Bears Discover Fire полностью

Besides, they get out as soon as they marry, anyway.”

“What if we don’t want our kid to go to prison at all?”

“Whoa, Akisha! Do you mind if I call you Akisha? Are we back in the Dark Ages here, where the parents decide the child’s future even before it is born? This is a free country and kids as well as parents have rights. Sure you don’t want a cigarette?”

“I’m sure.”

“Suit yourself. Let’s cut the BS. You’re nice kids, but under the Melanin Distribution Provisions of the Ozone Emergency Act, the law is clear. If you want to raise your own children, you’ll have to marry legally.”

“Which means marry a white person.”

“As a white person myself, I’ll overlook your racist tone of voice, which I’m sure you didn’t mean. Is there something so terrible about marrying a white person?”

“No. I don’t guess so.”

“Okay. Now why don’t you get with the program. Don’t you know some nice white boy to marry?”

“Then I can keep my baby?”

“Not this one, but the next one. This one’s double M and belongs to Uncle Sam, or at least to the Natural Resources Administration of HEW and M.”

“But what if I don’t want to marry some damn white boy!”

“Jones, I was hoping we could handle this without emotional outbursts of naked bigotry. I see I was wrong. You are in danger of making me feel like an inadequate counselor with this racist attack on my professional self-image. Is it because I’m white?”

“It’s because I want to marry Yusef.”

“Who just happens to be black? Let’s get real, girl. There’s nothing subtle about you same-race couples. The way you strut around, as if daring the world to rain on your disgusting little intraracial parade.”

“But—”

“Whoa! Before you go blaming all white people because of your personal problems, let me warn you that you are already in violation of several applicable federal Civil Rights statutes. I’m afraid you’ve taken this matter out of my hands. I have no choice but to send you up to see the Colonel.”

“The Colonel?”

“The Civil Rights Prosecutor. In the big office on the top floor of the main building.”

“What about me?”

“You can go with her if you want, Yusef. But if I were you—”

“You’re not.”

“—I’d find a nice white girl and get married. Fast. Before you both get in more trouble than you can handle. Dismissed. Next!”

“NEXT!”

“We’re here to see the Colonel.”

“I am the Colonel. I’m here to help you if I can. And let me begin by warning you that anything you say will be used against you.”

“Will be?”

“Can be, will be, whatever. Young lady, are you splitting hairs with me?”

“No.”

“Good. Now, I see you are under indictment for Discrimination and Conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy? All we wanted to do was get married.”

“Which is against the law. Surely you knew that or you wouldn’t have gone to the Marital Law Administration in the first place.”

“We were trying to get a special license.”

“Precisely. And what is that if not trying to evade the Melanin Redistribution Act which prohibits black intramarriage? The mere presence of you two in line A21 is in itself evidence of a conspiracy to circumvent the provisions of the Melanin Hoarding Ban.”

“But we were trying to obey the law!”

“That makes it even worse. The law is a just master, but it can be harsh with those who try to sabotage its spirit by hypocritically observing its letter. However, I’m going to delay sentencing on Conspiracy and Hoarding because we have an even more serious charge to deal with here.”

“Sentencing? We haven’t even been convicted yet.”

“Young lady, are you splitting hairs with me?”

“No.”

“Good. Now let’s move on to the Discrimination charge. Deep issues are involved here. You two aren’t old enough to remember the Jim Crow Days in the South, when blacks weren’t permitted to swim in the public pools. But I remember. Do you know what Discrimination is?”

“I read about it in school.”

“Well, then you know that it is wrong. And blacks who don’t marry whites are denying them the right to swim in their gene pool. Discriminating against them.”

“Nobody’s denying anybody the right to do anything! I just want to marry Yusef.”

“That’s a conveniently simplistic way of looking at things, isn’t it? But it won’t wash in a court of law. You can’t marry Yusef without refusing to marry Tom, Dick, or Harry. It’s the same difference. If you marry a black person, you are denying a white person the right to marry you; and that’s a violation of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Do you recognize those two pictures on the wall?”

“Sure. Martin Luther King and John Kennedy.”

“John F. Kennedy. Somehow your generation has lost sight of the ideals they died for. Let me pose a purely hypothetical question—would it be fair to have a society in which one racial grouping, such as yours, had special rights and privileges denied to the rest of us?”

“It never bothered anybody before.”

“Are you getting smart?”

“No. But what about the Fourteenth Amendment? Doesn’t it apply to me?”