The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess Read Free Book Online

tragic if we allowed it to be. But it’s better to see it as comic. We were right,’ he said elliptically, ‘to throw God out and install Mr Livedog in his place. God’s a tragic conception.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘Never mind.’ He caught her yawn belatedly, showing snowy plastic crowns. ‘The conflicting claims of line and circle. You’re all line, that’s your trouble.’
    ‘I’m circular. I’m globular. Look.’
    ‘Physically, yes. Mentally, no. You’re still a creature of instinct, after all these years of education and slogans and subliminal film propaganda. You don’t give a damn about the state of the world, the state of the State. I do.’
    ‘Why should I? I’ve got my own life to live.’
    ‘You’d have no life at all to live if it weren’t for people like me. The State is each of its members. Supposing,’ he said seriously, ‘nobody worried about the birth-rate. Supposing we didn’t get concerned about the straight line travelling on and on and on. We’d literally starve. Dognose we’ve little enough to eat as it is. We’ve managed to achieve a sort of stasis, thanks to my department and similar government departments all over the world, but that can’t last much longer, not the way things are going.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It’s the old story. Liberalism prevails, and liberalism means laxness. We leave it to education and propaganda and free contraceptives, abortion clinics and condolences. We encourage non-productive forms of sexual activity. We like to kid ourselves that people are good enough and wise enough to be aware of their responsibilities. But what happens? There was the case, only a few weeks ago, of a couple in Western Province who’d had six children. Six . I ask you. And all alive, too. A very old-fashioned couple – God-followers. They talked about fulfilling God’s will and all that nonsense. One of our officials had a word with them, tried to make them see sense. Imagine – eight bodies in a flat smaller than this. But they wouldn’t see sense. Apparently they had a copy of the Bible – Dognose where they’d got it from. Have you ever seen one of those?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, it’s an old religious book full of smut. The big sin is to waste your seed, and if God loves you He fills your house with kids. The language is very old-fashioned, too. Anyway, they kept appealing to this all the time, talking about fertility and barren fig trees getting cursed and so on.’ Derek shuddered with genuine horror. ‘They were quite a young couple, too.’
    ‘What happened to them?’
    ‘What could happen? They were told there was a law limiting offspring to one birth only, dead or alive, but they said it was a wicked law. If God didn’t intend man to be fruitful, they said, why did He implant the instinct for increase in him? They were told that God was an outmoded concept, but they wouldn’t take that. They were told they had a duty to their neighbours, and they conceded that, but they couldn’t see how limitation of family constituted a duty. A very difficult case.’
    ‘And nothing happened to them?’
    ‘Nothing much. They were fined. They were warned against having any more kids. They were given contraceptive pills and ordered to attend the local birth-control clinic for instruction. But they seemed quite unrepentant. And there are a lot of people like that, all over the world – China, India, the East Indies. That’s what’s so frightening. That’s why there’s going to be a change. The world population figures are hair-raising. We’re several millions on the wrong side. All through trusting people. You wait, you’ll see our rations reduced in a day or so. What is the time?’ he asked again. It was not an urgent question; he could, if he’d wanted, have removed his arm from under her warm lax body, leaned out to the far corner of the tiny room, and picked up his wrist micro-radio, which had a watch-face in its