Mystarrin was sick. Tummy illness. And no, not because she was pregnant. Her partner had the same thing, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t pregnant.
Anyway, she was sick, so Beth and I were sitting together for lunch, discussing the decision, recently announced, that while I would be going on for full surgeon, Beth would be becoming a ‘medic’… the Pathfinder term for a a first line doctor type person… all sorts of hurry, hurry, stuff… quick intubations and IV’s and stuff. And, ironically, we were both happy with the decision.
“I think you would be great as a surgeon,” I complained.
“You will be great as a surgeon,” she said. “I will be a great medic. I like it, actually. I like the rough and tumble better than the long hours of detailed work.”
Just then the teacher sat down across from us. “Discussing my decision?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Beth said, while I just looked embarassed.
“You’ll do fine,” she said, looking at me. “You poor New Texans, always second guessing yourselves. I suppose it comes from all of your silly feeling based culture. Imagine just choosing a partner, choosing a life work, all based on your own feelings.”
“Well, Beth and I didn’t get our partners that way,” I said, a bit miffed.
“Oh, no! You two did even better. You two tried to avoid your duty to society, to the human race; and got caught. Seriously, did you think that the CF would let anyone with your skills go off to… what was it… be a writer?” she asked, looking at me. “Or a chemist?” she asked, looking at Beth. “Not that there is anything wrong with being a chemist, mind. There are far too many books, unimporant books, but I suppose New Texas needed chemists. But you could have still done that while partnered and producing children. Here we are at war, and we need every child we can get, and you were wasting your most fertile time.”
“You always knew you were going to be a doctor?” Beth asked, while I fumed.
“Oh, yes. Well, since I was six, anyway, when my aptitude tests showed I would be good at it. Even before then my chosen studies led that direction. Your education system is so inefficient. Why, by the time I was six I could name every single organ in the human body, and had a good idea of their function. I liked art, too.”
“How efficient is that?” Beth asked, a bit aggressively.
But the teacher only grinned at her words and leant forward, “The human is more than just a collection of cells. Even we cold unfeeling Newtonians know that. Art is ‘efficient’ at reaching the human soul.”
She sat back and meditated for a minute, “You silly New Texans wouldn’t think we were so cold if you saw my partner and I in bed,” she said, grinning. “But do you really want to try to defend your bizarre system? It seems to me it is neither fish nor foul, Human or Bn. The CF came to NT, which had no desire to join, and had to twist your arms to get you to do the right thing. And then they had to give you a whole bunch of ‘exemptions’ and things. It seems, to me, like the CF has perverted your whole society.
Several of the other girls had stopped their conversations to listen to what we were saying, but they didn’t say anything, leaving it to me to say, “I don’t think so! Sure, the whole recruiting, culling, finishing school is not exactly NT. But you yourself pointed out how much we adapted it to our culture. And the rest of our culture is our own.”
“As if being ‘New Texas’ wasn’t artificial enough,” the teacher scoffed.
“You can’t tell us that being Newtonian isn’t artificial!” I said. “The whole thing was invented from the ground up. No one on Earth ever had a culture like yours.”
“And your partnerships, how is that not artificial? Having some computer pick a partner for you?”
“I can’t imagine marrying a husband I hadn’t even slept with,” a voice from the end of the table said, and we all stopped, shocked. It was Rasine. We all knew her story, their story. A ship crew from New Sparta, her husband had died of an accident with the power plant just before they had arrived on NT, and she had gotten a cull for a second husband: a very nice, and very overwhelmed, boy from the Dallas area. She had been forced to give up her ship position and, grossly pregant and with a two year old, was now with us studying to be a midwife, and probably going to have to change assignments to colonist or something.
“You say your husband is good in bed,” she said, into the silence. “How would you know, when you have never had bed play with anyone else?”
“That’s… that’s just awful,” Beth said, spluttering. “I can’t imagine…”
“Of course you can’t imagine,” Rasine said. “Nor can the Newtonians, or most of you. For all their boast of logic, they still can’t imagine trying out a husband before marrying him. You wouldn’t buy anything else that way, buy the first thing on the shelf without trying anything else.”
“Human relationships are not like toothpaste,” the teacher retorted. “Unlike material goods, human relationships are diminished when they are shared… human sexual and bonding relationships. A husband, like a child, is not something you should just ‘try’. Unless one enters fully into the bonding relationship one hasn’t bonded at all. And to fully enter and then pull out is to deny the very fruit the relationship is supposed to produce, to refuse the deepest and fullest blessing.”
The New Spartan blushed, I’m not sure why, but continued gamely. “Sex doesn’t always need to be about bonding. It can be about experimentation and friendship.”
“The sexual relationship is profoundly different from all other relationships,” Beth quoted, straight out of Gruden’s (although they had called it ‘the intimate and private physical relationship between two partners’). “The bonding that it accomplishes, regardless of the partner’s intent, is one of the most powerful of human actions, and should not be…”
“But how can you know that if you’ve never tried it with more than one boy?” the New Spartan asked.
—
“What?” Andrew said, when I told him about the conversation that night. “That’s crazy!”
“Well, I thought so too,” I said, as we fooled around in the shower together. “Have you… do you often have conversations like that?”
“About sleeping with girls before you get a partner?”
“No. About different cultures. Hallycone… you remember that. And now Newtonia, New Sparta…”
“Oh. Yeah. We don’t have many people from different cultures, but we talk about it. The Hallyconers know a lot more. New Texas is kind of out of the way, but they get a lot of traffic, a lot of visitors. New Spartans, Newtonians, practically all of the different planets come down onto Hallycone, almost like the whole ‘vacation’ thing worked out for them.”
“Really?”
“Well, they don’t make that much money off it, but, still, they get some. It really helps with the exemptions and all.”
“So, what do they talk about?”
“Oh, different food, mostly. You know guys.”
“Just food?” I asked. “I know guys.”
“Guys whose every word is being recorded on the computer. Food, some about clothes. I told everyone about…” His voice trailed off.
I blushed, “You did?”
“I, ummm, you told me you had…”
“It’s OK, I guess,” I said. “I just hate teh thought of all of those guys thinking about… about me…”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “Just don’t do it again.”
“Hopefully it won’t happen again!”
“With them as roomates? YOu’re kidding.”
“What did the guys say?” I asked, after a few minutes.
“Say?”
“About what happend to us?”
“Oh. Well, they laughed, obviously. And then they started telling their own stories… mostly the Hallyconers. This one told a story about This time that some Rihayalans had to stay a few days on Hallycone, and they absoloutely freaked at the dress code of the women. There was almost a riot!”
“What do the Hallyconers wear? I mean, I know they aren’t freaked but, what, do they swim in the nude? Like, in public? They way they treated me…”
I dunno how they swim,” Andrew said. “This was just their regular, walking around, clothes. They had put the Rihahalns in a stadium, the CF had. But the Hallyconers hadn’t locked any of the doors or anything, so the Rihalans wandered ‘downtown’, saw the women, and freaked.
“You two tried to avoid your duty to society, to the human race” There is no such thing in a positive sense. There is only the negative duty to not interfere with others’ liberty (The Silver Rule), unless you want to assume more specifically that they are all Christians, in which case there is God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, but he didn’t specify a rate, so they arguably weren’t even violating that.
“did you think that the CF would let anyone with your skills go off to… what was it… be a writer? …Or a chemist?” You seriously want me to believe that CF has legitimate (non-coercion-based) ownership rights to their bodies, minds, and the occupations thereof? That CF can take the place of God to tell someone what to do?
“Here we are at war” So someone else committing aggression gives you license to do the same? This is only true when speaking of using force against the aggressor. To use supposedly ‘reactive’ force against a peaceful third party is immoral.
“we need every child we can get” Who is this ‘we’ and why can’t you make your own children? There is no justification for coercing someone else to make babies on your timetable.
“you were wasting your most fertile time” Her time is hers to use as she sees fit. If you think such a delay is ‘wasting time’ then don’t act that way yourself. Interfering in her life is to presume a God’s Eye view of her life, that you know better AND have the right to impose your will on her life and liberty. If she uses her “most fertile time” for other life-enriching pursuits, she may find a suitable mate among the males who also want fewer children and a more capable wife. This is a win-win situation for both of them. If it turns out that there are too many women like her compared to men like that, she will find a dearth of potential partners and learn a possibly harsh lesson, but it’s hers to learn. Free societies find ways to make such preferences known to the participants and to voluntarily negotiate such decisions so that the market in each type of partner clears. Centrally planned societies take this liberty (and all liberties eventually) away, and substitutes for each person’s subjective value scale the values of the bureaucrats at central planning. This cannot be optimal for the society, as the necessary knowledge is dispersed among the hearts of the individuals who should be making these decisions for themselves.
“when my aptitude tests showed I would be good at it” Being good at something doesn’t necessarily mean you will enjoy doing it. While they generally correlate (who likes doing something they suck at? well, actually, some persist anyway), there may be many things you are potentially good at, but only you know what you like to do (though often only after trying them).
“before then my chosen studies led that direction” That’s more like it.
“But do you really want to try to defend your bizarre system?” Um, no, not most of what I know of it. But presumably the girls here do.
“CF came to NT, which had no desire to join, and had to twist your arms” Exactly my complaint.
“to get you to do the right thing.” Says you! It is one plan that a central planner far away came up with to defend against the Bn. There is NO indication that it is The Right Thing(™). And even if it were, you’d think people wouldn’t have to be coerced to do it. The very fact that coercion is necessary is a big red flashing light with sirens screaming that what they are doing is in fact NOT right.
“the CF has perverted your whole society.” I think we can agree there!
“artificial… the teacher scoffed.” What’s wrong with being artificial? Do you live in a cave you found, or a constructed home? Wear clothes that just grew by themselves in the right size and shape for you? Only communicate with your own voice through the air with everyone naturally near you, or do you sometimes use electronic means to artificially cast your thoughts to people around the world unnaturally far beyond the reach of your voice?
“I can’t imagine marrying a husband I hadn’t even slept with.” I was shocked once to hear this very sentiment, which greatly embarrassed a dear relation.
“You wouldn’t buy anything else that way, buy the first thing on the shelf without trying anything else.” This is the only part of their argument that makes some sense, but it also shows a lack of knowledge of human nature and a lack of trust in God who made it. The relevant parts of a girl and a boy are made by Him to fit, no “making sure it fits” necessary. And relationally, you’re even more right, about the bonding.
“But how can you know that if you’ve never tried it with more than one boy?” By learning from others, and listening to the Designer of the body. The first is common sense: only an idiot has to learn first hand, a wise woman learns from the mistakes of other women before her. The second requires a revelation from the Creator of these bodies (not a unique revelation, it’s written down), and the belief that He has our best interests in His Mind.
“had put the Rihahalns in a stadium… But… hadn’t locked any of the doors” Exactly the correct non-coercive treatment I’d prescribe. Set them gently down in isolation, knowing they’d prefer it, but not forcing it on them.
“the Rihalans wandered ‘downtown’, saw the women, and freaked.” LOL! It’s their problem. They knew, or should have known. Now they really do. The manner of freaking might be a problem, if they tried to make every woman around them cover themselves, or tried to rape them due to the ‘obvious’ permission, or threatened violent action. But so long as they were peaceful, they probably had a good learning session. “There was almost a riot!” implies otherwise, but I put hopeful emphasis on ‘almost’.