Free Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner

well as luxy—ask the folk from the Mountain States who can hold down city-centre jobs thanks to our five-minutely crush-hour service!
    “Just a formality, if you don’t mind. Young lady, hold out your hand … Thanks. It’ll take five minutes. Hang on … Sorry, we can only give you a transient’s pass for this state. Congratulations, though—hope it’s a baby.”
    WHEN THE PRESSURE GETS TO THE BLOWOFF POINT YOU’LL BE GRATEFUL FOR GT’S KEYS TO EASIER LIVING. TRANKS, PROPHYLACTICS, ARE ONLY THE START OF THE STORY. OUR AIDS TO NORMAL FEMALE BIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONING ARE APPROVED BY ALL STATE CODES.
    “Prophet’s beard, Donald, if I’d known you had a thing about dark meat I could have had my pick of—”
    “Then why don’t you try a brunette some time, say an Italian type? Someone who’s fed nothing but stark white sliced-and-wrapped is apt to want some wholemeal granary now and then!”
    But in any household problems like this are bound to arise.
    Olive Almeiro Agency offers you the chance of a lifetime. We have a wider range of good-heredity adoptables than any other agency in our field. Offer not good in following states: New York, Illinois, California …
    BE IT ENACTED THAT: carriage of the genes listed in Appendix A below shall ipso facto be grounds for abortion upon presentation of the mother at any Eugenics Processing Board in the following …
    “Who are you going to get in to replace Lucille?”
    “Don’t know. Haven’t thought about it yet.”
    POPULATION STRETCHING TO LIMIT. Reports today from official sources hint that immigrants to this state with residents’ qualifications more recent than 30th March last will be given choice of sterilisation or removal.
    We’ve celebrated our twenty-first. Have you? Liberal association seeks broadminded couples, triples, to enlarge the scope of our activities. We have FOURTEEN children in the group already!
    “Prophet’s beard, Donald…!”
    “I’m sorry, I’ve said I’m sorry! But can I help getting bored with your line of shiggies? Laura was Scandahoovian, Bridget was Scandahoovian, Hortense was and Rita was and Moppet was and Corinne was. I think you’re in a rut, to be frank.”
    Reliable couple seek babyminding opportunities, one or several days p.w. (Certificates avlble. Webtoe only drawback) Box NPP2
    BE IT ENACTED THAT: carriage of the genes listed in Appendix B below shall ipso facto be grounds for sterilisation of any male child achieving the age of puberty after …
    “Ah, go to hell!”
    “That’s a remarkably Christian attitude, Donald. Both meaningless and barbaric.”
    “Stop trying to play on my WASP guilt feelings. Sometimes I wonder how you’d make out in a genuinely nonracial society.”
    “There aren’t any. Give you another generation, you’ll add the genes for dark skin-pigment to the list of—”
    Leo Branksome! Come home! Being sterilised isn’t going to make us love you any the less! You’re our boy, our only son, and running away was a stupid thing to do! And you’re only fourteen, remember! Your adoring but miserable parents.
    “Thirty-four? And you have a clean genotype? My God, I ought to push this glass in your face! All we’ve got is a suspicion, not even proof but a suspicion, that Harold’s mother had sickle-cell anaemia and I’d give my right arm for children and you smug bastard can stand there and—”

tracking with closeups (4)
    MASKER AID
    Conscious that she was a walking advertisement for her own processes, conscious that not even the brilliant lights of the video technicians would reveal a flaw in her cosmetic garb, conscious with particular pleasure of the fact that the woman they had sent to interview her was conspicuously less well turned-out, Guinevere Steel cooed at the microphone.
    “Why, the success of my Beautiques is due to two factors: the ability of my customers to recognise who does and who doesn’t keep that quantum-jump ahead of transient fashions, and equally their