a perinatal death on Mars, specifically on the Phobos Station. Some twelve years ago. To Hazel Bannon, your maiden name, I believe?”

  Mother tried to speak and couldn’t.

  Father said, “It wasn’t on Earth. The emigration laws only pertain to Earth.”

  The proctor shook his head, nostrils pinched. “When the Mars projects were closed, their records were subsumed into ours. During this interview, your daughter twice mentioned an unverified identity. That triggered a universal search by the data system, all medical records and all identity banks.”

  Mother’s eyes were so full of fear that I cried out, “Mother! What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong,” said the proctor, “is you, young lady. You are not a four. You’re the second born of twins. You’re a five.”

  “What does that mean?” I cried.

  Mother sobbed, “Oh, Margaret!”

  “You could be prosecuted for attempted falsification of records,” said the proctor.

  “We didn’t know,” Father cried. “Phobos never counted. We never thought we’d be coming back to Earth!”

  “Well, sir. Earth is where you are. You and your wife may remain here, but your daughter, Margaret, will be required to report to the shipping point within the next ten days. The shipping officers will be in touch.”

  The dream was like watching a play. It was clear. The words were clear. In the dream, the proctor went away. When the door hissed shut behind him, Mother screamed, “I told you they’d find out, Harry!”

  Father yelled at me for mentioning Hy’s name.

  I cowered, wept, then howled, halfway between fear and fury, “You’re sending me away!”

  Mother shouted, “They’re taking you away!”

  “You knew about this,” I yelled. “You told Daddy they’d find out, so you knew I wasn’t a four! Why did you go ahead and have me if you were just going to let them do this…”

  It was as though they hadn’t really thought of me until that moment. Mother fell to her knees and put her arms around me. Father stooped above us both, tears flowing.

  I felt something squeezing my stomach and farther down, in my belly. I cried out with the pain, scrambled away from between them, and fled to the bathroom, where I stood, looking into the mirror while my insides cramped and jumped as though I had swallowed something alive that was trying to get out and split off from me. My skin felt damp. I thought I saw a shadowy presence moving around. For a momen
t I thought I could see it in the mirror, standing behind me, but there was nothing there except my own chalky white, scared face staring back at me.

  From somewhere outside myself I heard something, or someone, saying very firmly, slowly, in a commanding voice: “It’s all right, Margaret. Just take a deep breath, it’s going to be all right.”

  I don’t remember the subway trip to the South American elevator center, I just remember being there. It was huge, surrounded by sprawling dormitory and office buildings and centered on the immense reinforced and raised platform that anchored the elevators, some dozens of them, their transport ribbons virtually invisible, their translucent cargo pods making dotted lines that faded into invisibility, interminate fingers pointed at the silver shimmer of the staging platforms and the geosynchronous shipping station orbiting far above.

  The authorities tried to discourage my parents from making the trip, but they insisted. They got no farther than one of the huge intake lobbies thronged with families saying good-bye.

  “I’d have thought there’d be almost no one here,” Mother murmured. “Surely people can’t still be having children that are fives and over!”

  “It’s the backlog,” Father murmured in return. “They’re limited by the capacity of the elevators and the availability of transport ships. There are only four elevator terminals, one each in Sumatra and South America, two in Africa. There’s been some talk about building more of them as ocean-based platforms, but the last time that was tried, a tsunami took it out. The problem is, building more would be expensive, and Earth can’t afford it.”

  “I thought people would be flowing out,” Mother insisted. “This is more of an ooze…”

  “I’m not in any hurry,” I interrupted. My voice didn’t sound like me. It was a firm, solid voice, like a shield. Someone else had given it to me. I couldn’t have contrived it on my own.

  “That’s the spirit,” Father said, falsely cheerful. “You’ll probably be here quite a while. We’ll find a room nearby and visit you…”