«I see,» said Robinson after a long time. He nodded, like a man struck a stunning blow and not yet fully aware of it. «I see. The reason—»
«Is obvious.»
«Yes. People going through radioactive areas—»
«Why, no. That would only account for a few. But—»
«No matter. The fact’s there, and that’s enough. We have to decide what to do about it.»
«And soon,» Drummond’s jaw set. «It’s wrecking our culture. We at least preserved our historical continuity, but even that’s going now. People are going crazy as birth after birth is monstrous. Fear of the unknown, striking at minds still stunned by the war and its immediate aftermath. Frustration of parenthood, perhaps the most basic instinct there is. It’s leading to infanticide, desertion, despair, a cancer at the root of society. We’ve got to act.»
«How? How?» Robinson stared numbly at his hands.
«I don’t know. You’re the leader. Maybe an educational campaign, though that hardly seems practicable. Maybe an acceleration of your program for reintegrating the country. Maybe—I don’t know.»
Drummond stuffed tobacco into his pipe. He was near the end of what he had, but would rather take a few good smokes than a lot of niggling puffs. «Of course,» he said thoughtfully, «it’s probably not the end of things. We won’t know for a generation or more, but I rather imagine the mutants can grow into society. They’d better, for they’ll outnumber the humans. The thing is, if we just let matters drift there’s no telling where they’ll go. The situation is unprecedented. We may end up in a culture of specialized variations, which would be very bad from an evolutionary standpoint. There may be fighting between mutant types, or with humans. Interbreeding may produce worse freaks, particularly when accumulated recessives start showing up. Robinson, if we want any say at all in what’s going to happen in the next few centuries, we have to act quickly. Otherwise it’ll snowball out of all control.»
«Yes. Yes, we’ll have to act fast. And hard.» Robinson straightened in his chair. Decision firmed his countenance, but his eyes were staring. «We’re mobilized,» he said. «We have the men and the weapons and the organization. They won’t be able to resist.»
The ashy cold of Drummond’s emotions stirred, but it was with a horrible wrenching of fear. «What are you getting at?» he snapped.
«Racial death. All mutants and their parents to be sterilized whenever and wherever detected.»
«You’re crazy!» Drummond sprang from his chair, grabbed Robinson’s shoulders across the desk, and shook him. «You… why, it’s impossible! You’ll bring revolt, civil war, final collapse!»
«Not if we go about it right.» There were little beads of sweat studding the general’s forehead. «I don’t like it any better than you, but it’s got to be done or the human race is finished. Normal births a minority—» He surged to his feet, gasping. «I’ve thought a long time about this. Your facts only confirmed my suspicions. This tears it. Can’t you see? Evolution has to proceed slowly. Life wasn’t meant for such a storm of change. Unless we can save the true human stock, it’ll be absorbed and differentiation will continue till humanity is a collection of freaks, probably intersterile. Or… there must be a lot of lethal recessives. In a large population, they can accumulate unnoticed till nearly everybody has them, and then start emerging all at once. That’d wipe us out. It’s happened before, in rats and other species. If we eliminate mutant stock now, we can still save the race. It won’t be cruel. We have sterilization techniques which are quick and painless, not upsetting the endocrine balance. But it’s got to be done!» His voice rose to a raw scream, broke. «It’s got to be done!»
Drummond slapped him, hard. He drew a shuddering breath, sat down, and began to cry, and somehow that was the most horrible sight of all. «You’re crazy,» said the aviator. «You’ve gone nuts and with brooding alone on this the last six months, without knowing or being able to act. You’ve lost all perspective.
«We can’t use violence. In the first place, it would break our tottering, cracked culture irreparably, into a mad-dog finish fight. We’d not even win it. We’re outnumbered and we couldn’t hold down a continent, eventually a planet. And remember what we said once, about abandoning the old savage way of settling things, that never brings a real settlement at all? We’d throw away a lesson our noses were rubbed in not three years ago. We’d return to the beast—to ultimate extinction.
«And anyway,» he went on very quietly, «it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Mutants would still be born. The poison is everywhere. Normal parents will give birth to mutants, somewhere along the line. We just have to accept that fact, and live with it. The new human race will have to.»
«I’m sorry.» Robinson raised his face from his hands. It was a ghastly visage, gone white and old, but there was calm on it. «I—blew my top. You’re right. I’ve been thinking of this, worrying and wondering, living and breathing it, lying awake nights, and when I finally sleep I dream of it. I… yes, I see your point. And you’re right.»
«It’s O.K. You’ve been under a terrific strain. Three years with never a rest, and the responsibility for a nation, and now this—Sure, everybody’s entitled to be a little crazy. We’ll work out a solution, somehow.»
«Yes, of course.» Robinson poured out two stiff drinks and gulped his. He paced restlessly, and his tremendous ability came back in waves of strength and confidence. «Let me see—Eugenics, of course. If we work hard, we’ll have the nation tightly organized inside of ten years. Then… well, I don’t suppose we can keep the mutants from interbreeding, but certainly we can pass laws to protect humans and encourage their propagation. Since radical mutations would probably be intersterile anyway, and most mutants handicapped one way or another, a few generations should see humans completely dominant again.»
Drummond scowled. He was worried. It wasn’t like Robinson to be unreasonable. Somehow, the man had acquired a mental blind spot where this most ultimate of human problems was concerned. He said slowly, «That won’t work either. First, it’d be hard to impose and enforce. Second, we’d be repeating the old Herrenvolk notion. Mutants are inferior, mutants must be kept in their place—to enforce that, especially on a majority, you’d need a full-fledged totalitarian state. Third, that wouldn’t work either, for the rest of the world, with almost no exceptions, is under no such control and we’ll be in no position to take over that control for a long time—generations. Before then, mutants will dominate everywhere over there, and if they resent the way we treat their kind here, we’d better run for cover.»
«You assume a lot. How do you know those hundreds or thousands of diverse types will work together? They’re less like each other than like humans, even. They could be played off against each other.»
«Maybe. But that would be going back onto the old road of treachery and violence, the road to Hell. Conversely, if every not-quite-human is called a ‘mutant,’ like a separate class, he’ll think he is, and act accordingly against the lumped-together ‘humans’. No, the only way to sanity—to survival—is to abandon class prejudice and race hate altogether, and work as individuals. We’re all… well, Earthlings, and sub-classification is deadly. We all have to live together, and might as well make the best of it.»
«Yeah… yeah, that’s right too.»