Free Recognition by Ann Herendeen Page A

No one thinks shame of you
.
    I shut my mouth with a snap. “Four,” I
answered. A pathetic total for twenty years of adulthood. And that
was counting the one time with a stranger, after a drinking party
in my first year of college. “That’s all,” I added. “Four.” The
clerk wrote my answer exactly as I spoke it. I heard his pen stop
after the first “four,” then pick up again when I said, “That’s
all.”
    But it was not all. Once again the room
exploded into uproar. “Four!” someone shouted. “That finishes it.”
“No hope,” another man agreed. “I’d take a chance even on two, but
four!” The women I could see shook their heads sadly, and from the
back, where the rest of the women sat behind their partition, there
came a wailing as if someone had died.
    The Viceroy was not willing to give up. “We
will find out everything,” he assured his unhappy audience. “It may
be there are facts we do not yet know.” Despite the obvious
derision of the men, he persevered, waiting patiently for quiet.
“Young mistress.” His voice was sad and gentle. “Did you ever seek
treatment for your infertility? Is it perhaps something that could
be cured?” I read the thoughts behind the sympathetic words, the
gloomy certainty that if the renowned Terran treatments for
infertility had failed, I was indeed a hopeless case.
    I stared blankly for a long couple of
minutes. “I used birth control,” I said, laughing with hysterical
relief at the misunderstanding. “Contraception.” I supplied the
Terran term, finding no Eclipsian equivalent in my limited
vocabulary. The clerk looked up, for the first time in his entire
career, I was sure, hearing a word he didn’t know and couldn’t
spell.
    The ‘Graven were equally mystified.
Contra what? How do you ‘control’ birth?
Only the women
grasped the basic principle, but they were just as confused by the
larger implications.
    Lord Zichmni’s face turned bright red, and
for a moment all eyes were on him as people worried he was going to
faint or have a stroke. He waved away the offers of help, but
accepted the glass of water that a guard brought. When he could
speak, Lord Zichmni was both stern and more at ease. “Young
mistress,” he said, “for the benefit of those like me, and for our
poor clerk here, please explain in simple language what this
‘contracept’ is, and how you ‘control’ birth.”
    I turned to Dominic, hoping that he would get
me out of this, but he was waiting like the rest. I sensed a
certain curiosity in him, admiration and even a kind of envy. There
was no help to be had from him. My tongue stumbled over the words,
but eventually I got the idea across, the chemicals that prevent
ovulation, the freedom from the monthly periods, the opportunity to
enjoy sexual relationships with men without fear of pregnancy.
    There was silence as I finished. Most people
had followed the straightforward science; as Dominic had told me,
the ‘Graven have studied the biology of reproduction out of
necessity. “But why?” a man shouted. A woman began to explain, but
the man cut her off. “Yes,” he said, “I understand if she had a
dozen already, but she has none. I’ve never heard of a woman not
wanting
any
children.”
    It was Lord Zichmni who finally got to the
heart of it. “So it is this contraception that has made you
sterile?” he asked.
    “Not sterile,” I answered. “It only works
while you use it. Once you stop using it you can try to conceive.”
Of course I had no idea if I was fertile to begin with, never
having wanted to be.
    The Assembly’s disposition improved
radically. Here was something people could understand. “It’s as if
she’s a virgin,” they told each other. “She’s only had sex with
this potion to keep her womb empty.”
    My uneasiness only increased along with the
rising elation of the Assembly as I heard the speculative thoughts
around me, all from men, sizing me up as a potential breeder.
    Still a few