The Resistance

crowded his head. He knew the truth. There would be no children. There would only ever be the two of them and Ben. There was no reason not to sign any more, no reason to die. But he couldn’t tell her. Not yet.
    ‘If you loved me, you’d sign.’ He flung the words at her, kicking his chair and storming out of the kitchen.
    ‘Peter . . .’ Anna called after him, but he barely heard her as he stomped off to the sitting room, collapsed on the sofa and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
    ‘Peter?’
    Peter looked up, disoriented. He squinted at the face in front of him, at the familiar eyes staring down at him.
    ‘Pip?’
    ‘Anna called me. She said you’d been drinking. She sounded very worried about you.’
    ‘She called you?’ Peter pulled himself up and looked at Pip incredulously. ‘And you came here? What about code names? What about security?’
    ‘An emergency is an emergency. And don’t worry, I was careful,’ Pip said. Music was playing; Peter looked around and saw that the radio was on. Of course it was, he thought to himself bitterly. Pip never missed a trick. ‘Anna said you were confused,’ Pip continued. ‘I’d like to help.’
    ‘Well she’s wrong,’ Peter said angrily, moving his head and realising that he was still intoxicated. ‘I’m not confused about anything. I told her we were going to sign the Declaration. Anyway, what are you doing here out in the open? I thought you only hung around darkened rooms, feeling important.’
    ‘You want to sign the Declaration?’ Pip’s voice was steady, flat, and it drove Peter into a rage.
    ‘You want to give me one reason why I shouldn’t?’ he asked bitterly, standing up suddenly, then gripping the side of the sofa to keep his balance. ‘You want to tell me that the Surplus Sterilisation Programme never happened? You want to tell Anna that after all the crap you’ve been feeding us about “being the revolution” and “parenting the future children of the world” she’s never going to have a child? That she can’t because her insides have been ripped out or put to sleep or turned off, or whatever it is they’ve done to her? Because I can’t.’
    Pip was looking at him strangely. ‘The programme. It’s really true? It happened? How do you know? How did you find out?’
    Peter didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Even through his anger he’d harboured some small hope that there might be an explanation, that Pip might not have known. ‘I saw the report,’ he said eventually, his voice low and bitter. ‘Saw our names on the list.’ He looked at Pip in disgust. ‘You knew,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I thought you must know; you say you know everything. But then I thought no, you couldn’t know, because if you even suspected something, you’d have told us. You wouldn’t have allowed us to Opt Out of the Declaration, to build our whole lives around having children, when you knew full well we couldn’t have any. I thought you weren’t that much of a bastard. But I’m guessing I was wrong. Maybe you’re the one who’s outlived his usefulness, Pip. Ever thought about that?’
    He could see Pip’s eyes widen slightly, even in the darkness of the sitting room, lit only by a glimmer of moonlight through the window. Guilt, Peter thought to himself. Or perhaps just the shock of being found out.
    ‘Peter, you must listen. There was talk of such a programme but we understood that it had been abandoned. But even if this tragedy came to pass, there’s still reason to Opt Out. To make a statement. You, of all people. Eternal life was never the destiny of mankind, Peter. We must fight the dogma that death is wrong, that nature’s cycle can be ignored.’
    ‘Like you, you mean?’ Peter asked, his eyes flashing. ‘Oh, no. That’s right. You signed the Declaration, didn’t you? Living for ever isn’t something you were prepared to sacrifice, is it? Just me. Just Peter Pincent.’
    Pip frowned uneasily. ‘Peter, you know very well that I have no interest in prolonging my own life, in watching all this misery unfold; but my role in the resistance meant I had to sign the Declaration to ensure that the movement could develop. I couldn’t risk it dying out. I live for the cause, that is all.’
    ‘You mean you couldn’t risk leaving it to the next generation to run the Underground in case they rejected your ideas,’ Peter spat. ‘You’re as bad as the Authorities. All you care about is your own self-interest.