The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [121]
In New Tonga, as in the lunar domes, there was a quasi-revolutionary spirit in the air: a lust for change that far transcended the seemingly modest ambitions of the world’s owners and rulers.
I had never expected to be drawn to someone like Mica Pershing, and she had obviously not anticipated that I was the kind of person who might be fruitfully invited into the discussions of her own circle, but we were both surprised. We had more in common than the differences in our vocations suggested, and a spontaneous spark of camaraderie kindled what soon became a warm friendship.
Within months of my arrival I had become well-acquainted with Mica’s closest professional associates. They found me an amusing distraction from their work-related discussions, and I began to feel definite echoes of my old association with the Lamu Rainmakers. The last thing I had been contemplating as I planned my return to Earth had been a third marriage, but when Mica and two of her most intimate allies in the new continental cause began to talk about possibilities of that kind I quickly became interested. What better way could there be to support my insistence that humans really did benefit from roots and that the Earthbound really were progressive in their outlook?
The marriage that Mica and her friends wanted to form was, of course, different in one very significant respect from the one the Lamu Rainmakers had organized. That had been an exploratory union of young people, whereas this was a purposive association of mature individuals. Mica had decided that she was old enough and wise enough to be a foster mother, and I was ready and willing to reason that if that were true, then I was old enough to be a foster father.
When Mica and her prospective co-parents began to discuss the spectrum of qualities they would to need to support an application for parenthood, it was easy enough to persuade them that my record as an ex-lunatic historian would add vitally necessary variety. Given that there was no one else on Neyu who could contribute such a striking set of exceptions to the local rule, I went right to the top of their list of candidates.
The further negotiations remained delicate and complicated because all of the people who would ultimately be welcomed into the company had to be acceptable to all the others, but once the determination was there the process pressed ahead with all possible speed. As the thirtieth century dawned the matter was settled. I was to be married again, and would very soon be a co-parent, following in the footsteps of Papa Domenico, Papa Laurent, Mama Eulalie, Papa Nahum, Mama Meta, Mama Siorane, Mama Sajda, and Papa Ezra. I thought—as I suppose almost everyone must think—that no matter how difficult it would be to do better job than they had done, I would make certain that I did it.
SIXTY-TWO
Long afterward, Mica confessed that my inclusion in the marriage had not been unopposed when she first raised it with Maralyne, Ewald, and Francesca, and that when their preliminary debate reached its critical point the item that swung it was the moral credit that I was presumed to have accumulated by virtue of once having saved Emily Marchands life.
I was moved by a sense of injury to respond, somewhat dishonestly, that I had had to think long and hard before accepting the invitation, and that the item that had eventually swung my own internal debate was simple economic anxiety. It was a plausible story. Having readapted myself to Earthly life I wanted to press on as hard as was possible with the remaining volumes of my History, and the flow of income from the earlier sections had dwindled to a point at which meeting my living expenses and financing my continuing researches would not have been easy had I