（外文电子版资料）Robert Silverberg - A Happy Day in 2381.pdf

A HAPPY DAY IN 2381 by Robert Silverberg The author of this story is one of the most productive writers of science fiction-recent novels are Thorns and Hawkshill Station, a past president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, a non-fiction specialist in archaeological and historical themes-Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archaeology of a Myth, and sometime world-traveler. He is also a student of social affairs, as this story proves, taking a close look at the untrammeled joys of a happy, productive, crowded, overpopulated world. Here is a happy day in 2381. The morning sun is high enough to reach the uppermost fifty stories of Urban Monad 116. Soon the buildings entire eastern face will glitter like the sea at dawn. Charles Matterns window, activated by the dawns early photons, deopaques. He stirs. God bless, he thinks. His wife stirs. His four children, who have been up for hours, now can officially begin the day. They rise and parade around the bedroom, singing: God bless, God bless, God bless! God bless us every one! God bless Daddo, God bless Mommo, God bless you and me! God bless us all, the short and tall, Give usfer-til-i-tee! They rush toward their parents sleeping platform. Mattern rises and embraces them. India is eight, Sandor is seven, Mane is five, Cleo is three. It is Charles Matterns secret shame that his family is so small. Can a man with only four children truly be said to have reverence for life? But Principessas womb no longer flowers. The medics have said she will not bear again. At twenty-seven she is sterile. Mattern is thinking of taking in a second woman. He longs to hear the yowls of an infant again; in any case, a man must do his duty to Go