She mustered the calm, though fists clenched at her sides, to look straight at him and say almost levelly, “Then maybe you could’ve steered me off this mess I’ve gotten myself into? Is that what you’re thinking, Uncans? Prob’ly you’re right.”
Again he smiled, one-sidedly. “You didn’t get into it all by yourself, muchacha. You had enthusiastic help.”
The color came and went in her cheeks. “Don’t hate him. Please don’t. He never would have if I—I hadn’t—”
Guthrie nodded. “Yeah. I understand. Also, when the word got to me, I looked into the situation a bit. Love and lust and more than a little rebellion, right? By all accounts, Bill Thurshaw’s a decent boy. Bright, too. I figure 1’11 hire an eye kept on him, and if he shows promise—But that’s for later. Right now, you are too young, you two, to get married. It’d be flybait for a thousand assorted miseries, till you broke up; and your kid would suffer worst.”
Steadier by the minute, she asked him: “Then what should I do?”
“That’s what we brought you here to decide,” he reminded her.
“Dad and Nfother—”
“They’re adrift with a broken rudder, poor souls. Yes, they’ll stand by you whatever you choose, whatever the sniggering neighbors say and the dipnose government does, but what’s the least bad course? They’ve also got your brother to think about. School alone could become an endurance contest, in the clammy piety that’s settled on this country.”
Momentarily, irrelevantly surprised, she wondered, “Piety? The Renewal doesn’t care about God.”
“I should’ve said pietism,” he growled. “Puritanism. Masochists dictating that the rest of us be likewise. Oh, sure, nowadays the words are ‘environment’ and ‘social justice,’ but it’s the same dreary dreck, what Churchill once called equality of misery. And Bismarck, earlier, said that God looks after fools, drunks, and the United States of America; but when the North American Union elected the Renewal ticket, I suspect God’s patience came to an end.”
Shared need brought unspoken agreement that they walk on. The sand squelped faintly beneath their shoes; incoming tide began to erase the tracks. “Never mind,” Guthrie said. “My mouth’s too apt to ramble. Let’s stay somewhere in the vicinity of the point. You’re pregnant. That’s shocking enough, in the national climate today, but you’re also reluctant to do the environmentally responsible thing and have it terminated.”
“A life,” she whispered. “It didn’t ask for this. And it, it trusts me. Is that crazy?”
“No. ‘Terminate’ means they poison that life out of you. If you wait till later, it means they crush the skull and slice off any inconvenient limbs and haul it out of you. Yeah, there are times when that may seem necessary, and there are too many people. But when across half the planet they’re dying by the millions of famine and sickness and government actions, I should think we can afford a few new little lives.”
“But I—“ She lifted her hands and gazed at the empty palms. “What can I do?” The fingers closed. “Whatever you say, Uncans.”
“You’re a proud one, you are,” he observed. “I’ve a hunch this whole business, including your hope you can save the baby, is partly your claim to a fresh breath in all the stifling smarminess around you. Well, we’ve been over and over the ground, these past several days. Juliana and I, we never wanted to lay pressure on you, one way or another. We only want to help. But first we had to help you grope forward till you knew what your own mind was, didn’t we?”
“I could always talk to you … better than to anybody else.”
“M-m, maybe because we haven’t been around so much.”
“No, it was you, Uncans.” With haste: “And Auntie. All right. What should I do?”
“Have the baby. That’s pretty well decided. Juliana believes if you don’t, you’ll always be haunted. Not that your life would be ruined, but you’d never feel completely happy. Besides the killing itself, you’d know you’d crawfished, which plain isn’t in your nature. Trust Juliana’s insight. If I hadn’t had it to guide me dealing with people, I’d be flat broke and beachcombing.”
“You understand me too. You made me see.”