The Wanting Seed Read Online Free PDF Page A

Joscelyne. ‘Sit right down. Have a caff.’ He hospitablymotioned towards the dish of caffeine tablets on his blotter. Tristram shook his head, smiling. ‘Give you a lift when it’s needed most,’ said Joscelyne, taking two. Then he sat down at his desk. The afternoon sea-light shone on a long nose, a blue muzzle, the mouth large and mobile, the face prematurely lined. ‘I tapped your lesson,’ he said, nodding first towards the switchboard on the white wall, then to the ceiling-speaker. ‘Do you think the kids take in much of that stuff?’
    ‘They’re not supposed to understand it too well,’ said Tristram. ‘Just a general impression, you know. It’s in the syllabus but never comes up in the exam.’
    ‘Yah, yah, I guess so.’ Joscelyne was not really interested. He was fingering a grey-backed dossier, Tristram’s: Tristram saw FOXE upside down on its cover. ‘Poor old Newick,’ said Joscelyne. ‘He was pretty good. Now he’s phosphorus pentoxide some place in Western Province. But I guess his soul goes marching on,’ he said vaguely. And then, with speed, he added, ‘Here in the school, I mean.’
    ‘Yes, yes, of course. In the school.’
    ‘Yah. Now,’ said Joscelyne, ‘you were all lined up to take his place. I’ve been reading through your dossier today –’ Were . Tristram swallowed a bolus of surprise. Were , he said, were . ‘– Quite a book. You’ve done pretty good work here, I can see that. And you’re senior in the department. You should have just walked into the job.’ He leaned back, put thumb-tip to thumb-tip, then-little, ring, middle, index-let finger-tip meet finger-tip. He twitched meanwhile. ‘You realize,’ he said, ‘that it’s not up to me who fills these vacancies. It’s up to the Board. All I can do is recommend. Yah, recommend.Now, I know this sounds crazy, but what gets a man a job these days is not pry-merrily qualifications. No. It isn’t how many degrees he’s got or how good he is at whatever it is he does. It’s-and I’m using the term in its most general sense – his family background. Yah.’
    ‘But,’ began Tristram, ‘my family –’
    Joscelyne held up a traffic-stopping hand. ‘I don’t mean whether your family was up in the world,’ he said. ‘I mean how much of it there is. Or was.’ He twitched. ‘It’s a matter of arithmetic, not of eugenics or social status. Now I know as well as you do, Brother Foxe, that all this is absurd. But there it is.’ His right hand suddenly took flight, hovered, then dropped to the desk like a paper-weight. ‘The records,’ he said, pronouncing the word ‘wreckerds’, ‘the records here say-the records say – yah, here it is: they say you come of a family of four. You have a sister in China (she’s on the Global Demographic Survey, right?) and a brother in, of all places, Springfield, Ohio. I know Springfield well. And then, of course, there’s Derek Foxe here, homo and highly placed. Now you, Brother Foxe, are married. And you have. one kid.’ He looked up at Tristram sadly.
    ‘Not any more. He died in hospital this morning.’ Tristram’s lower lip jutted, quivering.
    ‘Dead, eh? Well.’ Condolences nowadays were purely financial. ‘Young, wasn’t he? Very young. Not much P 2 0 5 there. Well, his being dead doesn’t alter the position as far as you’re concerned.’ Joscelyne clasped his hands tight as if about to pray away the fact of Tristram’s fatherhood. ‘One birth per family. Alive or dead. Singleton, twins, triplets. It makes no difference. Now,’ he said, ‘you’ve broken no law. You’ve not done athing you theoretically shouldn’t have. You’re entitled to marry if you want to, you’re entitled to one birth in the family, though, of course, the best people just don’t. Just don’t.’
    ‘Damn it,’ said Tristram, ‘damn it all, somebody’s got to keep the race going. There’d be no human race left if some of us didn’t have children.’ He was angry.