It
was a wealthy family. Their riches had been earned from contracts
with the Nation’s Armed Forces. In their family’s
munitions factory they made guns for the military, exclusively. In
the laboratories on their factory premises, mathematical equations
were being generated continually indicating possible future weaponry.
The
parents had two children; Reez and Lya. Identical twin daughters.
They were born at home because a City-wide storm made all roads to a
hospital impassable.
Near-chaotic
circumstances in the home, which included frequent power outages,
rendered it impossible to know which twin was the elder. By a toss of
a coin, Reez was declared the elder.
When
this story begins, both twins were married; Reez to Sigh; Lya to Syl.
Incredibly,
Sigh and Syl were identical twins; Sigh was the elder by a full
minute, at least. Both had been born in a hospital in the City where
the munitions factory was located.
Sigh
and Syl were science-soaked engineers who worked in the family’s
munitions laboratories and factory. Years ago, unmarried, they were
hired on graduating from the City’s only University because of
two facts.
One’s
specialty was Chemistry; the other’s was Metallurgy. Working
side by side, they were a perfect complementary fit in a munitions
factory.
Reez
and Lya, long before they married, and in secret from their parents,
had entered into an agreement that they would never become Mothers.
They agreed that the fabulous wealth in which they lived and which
they would inherit from their parents, made the necessary personal
sacrifices of motherhood easily avoidable and totally unnecessary.
When it became necessary, the secrecy from their parents was
seamlessly extended to husbands Sigh and Syl.
That
secret of the wives was neither here nor there to the husbands
inasmuch as to Sigh and Syl, inveterate scientists
through-and-through, parenthood was so remote a possibility as to be
practically non-existent.
That
the wives never brought up the issue of parenthood, went utterly
unnoticed by the science-soaked husbands.
That
the husbands never brought up the issue, forever caused the
ever-apprehensive wives to be driven to drinking alcohol, in secret
from their husbands, of course, and to the brink of becoming
alcoholics.
When
in time the parents realized they were not likely to become
grandparents, they discussed with their daughters and their
daughters’ husbands, plans to sell the factory. While the
daughters could not care less; the husbands were intensely worried.
Sigh
and Syl were dedicated scientists. Quite often, their wives were
irked by suspicions their husbands loved their science work in the
family’s laboratories and munitions factory more than they
loved their wives at home. The only reason those suspicions never
deteriorated into dangerous worries in the wives was because the
intensity of dedication to science made the husbands so very
unconcerned about becoming fathers.
The
parents’ intentions to sell the factory troubled Sigh and Syl
because they felt becoming fathers was so easy and natural and
healthy a minor solution to preventing the sale. So-to-speak, a
simple algebraic equation.
Sigh
and Syl, totally ignorant of their wives’ premarital secret
pact, agreed to discuss the matter with Reez and Lya.
Reez
and Lya met in secret, after their husbands had, at different times,
brought up the matter of parenthood for discussion.
In
the years that had passed since Reez and Lya made their pact, life
had proceeded much to their comfort so much that the fear of
motherhood had diminished considerably.
Reez
lived her life a dabbler. She enjoyed many pastimes, each for awhile,
before moving on to the next. In track-and-field athletics, she
declined the recommendation from coaches that her potential indicated
she would do well in the nation’s Olympic program. In swimming,
she became so qualified she was counseled to become a lifeguard. For
three seasons she was a violinist with the City’s symphony
orchestra. She was professionally skilled in three musical
instruments.
To
Sigh’s pleasant surprise, when he hesitantly brought up the
idea of probable parenthood, Reez laughingly declared a willingness
to “give it a one-time shot.” She, again laughingly,
declared incredulity at Sigh’s willingness to detour from his
strict Science agenda.
Lya
had gradually taken to Science, helping Syl. As a minor helper in his
laboratory, she was present when Syl and Sigh and other
mathematicians worked at equations on the wall blackboards. Because
she had no basic high school knowledge of mathematics; Algebra,
Geometry, Trigonometry, and such, she was careful to not show either
Syl or Sigh, or all the other fellow Scientists her interest in their
blackboard calculations. With Syl, she often worked side-by-side at
the blackboards in the factory.
Working
side by side with his wife was so natural to Syl, he seemed to never
notice how easily she understood his explanations of mathematic
calculations. Within two years, at a blackboard, he and she had
become as two different values in the same half of an algebraic
equation.
Notwithstanding,
Lya made a point to never dare correct a chalked mistake on a
blackboard which she alone detected. Instead, she would find ways to
maneuver Syl into uncovering the error himself.
In
time, Lya persuaded Syl to erect a blackboard in their home,
ostensibly for them to inject some fun into their side by side
calculations by using different colored chalk. Lya’s deeper and
only motive for an at-home blackboard was to provide herself more
opportunities to work on factory-laboratory science calculations on
her own; in any chalk color.
Fairly
early into their discussion of their husbands’ idea of entering
into parenthood, Reez and Lya arrived at a compromise between
themselves.
While
they would accept their husbands’ proposal, Reez would have
children, but Lya would not. Neither husband would be informed about
Lya’s exemption. It was left entirely and solely up to Lya how
she would keep Syl happily in the dark.
Lya
accepted that while such spousal deception was in itself not
righteously acceptable, in this case it was forgivable because
motherhood would not be a result of true romantic love. Motherhood in
this case would be to accomplish an entirely and merely materialistic
end; too, a fabulously wealthy merely materialistic end.
When
in time it became evident that neither couple was having success in
pregnancy, three of them were devastated.
Of
course, Lya was the one not devastated because she had always
delighted in the success of her underhanded secret measures and
Machiavellian machinations to ensure she and Syl would not become
biological parents.
The
failure of Reez and Sigh to become parents, necessitated recourse to
a different equation.
That
different equation troubled Lya. If Sigh and Syl were not infertile,
what if Reez’s deficiency was an identical female twin natural
genetic shared deficiency? Had all her, Lya’s, brilliantly
cunning machinations against her faithful husband, been for nothing?
On
the other hand, if-------?
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Ezra (Unless
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