The Seed of Evil

Lian Li frowned. “Very well.”

Chairman Christian nodded. He was no less cheerful as he went on: “Following Won Muong’s report, the DCC deemed it advisable to investigate your past history. First of all, it emerges that your behaviour displays a pattern of concupiscence. When asked, several young females have described incidents where your conduct seemed, in their words, odd and over-familiar. They mention your tendency to seek bodily contact, sometimes by an act of ‘friendly’ fondling, sometimes by what they suspect to be contrived accident. Always these acts are too ambiguous for their import to be clear.”

“In that case perhaps these stories could not be relied on,” Lian Li ventured uncertainly.

Dark-haired Ching Rowena, wearing a lavender smock, spoke up. “Is this not the crux of the matter, Lian Li? Do you deny that you frequently harbour sexual thoughts concerning the females you meet?”

Lian Li’s voice fell to a mutter. “No, I won’t deny it,” he said. He gazed deep into the brown, almost black eyes of Ching Rowena, momentarily losing himself, and finally he fancied she shifted uneasily in her seat. He tore his gaze away.

“Well, you know about me, then. I suppose I should have reported my urges before, but somehow. …” He shrugged. “What happens now? Am I to take remedial treatment?”

For the first time there was an air of embarrassment in the room. Chairman Christian spoke, his tone serious and almost diffident. “The news we bring you is grave, Lian Li. It becomes a matter of maintaining the condition of the commonalty.”

“Well, yes, but. …” Lian Li’s composure began to falter. “What do you mean?”

“More investigations have been undertaken. It was necessary to know if anything in your personal life has caused your deviation. When all other possibilities were excluded, the circumstances of your birth came under scrutiny, and your mother was questioned. At first she withheld the truth. But eventually she was persuaded to disclose a fact she has kept hidden up until now. A fact relating to your conception.”

Chairman Christian’s voice became warm and sympathetic, and while Lian Li listened dumbfounded, he said: “It is my duty to tell you something unfortunate, Lian Li. You were not conceived in perfect love. It appears that you owe your existence to a brief and secret liaison prompted by what once used to be known as a ‘glandular eruption’. In other words its object was the gratification of a frenzied and purely physical desire, described by your mother as ‘compulsive and irresistible’.

“Your mother has never until now revealed this episode, Lian Li. Not to her local DCC, nor to her spouse, whom you mistakenly believe to be your natural father—though his ignorance cannot be corroborated, as he died some years ago in a diving accident when the Atlantic mines were first being opened up.”

Lian Li nodded absently. Chairman Christian went on: “I don’t need to remind you that the feelings of the parents during intercourse directly affect the offspring’s psychic tendencies. The emotional atmosphere at your conception was one of atavistic passion. This, we regret to say, is undoubtedly the source of your deviation.”

There was silence. They were giving him time to absorb the largest, most unexpected and most unwelcome fact in his life. At last he shook his head slowly, as if in bewilderment.

“You are telling me that I am a throwback.”

“In the sense that the urges troubling you are congenital, yes. The misfortune, I need hardly add, is likely to be passed on to your own offspring.”

“Then … what is to be done?” repeated Lian Li blankly.

Chairman Christian tilted his head and smiled, cheerful again. “Half a century ago you could have taken a pill to rid you of these desires. But that is not countenanced now. The time for artificial measures has gone, and vigilance is our only watchword. We cannot allow the old taints to re-establish themselves, for indiscriminate sexuality jeopardises the revolutionary goal. It reduces ability and brings personal unhappiness.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Lian Li said. He was puzzled. “But what is expected of me?”

Ching Rowena spoke again. “Isolation from the commonalty is the only remedy we have now, Lian Li. Let me explain. Other cases like yours occasionally arise. There is an island where such people can live out their lives together. Sterilisation is mandatory, of course, since the aim of the island is to make regressive traits a genetic dead end.”

Lian Li reflected. “This island is a place of exile for people like me?”

Ching Rowena nodded.

“And how many live there?”

“Something less than a thousand, I believe.”

“My mother …?”

“She has already arrived.”