You want to go back to the
basement tenements?"

_God, no! Anything rather than that fetid huddling, that shameless
communal sprawl. And yet, was this so much better? The nearness to the
surface was meaningless; it only tantalized. And the privacy magnified
Hank._

She shook her head dutifully and said, "No, Hank."

"Then why aren't you careful? I've told you a million times, Effie, that
glass is no protection against the dust that's outside that window. The
lead shutter must never be touched! If you make one single slip like
that and it gets around, the Committee will send us back to the lower
levels without blinking an eye. And they'll think twice before trusting
me with any important jobs."

"I'm sorry, Hank."

"Sorry? What's the good of being sorry? The only thing that counts is
never to make a slip! Why the devil do you do such things, Effie? What
drives you to it?"

She swallowed. "It's just that it's so dreadful being cooped up like
this," she said hesitatingly, "shut away from the sky and the Sun. I'm
just hungry for a little beauty."

"And do you suppose I'm not?" he demanded. "Don't you suppose I want to
get outside, too, and be carefree and have a good time? But I'm not so
damn selfish about it. I want my children to enjoy the Sun, and my
children's children. Don't you see that that's the all-important thing
and that we have to behave like mature adults and make sacrifices for
it?"

"Yes, Hank."

He surveyed her slumped figure, her lined and listless face. "You're a
fine one to talk about hunger for beauty," he told her. Then his voice
grew softer, more deliberate. "You haven't forgotten, have you, Effie,
that until last month the Committee was so concerned about your
sterility? That they were about to enter my name on the list of those
waiting to be allotted a free woman? Very high on the list, too!"

She could nod even at that one, but not while looking at him. She turned
away. She knew very well that the Committee was justified in worrying
about the birth rate. When the community finally moved back to the
surface again, each additional healthy young person would be an asset,
not only in the struggle for bare survival, but in the resumed war
against Communism which some of the Committee members still counted on.

It was natural that they should view a sterile woman with disfavor, and
not only because of the waste of her husband's germ-plasm, but because
sterility might indicate that she had