The Seed of Earth

At the moment of decision he hung back, an act not characteristic of him. But he hesitated only a handful of moments. He had come this far; he realized that there could be no turning back now.

The office door was the old-fashioned kind, manually operated. He grasped the handle and pulled it open. He stepped inside.

A dozen teenagers, boys and girls, stood at a table to the left of the door, frowning busily over the registry questionnaire. To the right, several others stood on line, waiting to be admitted to the medical office for their physical examinations. All of them looked scared. Noonan smiled inwardly, knowing that by his action today he was permitting some frightened, reluctant little person to spend twenty-four extra hours on Earth.

He strode to the reception desk and said, clearly, so that everyone in the room could hear him, 'My name is Noonan. I want to volunteer.'

A dozen heads swivelled round to peer at him. There was a silence in the room. The receptionist muttered something automatic and conducted him inside, to an office whose door bore the label Mr. Harness.

Mr. Harness was a timorous-looking, clerkish, driedout little man with a pretentiously solemn manner. He offered Noonan a chair and said, 'Do I understand that you wish to volunteer for selection?'

'You understand right.'

Mr. Harness steepled his fingers in a thoughtful way.

'We don't get many volunteers these days, as you can imagine. You're the first in more than a month.'

Noonan shrugged. 'Do I get a medal?'

Mr. Harness looked uncomfortable. 'Not exactly. But you do get certain privileges that the ordinary conscripts won't be entitled to. You're aware of that, aren't you?'

'I know that volunteers get their first pick of the women,' Noonan said bluntly. 'Maybe they get better food on the starship going out, too. But the women angle is the only privilege I'm interested in.'

'Ah - yes. Of course, Mr. - Mr.—'

'Noonan. Ky Noonan.'

The Bureau man reached for a data blank and a pen.

'We might as well get the details down, Mr. Noonan.

Would you spell that first name, please?'

Noonan's lips twitched with sudden annoyance. 'Cyril.

C-Y-R-I-L. Cyril Franklin Noonan. I call myself Ky.' The effete first name had been his mother's idea; he detested it, but all his official records bore that name, and he was too proud a man to apply for an authorized legal name-change. He called himself Ky, and let it go at that.

'Date of birth?'

'Fourth of January 2086.'

'Making you - ah - thirty. Your occupation, please?'

'Most recently, I was a policeman. A lot of other things before that.'

'Any special training? Medicine, the law, science, engineering?'

'I know how to use these—' Noonan held out his big hands - 'and I know how to use this.' He touched his forehead. 'But no professional training, no.'

Harness looked up. 'May I ask why you're volunteering, Mr. Noonan? You're not required to answer of course, but for my own personal curiosity—'

Noonan smiled. A volunteer had certain special privileges, and reticence was one of them. So long as he was deemed psychologically and physiologically fit for colonization, and so long as he was not rendered ineligible by the existence of young children who would be orphaned by his volunteering, and so long as he had not committed any serious crime, he was not required to explain. But old-maidish men like Harness wanted to know all the gossip, Noonan thought.

He said, 'For your own personal curiosity, I'm volunteering because I'm tired of staying on Earth and want to try someplace else. I'm not in debt and I haven't ruined any innocent wenches lately and I'm not volunteering to escape from a dominating mother. I'm just signing up because I want to see what it's like out there.'

Harness seemed terrified by the booming outburst. He shrank back in his chair and said, 'Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Noonan. I wasn't implying - now, if you'll simply fill out the rest of this data blank—'

Noonan filled it out. The questionnaire was a standard one; it wanted to know what jobs he'd held, what special skills, if any, he had had, what diseases he had contracted, what relatives, if any, there were. He listed as many of his jobs as he could remember, drew a casual X through the column of diseases none of which he had ever had, and left a question mark in the next-of-kin column. His parents were probably still alive, and for all he knew still living in West Virginia, but he hadn't been in touch with them for fifteen years and didn't see any point in doing it now.

He turned the blank over and found himself being asked whether he had ever been pregnant and whether he had ever had certain specific feminine complaints.

Noonan looked up. 'You sure you gave me the right form to fill out?'

Harness managed a faint grin. 'We use the same form for both sexes. Ignore the sections that aren't relevant, and go on.'

Noonan went on. When it came to the section that asked. How much time will you need to settle your affairs?, he wrote in impressive capitals, NONE. Signing the sheet, he handed it back to Harness, who skimmed through it and lifted his eyebrows prissily when he came to the final entry.

You're willing to leave immediately, Mr. Noonan?'

'Why not? My affairs are in order. I don't have much property and I don't have much money, and I don't have anybody to give it to. So I'll just hand over everything I own to charity. I won't be needing money where I'm going.'

'Very well,' Harness said crisply. 'Today is October eighth. Will you report back here in three days?'

'Three days? Why?'

'According to law, you have three days to reconsider your decision. If you still want to volunteer at the end of the week, come back here and we'll finish processing your application.'

Noonan shook his head. 'I ain't gonna do any reconsidering. I made my mind up before I came in here.'

'The law prescribes—'

'To hell with the law. I came here to sign up now, not three days from now. Three days from now I want to be out of here. You get me?'

Harness looked flustered and upset, as if this deviation from accustomed routine had left him hopelessly confused and bewildered. 'Well - it's irregular, but I suppose we can waive the waiting period—'

"Yeah. Waive it.'

'Just one moment, Mr. Noonan.'

Harness swivelled around and pulled a thick leather-bound book from a shelf. He thumbed through it for several minutes while Noonan watched with mounting impatience, inwardly cursing the maddening network of regulation and ordinance that bureaucrats could weave around a man who simply wanted to join up and get moving.

Finally Harness looked up and said, 'You're in luck, it seems. The waiting period is a privilege, not a mandatory regulation. It can be waived.'

'Okay. Waive it. When do I leave?'

Order restored, Mr. Harness steepled his fingers again, carefully aligning thumb against thumb, index finger against index finger, and along down until his pinkies touched. 'It may still take a while, I'm afraid. The first thing to do is to send you next door for a medical and psychological checkup. Lord knows you look healthy enough, but one never can tell, can one?'

He seemed to be waiting for Noonan to agree with the platitude before he went on. Noonan remained silent.

After a hesitant moment Mr. Harness continued, 'If you pass your tests this afternoon, we'll forward your papers to the Board One headquarters in New York, and you'll be included in the next list to be made up. After you're assigned to a ship, there's a wait of seven days before blastoff. No matter how impatient you are to leave, there's no getting around that seven-day wait.'

'While you check up on me and make sure I'm not skipping out on a jail term or something like that.'

Mr. Harness looked uncomfortable. 'The seven-day wait is mandatory, Mr. Noonan. You must know, certainly, that we have a certain amount of screening to do.'