Indira gasped. “Does that mean—?” She swallowed. “The kids—”
Koresz shook his head. “I believe the children will be fine. Young animals are more adaptable than adults. The ones who survive, that is to say. Typically, young animals either survive or they die quickly. But the ones who make it—”
He stopped, turned pink with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Julius. Indira. My big mouth.”
The biologist’s face was pale, as was Indira’s. But Julius smiled his lopsided smile, and said:
“S’okay, Vladimir. It was a long time ago. My daughter—oh, hell, if I’d left the poor kid on Earth she would have been all right. But here—” He sighed heavily. “Nobody ever said natural selection was kind.”
He shook his head sharply, clearing away the memory.
“But what’s important now is that I think you’re right. A few of the kids who died in the first year, like Indira’s, died of trauma. But most of them—just died. Nothing we could do to stop it, as hard as we tried. Lost almost twenty percent, the first year. A few the next year. But since then, they seem to be doing just fine. And you think they’ll be okay from now on—and their kids, too, I assume?”
Koresz nodded. “Basically. Oh, I expect there will be a high child mortality rate. But the colony will survive that, especially if the children follow nature’s age-old strategy. Be fecund.”
He cleared his throat. “Which brings up something I have been meaning to raise. I have not said anything about it before, because it was a moot point. But the children are just about at the age where they discover a fascinating new game.”
He gave them a hard stare. “I do not know what cultural prejudices may still be lurking deep within the recesses of your nasty little minds—”
“This—from you?” demanded Julius. “The pervert who’s going to fry for eternity?”
When the laughter died down, Koresz continued.
“You must allow the children maximum sexual freedom. More than that. You must positively encourage promiscuity. This is not the time and place for the nuclear family and sexual fidelity. The gene pool is small enough as it is. I believe we have a large enough gene pool—barely—if the genes are mixed up constantly. Even then, genetic drift is going to loom large. I suspect we shall see the resurgence of all sorts of recessive traits. Hemophilia, that sort of thing.”
His face grew harsh. “Natural selection will do its job, like always. But we want the genetic mayhem to be as small as possible. That means—”
“Swingers’ paradise,” snorted Julius. “Rome of the Caesars.”
Koresz smiled. “Not so bad as all that, Julius. At least, I have not seen much of a sadistic streak among the children.”
He looked at Indira. “Why the big frown, Indira? You never struck me as the sexually-repressive type.” A chuckle. “Even though you and Julius have selfishly refused to share your treasures with us sinners.”
Indira smiled, faintly. “It’s not that, Vladimir. I have no moral problems with allowing the kids to develop a sexually permissive culture. I’m in favor of it, actually. It’ll avoid a lot of social neuroses. No, it’s just . . .”
She took a deep breath.
“It’s just that up until now the boys and the girls have been on a equal footing. They understand that there’s a difference between the sexes, of course. But they don’t think much of it. Their games are completely integrated, and a number of the girls are emerging as leaders. But if they start having lots of kids, well . . .”
She fell silent. Koresz seemed puzzled.
“I still don’t—”
“She’s worried about the rise of the patriarchy, Vladimir,” explained Julius. “She’s mentioned it to me before, in private. Indira says that if the colony were to remain in the state of primitive hunters and gatherers that it wouldn’t be a problem. Primitive cultures, she says, are generally characterized by sexual equality.”
Indira interrupted. “There’s always a division of labor between the sexes, but it rarely translates into a relationship of dominance and subjugation. But the point is that we’re not primitive hunters and gatherers. We’ve already developed agriculture, of a sort—a kind of modified pastoralism, without the migration—and with everything else we’ve taught the kids they’re well on their way toward civilization, of a basic sort. And throughout human history, the rise of civilization was always accompanied by a transformation in the relationship between the sexes. What’s called the patriarchy.”