Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [35]
They weren’t even particularly old, his parents. They’d married young. His father’s beard had grey hairs coiling among the black; his face had lines like cuts. His mother’s eyes were reddened. Both parents watched him in silence as he walked up.
‘I feel totally betrayed,’ his mother said. ‘How could you write such vile, satanic filth? To think how we trusted you—’
She turned away, laid her face on her husband’s shoulder, and sobbed.
‘Now look what you’ve done to your poor mother.’
Jordan had expected to feel guilty at this moment, the moment he had put off for so long, the moment when he let his parents know what he really thought. Now that they had found out for themselves he felt embarrassed, sure – his cheeks burned at the thought of them reading his diary – but most of what he felt was anger at their doing this. The gall of it, the effrontery!
‘Don’t I have any privacy?’
He snatched the diary away and snapped it shut. His hands and voice shook.
‘Not while you’re under my roof and my responsibility.’
His father looked set to launch into a denunciation. Jordan spoke before he had a chance.
‘That’s it! If I can’t live under your roof with the minimum civilized decency of knowing I won’t be spied on or have you rummage through my possessions then I won’t live here at all!’
His father jumped up. ‘Now, you wait a minute! We don’t want to drive you out. We’re worried – terribly, terribly worried about you. What you’ve been reading – even what you’ve been writing – if we talk about it, take your doubts to a minister or a counsellor, I’m sure you’ll come to see how you’ve been led astray by these wicked, lying rationalistic libertines whose philosophy and vain deceit have been refuted over and over again by Christian thinkers.’
‘No.’
Jordan let his eyes wander. He’d decorated the room as near as he’d dared to his tastes: space prints of distant galaxies and supernova shells (Creationist propaganda), pictures of tribal peoples (mission appeals), pictures of chastely clad but pretty and subtly alluring girls (Modesty advertisements). Ah well. The books they’d heaped together were all he really wanted to take. He dragged a rucksack from the corner and stooped to gather them up, then walked around randomly grabbing clothes. Emotions are commanded by thoughts, and who but you commands your thoughts? Thus spake Epictetus, or possibly Wayne Dwyer. Whatever. Jordan commanded his thoughts.
‘Don’t turn your back on us,’ his mother said. ‘Don’t turn your back on the truth.’
‘You call yourself a free thinker,’ his father taunted, ‘but you don’t want to face anyone who might change your mind! All you’re really interested in is going after your own way, indulging your own carnal lusts. All this atheist garbage is just a miserable excuse. If you rely on that you will one day face God Himself with a lie in your right hand.’
Jordan felt he had swallowed ice.
‘As if I hadn’t heard all their arguments already!’ He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I’ll listen to them. I’ll argue with your Christian thinkers but I’ll do it from out of range of the guns in their right hands.’
‘Don’t make me laugh! Nobody is threatening you with a gun.’
Jordan buckled the rucksack. He saw one remaining book that had been kicked aside, and retrieved it. Another of the Watts & Co Thinker’s Library: The History of Modern Philosophy by A. W. Benn. He smiled to himself, then straightened his face and back.
‘How do your Elders keep ideas out, people out, books out? With guards, with guns! You can’t have a free inquiry or discussion here.’
His father ignored the parry and asked, ‘Where do you think you’ll find this precious freedom? Some dirty communist enclave? Fine freedom you’ll find there!’
‘You’re probably right,’ Jordan said, thinking: Communist? ‘So I’m going to Norlonto.