New Worlds 4

by Edited By David Garnett

  After inserting her card and being let through the doors into the waiting area, she waited for hours surrounded by ill, injured and slightly mad people, most of whom eyed her and the enormous black pram with unconcealed resentment. Not for the first time, she wished she had an IC. The idea of being able to touch her wrist and call up information from anywhere in the world, or even to be able to talk to a friend, made her almost faint with longing. Or maybe it was the air, heavy with sickness and despair, that brought her close to fainting. Eventually, inevitably, Becky woke up and started crying again. Rocking the pram didn’t help, so she refilled the baby bottle with milk from her bag of groceries. For a few minutes, as Becky gulped it down, there was blessed quiet. Then she turned her head and puked it all up.

  ‘Oh, dear... oh—’ As she was trying, fairly uselessly, to clean up the mess of curdled milk with the one crumpled tissue she’d found in her bag, a passing carer (with Limited Nursing Skills, according to her badge) took notice of her plight and brought her some disposable towels.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you so much.’

  ‘You’ve got your work cut out for you - I sure don’t envy you. First-time babies are bad enough, but at least they’re portable, and cute. Try picking up something this big, huh! But I guess you must love her a lot. They say knowing your lover as your mother or your child adds an extra dimension to your love. ‘

  She’d heard that said on a soap opera, and was nodding in recognition of the sentiment before she realized what it implied. ‘Oh, no. I’m not her lover - I don’t even know her!’

  ‘Is that so? The money must be good, then. Husband hired you, I guess?’

  ‘No. I don’t know her - I don’t know who she is. I just found her outside my local mall—’

  ‘Whoa! Take her back!’

  ‘I can’t. She’d been abandoned. She was screaming her head off. There was a note pinned to her blanket—’

  ‘And you’re the lucky sucker who found her.’

  ‘I couldn’t just leave her.’

  ‘Why not? Her family did.’

  ‘She needs to be looked after. She can’t do anything for herself. I know she’s got the body of a grown woman, but her mind’s a blank slate. She might not look like one, but she is just a baby, really. Would you be able to walk past an abandoned baby?’

  ‘I sure wouldn’t take it home with me.’

  ‘I don’t want to take her home, I want to find out where she belongs. The police were no help. Do you think...?’

  The carer’s sigh and rolled eyes told her she was wasting her time, but: ‘I’ll try to find somebody who can see you.’

  But when she did finally achieve an interview with a member of the administrative staff, Ms Bogan, there was no help on offer. ‘Can’t you just keep her in the health centre for a few days, until you find out who she is? Or send her to a hospital or a nursery - you must have a contract with one of those places. Isn’t that what you’d do with an abandoned baby?’

  ‘That is not a baby.’

  ‘Mentally she is. There’s no difference, they’re both equally helpless.’

  ‘She didn’t have to make herself helpless.’

  ‘You could say the same thing about any addict, or someone who tried to commit suicide. Would you turn them away if they were at risk, or dying, because they’d done it to themselves?’

  ‘That depends,’ said Ms Bogan coolly. ‘Are we talking about an alcoholic with a decent insurance package, or a down-and-out? Surely you’re familiar with the concept of community care?’ Her smile was as disturbing as the grin on a bare skull; it flashed and was gone. ‘Unless the indigent are in need of heroic intervention to save their lives we invoke the concept of community care. Which is what I will do now, also pointing out to you that she is not a member of our community.’

  Hostility towards the super-rich, the ‘immortals’, was common among the general public, more so than Renate’s awe, yet she was shocked to encounter it here. She had romantic notions about people who worked in health care, due to her addiction to the same dramatic serials that fed her fantasies about the super-rich.

  ‘Well, what do you suggest I do? Take her to a rich people’s hospital - if I could find one - and throw her on their mercy?’

  ‘There’s no point. She could be from anywhere, from an enclave in Switzerland or Colorado as likely as one around here. Anyway, I’m sure that by now her ex-husband has had her declared incompetent and taken all her assets in trust. If she lives to grow up, she’ll have her work cut out for her finding him again and fighting to get it back. If she dies, well, it’s not his fault and he’d probably inherit anyway.’

  ‘She could die? Isn’t she immortal?’

  ‘Just because the tabloids called them immortals, and they happen to like the name, doesn’t mean they are. She’ll live a long time if she’s lucky, but a lot of the things that could kill you could kill her - a gun or a knife or a fall from a high place, to mention only three.’

  It was too late to go anywhere else by the time she left the health centre, even if she’d had anywhere else in mind to go. So she took Becky home. There was nothing else she could do.

  ~ * ~

  Len didn’t agree, but he was basically an easy-going man, and as he’d never in all the years they’d been together won an argument with Renate, he didn’t put up much of a fight. He gave a leave-me-out-of-it shrug and plugged himself back into his sports programme and left his wife to the task of settling their uninvited visitor down for the night.

  Not liking the idea of leaving Becky alone, Renate stayed home from work the next morning and phoned the Office of Public Health and Happiness, where someone who preferred to let herself be represented on the viewing screen as a hologrammatic Mickey Mouse, took Becky’s details.

  ‘I can see that’s a problem for you, and all of us here deeply sympathize, but I’m afraid this citizen doesn’t fall within our criteria of those truly in need.’

  ‘But how much more in need could she be? She’s completely helpless, she’s just a baby!’

  ‘It is certainly understandable that you would see her in that way, but the fact of the matter is she is not a baby but an adult who has made herself deliberately helpless. And as you probably know, in cases of deliberate failure to provide for the self, the body public is not morally required to provide assistance of any kind.’

  ‘But somebody has to help! However it happened, she is effectively helpless now.’

  ‘Her family has the moral and legal obligation to provide care.’

  ‘But I don’t know who her family is!’

  ‘You are her family.’

  ‘Me! I’m not related to her -1 never saw her before yesterday!’

  ‘If you’ll forgive me saying so, arguing on the basis of blood relationships is terribly outdated. And of course legal documents need not be drawn up to make a partnership valid - anyone who has ever fallen in love knows that! It is only necessary that you choose to live together and care about each other to be recognized as a family in the eyes of the public community.’

  ‘But we don’t live together!’

  ‘You have just been telling me how you took her home with you last night. You took on the role of care-giver, and however it came about you have entered into a meaningful, ongoing relationship with Becky, as you call her. She’s being cared for by you. There’s no problem.’

  ‘There certainly is a problem!’

  At once Ms Mickey was all solicitousness. ‘There is? Are you finding it difficult to cope? Would you like a visit from a social worker?’

  Argument was clearly useless. She declined the social worker - a phrase that had been a foul insult in her childhood but which had recently been rehabilitated - but one turned up at their flat a few days later. It was, like the peacekeeper, an Artificial, and just as understanding. It let them know, in no uncertain terms, that Becky was now their responsibility, and that any attempt to evade that responsibility, by abuse, neglect or abandonment, would be very
harshly condemned. If necessary, Becky would be taken into care, but, in such an extreme case, both Renate and Len would be looking at prison sentences.

  Len was wonderful in adversity. Never a word of blame, and he was with her all the way. In all the years they’d been together perhaps she’d come to take him a little for granted, but every now and again she realized how lucky she was to have him.

  He helped out more with Becky than he had with their own daughter. He had only a part-time job now, whereas when Tamara had been small he’d been working full-time and more, while she had supplemented their income as best she could with piecework that could be done at home. Also, she had never needed his help with Tamara as desperately as she did with Becky, who she could barely lift off the floor.

  She tried to find someone else to look after the baby, even part-time, but it was a job no one wanted. All the child-minders charged over the odds because she wasn’t a ‘normal’ baby and because they thought they scented money. In the end, Renate had to give up her job. The loss of her weekly wages was a hardship, otherwise she didn’t mind. Looking after a baby, even though it wasn’t her baby, even though it wasn’t really a baby, was lots more fun than production line work. She’d always wanted more than one child, and after it became clear there would be no more she’d pinned her hopes on her daughter producing some grandchildren before Renate was too old to enjoy them. Not that her daughter, now twenty-three, had yet shown any inclinations in that direction. Tamara, in fact, had turned into something of a disappointment all round. She’d been a wonderful child, an unmixed blessing as far as her parents were concerned, but now she’d joined a Christian cult and become a religious fanatic. Renate’s friends told her she should be glad her daughter hadn’t followed the path taken by 82 per cent of her schoolmates and become a criminal and/or drug addict, but she frankly couldn’t see that this was any improvement.

  Despite all the problems Becky caused - poverty the chief among them - she did fill a gap. Although her great, ungainly adult body lacked the vulnerable charm of infancy, she was more like a real baby than the incontinent, mentally subnormal adult she resembled. Like all babies, she was growing and learning with astonishing speed, changing every day, gaining in ability and alertness with every passing hour. When her brown eyes locked on to Renate’s and she smiled that special, sweet smile of recognition, she couldn’t help responding. Their bonding took longer than it had with Tamara, but within four months she was every bit as helplessly in love with this second-timer as she’d been with her own baby.

  Which was probably just as well, since her own baby denounced her for giving aid and comfort to an Evil One and declared she would have nothing more to do with her natural mother until such time as she renounced her past wickedness and joined the One True Church.

  Renate had known that her daughter’s sect abhorred the immortals as going against nature, man and God, but ‘What about Christian charity? I could hardly leave her to die ...’

  ‘Of course you could - and should! The sooner God reclaims each Evil One, the better for all of us. By their actions, by attempting to evade God’s will for them, they have attempted to become more than human, and so, by renouncing our common humanity, they must forfeit all human help. I shall pray for you, Mother.’

  For once, Renate was glad that looking after Becky left her so little time to think about her own problems. The new baby’s development seemed uncannily quick, and although the more Becky could do the more trouble she was, Renate nevertheless felt a mother’s pride in watching her gigantic darling learn to crawl and then to stand. Unfortunately, when she used the bookcase to pull herself to her feet she also pulled the bookcase over on top of her, but no childhood is survived without some damage.

  Damage to the furniture and the flat was the least of it. Renate was covered in bruises from her regular tussles to stop the baby from climbing out the window (they were on the eighth storey) or playing with the microwave. Once, as they grappled together, Becky got a stranglehold on her neck and didn’t let go until some time after Renate had passed out. She realized then that the baby could have killed her. Renate was always aware that she was dealing with a baby, and she restrained herself, fearful of doing Becky some injury, but Becky had no such fears, no such restraint. After the throttling Renate knew she had to be quite ruthless or she might end up dead. Harshness with children did not come easily to her, but she hardened her heart and worked on impressing Becky with the notion that she must never, ever fight against her mother or father, and must always obey them. She could so easily have killed herself, or all of them, during an unsupervised moment that Renate sometimes had to tie her down while she went to the toilet or got on with cooking their dinner. She did this only when it was absolutely necessary, and never for very long, but it was unfortunate that it was during one of those times that the social worker chose to pay a surprise call.

  She should count herself lucky to be let off with a warning. The bruises on baby Becky were noted (‘What about my bruises?’ demanded Renate) and she was put on the ‘at risk’ register. There would be more visits. The prospect of having Becky taken away was by this time more chilling than the threat of a prison sentence, at least to Renate. She wasn’t sure how Len felt, he wasn’t in the habit of talking about his feelings, but she could see that he had grown fond of their foster-daughter.

  There was one good result from having Becky on the ‘at risk’ register: Renate finally received a ‘carer’s allowance’. It wasn’t much, it nowhere near made up for her loss of wages, but it was something.

  By seven months Becky was walking and saying a few words. By the end of her first year with them she was toilet trained and talking in sentences. Remembering how long it had taken Tamara to pass those particular milestones, Renate was impressed. She wondered if she could take any credit for the child’s quickness - had she really been too lenient, too easy-going with Tamara? But then someone told her that immortals seldom took their second childhoods in real time, they usually condensed eighteen years into nine. Even with all the time in the world, people were still obsessed with saving it.

  Knowing that her one-year-old was ‘really’ two made Renate hopeful of getting back to work sooner than she’d thought. Most toddlers spent time apart from their mothers in playgroups - if not all day, then at least a few mornings a week. But when Renate began to enquire she found no one willing to take Becky. She was too big; she’d be disruptive, impossible to control, and she wasn’t really a toddler.

  ‘Of course she’s a toddler! She’s only been walking for six months! What else is she if she’s not a toddler?’

  ‘She’s a second-timer,’ said the playgroup leader. ‘She should be with her own kind.’

  It was prejudice; it was class-hatred, pure and simple. There was a toddlers’ group for second-timers in a wealthy enclave across town, but even if she could have afforded the fees, without a private vehicle, travel between those two areas was practically impossible. She would just have to keep Becky at home with her until she was ready for school.

  But when Renate began to enquire about schooling, she ran into a bureaucratic nightmare of double-talk and double-think. Becky was either far too young (two and a half) or far too old (it was anybody’s guess, since her birth identity was still a mystery, but the idea of living through a second childhood had no appeal for anyone under a hundred years old) for a place in a local school. A school for children with special needs might be indicated, but few had places and those that did (a school for the deaf, a school for the multiply handicapped) were inappropriate.

  The present government had been making noises about its commitment to equal opportunities and education for everyone, so Renate wrote to her representative to enquire about the possibility of a state-funded place for her daughter in one of the private-sector second-timers’ schools. His reply was unhelpful.

  After some waffling about his government’s commitment to equal opportunities he went on to say: ‘Note that word “equal”. Your fos
ter-daughter has already been educated, and I would hazard a guess that she received an exceptionally fine and prolonged education. She has no need of another one, because the first is still there in her mind, waiting to be accessed when she’s eighteen. Now, when there are scarcely enough places in our schools for all the poor children who need them, where is the fairness in providing another one for your foster-daughter? She doesn’t need a second education; she doesn’t need training for anything - it’s not as if she’ll grow up to need a job!’

  ‘No,’ muttered Renate to herself, ‘but I do!’

  Eventually, through a combination of psychological blackmail and luck, they managed to get Becky a place in a local primary school

  Becky hated it. She was smarter than everybody else, she said, and didn’t like all those little people; she wanted to stay home with Mummy and Daddy. She’d throw a tantrum or make herself sick in the mornings to get her way.

  Renate felt close to despair. She’d found herself a job, but wouldn’t have it long if she kept taking days off, and there was little point in having it just to pay the lion’s share of her wages to baby-sitters. At an age when most children were reaching out, becoming more interested in the wide world, turning away from their parents towards friends their own age, Becky was going through a clinging phase. At least, Renate hoped it was a phase. The demands of this child - who was physically a woman considerably taller and heavier than herself - to be picked up and carried were suffocating. Becky knew very well that Renate couldn’t pick her up but rather than accepting this physical fact as she had when she was younger and less reasonable, Becky would simply throw herself on her mother and let herself go limp, knocking them both to the floor.