‘La Fiesta de Santa Carolita? Hey, you clamped down! Watch it, ducks, you’ll hurt
yourself.’
I sighed and tried to relax. Santa Carolita is my second child, bron in 1902
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Gregorian.
Chapter 2 – The Garden of Eden
I remember Earth.
I knew her when she was clean and green, mankind’s beautiful bride, sweet and lush
and lovable.
I speak of my own time time, of course, numbered ‘two’ and coded ‘Leslie LeCroix.’
But the best known time lines, those policed by the Time Corps for the Circle of
Ouroboros, are all one at the time I was born, 1882 Gregorian, only nine years after
the death of Ira Howard. In z88z the population of Earth was a mere billion and a
half.
When I left Earth just a century later it had increased to over four billion and
that swarming mass was doubling every thirty years.
Remember that ancient Persian parable about doubling grains of rice on a chessboard?
Four billion people are a smidgen larger than a grain of rice; you quickly run out
of chessboard. On one time line Earth’s population swelled to over thirty billion
before reaching final disaster; on other time lines the end came at less than ten
billion. But on all time lines Dr Malthus had the last laugh.
It is futile to mourn over the corpse of Earth, as silly as it would be to cry over
an empty chrysalis when its butterfly has flown. But I am incurably sentimental and
forever sad at how Man’s Old Home has changed.
I had a marvellously happy girlhood.
I not only lived on Earth when she was young and beautiful but I also had the good
fortune to be born in one of her loveliest garden spots, southern Missouri before
people and bulldozers ravaged its green hills.
Besides the happy accident of birthplace, I had the special good fortune to be my
father’s daughter.
When I was still quite young my father said to me, ‘My beloved daughter, you are an
amoral little wretch. I know this, because you take after me; your mind works just
the way mine does. If you are not to be destroyed by your lack, you must work out a
practical code of your own and live by it.’
I thought about his words and felt warm and good inside. ‘Amoral little wretch
-‘Father knew me so well.
‘What code should I follow, Father?’
‘You have to pick your own.’
‘The Ten Commandments?’
‘You know better than that. The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five
are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five
are half-truths, neither complete nor adequate.’
‘All right, teach me about the second five. How should they read?’
‘Not on your tintype, lazy bones; you’ve got to do it yourself.’ He stood up
suddenly, dumping me off his lap and almost landing me on my bottom. This was a
running game with us. If I moved fast, I could land on my feet. If not, it was one
point to him.
‘Analyse the Ten Commandments,’ he ordered. ‘Tell me how they should read. In the
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meantime, if I hear just once more that you have lost your temper, then when your
mother sends you to discuss the matter with me, you had better have your McGuffey’s
Reader tucked inside your bloomers.’
‘Father, you wouldn’t.’
‘Just try me, carrot top, just try me. I will enjoy spanking you.’
An empty threat – He never spanked me once I was old enough to understand why I was
being scolded. But even before then he had never spanked me hard enough to hurt my
bottom. Just my feelings.
Mother’s punishments were another matter. The high justice was Father’s bailiwick;
Mother handled the low and middle – with a peach switch. Ouch!
Father spoiled me rotten.
I had four brothers and four sisters – Edward, born in I876; Audrey in’78; Agnes in
i88o; Tom,’8i; in’8z I carne along; Frank was born in I884, then Beth in’92;
Lucille,’94; George in I897 – and I took up more of Father’s time than any three of