The Speculative Short Fiction of Sonya Dorman by Sonya Dorman

Author:Sonya Dorman [Dorman, Sonya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short stories, sf/f
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Them and Us and All

Sonya Dorman

Published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1976

Sonya Dorman returns with a first-rate sample of “inner space” sf, in this case a story about mind-control: a terrifying domestic drama which seems a swing of the pendulum ahead of most sf on this theme.

*

Margaret, tall, fair, with two vertical tension lines between her reddish brows, leaned toward the mirror to clip on the green earrings.

From the other room, Jack called, “Are you ready to leave now?”

“Soon. There’s no hurry, we’re always the first to arrive at parties, they’ll find us boring.”

Margaret brushed her hair, gazing at the picture of the children, taken four years ago. Eddie, at eight years, Martha at twelve, sitting on the living room floor. Eddie was lying in his sister’s lap, playing with a strand of her long, fair hair. Their look of adoration and happiness together was caught forever in the snapshot. Margaret hoped it would, indeed, last forever, but she knew that nothing did, not good times, or bad; not work or parties; not even governments. The children were still beautiful together, closely bonded, trusting, usually in each other’s company.

“You’re lovely,” Jack said, coming in.

She turned around to him and their eyes met, reassuring, comforting. “Where are the children?” She asked.

“They went to visit friends, said they’d be home before we leave.”

Jack and Margaret always knew where their children were, or so they said to each other, but lately their saying so only confirmed secret fears that it wasn’t true. So many of their friend’s children had become involved in the illegal Alpha Clubs, and last year the Ramsey boy had been clinkered, a terrifying incident in their world. But how else, they all asked each other, how else can the kids cope with today’s massive mess, bad, inadequate foods, repressive laws? How can we ourselves cope with them, was the unspoken question among the adults. Nevertheless, secret sympathy for illegal behavior got you nowhere but clinkered, Margaret knew. What was important was to reassure the children, to keep them looking straight ahead to a good, sound future and not let the ambiguities leak into the family strength and dilute it.

There was a heart-rending cry from the apartment next door, followed by crashing noises. In the mirror, Margaret and Jack exchanged glances. The Bedfords were at it, again. A month before, their nerve pill allotment had been canceled, for lack of payment to the drug center, and they were now falling apart. The two boys had already left home; the neighbors were obliged to listen nightly to the noise of a collapsing world, only a paperwall thickness away. It was frightening, for it might happen any day to any of them.

Jack sighed deeply. They exchanged another glance. “Do you think we should help?” he asked Margaret, not for the first time.

“I don’t know. Do we dare? I’m so sorry for them and wish we could help. But will it be misinterpreted?”

“How could anyone tell it was us?” he asked.

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