I asked her if she was keen to return to Earth, to practise there.
She smiled, almost pityingly. Not at all, was her answer. ‘The elements in the formula have been reduced here to a manageable level.’
She was determined to remain on Mars in her interesting experimental situation, free of many diseases which plagued Earth, helping to bring about a Utopian phase of human life. For her money, we could remain cut off for good! Were not working and learning the great pleasures for anyone of rational intelligence?
She and a nurse conducted me to a ward-lounge, where we sat over coffdrink gazing out of windows that showed simulated views of beach, palm trees and blue ocean, where windsurfers rode the breakers.
Continuing her discourse, Mary said that it was the young who were expensive. Child benefits, constant supervision and education, health care, the devastations of drink and drugs, and – at least on Earth – crime, all formed major items in any nation’s financial regimen of expenditure. Contrary to the general consensus that children were a blessing, she maintained they were rather a curse; not only were they an expense, but they forced their parents to participate in a second childhood while rearing them. She regarded this as an irrational waste of years of young adulthood.
‘It’s true,’ I answered, ‘that most crime on Earth is committed by the young. Whereas, if I recall the statistic correctly, the over-seventies account for only 1.3 per cent of all arrests.’
‘Yes. Mainly for dangerous driving, the occupational hazard of the age! Happily, we do not have that problem on Mars.’
We laughed together. But her laughter was rather abstracted. She began thinking aloud. Belle Rivers’s jeuwu did not carry matters far enough. Although Mary had nothing against children per se, she would like to see them removed from their parents at birth, to be reared in institutions where every care would be lavished on them; protected from the amateurishness and eccentricity – if not downright indifference – of their parents, they would grow up much more reasonably. She repeated this phrase in a thoughtful manner. Much more reasonably…
Knowing that Mary Fangold had been disappointed by the establishment of the Birth Room, I asked her how she regarded the matter now.
‘As a rational person, I accept the Birth Room as an experiment. I do not oppose the Birth Room. Indeed, I permit my midwives to go there when summoned. However, its function is undoubtedly divisive. The division between the sexes is increased. The role of the father is curtailed.’
‘Do you not think that the important mother-baby bond is strengthened by the Birth Room procedures? Are we not right to encourage birthing to become a ceremony? The role of the father is enhanced by the celebration when he is again united with his wife?’
‘Ah, now, there you should say husband rather than father. Men favour the husbandly role above that of a father. I will speak plainly to you. The one reason why I did not oppose the Birth Room is that the new mother is given a week’s freedom from the importunings of the male. You perhaps would not credit how many men insist on sexual union again, immediately after their wives have delivered, when their vaginas are still in a tender state. The regulations of the Birth Room protect them from that humiliating pain.’
‘You must see the worst of human nature in hospital.’
‘The worst and the best. We see lust, yes, and fear – and courage. The spectrum of human nature.’ After a pause, she added, ‘We still have women who prefer to come here to hospital to give birth, and have their husbands with them.’
‘But increasingly fewer as time goes by, I imagine?’
‘We shall see about that.’ Her lips tightened and she turned to summon a nurse.
After a while, Mary said she had a vision of what life could be. For her, Olympus the Living Being (as she phrased it) was an inspiration. Its age must surely be a guarantee of its wisdom, its eons of isolation a promoter of thought. I questioned that. ‘Eons of isolation? I would think they might as easily promote madness. Could you endure being alone for long?’