A Creed for the Third Millennium (27 page)

'No good, Mama,' he said, starting to
walk again. 'I respect her. Sometimes I even like her. But I couldn't love her.
You see, she doesn't need love.'

'I don't agree with you at all,' said
Mama stoutly. 'Some people hide their feelings very well. She's like that. I
don't know why. All I do know is that she's the right woman for you.'

'Oh, look, Mama! A concert on the lake!'
And he began to walk faster down the hill towards the ornamental lake, where
four musicians on a moored pontoon were playing Mozart.

Mama gave up. There was no competing with
Mozart.

Summer swelled up on its own hot air,
lush and oh so languorous, more ephemeral in these days when people were
perpetually aware of its brevity and mortality, but no less hot, hot, hot; how
could a place so arctically cold in winter be so tropically hot and humid in
summer? But ice ages aside, that was a question Americans of the northern states
had been asking themselves ever since the seventeenth century. The only real
difference between a summer of the second millennium and one of the third
millennium was its duration, shorter now by about four weeks.

In the evacuee cities of the north and
midwest, summer had to be ignored while those who had made the arduous trek up
from the south during the first days of April toiled to make up for their
enforced winter idleness. And following an annual pattern apparent for some
years now, the spring of 2032 saw fewer people than ever before return north,
while more people than ever before relocated permanently in some

Band A or Band B town south of the
Mason-Dixon line, or west and south of the Canadian-Arkansas River.

When relocation had begun over twenty
years earlier, no one who still had a job in the north wanted permanent
relocation; but that state of affairs was now reversed, the list of applicants
for permanent relocation grew ever longer, while a harassed government fell ever
further behind in the number of permanent places it could offer potential
relocatees. Of course there were many who spurned federal assistance in
relocating, just sold what they could in the north and bought afresh in the south. But because property
in the north and midwest was fetching next to nothing, there were many indeed
who could not relocate permanently until they received official help. Probably
about the same number of new fortunes were made as old ones were lost; builders,
housing developers and land speculators waxed fat while small northern
businessmen and professionals waned lean. The warmest of the southern states
fought desperate battles to curb the growth of trailer parks and shantytowns,
dinning their woes in Washington's left ear while the skeletal remains of the
northernmost states dinned their woes in Washington's right ear. All of which
made the one-child family a crucial factor in the struggle to equilibrate. Oddly
enough, many more people were prepared to defy the government in order to stay
in the south all year round than defied the one-child family edict.

Excluding the area that once had housed
the black and Hispanic communities, things came to life in Holloman after April
Fool's Day. There were still more unoccupied houses by far than tenanted ones,
but every block saw one or two dwellings with winter boards taken down and
drapes flying proud as flags out of open windows. The streets had pedestrians,
more of the suburban shopping malls opened, the frequency and number of buses
increased, the few industries not permanently removed kept up production seven
days a week. Winter grime was scrubbed and blown off everything, dilapidation
lessened, the cinemas went back into business, so did a number of restaurants
and diners and bars and ice cream stands. The roadways suddenly littered a
modest number of solar-battery-powered electric carts that ambled quiet as the
grave and slow as a snail on pleasurable errands. Those in a hurry or going to
and from work or school caught buses and trolley cars, those going to the market
or the park or the doctor crept there and back by electric cart. And a lot walked, of choice.
Mentally the people might have been depressed and apathetic, but physically they
had never been fitter.

However, by the end of September what
little euphoria had trembled in the summer air above Holloman was dwindling away
again. Two months before relocation would be completed, yet already the warmth
was gone from the sun. Two months in which to pack away things not wanted down
south and wind up affairs and start the telephoning and queueing to see how and
when the winter exodus would be conducted. While the glorious Indian summer that
now came in September instead of in October worked its hot-day cold-night
witchery on the trees and they turned red, yellow, orange, copper, amber,
purple, Holloman thought only of how cold the nights were getting and shut out
the pageant of the autumn by boarding up its windows and doors. A dumb enduring
hideously patient sadness came down with the first fog, and people began to tell
each other how glad they would be to quit the place, preferably for good. Who
wanted or needed this circus living, forever packing up and moving on? Who
wanted living at all? The suicide rate commenced its soaring annual escalation,
the acute psychiatric units at Chubb-Holloman Hospital and Holloman Catholic
Hospital filled to overflowing, and the Christian Clinic was obliged to turn
patients away.

The most cheering news to come out of
Washington was that from the year 2033 onward, relocation of a temporary nature
would be more realistic in terms of the weather; six months only in the north,
from the beginning of May to the end of October, and six months in the south
instead of four. Not that everyone arrived on the same day, anyway; such a
massive movement of people took several weeks, though it was done with extreme
efficiency given the conservation of oil, coal and wood, and with a minimum of
red tape. No country in the world could do so much so quickly as the United States of America in the
frame of mind to do. But this was far from cheering news to people like Mayor
d'Este of Detroit; he read it correctly as the beginning of the end of winter
relocation, and therefore as the death knell of the northern and midwestern
cities. Places on the west coast like Vancouver and Seattle and Portland would
last longer, being warmer, but eventually they too would perish. Those who
insisted upon remaining in the doomed cities all through the depths of winter
after winter relocation was phased out altogether (the estimate given for this
was another ten years) would not be forcibly removed, any more than women who
insisted upon defying the one-child family were forcibly aborted, or sterilized.
Simply, they would receive no aid, no tax benefits, and no welfare.

'I don't want to go south!' cried Mama
when the family gathered in the living room to discuss this bolt from the
Washington blue.

'Nor do I,' said Dr Christian soberly. He
sighed. 'But Mama, we will have to. It's inevitable. Chubb has set itself a
target for relocation, starting next year and finishing by 2040. Margaret Kelly
phoned me today to tell me. She's pregnant, incidentally.'

Andrew shrugged. 'Well, if Chubb goes,
it's the end of Holloman for sure. Where?'

Dr Christian laughed silently. 'Certainly
not to any of those brash late entrants into the Union! They've purchased land
outside Charleston, quite a swag of it.'

'Well, we've got a while yet to think
about where we'll go,' said James. 'Oh, Josh! Somehow when things happen you
adjust, and once you've adjusted there's a sense of well-being again. You can
tell yourself it's a false sense until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't
cushion the shock when the next upheaval comes, does it?'

'No.'

'What provoked this decision?' asked
Miriam.

'I imagine the birthrate and the
population have fallen more rapidly than anyone expected,' said Dr Christian.
'Or — who knows? Maybe my friend Dr Chasen and his computer have figured that
now's the time to cut our losses with a vengeance. The whole phenomenon of
relocation, if you'll permit me to call it a phenomenon, has had to be played by
ear right along. It's never happened before, unless you can include the mass
migrations of peoples out of central Asia. But the last of those occurred over a
thousand years ago. One thing for sure. This isn't an irresponsible decision. So
I guess we move.'

'Our beautiful clinic!' said
Miriam.

Mama was weeping. 'I don't want to go, I
don't want to go! Oh, please, Joshua, can't we stay? We're not poor, we can
survive!'

He plucked a handkerchief from his
pocket, passed it to James, who passed it to Andrew, who leaned over and took
his mother's face in one hand and dried it with the other.

'Mama,' Dr Christian said patiently, 'we
elected to stay in Holloman because we felt it was those who didn't go south who
would need us the most, and the people who relocated for the winter only too.
But now we have to go south, because I imagine it will worsen there during the
first few years of this new phase. We go where we're needed, that's the real
reason why our clinic exists.'

Mama shrank and shivered. 'It's going to
be some shanty city in Texas, isn't it?'

'I don't know yet. Perhaps this publicity
tour in November will give me the answer, if they send me to enough places. It's
a good time to start looking, anyway.'

Andrew put a kiss on each of Mama's
eyelids, and smiled into her face with her own smile. 'Come on, Mama, no more
tears and chin up!'

'Oh!' gasped Martha, so suddenly everyone
turned away from Mama to look at her.

'Oh?' asked Dr Christian, smiling at her
lovingly.

But she knew the love for what it was: a
father for his youngest child, a brother for his baby sister. So she drew closer
to Mary, who sat alongside her on the couch, and when Mary offered her a hand to
hold she took it convulsively and held on to it tightly. 'Mrs Kelly,' she
managed to say. 'Isn't it nice about her baby?'

'Yes, it's very nice,' said Dr Christian,
and got up. He looked at his mother. 'Don't mourn the dead, Mama. The little
Mouse is right. Rejoice for the living.'

He opened the front door, not boarded up
yet, and went out onto the porch, closing the door behind him too quickly to
permit of anyone's following him, a sure signal that he wished to be
alone.

It was very still and very cold, but it
was dry. Too many changes. He took the icy wood of the porch railing in his
hands and leaned on them, watching his breath billow out from his mouth like the
balloons in a comic strip. Not often these days did his family intrude upon his
thoughts, but tonight was an exception. A reminder that though he had huge
responsibilities to the community at large, he also had a responsibility for
those beloved people sitting inside. I am receding from them, he thought; as
fast as I go towards the faceless many do I leave them behind. Why can we not
stay the same? Why is change? They are afraid, and they are sorrowful. They have
reason for their fear and their grief. Yet I cannot summon up the old intensity
of affection for them, I am too drained to bear with them as patiently and
gently as I should!

The beast, the thing inside: it had the
bit between its teeth and it dragged at him remorselessly. His hands left the
railing and went up under his sweater, plucked at his shirt and the meagre chest
that shirt harboured as if they could physically locate and tear away
the thing that plagued and tore him so. He
thought he would weep to ease his pain, and closed his eyes. But there were no
tears.

God in Cursing: A New Approach to
Millennial Neurosis
saw the printed light of day in late September. A carton
of complimentary author's copies was dispatched to Dr Joshua Christian the day
after the first batch of the first print run was packed in the huge printing
plant Atticus owned outside Atlanta, Georgia. Atticus also owned a plant in
southern California, which supplied the west of the country.

It was the most extraordinary sensation
to pick up a well-bound and beautifully laid out book and see his own name on
it, Dr Christian discovered. He had never in his life experienced anything quite
so unreal. The expected delight was just not there, for delight would have
indicated reality, and about this book there was nothing real.

Of course he would have ample time to get
used to the fact that the book did exist before he was obliged to embark upon
his publicity tour, for publication day was scheduled sometime late in October.
The ensuing weeks would see the book presented to booksellers across the nation
by the Atticus salesmen (who had been busy with bound galley copies for six
weeks already), after which it would be shipped off to bookstores in the
specified quantities. The ensuing weeks would also see copies bestowed gratis
upon the various people whose duty it was to read the book and review it for
television and radio and newspapers and magazines and journals.

From the moment the book arrived in Oak
Street, Holloman, life itself began to become unreal for Dr Christian. He had no
time of grace allowed him at all, for on the day after he received his advance
copies, his sister buzzed him in his office.

'Joshua, I don't know whether I've got a
really crazy patient on the line, or whether it's a
genuine call,' Mary said, voice sounding odd. 'Maybe you'd better pick up and
sort it out, okay? He says he's the President of the United States, but he
doesn't
sound
crazy!'