The Seed of Earth

CHAPTER SIX

After completing his list of one hundred ten names for the seventeenth of October blasting of the Gegenschein, District Chairman Mulholland turned his attention to the next item on his daily routine: finalization, as they so barbarously called it in scheduling, of the previous day's list.

The October 16 ship was the Sky rover, departing from the Cape Canaveral base. Mulholland had prepared the usual quota of names; during the early hours of the morning, while he had been assembling the Gegenschein list, word was coming in from the local boards on the previous day's selections. Mulholland scanned the long yellow sheets. The Skyrover list would present no difficulties, he saw. There were fifty-one eligible males, fifty-two eligible women.

He deleted the three surplus names, entered them on the proper form, and gave the deletion list to Miss Thorne. During the day three people somewhere in the United States would learn that they had received a minute's reprieve; instead of departing as they had been told on the October 16 ship, they would be held over until October 17, and, if not needed to fill vacancies on the Gegenschein list, would certainly be included on the list of whatever ship was scheduled for departure on the 18th.

His job, Mulholland thought, was like a kind of cosmic jigsaw puzzle - a puzzle in which he used human pieces, scooping up a hundred at a time, discarding those which might be bent or broken and unsuitable for the pattern, fitting the rest into place. Each day another pattern had to be created; sometimes there were too many pieces, and some were put aside for another day.

He completed the Skyrover list and sent it down the pneumotube to Brevoort, twenty storeys below. Brevoort would phone Cape Canaveral and advise them verbally of the completion of the list; the list itself would be sent to Florida by fax at the same time. With the Skyrover under control, Mulholland was finished for the day. The time was 1400 hours. At the Bangor starfield that moment, the Enterprise Three was blasting off, with one hundred colonists aboard, people who had been selected a week before.

It went on constantly, day and night - people registering for selection, people being selected, people reporting for blastoff, ships departing. Five ships leaving a day from the United States alone, sixty from the world, four hundred twenty ships a week. And, so immense were the heavens, it would be untold centuries before the last habitable planet had been colonized by men of Earth.

1400 hours. The end of the day. Mulholland tidied his desk and said his goodbyes - most of the clerical workers had two hours before their day ended - and left.

As he stepped outside, into the bracing October wind, he tried to shrug off his day's labor like an otter coming to shore and shaking itself dry. Once 1400 hours came, he could stop being District Chairman Mulholland, wielder of the sacred staff; he could go back to being plain Dave Mulholland of White Plains. Once aboard the sleek bullet of a train, he smiled politely to other commuters whose faces if not names he knew, and settled back in his padded seat. The nonstop White Plains express made the trip in seven minutes. Years ago, before the new trains had been put in use, the trip took longer, long enough for him to have a drink and relax before arriving at the White Plains station. But there was no time for a drink now.

One was waiting for him at home, though, an icy martini. Mulholland kissed his wife, patted the bouncingly joyful dog, drank his drink.

'Anything new, dear?' Ellen asked. She was forty-one; safe from selection, at last. Like him, her hair was red.

'You're bound to raise a flock of redheads,' friends had said over and over, when they were married sixteen years before. But they had no children. Out of fear of selection, perhaps, Mulholland admitted.

'Nothing new, Ellen. The same as always. One hundred heads on the block.'

She looked at him painfully, but kept unsaid what she was thinking. They had been over the same ground often enough in the past. The job was tearing him apart - nobody loves the public executioner or the baseball umpire or the local boss of selection - but resignation was impossible. You didn't toss away a job the party had carefully gained for you. If you did, there would be no further jobs forthcoming from them - ever.

Mulholland changed into his puttering clothes. There was work to do in the garden, in what remained of the afternoon. He enjoyed working with his hands, grubbing down in the dirt to bed an azalea or trim a privet hedge. He could get absorbed in the mere physicality of the work, absorbed enough to forget that a hundred people in the United States were cursing him bitterly because he had done the job he was paid to do.

At least, he thought, it wasn't so bad now that he didn't have to hear appeals. He sat in lofty isolation in his office, drawing up lists and initialing forms; at least he had no direct contact with the victims he was condemning. Before reaching the top, when he had been one of the subchiefs in charge of refusing appeals, the job had been infinitely more painful.

He remembered some of the appeals. There was the poet embarked on an immense verse cycle, who arrived bearing a petition from some of the world's leading creative figures begging that he be excused in the name of culture. The poet had been shipped out with regrets; the surest way to destroy selection would be to begin making exceptions in the name of minority interests. Then there had been countless parents who could not bear separation from their children or from each other; students who pleaded for a chance (denied) to complete their educations; stage figures asking (unsuccessfully) to be allowed to finish the runs of their plays. Selection could make no exceptions. Whatever the cost to Earth in terms of a work of poetry forever lost, a hit play closed, a potential Einstein shipped to the stars, such losses had to be endured. To permit creative people, people of genius, to escape the net of selection would be to insure that only mediocrities would go to the stars, and mankind's destiny thus would be thwarted.

Mulholland finished his garden work, went indoors, washed, had another cocktail, ate dinner. In the evening, several hours of reading, a bit of music, an hour or two of video, a sedative, and bed.

He had few personal friends these days. Once he had been more gregarious, but nowadays social relationships were difficult for him to maintain. Either people regarded him with thinly veiled horror (who wants to play bridge with the hangman?) or else they cultivated his friendship with the hope that someday he might do them a favor, when selection struck their home. Of course, he could do no favors, but people never seemed to believe that.

He went to bed at 2300 hours. He was up again at 0730, shaved and showered and dressed and fed within forty-five minutes. On his way to the station he saw a mail truck making its rounds with the morning delivery, and felt little comfort from the fact that he no longer needed to dread the arrival of a blue envelope. It was impossible for him ever to forget that two hundred million Americans lived in the grip of terror each morning between breakfast and the arrival of the day's mail, never knowing until the red-white-and-blue truck had made its appearance whether or not this would be the day their number came up.

At 0900 on the dot, Mulholland was at his office. The requisition form was waiting for him, as always; fifty couples were needed for the starship Aaron Burr, leaving Canaveral on the eighteenth of October. He went through the standard morning routine, authorizing the selection of one hundred ten names for the Aaron Burr.

Two hours later, the first replies began to come in from the local boards on the Gegenschein selectees. Mulholland put each form in the 'hold' basket and forgot about them until it was time to get back to the Gegenschein list. He had already forgotten about the Sky rover, now that its list was complete, it faded into the long blur of unremembered ships whose passengers Mulholland had authorized.

After lunch - a tense affair as always for he never digested well on a working day - he turned his attention to the Gegenschein. His notes told him that one slot had already been filled: Noonan, the volunteer sent through from Baltimore Board #212. Mulholland needed forty-nine men, fifty women to make up the complement.

Most of the east coast and Midwest reports had come in already. The western people, naturally, would take longer; in most cases the mail was just being delivered now, out on the Coast. But there were enough early returns to begin working with. Mulholland began to sort through them, checking them oil against his master file.

Columbus, Ohio Board #156 We have examined registrant Michael Dawes and find him acceptable for selection

New York Board #11 We have examined registrant Cherry Thomas and find her acceptable for selection...

Philadelphia Board #72 We have examined registrant Lawrence T. Fowler and find him acceptable for selection...

And, mixed with the rest, a red slip that signified a turndown: Atlanta Board #243 We have examined registrant Louetta Johnson and find her not acceptable for selection for the reasons detailed below….

Mulholland paused, turned the red slip over, and read it. Louetta Johnson had been found after due medical examination to be in her twelfth week of pregnancy, this fact being unknown to Miss Johnson, who therefore had not notified the registry center of this change in her status.

He put her slip aside and crossed her name from his list. Within the next hour, he lost two more of his possibles: the 93rd Board, in Troy, New York, reported that Elgin MacNamara had been the victim of a fatal auto accident the very day of his selection the 114th Board, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, regretfully informed the District Chairman that registrant Thomas Buckley had been taken into custody after allegedly shooting his wife and another man, and would not be eligible for a berth on the Gegenschein.

But, despite these minor setbacks, the list slowly filled.

By 1320 hours, Mulholland's tally showed forty-three men and thirty-nine women assigned to the Gegenschein, with five of his original hundred and ten disqualified and twenty-three yet to be heard from. Not long after that, the first reports began to come in from the far west:

San Francisco Board #326 We have examined registrant Carol Herrick and find her acceptable for selection...

Los Angeles Board #406 We have examined registrant Philip Haas and find him acceptable for selection...

A red slip from Seattle Board #360: Registrant Ethel Pines declared ineligible on medical grounds; registrant Pines has cancer. Mulholland removed the name of Ethel Pines from his list.

By 1340 hours, he was nearing completion. A quick check indicated that he had forty-eight men, forty-six women. Ten of his original hundred and ten were scratched, ineligible. One volunteer. Seven reports were yet to come in.

Ten minutes later, they were in: five acceptables, two rejects. Mulholland drew a line under the column of male names and quickly counted upward: fifty names in all, headed by Cyril Noonan, volunteer. He was short one woman.

Now he reached into his replacement basket and drew out the three cards that had been left over from the Skyrover quota. One man, two women. Mulholland put the man's card aside. He flipped the other two cards into the air. One landed face up; he snatched at it - the card of a woman named Marya Brannick.

Marya Brannick's name was entered in the fiftieth slot on the distaff side of the Gegenschein list. Carefully putting the completed Gegenschein list to one side, Mulholland took tomorrow's Aaron Burr list from its pigeon-hole and inscribe the names of Irwin Halsey and Maribeth Jansen at the heads of the two columns.

He buzzed for Miss Thome.

'Jessie, I've assigned the three leftovers from the Skyrover list. Brannick goes into the Gegenschein, Halsey and Jansen are being held over till tomorrow for the Aaron Burr.'

Miss Thorne nodded efficiently. 'I'll see that the notification goes out to the local boards. Anything else, Mr. Mulholland?'

'I don't think so. Everything's under control.'

She gave him a toothy smile and scuttled back to her adjoining cubicle. Sighing, Mulholland checked the clock. 1358 hours. Astonishing how smoothly the Selection mechanism works, he thought. The list gets filled as if by clockwork.

And it had been clockwork, he realized, with himself doing nothing that a robot was unable to do. He wondered what a film of himself at work on a typical day would look like, speeded up a little. Even more ridiculous than the ancient fast-camera films, no doubt. He would emerge on the screen as an inane fat little bureaucrat, busily pulling lists in and out of pigeonholes, inscribing names, juggling surpluses, carrying forth extra selectees until they were needed, signing documents, self-importantly buzzing for his secretary—

It was an unflattering picture. Mulholland tried to blank it out, but the image refused to quit his mind.

Thank God it was quitting time, he thought.

He studied the completed Gegenschein list again. It looked all right: the hundred names, fifty in each column, each on its appointed line. He skimmed down the men's list: Noonan, Cyril; Dawes, Michael; Fowler, Lawrence; Matthews, David; And right along to the names at the bottom: Nolan, Sidney; Sanderson, Edward.

He checked out the women's column next: Thomas, Cherry; Martino, Louise; Goldstein, Erna; And down to the last, the ink not yet dry on her name: Brannick, Marya.

Mulholland nodded. Fifty here, fifty there. The list was okay. He scrawled his signature in the proper place.

Another day, another shipload, he thought. Another cargo for his conscience.

The long list of names wavered, blurred; he closed his tired eyes. But that was a mistake. His imagination responded by conjuring up images of people; names took on flesh, faces hovered accusingly in the air. Edward Sanderson, he thought - and pictured, for no particular reason, a short, slim, narrow-shouldered man with thinning brown hair. Erna Goldstein - she might be a darkhaired girl with large eyes, who majored in dramatics in college and had hopes of writing a play, someday. Sidney Nolan—

Mulholland shook his head to clear it. He had managed to keep this from happening all day, this sudden taking on of flesh on the part of the names on his list. So long as he thought of them simply as names, as strings of syllables, everything was all right. But once they began asserting their humanity, he crumbled beneath the assault.

Hastily he pressed his thumb against the sensitized spot, rolled up the sheet, stuffed it in its little cylinder, and sent it rocketing down the pneumotube to the waiting Brevoort. The Gegenschein had her cargo, barring accidents and possible suicides between now and the seventeenth of the month.

The clock said 1400 hours. The day was over. Mulholland rose, sticky with sweat, eyes aching, mind numb.

He was free to go home.

At least you only get selected once, he thought. I have to go through this every day.

He tidied his desk and moved in a shambling way toward the door. Tomorrow, the Aaron Burr list would have to be finalized, and some new list would be begun.

And after that, the weekend, when Dick Brevoort moved upstairs to prepare the Saturday and Sunday lists. The wheels of selection never ceased grinding, even though an individual component of the great machine might occasionally require a couple of days of rest.

Mulholland peered into the adjoining office. Miss Thorne was behind her typewriter, spine stiff, fingers sharply arched. She seemed supremely happy in her business. Mulholland wondered if the names she typed so busily all day ever came to haunt her. Probably not, he decided. She could go home each night with a clear conscience to whatever she enjoyed doing in the evenings, crocheting or watching video or listening to sixteenth-century madrigals.

He looked in. 'Good afternoon, Jessie.'

'Good afternoon, Mr. Mulholland. Have a very pleasant evening.'

'Thanks,' he said in a suddenly hoarse voice. 'The same to you, Jessie.'

He walked slowly toward the door.