A Creed for the Third Millennium Read Online Free PDF

solar
force fields and tilting axes, but it's all pure speculation. However — however!
They assure us that in a few more decades or maybe centuries they'll have enough data to tell us exactly why,
and in the meantime, God at least knows. We are assured it's not going to last
too long, a matter of a mere millennium or two — the most infinitesimal mote in
the eye of time! But the reality we face is quite long enough to outlast us and
our posterity for many generations to come. The land mass we can use fruitfully
to live on is shrinking rapidly, most of our available water is on its way to
imprisonment in the polar ice cap, and the population of the world is still far
too large. That's what the dawn of the third millennium brought us! And no
matter how we might try, we can't get around it.'
    He shrugged and stopped for perhaps ten
seconds, a pause exquisitely but quite instinctively gauged to be exactly the
right length for maximum effect; and when he continued, his voice had dropped
both in volume and tone, drawing his audience along with his change in
mood.
    'Not that we Americans were very worried.
We were the most advanced nation on earth, we knew we could cope. We didn't
think we'd even need to pull in our belts more than a couple of notches. But
what we forgot was the rest of the world. And the rest of the world ganged up on
us! One in, all in. Permit the United States of America to grow and multiply
while the other major powers brought in population reduction programmes they had to bring in? No way! One-child families for every single country in
the world for a minimum of four generations and then a two-child maximum in
perpetuity, that was the agreement. Well, we stood out against it utterly alone.
And when the chips were down, we discovered we didn't have enough of anything to
take on the rest of the world united against us. We couldn't have fought a war
that big even at our peak, and let's face it, we were not at our peak. We had
wasted so terribly much of what we once had to waste, most of all the spirit, and the strength of our
people. We'd fried our brains on dope and our hearts on loveless copulation and
our souls on trash.
    'When the borders of the Eurocommune met
the borders of the Arabicommune — and try as we did, there was nothing we could
do to prevent that — we had nowhere left to go except the treaty table at
Delhi.'
    His voice had dwindled to whispering
sadness; the pyrotechnics were over. Or they would have been over had Mama been
content to let them die; she, who knew with unerring exactitude where the goad
pricked worst, wanted more fireworks.
    'I will never believe we had to
sign or perish!' she cried. 'Old Gus Rome sold us out for a Nobel Peace
Prize.'
    'Mama, you are typical of your whole
generation! Why will you not see that on your generation fell the blow to pride,
the loss of face, the humiliation? It's done! It's done, done, done, done! But
it's my generation that has to pick up the pieces, get things going again, lie
low and guard everything America was and will be again! You suffered the injury
to pride. I have no pride! So do I care whether Gus Rome was right or
wrong in committing us to the Delhi Treaty rather than to a war we couldn't win?
No! I don't!'
    His brain — it was going to burst, come
spewing out of the sutures of his skull and the orifices of his head… Slow down,
slow down, Joshua Christian! He took his fiery face between his cold hands and
held it, rocking it between them until the tiny cords under the skin of his
temples dwindled away. And then he dropped his hands back to his sides and
resumed his pacing, but more slowly now, his dark eyes flashing in the grottoes
of their sockets.
    Suddenly he stopped and turned to look at
his family, still sitting rapt.
    'Why do I keep thinking it has to be me?'
he asked them.
    No one replied, least of all he himself.
This was a new question he had only begun to ask in recent weeks,