There was a short silence.
A kind of anguish was written on Norman’s face. Studying it, Elihu said finally, “It’s remarkable how much you’ve altered in the few days since I met you.”
“What? How do you mean?”
“Laying away your ancestor to his long-time rest has improved you out of recognition. A couple of weeks ago I can imagine you chortling over the discomfiture of the paleasses in face of this breakthrough by yellowbellies. Now what seems to worry you most is the fact that people won’t get the chance to judge the idea dispassionately for themselves, but may get stampeded into stupid emotional reactions.”
“My whole life has been one long emotional reaction,” Norman said, not looking at the older man. “Shall we leave the subject and get back to the business in hand?”
He picked up the first clipped-together section of printouts and riffled the pale green pages. Pale green signified that Shalmaneser had processed the information there contained as a hypothesis; when they keyed in the real-world assumptions the printouts would be on light pink sheets.
“What does the summary say?” Elihu inquired.
“It’ll work,” Norman muttered. He set the item aside and glanced at the top page of each of the following documents. “And that, and that, and that … ‘Given the assumptions in the programme, the evaluation is favourable.’”
“It’s nice to know something is on our side,” Elihu commented caustically, and, reaching for a pen, began to make a neat tabulation of the various areas of the proposed Beninian venture where Shalmaneser said the idea was feasible.
He—one had to use the personal—had even revised the drafts of the advertisements for ex-colonial personnel.
the happening world (10)
SOUR GRAPES
“Already surgeons, doctors and nurses from all of the hundred islands are pouring into Gongilung to join the tremendous new venture directed by Professor Dr. Sugaiguntung. Parties of them have been standing in Liberty Square sometimes for hours on end in the hope of seeing Marshal Solukarta appear at the windows of the palace so that they may express directly to him their appreciation of the wonderful new era he has opened up. As the Leader explained in a television message last evening, fulfilment of this unique and magnificent programme will take time, but it is expected to be under way early next year. Meanwhile, thousands of husbands are applying to clinics all over Yatakang for vasectomy operations, explaining that they do not want to father inferior progeny now that the chance of optimising the country’s population has been offered to them.”
Delhi, India: a crowd estimated at forty thousand led by members of the League of Parents of Crippled and Handicapped Children besieged the Yatakangi Embassy for six hours today and police had to use tear-gas and sleepy-gas to disperse them.
“Chairman Yung sends congratulations to Marshal Solukarta and expresses the hope that the remarkable advance in medical science recently announced by Professor Dr. Sugaiguntung will shortly be made available to all Asians. While, of course, the great strides forward made in China, in the fields of nutrition, sanitation and genotyping, have already made the country’s population the healthiest and most able in the world, the people of Yatakang’s great ally are eager to hail and adopt this impressive Asian achievement.”
Stockholm, Sweden: the streets of every city in this, the country with the world’s oldest and most stringent eugenic legislation, were alive last night with crowds of helpless drunks bemoaning their childlessness. Ancients of seventy and eighty mingled with recently sterilised youths and girls and drank the entire available supplies of akvavit in Stockholm, Malmö and Göteborg, according to a statement by the national liquor corporation. No fatalities were reported during subsequent disturbances.
“Secretest scramble and pass by hand of secure messenger Jogajong reports sitn unfavourablest propaganda impact of announcemt kuote fantsatic unquote.”
London, England: the Minister of Health is expected to make a statement in the Commons on Tuesday.
Johannesburg, South Africa: Nathan Mdlele, a self-styled “doctor” practising here, has been arrested on charges of fraud following publication of handbills in which he claimed to be able to apply the Sugaiguntung technique to pregnant women.
“I don’t care what they say, the fact remains Larry isn’t as bright as the rest of the prodgies in his class. I know I promised that we’d have our second when I got my raise in pay, but I don’t want another dullard in the family—not now geniuses can be had to order!”
Port Moresby, New Guinea: several hundred men and women banned from parenthood under local eugenic legislation set out from the harbour here today en route for Gongilung where they hope to be able to apply for the Sugaiguntung treatment. Observers recalled the last-century spread of the cargo cults when describing the wave of hysteria that has swept the country.
Athens, Greece: in a bold stroke of publicity agents for popular TV idol Hector Yannakis today announced his willingness to help optimise the population himself, provided the shiggies calling on his services were quote reasonably attractive unquote. A storm of protest at his alleged bad taste has been overshadowed by the clamorous response from his fans.
“A hundred thousand buckadingdongs and no guarantee that it’ll work? You must be crazy! Over in Yatakang they’re doing it on the Health Service!”
Alice Springs, Australia: hospitals here are overwhelmed with disconsolate abos who had been misled by fanatical preacher Napoleon Boggs into believing that they could obtain white-skinned babies on request, according to a claim he made at a recent corroboree. Some had trekked a hundred miles on this vain errand. In a statement circulated earlier today Boggs declared it was his way of dramatising the still-inferior status of the aborigines in modern Australia.
“Look at you, you great oaf! It’s no use saying you’re sorry—that was an expensive present and when I tell Aunt Mary you broke it on the first day you had it she’ll be furious! Why did I have to start a family before I could be sure my prodgies would be fit to look after themselves?”
Tokyo, Japan: despite police activity the clock around, the wave of public suicides by men denied fatherhood owing to genetic shortcomings continues at all major Shinto shrines in the city. At one shrine which was closed to the public after five such incidents, a man succeeded in climbing to the roof sixty feet above the floor and hurling himself head-first from a ledge.
Portland, Oregon: partisans armed with thermite, napalm and explosive this morning attacked the local Eugenic Processing Board offices in broad daylight. When police swooped, cheering crowds assisted the partisans’ escape by swarming across roadways and blocking the path for the prowl cars.
“Well, one of the techniques the experts say they’re going to use in Yatakang is what they call ‘cloning’, where they take a nucleus from one of your own body-cells and put it into an ovum to grow. If they can do that, why can’t I have a child of yours? No freaking male need have anything to do with it!”
Moscow, Russia: students at the university here, members of the class due to graduate this summer who will be offered the standard alternatives of sterilisation or removal to one of the Siberian New Towns, staged an all-day sit-in at the main biological research laboratory in protest against Russia’s lagging behind a comparatively backward country like Yatakang in the crucial field of tectogenetics.