was on the way up. With that “work” done, the doctor went back to the physicians’ lounge for a smoke and a magazine.
ComradeYang?" another clerk, a more senior one, said. ”Yes?" the worried husband replied, still stuck in the waiting room, held prisoner by clerks.
“Your wife is being taken upstairs to obstetrics. But,” the clerk added, “there’s one problem.”
“What is that?” Quon asked, knowing the answer, but hoping for a miracle, and utterly trapped by the bureaucratic necessities of the moment.
“We have no record of your wife’s pregnancy in our files. You are in our health district—we show you at Number Seventy-two Great Long March Flats. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s where we live,” Quon sputtered out, trying to find a way out of this trap, but not seeing one anywhere.
“Ah.” The clerk nodded. “I see. Thank you. I must now make a telephone call.”
It was the way the last statement was delivered that frightened Quon: Ah, yes, I have to see that the trash is removed properly. Ah, yes, the glass is broken, and I’ll try to find a repairman. Ah, yes, an unauthorized pregnancy, I’ll call upstairs so that they’ll know to kill the baby when it crowns.
Upstairs, Lien-Hua could see the difference in their eyes. When Ju-Long had been on his way, there’d been joy and anticipation in the eyes of the nurses who oversaw her labor. You could see their eyes crinkle with smiles at the corners of their masks ... but not this time. Someone had come over to where she was in labor room #3 and said something to the nurse, and her head had turned rapidly to where Lien-Hua lay, and her eyes had turned from compassionate to ... something else, and while Mrs. Yang didn’t know what other thing it was, she knew the import. It might not be something the nurse particularly liked, but it was something she would assist in doing, because she had to. China was a place where people did the things they had to do, whether they approved it or liked it or not. Lien-Hua felt the next contraction. The baby in her uterus was trying to be born, not knowing that it was racing to its own destruction at the hands of the State. But the hospital staffers knew. Before, with Ju-Long, they’d been close by, not quite hovering, but close enough to watch and see that things were going well. Not now. Now they withdrew, desiring not to hear the sounds of a mother struggling to bring forth death in a small package.
On the first floor, it was equally plain to Yang Quon. What came back to him now was his firstborn son, Ju-Long, the feel of his small body in his arms, the little noises he made, the first smile, sitting up, crawling, the first step in their small apartment, the first words he’d spoken ... but their little Large Dragon was dead now, never to be seen again, crushed by the wheel of a passenger bus. An uncaring fate had ripped that child from his arms and cast him aside like a piece of blowing trash on the street—and now the State was going to slay his second child. And it would all happen upstairs, less than ten meters away, and he couldn’t do a thing about it.... It was a feeling not unknown to citizens of the People’s Republic, where rule from above was the rule, but opposed to it now was the most fundamental of human drives. The two forces battled within the mind of factory worker Yang Quon. His hands shook at his sides as his mind struggled with the dilemma. His eyes strained, staring at nothing closer than the room’s wall, but straining even so ... something, there had to be something ...
There was a pay telephone, and he did have the proper coins, and he did remember the number, and so Yang Quon lifted the receiver and dialed the number, unable to find the ability within himself to change fate, but hoping to find that ability in another.
I’ll get it," Reverend Yu said in English, rising and walking to where it was ringing.
“A remarkable guy, isn’t he?” Wise asked the two Catholics.
“A fine man,” Cardinal DiMilo agreed. “A good shepherd for his flock, and that is all a man can hope to be.”
Monsignor’s Schepke’s head turned when he caught the tone of Yu’s voice. Something was wrong here, and by the sound, something serious. When the minister returned to