post-Blowup generation.
It must be great to have come to terms with reality instead of laboring under the delusive burden of a vanished world, leaden with prejudices and preconceptions. He did do his best, struggled to accept the doctrines of the Way of Life and act on them. Perhaps if he had managed to find a younger wife – No, that was out of the question. Perhaps he ought to have resigned himself to never marrying, especially since the marriage was compulsorily childless …?
Younger people had no memory of ancient evils like churches and nation-states. But they were all too keenly aware of their legacy.
Their frontiers nullified by the skelter, under constant attack by saboteurs and partisans who could be half a world away before their time-bombs exploded, five of the Great Powers had gone into insensate nuclear spasm as though they had taken strychnine. The survivors, or at least some of them, believed their governments had also been responsible for the subsequent epidemics. Given that foundation to build on, they had abandoned at last everything their ancestors took pride in: patriotism, religion, conformist morality, group solidarity … Oh, not completely, not all at once. But for the third and final time the wisdom chain had been shattered; so ran the teachings of the Way of Life.
In the beginning, the argument declared, to be older meant to be wiser – to have had more experience of how things are, to be more in touch with the reality of human existence.
Then came a war that murdered a whole generation offine young men in mud and blood, and murmurings of dissent accompanied them to their unmarked graves.
It was said, ‘We have fought the War to End War.’ Many believed, and were comforted.
In one more generation there was another war, that killed not only young men but old people and little children in their beds, that loosed the firepower of the universe on the fragile flesh of man.
By that time there were young people saying in tones of extreme puzzlement, ‘Grandfather promised peace to father and father swore he would preserve it and father is dead in an ugly, cruel manner. Can we trust nobody at all?’
And there came the third war, the Blowup, and the wisdom-chain – already filed twice at its crucial link – snapped.
It was a new world. But a new world that must understand the old in order to surpass it. Hans Dykstra was convinced of that.
Right now there was no time for reflection, though. He needed some means to placate his wife. Being too slow, he failed. That was unusual. Ordinarily he was quick to react and forestall her; he had to be, because the risk of her leaving him was so high. No matter that she was close on fifty; no matter that under her thick face-powder dark bags marred her eyes and her cheeks were crested with blue-red broken veins; no matter that her bust, her belly and her bottom sagged – she was
a wife,
and for a young man nowadays no achievement surpassed stealing away a wife … unless it were abandoning her in her turn, a just act of punishment, as though CPF which had shrunk the proportion of females so low that many men had to resign themselves to never having a woman were in some way the fault of all women.
But this time Hans was laggard. She made it as far as sobs and wails.
She was eighteen years older than him. Like many of her generation, of both sexes, she was subject to crying fits born of sheer despair at the disappearance of the world she had been taught to believe in as a child. Perhaps earlier than the average she had learned to exploit tears as a weaponagainst anybody who worried about her, who cared whether or not she killed herself in accordance with her frequent threats. It was there, Hans suspected, that one should seek the reason for her not accepting the invitation she had been granted by Karl Bonetti.
Karl was a psychiatrist who practiced on the neighboring island of Gozo. Islands were popular among those who were lucky enough to enjoy access