Don’t Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee (little red riding hood ebook free .TXT) 📕

Distortion at the moment. He’s had it booked for ages and couldn’t break the appointment, or he’d be here with me now. We’ve thought about making a child for a long while,” I went on, dreamy-eyed. “A part of ourselves …”

“Really?” asked the Q-R. He wasn’t sure, I could tell. He flicked through circuits and relays, and said, “Apparently the ruling is not so strict now, anyway. If you are willing to undergo the relevant examinations, we will consider your application.”

I nearly had a seizure.

“You will?” I honked.

“Yes,” said the Q-R. It suddenly struck me that he really was kind, or really had been programmed to be kind. “I know,” he said, “how difficult you are finding things at the moment and, in my judgment, I feel a relationship with a growing being might well help you. Providing, of course, you recognize that a certain amount of Committee inspection will take place during the child’s early years.”

I burbled happily. The Committee could inspect what they liked. I’d trot the child out, singing, “I love Four BEE and hypno-school, and I will be Jang beyond Jang,” if they wanted. Oh, derisann Q-R!

I went by sledge to a pale yellow, soothing sort of room, where two or three Q-Rs in gold encouraged me to tell them why I wanted to make a child. When I reeled off all this stuff about presenting Four BEE with another happy citizen, they looked quite surprised, but I knew I was saying the right things. I’d read up on it all, you see. I also said I felt associating with a child’s naivety and innocence would give me a sort of mental tonic bath, and they went wild at that. I actually sort of felt it anyway, so I suppose it rang sincere. Apparently difficult, tosky, nuisance Jang like me had been reformed before by prolonged sexual relationships and the making of children.

Then we got on to another subject: “You realize your chosen male must be another Jang, and where is he?” So I trotted out the Sense Distortion thing again. When you attend Sense Distortion, it can go on for ages, and you can be anonymous while you’re at it. It’s a sort of safety valve. I suppose, a manner of getting out of it all. So my chosen male, whose name I didn’t give, was shut away for the moment and I wasn’t quite sure when he’d emerge.

They accepted it blithely; obviously the rules were a bit slacker now or they’d have been routing everyone out of Sense Distortion till they found him.

Then I had to go wait in a room full of bowls of ecstasy pills and love machines, and after a million and one vreks a messenger came to take me back, and they said it was going to be all right.

They gave me a little chat next on the responsibilities of makerhood, how I could apply for help and where from, how the Committee would send Q-Rs to inspect my efforts—apparently gaily informal little visits, gurgles at baby and furry toys and so on, but I’m not that selt—and warnings about forms I would have to fill out later for hypno-school and the rest. Making children is fairly involved.

I felt terribly overexcited and glowing, with hot cheeks and banging heart. When they sent me on to the medical this enthusiasm registered on the machines, and the Q-Rs looked moist-eyed. I honestly nearly went out of my mind trying not to laugh at them. I had this feeling if I started I might not stop, and they’d mark me as One-A First-Class Hysteric and say no children ever! So I hung on while they took blood groups, brain electricity readings, and chalk measures of bones. Then someone leaned over me and said did I want to make a male or a female.

“Female,” I responded, rather aggressively I suspect.

They asked if my chosen mate was in agreement

Oh yes, of course.

Well, of course he would be, wouldn’t he, whoever he was? And it suddenly seemed it had to be someone a bit special, after all.

I suppose they’d corrupted me into feeling that.

3

And the ghastly thing was, the first person I thought of was Hergal.

I tried to reason myself out of it.

Hergal is such a bore, I kept telling myself, and decidedly off-Jang and zaradann to boot, and oh, all sorts of things.

But it wasn’t any good. I suppose I’ll always have a soft spot for the mannerless, vague nonchalance of him, the essence of his life spark, so alien to and yet, in some weird way, so parallel to mine.

He’d still be in Limbo probably, after the last crash—the forty-first, wasn’t it?—but that wasn’t a problem. As to having him cut out of my circle, I’d since cut myself out as well, so we were sort of outcasts together, so to speak.

Actually he came into the dream. The dream is what they give you while they take the necessary half from you to make the child. The main idea is to get you to dream of being with the child, and it’s wildly idyllic, so you’re practically weeping with joy in your sleep. I was running with her, my child, across rose fields full of scent and pink sunlight, and both our hair was scarlet, clashing with everything, only we didn’t care. There wasn’t much to it, just this bursting, sobbing happiness that shakes the heart out of you. And then the child looked up and pointed at something glittering in the sky.

“Maker, what’s that?”

And it was silly old Hergal, looking utterly groshing, entirely gold and catching the sun, flying around and around in circles on these huge angel’s wings that really worked.

So I woke up, and they’d popped my half into crystallize cold-storage; they said to send my male along as soon as he was ready, and they’d get cracking on it. And I thought of Hergal.

I was so happy riding to Limbo on the floating bridge. I kept going