"It sounds awfully cold-blooded."
"It's not, really. In most cases children spend most of their childhood with one or both parents. Usually parents will insist on a child spending at least a year or two in a development center to be sure that the child is adjusted to social living. Take my case for example. I lived with one or the other of my parents practically all the time until I was eighteen, except for two years in a development center between fourteen and sixteen."
"You say one or the other of your parents. Aren't they married anymore?"
"Oh yes. But they are not very domestic, and their work keeps them apart a lot of the time. But take the case of my half brother Pharion. He's the son of a very talented actress who fell madly in love with Dad for a while and wanted a child by him. But they never married. He grew up in a development center almost entirely because he didn't like his parents. He was a sober minded boy and they were both too frivolous for him. Then there is my half sister Susan; she's mother's child by another great surgeon. I don't believe they were in love at all the way you mean it, but I am sure that they both hoped that their child would be a genius in surgery. Sue has lived with mother all her life."
"That sounds polygamous to me."
"No—I really don't think you could call it that. There is no custom against polygamy or polyandry, if anyone wants to. I have two friends, girls, who live together. They have a friend, a man, who lives with them most of the time. Of course I don't know but I think they are both married to him."
Perry shook his head. "I don't understand it. It seems unnatural."
"Don't worry about it, darling. You will understand in time."
Perry was much too busy for the next several days to trouble his mind with misgivings and doubts. He was happy, happier he thought than he had ever been in his life—or lives?—he could not be sure which was the proper term. Life was a picnic, a honeymoon, a delightful and interesting school, a Cook's tour, and the land of the Lotus Eaters, all rolled into one. He listened for hours to records of events that fascinated him, studied new techniques and advances in science in a medium that made his early day studies seem left handed and awkward, trudged through the mountain snows with Diana, watched her rehearse her dances, listened with her to gorgeous music and stirring drama, flew about the country-side in their car, and spent the nights in his darling's arms. Their intimacy ripened and grew. She encouraged him to talk of his early life, his childhood in Kansas, the adolescent triumph of winning an appointment as a midshipman, his school days, his life in the service, the things that he had seen and experienced, and the evaluations that he placed on all these things.
Meanwhile, as he observed the life of the modern world, listened to the records and studied the code of customs, he found in talking with Diana that his opinions had changed from the world that he had left, and that he was beginning to assess that past life from the point of view of a citizen of the modern world. That which had appeared to be the natural order of things, now seemed grotesque. Values lumped together as "sportsmanship" now appeared to be the stupid exhibitionism of savages. Things that were known as "sport" now appeared to range from harmless but pointless play to callous sadism. Nice points of "honor" between "gentlemen" struck him now as the posturing of peacocks. But most of all he came to despise the almost universal deceit, half lies and downright falsehood that had vitiated the life of 1939. He realized that it had been a land of hokum and cheat. The political speeches, the advertising slogans, the spit-licking, prostituted preachers, the billboards, the ballyhoo, the kept press, the pussy-footing professors, the incredible papier-mâché idol of "society", the yawping Neanderthal 100% Americanism, paving contracts, special concessions and other grafts, the purchased Senators and hired attorneys, the corrupt judges and cynical politicians, and over and through it all the poor desiccated spirit of the American peasant, the "wise guy" whose motto was "Cheat first, lest ye be cheated" and "Never give a sucker a break." The poor betrayed overgrown lunk who had played too young with the big boys and learned a lot of nasty habits, who had deluded himself with his own collective lies, whose father had deluded him from the best of intentions and who would in turn delude his own son from the same good intentions. The pillar of the community who taught his son that a man has to "go with a woman" but the women you marry are somehow different from the women you "go with." The mother who encourages her daughter to "make a good match" but wants to "run out of town" her sister from across the tracks who strikes a more generous bargain. The whole tribe, lying, lied to and lied about, who had been taught to admire success, even in a scoundrel, and despise failure, even in a hero.
Perry came to despise and be nauseated by all of these things, but he did not hate the people from which he came, nor loathe himself for being one of them, for he knew these people, and he knew that they were good people, warm-hearted and generous, yes, and brave and courageous. He knew that any one of the posturing morons among those 100%ers would dive under the wheels of a locomotive to rescue a child, that the crooked real-estate promoter would buy a meal for any hungry man, and the vicariously ambitious mother would go without food to buy her daughter a party dress. He knew that kindliness and generosity were as universal as deception and cut-throat competition. Perry realized that not one in a thousand men had ever had a chance to act the decent, honest creature that he potentially was. He knew that the ordinary man from 1939 was too weak-willed and too naive to stand up against the system in which he found himself.
The thing for which Perry most admired the Americans of his period was that in them, potentially, lay 2086. In a short century and a half these callous, kind hearted, gullible, deceitful bumpkins had stumbled and zig-zagged into a culture they could be proud of. Somehow or other (Cathcart's explanations seemed too simple now) the universal longing of the older generations that things might be different for their children had borne fruit. Perhaps that alone had accounted for it. Perhaps to have the desire for better things for our children, and our children's children, than we had for ourselves is to be immortal and to become divine.
Perry had ample opportunity as the days marched by to see this culture as well as to hear about it and view it in shadow show. He visited the socialistic state of Wisconsin which had grown up in its own direction within the framework of the federation. Diana and he spent several days in the Gulf States where there still remained the large group of blacks not yet assimilated by the white majority. Here he found a culture as free as the rest of the country—perhaps less highly mechanized, but undoubtedly richer in arts, and social graces, and zest for living.
Gradually Diana introduced Perry to her friends and helped him over the rough spots in adjusting himself to new social customs. After a few weeks of the casual, easy, good-humored atmosphere of her circle of acquaintances, he felt, and she agreed, that he was ready to get by in any company without betraying the peculiar circumstances of his life. He had acquired some of the modern liking for privacy and decided not to expand the number of those who knew.
One morning about six weeks after his advent Diana announced that she expected a visitor. Perry looked up with interest. "Who is it? Anyone I know?"
"No. It's a young fellow named Bernard. I used to be very close to him. He's a dancer, too. We used to be partners."
"What do you mean, 'used to be very close to him'?"
"Why, I was very fond of him. We lived together about a year."
"What!"
"Why, Perry, what's the matter?"