by John Brunner
“I…” Closing her eyes, pressing her hands against her temples, Claudia swayed. One of the boys helped her to resume her seat.
“Are you still in any doubt, Dad?” David murmured. “Oh, I called you ‘Mr. Levin’ just now, didn’t I? Well, I think we ought to forget about that, and even about the use of Dad. After all, very shortly half of us are going to be on extremely intimate terms with you.”
Peter’s mind had wandered down an alleyway of the imagination, at the ends of whose forking branches stood small but menacing bands of children, his children, waiting to waylay the VIP he and other reporters were accompanying: a cabinet minister, an ambassador, the chairman of a bank, the managing director of an arms company, the spokesman for a government-in-exile… No. Not menacing. Welcoming. Ready, and able, to change their minds.
Or burn them alive.
Surely some people must be immune…?
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” David snapped.
What did I miss? Something about “intimate terms”—Oh, my God. He can’t mean it. How can he possibly mean it?
Frantic counterarguments sprang to mind—inbreeding, imbecility, why me and not the boys?—but he was unable to utter them. David’s words were inexorable.
“It has to be you to start with. I haven’t yet pinned down the gene or genes involved, though I’m working on it, of course. The power is fully expressed in us, yet you don’t seem to possess more than a slight trace, a commonplace sort of personal charm, so one can only assume a connection with your inheritance on your mother’s side. I plan to look into that later. But since every last one of us has the power, and we need to increase our numbers as fast as possible, we’ll have to start with you. Meantime, of course, we boys will play our part. There won’t be any lack of willing women, as I can personally testify… Speaking of which,” he added maliciously, “doesn’t it turn you on, the prospect of making love with so many under-age girls? They’re all pretty, they’re all healthy, they all have lovely figures—”
“Shut up!” Peter exploded. “I won’t have any part of it!”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ellen said, rising from beside him. Stepping to the center of the floor with the slinky elegance of a professional stripper, she writhed her sweater from around her torso, tugged it clear of her hair, tossed it aside. Cupping her small bare shapely breasts, firming her nipples between forefinger and thumb, she leaned first one and then the other toward what was suddenly her father’s eager mouth. A fraction of an inch from his lips, she snatched herself out of range.
But Peter had hardened on the instant. How quickly was conspicuous from his discomfort. The other children burst into cruel laughter.
Yet at the same time he felt as though, at long last, he had met the woman of his youthful dreams, the one whose name he had used as a key to his computer passwords…
Sharing the general mirth at least to the extent of a broad grin, David said, “I thought so… Well, in fact, of course, you won’t have the chance to actually screw your daughters. They’re not inclined to get next to anyone who cares as little as you did about the fate of his offspring. Still, in a sense it will be quite like old times, won’t it? I don’t know what they used to arouse you at Chinn-Wilkinson, but given the impact Ellen just demonstrated it shouldn’t be too hard for the girls to make you—what did they say in the Bible about Onan? Ah, yes—‘spill your seed’ as often as we require it!”
Indeed, to Peter’s shame and sick dismay, his penis was throbbing in his pants against his will…
With indescribable horror he looked from each to other of his children.
And felt wave on wave of uncontrollable, intolerable love.
Launching one last desperate appeal for help, he turned to Claudia. Tears were trickling down her cheeks. Nonetheless she managed to force out defiant words.
“Have you asked the girls how they like the idea of being turned into baby-minders at their age?”
“That doesn’t enter into it,” David sighed. “Thanks to Bernie, we’ve found an expert willing to transplant fetuses as soon as they’re viable—including yours, of course; you won’t have to carry it to term. So the girls can start again every eight weeks, which they welcome because it means their power won’t be weakened by having periods. I believe you’ve met the person I’m talking about: Dr. Ada Grant? She says there’ll be plenty of takers because so many men are infertile nowadays owing to environmental poisons… You might say that we plan to reproduce like cuckoos, if at a faster rate. I only hope it may be fast enough!”
For some reason that reference to cuckoos struck Peter as incredibly funny. He strove to master his reaction, and failed as completely as he had failed to control his—now cold, now sticky-wet—ejaculation.
The door of the drawing room swung wide. Alice entered. “If you lot have finished,” she said brightly, “lunch is ready—Why, what on earth is wrong?”
And stood there, baffled, at a loss to understand why one of their guests was weeping silently and the other lost in paroxysm after paroxysm of hysterical laughter.
—South Petherton
February-June 1987
