Edward Llewellyn

by Prelude to Chaos

  “Right. But how would anyone know her tubes weren’t there? It’s easy to recognize there’s something wrong when a baby’s bom without arms. How would you recognize a baby without tubes?”

  “Well—you wouldn’t. Not until she tried to get pregnant. Twenty years later, maybe 1” I started pulling on my clothes, my sex-drive abolished. “Is that what Impermease does? Block off a girl’s tubes before she’s born?”

  “The effect’s much the same. The mechanism’s not so simple as blocking the tubes. If it was only the tubes, they could be fixed by surgery these days. Impermease hits the eggs. Prevents them from ever dividing. It’s a selective inhibitor of cell division.”

  I extracted the meaning of that statement after a little thought. “Some woman told me that was how Noncon worked. The monthly pill she was taking. As long as she took one a month she couldn’t get pregnant. But if she stopped taking it she could. She swore by it. The great liberator she called it. Had three kids too—none of ’em mine,” I added quickly.

  “If those kids were girls they were bom sterile. Noncon’s the trade name for Impermease. Impermease when it’s been colored, scented, and packaged in heart-shaped containers!” “Good God!” I stared at her. “I don’t get it. I thought the idea was to stop the woman from getting pregnant. Not to sterilize the fetus when she did.”

  “That was the idea. They didn’t know that the traces of Impermease remaining in the woman’s body weren’t enough to stop her from getting pregnant But were enough to cross the placental barrier and sterilize the eggs in the fetus. Because of the time lag, about twenty years, they only found out when the birth rate among girls wanting babies started to fall!”

  “So all those women who were taking Noncon are going to have sterile daughters!”

  “All the women who’ve been taking Noncon since the late nineties have been having sterile daughters. They’re only starting to discover that now. And most sexually active women in North America have been taking their monthly ‘liberator’ for the last twenty-five years. They’re still taking it!” She came to sit beside me. “I haven’t. My mother didn’t She was one of the earliest converts to the Teacher. And he forbade the use of any drug or chemical developed after 1990.” “How the hell did he know?”

  ‘The Light warned him. Not against Impermease specifically. Against all post-1990 chemicals.”

  “Good for the Light!” I spat in sudden anger. “Typical Jehovah! Warn the elect in vague terms. But don’t tell ’em why or what. Save the dumb obedient faithful! Let the infidels die.”

  “I wouldn’t push your God’s sense of humor too far!”

  I returned to the subject at hand. “So the ladies of the Affluence have been having sterile daughters. But the vast majority of women don’t belong to the Affluence. They can’t afford to buy colored, scented, and prettily packaged contraceptives. Yet you speak as if this thing’s worldwide. How come?”

  “Impermease stops cell division, but very selectively. It stops rapidly dividing cells. Such as cancer cells. It’s sold as a cancer prophylactic under the trade name Bancan. Black tablets in a container with a crushed crab on the cover.”

  “Christ! I took those once when I thought—” I stopped, suddenly ashamed of an empty fear. For months I’d been afraid to show my wart to the doc.

  “You and a hell of a lot of other people. Cancerphobia— fear of cancer—has been endemic in Europe and North America for years. Men as much as women. Bancan won’t have harmed you! If only the stuff had made mens’ balls drop off it would have saved a lot of women from a lot of misery.” “Christ! So Bancan’s Impermease too! And masses of people take it regularly.” I looked at the floor. “And the FTA wouldn’t have dared to stop the sale of Bancan. Not even if they’d known.”

  “Well, they know now! And they’re trying to stop it being used without facing the public. The Bancan you buy todayi is a placebo.”

  Another bit of Administration flim-flam! But one I could excuse. I thought of the howl if they’d tried to ban it openly. “So they’ve stopped it. But I still don’t see how that affects the non-affluent. They can’t afford Bancan any more than their women can afford Noncon.”

  “Impermease is easy and cheap to produce. For over twenty years they’ve been making it by the megakilo.” Judith sighed, then clenched her fists. “Not to sell as expensively packaged tablets of Noncon and Bancan. When I described how it stopped division in rapidly dividing cells I gave the clue to its third use. Probably by far its most important use. It stops cell division in insect pupa. So it’s a first-class insecticide. And the insects never have a chance to develop resistance. It’s now the pesticide of choice all over the world. Mogro—the farmer’s friend. Without it the cost of food would quadruple and most farmers would go bankrupt.”

  “And millions would starve in the famines. That seems a legitimate use for Impermease. As long as the farmer’s daughter keeps her hands out of the insecticides. I suppose—” I looked up at her. “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes! It’s a persistent insecticide. Most washes off but traces remain. The worst thing about Impermease is that it accumulates in the human body. The way DDT used to do. Only DDT was harmless to everything except birds and insects. In the seventies—just before it was banned—every man, woman and child in the United States had measurable amounts of DDT stored in their body fat. Absorbed with the food they ate and even the air they breathed. The stuff didn’t break down, but it didn’t do much harm either. Humans slowly got rid of it over the next ten years. Even those people who ate it by the kilo to prove how safe it was.”

  “It was banned so it must be dangerous. When I was a kid I heard of an aunt who killed herself with DDT.”

  “It wasn’t the DDT that killed her. It was drinking the several liters of kerosine in which it was dissolved.” Judith gave an impatient gesture. “I only mentioned DDT to show you how one insecticide got into everyone. Impermease has done the same. Accumulated in every woman who’s eaten regularly food from crops treated with Mogro. Now do you see how the stuff’s reached almost everybody? Affluent and starving. The starving got it with relief shipments as insecticide contamination. The poor got it as a discreet additive. An additive added by governments trying to control their runaway birth rates. They’ve reduced the birth rates—with a vengeance! That’s why the truth hasn’t yet been published. Would you like to be a Minister in some country where every peasant would try to tear you apart if he found you’d sterilized his new-bought bride?”

  “Judy—surely they’ve come up with an answer by now?” “They’ve been researching the stuff like hell for years. Under the blanket of the Social Stability Act. Trying to find some way to reverse the Impermease effect.” She sighed. “It’s hopeless! The eggs were made infertile twenty years ago. It’s ns hopeless as trying to bring a twenty-year-old corpse back to life!”

  That left me with a lot to think about during our thousand click ride north.

  XI

  The road ended abruptly at the bridge. The spans were intact but the roadway had been taken up; the planks for a makeshift replacement were piled on the far side. I skidded my Slada to a halt and grabbed my CB. “Hold it!”

  “Why?” Judith’s signal was too strong. She should be way astern.

  “There’s a bridge down. Stay where you are and let me scout.” The wrecked cars we had passed during our journey north had been warnings that bandits were now a hazard on back roads. Since leaving the highway at Standish I had insisted on riding point. For the last few kilometers we had been following a dirt road winding along beside a creek with the deep woods of Maine on each side of us and the tang of the sea ahead.

  “The Settlement’s only a little way beyond the bridge. I’m coming up!”

  It was no good my telling her once again to stay where she was. I searched the creek and the woods as I heard her bike rounding the bend. When she pulled up beside me there was a flicker of movement among the trees. I muttered, “We’re being watched.”

 
“Good!” She took off her helmet, shook out her Titian hair, and smiled at the woods and the stream.

  “Someone’s watching the bridge.” I saw the movement again. “Up there—by those beech trees.”

  “Doctor Grenfell!” A girl’s voice came from the far bank. I did not see her until she broke cover, slipping from the bushes less than fifty meters from us. A slim youngster in a dark-blue jersey and jeans who came jumping from stone to stone across the creek, golden hair flying.

  “Barbara!” Judith put her bike on its side-stand and ran to meet her. “Barbara Bernard!” They kissed, then Judith held the girl at arm’s length, smiling down at her. “You’ve grown so! I hardly recognized you.”

  “You look older too, Doctor.” She was returning Judith’s smile, humor and affection in her voice. “We thought you were dead.”

  “You can see I’m not.” Judith put her arm around the girl and brought her over to me. “This is Barbara, an old friend of mine. Barbara, meet Mister Gavin—a new friend.”

  I took her hand with that benign courtesy men of my age and type use as a defense against teenage girls. Her fingers were slim, her grip was firm. Everything about her was firm from the set of her mouth and chin to the way she stood, from the assurance with which she had greeted Judith to the way she studied me. I put her age at a young seventeen, but her gray eyes mirrored confidence and experience. I was both fascinated and warned.

  “Barb!” A boy had stepped from behind the beech trees. “Who are they? What shall I call in?” Glancing up I was startled to see he was hefting a rifle. We had been covered as well as watched.

  “Say that Doctor Grenfell’s here. That she has a man with her.” She looked at Judith’s Yama. “When Ruth radioed that a woman biker was heading this way I should have known it must be you.”

  “You’ve got lookouts up the road?”

  “Back to the fork. We like to be warned when visitors are coming. And to know who they are.” She called across the creek. “Bring up the bridge squad. And have Hilda tell Chairman Yackle that the Doc’s on her way.” She turned to Judith. “We’ll have the planks on within ten minutes. Then you’ll be able to ride in.”

  “No need for them to haul lumber.” Judith pulled on her ielmet and studied the creek. “The old ford still passable?” “For you—yes. For Mister Gavin—I don’t know.” She regarded me with frank skepticism.

  Judith laughed and tightened the chin strap of her helmet. “Gavin, wait to see if I get across. If I dump—don’t you try!” And she was astride her bike and away, weaving down the bank, plunging through the creek, and roaring up the far side.

  “She makes it look easy,” said Barbara, watching Judith’s maneuver with detached admiration. “It isn’t! You’d better wait till we’ve got the planks down.”

  I was not going to play second string under the critical eyes of this teenage brat. I didn’t dump but I did stall in mid-creek and finally arrived beside Judith muddy, sweating, and annoyed. My temper was not improved when she greeted me with advice to the effect that I should keep my revs high when my pipes were under water. I called my Slada something I usually reserve for horses. Then the bridge squad arrived and, finding they were not needed, formed an honor guard to escort us into Sutton Cove.

  Judith made a triumphant entry, with me trailing astern. At first sight the Settlement was not much to look at; several hundred wooden houses clustered around a small cove at the end of a narrow valley. Men, women, and hordes of children came pouring from the houses to greet the returning doctor; their display of affection for Judith in sharp contrast to the looks they gave me. I parked my bike beside hers outside a building which seemed to serve the duties of Council Chamber, Chapel, and Town Hall and stood ignored while she was being embraced by people of all ages and both sexes.

  A plump little man emerged from the building. “Doctor Grenfell—the Light has led you back to us! And at a time when your skills are sorely needed!”

  “Chuck Yackle—Chairman Yackle!” Judith threw her arms about him, kissing his bald head. “I thank the Light for guiding me home!”

  Amused and depressed, I turned to look down the village street toward the cove. Boats were coming in from the sea; word of her arrival had apparently reached even the fishing fleet. I watched boat after boat shouldering through the rip across the mouth of the harbor. These people looked poor, but—

  “Gavin!” Judith’s hand was on my arm. ‘This is Chuck Yackle—Chairman of the Settlement Council.”

  He beamed as he wrung my hand. “We thank the Light for returning our Physician. And we thank you, Brother Gavin, for aiding her return.” He moved to the steps of the Hall, holding up his arms to quiet the crowd. “Let us enter and give thanks to the Light for having shone upon us! Enter, all of you. And tonight we will eat together.” Chairman Yackle evidently doubled as the local Minister of Religion.

  Judith flashed me a smile before disappearing into the Hall. I watched the others crowding in after her, astonished at the excitement our arrival had caused, at the warmth of Judy’s reception. What was so great about a doctor coming back to a village? Although the American Medical Association had striven to keep the physician/population ratio reasonably low to hold the fee scale unreasonably high, there was still a surplus of doctors in most cities.

  In most cities! Of course. It would be very different for these people living on the edge of an empty ocean, isolated from the nearest town by thirty kilometers of dirt road and woods still reputed to be filled with unexploded missiles. The old and sick wouldn’t have been getting much in the way of physician care during the time Judith had been in jail. Physicians and soldiers have the same public image. I remember the rhyme I had seen on an old tombstone in Gibraltar:

  “God and the Soldier, all men adore In times of troubles, and then no more.

  When wars are over and wrongs are righted God is forgotten, the Soldier is slighted.”

  I understood better the pleasure on the faces of the men and women coming up the street from the cove. Small-boat fishing is a dangerous trade at best. A lot of these people probably had had fish hooks taken from their hands, lacerations sewn up, bones reset, without benefit of anesthetics or strong analgesics. I remembered how uncomfortable even we Troopers had been if there was no medical corpsman with us when we went on a mission. Of how we would protect the one guy who could look after us, give us relief from pain— or a painless death—if we were hit.

  There were many babies here. Most of them would have been born without even a skilled midwife in attendance. I had had to deliver a baby once myself and the memory still tended to leave me nauseated. The mother and child had lived, thank God! But during those terrible hours crouching in a ruined house, trying to help a young mother through her first labor with an ignorant old crone muttering that girl and child were lost because the head was locked or something— during those hours I would have welcomed the arrival of the worst product of any second-rate medical school in America.

  Yackle reappeared on the porch. “Join us, Brother Gavin. Come and join us. Come and pray wih us. Praise the Light with us!”

  I hesitated. Should I avoid hasslement by pretending to be a Believer? No, by God! I didn’t believe in their Light, but I’d be damned if I’d insult It—or Him—or Her—with hypocrisy. “I’m sorry, Mister Yackle. But Fm not one of the chosen.”

  “Not a Believer?” His smile tamed to a flustered frown. “But you came with Doctor Grenfell—-I had assumed—-then please wait while we have our little service of thanksgiving.” He attempted another smile and followed his flock into the Hall.

  I stood on the porch, alone with myself, two motorcycles, and an empty street. From inside the Hall came the roar of voices, lustily singing a hymn whose tune roused childhood memories but whose words differed from those I remembered. Their Teacher had borrowed tunes as well as myths to weave into his synthetic religion.

  A single boat glided into the cove and moored alongside the pier. A heavyset weatherbeaten man in a
windbreaker, cap, and seaboots climbed onto the wharf and started up the village street, moving like a sturdy ship breasting a rip tide. When he reached the steps he held out Ms hand. “You must be Mister Gavin. The gentleman who’s brought the Doc back. Heard about you on the radio. Like to thank you myself. My name’s Enoch.”

  As we were shaking hands Barbara appeared in the doorway and snapped, “Come on, Dad! We’ve just started, “Coming, girl!” He smiled at me. “Reckon you’ve met my little girl already?”

  “I have indeed!” I looked from one to the other. This large and friendly man seemed an unlikely father for the slim, detached Barbara, but the shape of his nose confirmed that he was.

  She tugged at his sleeve, ignoring me. “Move it, Dad! Everybody else is inside.”

  “Then I’d better be too!” He winked at me over the top of his daughter’s blonde head. “See you later, I hope, Mister Gavin.” And he followed her into the Hall. I looked after Mm. At least one of the natives appeared to be friendly.

  The psalm-singing began to get on my nerves. To escape I walked down the village street toward the wharf, and began to revise my initial impression of Sutton Cove as a poor and primitive Settlement. The houses, though clad in unpainted sMngles, were solidly built on permacrete foundations. The people crowding into the Hall had been wearing worn but serviceable working clothes and were obviously well fed. And the boats at anchor in the cove made me realize that there was a lot more here than met the superficial eye.

  They looked like traditional Cape Islanders. Between twelve and fifteen meters from stem to stem, high bows to shoulder through cresting waves and low counters for the easy hauling of lobster traps and trawl, a hull-form evolved from a hundred years of power-boat fishing on some of the roughest seas in the world. But the traditional Cape Islander had been planked with softwood and had had a working life of little more than a decade. These boats were built of veralloy and had a potential life of centuries. I hunkered down on the edge of the wharf, inspecting the boat moored alongside, Enoch’s Aurora.