exposition, his eyes brightened and he smiled as if surprised and delighted by his own words. At least outside the pulpit, he might also veer into the salty language of his working class heritage. That was the case on this occasion. McNearland continued: “Think of this—the Gospel of John informs us that Jesus Christ is at his highest, his most exalted, when he is dying on a cross. Now, just by appearances and on the surface of things, how can you see the crucified Jesus as exalted? Bullshit! This is a naked and broken man under torture, enduring a horror. To see Jesus exalted on the cross, you have to know the story before the story. You have to know about the history of Israel and its expectation of a suffering servant messiah, its trust that God can work through ugliness and patient endurance. And you have to know the story after the story, that the Christ dying on a cross will be resurrected from the dead, and in his resurrection vindicated by God as the true messiah.”
“It is words,” Father McNearland concluded, “words of story and remembrance, that not only describe the surface of things—which after all is often bleak as hell—but also point to a deeper dimension of God’s will and intention, God’s spirit.”
With the muffled shrill of the train’s throaty horn, Al returned to the surface of things, to his mundane commute. Brakes squealed and the train slowed to a stop at one more commuter station before its destination in downtown Old Chicago. Al’s seatmate theatrically erected himself with a groan, as if standing up was almost a full day’s labor, and exited the car. A few others also stepped down onto the station platform, while several more climbed on the train. A bell rang urgently. The lumbering string of coaches clunked, jerked, and shuddered like a huge dog shaking itself awake. The train gathered speed and regained its pace. Static crackled over the car’s intercom. Al sat up straight, yawned to open his ears. It was time for the conductor to read the morning’s news.
≤
The constituency funded and fueled the train lines not only for its transportation, but for the ready movement of subs to engineer and build, cook and clean, tutor its children, and perform other menial tasks. Both constituents and subs wanted regular news, and with electronic media largely defunct, packed trains provided a natural venue for broadcasting in the Age of the Descent. There were, of course, other and more informal means for the distribution of information. But the constituency owned the railroads and very much liked the idea of providing and overseeing the sole extant form of mass media.
Today the conductor-newscaster began, as usual, with the weather. Forecasting had actually improved in recent years. Many means of scientific forecasting remained, and the Descent had returned all the population—subs and rural denizens especially, but constituents too—closer to nature. Weathermen reincorporated “folk methods” that scrutinized the movement and other behavior of bird flocks, various burrowing animals, and the massive buffalo herds resurgent on the Great Plains.
After a terse summary of the weather, the newsreader moved on to an account of recent regional robberies, sex crimes, and homicides. Then came a smattering of foreign news, which, today as usually, amounted to indirect (or not so indirect) hints why listeners were so fortunate to live in Old America rather than anywhere else in the world. Next came vital information about crops and the conditions for other foodstuffs. This was the part of the newscast where passengers were most likely to participatively jeer, as with this morning’s announcement of tomato rationing, or to cheer. And at this moment resounding clapping, foot-stomping, seatback-banging, and shouting greeted the excellent tidings that brewers had a temporary oversupply and beer prices would plummet tomorrow. The exuberant din drowned out not only the thumping and clacking of the train but the amplified voice of the reader. The newscaster shut up for a minute or two, until the enthusiastic approval wound down to an infrequent hoot. Finally the intercom crackled again. The newscaster spoke:
And now, the Headline of the Day.
Authorities announced this morning that Congress is repealing the National Anti-Natal Law. The repeal, proposed by President Willie Gleason, has been under debate for several months. The lifting of the NAN eliminates penalties for childbearing men and women under age twenty-eight.
“My colleagues have acted wisely,” said President Gleason, lauding approval of his proposal. “The anti-natal law may once have been necessary. It is no longer.”
The newscaster went on quoting the President. There was some murmuring and rustling among the passengers, but nothing approaching the raucous outburst for falling beer prices. While subs despised the NAN Law, they remained aware that there were constituents on the train with them. Outward celebration over the death of this controversial law might endanger jobs, if not more.
The Anti-Natal measure was implemented fifteen years earlier, forbidding any Americans to birth children before both the mother and father were already well into their childbearing years. The official rationale for the law was conservational, to hold down population growth and ease the human burden on Earth. Al and the other subs knew that was true—after all, the law applied to the constituency, too—but they also knew ecological righteousness was hardly the sole motivator behind it. Constituents wanted to preserve available petroleum energy, of which they were the primary remaining users. They also (and perhaps mainly) hoped to depress the birthrate among subs.
The law’s draconian penalties contributed to the spite for it: pregs, women under age twenty-eight who got pregnant, were sentenced to a minimum of eighteen months in prison; impregs, the males under twenty-eight who fathered their children, were liable to mandatory sterilization. But comparatively, that was just kindling in the burning hatred subs bore against the NAN policies. What fueled anger into an inferno of resentment was the law’s uneven enforcement. Relying on connections and superior legal and political resources, constituents usually escaped these severe punishments. Subs, by contrast, rarely avoided them.
In this light, Albert and other subs on the train were suspicious as they heard the newsreader quote the president and enumerate the official reasons for striking the law from the books. Officially, NAN policies were “no longer necessary” because alternative forms of energy were successfully under development and because “the great citizens of Old America” would now voluntarily, as a patriotic duty, keep birthrates low. This official account did not acknowledge that anti-natal law had become unacceptably difficult and expensive to enforce. Resentment of the law approached explosive heights, and prison populations had soared to unmanageable levels.
Not wanting to make potential trouble for himself, Al kept a well-practiced poker face as he heard this news. But inwardly, he imagined an ugly, hateful beast going down, and tingles of glee danced up his spine. He had known several people hurt by the NAN law. Two male friends, convicted, penalized, and no longer able to produce children, were spurned from marriage. One was reasonably content with his bachelorhood, if prone to bursts of anger and the occasional drunken binge. The other bitterly and constantly yearned for a spouse and family he would never have. Then there was Sharon Lorebain, who lived down the street from Albert’s boyhood home. Sharon had married when she was twenty-two and gotten pregnant a year or two later. A teenaged Al was walking down the street one morning when he saw Ms. Lorebain arrested, handcuffed wrists behind her back, screaming, stumbling, and being dragged across her yard. She disappeared from the neighborhood for several months. When she returned, she was pale and sullen. She never said if her offspring had been aborted or given out for adoption. She never said much of anything. Before long she and her husband separated, and now she lived alone, the hermit of Banneker Street, with dandelions and prairie grass obscuring her front door.
Then, of course, and damn it, Al thought of Valerie. He recalled how they had begun to talk of marriage. Each of them had been an only child, and both wanted two or three kids. Some day, they told each other. His father had often joked how easy it was to be an expert on childrearing until a child was born to you, and Al supposed he and Val had only ever thought of raising a family naively, with all the pristine wonder only the inexperienced and untried can enjoy. But he knew they had wanted children. He knew Val would
