Besides, it was illegal. They were no longer hers. She was an Abandoned.
She had never known what a tremendously harrowing experience filling out an availability form could be. Name, age, Sector, race, size-classification, beauty-index, fertility tests, personality scores, aptitudes, psyche-rating and so on, and so on and so on. It was like undressing for an auction. The protection-request form was much simpler, except for that one question: STATUS? Her hand shook almost uncontrollably as she wrote. Abandoned.
After that she did not know what to do. She had stood for nearly twenty minutes before the document file, listening, thinking desperately that he would come back; that if she only waited a few minutes more he would come back. She had made herself refreshment. She had sat with the filled-out documents on her lap looking, from time to time, longingly at the entrance-ramp. But he had not come back. Finally, with a low moaning sound, she had pushed the papers through the document file slot. She made the deadline by a scant three minutes.
Now she knew that whatever else happened, the Protection People would be there in the morning to pick up the children. She knew that it could show in her favor if she were to get together the things they would need to take with them. She could do this without seeing them and without talking to them, which was forbidden, but she could not bring herself to move.
The red light on the atmosphere control blinked warningly. Soon it would let out a piercing scream. She was tempted to just let it. Another of Clytia's suns must have set. She found that she had no sense of time. She had only the conviction that this would be her last night. The last night that mattered to her at all. She wanted it to be a long one. She had adjusted the atmoset. She had done this every night for the seven years of their marriage. She began to sob uncontrollably. She took her Status Married card and tore it in half. Then she held the halves to her cheeks, her face wet and wretched between them.
After a while she dialed the credit balance at her account. The figures came back indicating a balance of 1300. He had left her quite a lot, when you considered that she had televiewed to Earth. She cried hard again because she knew that he had not had to leave her anything at all. This made her certain (although she had known it already) that he was not coming back.
She sat for quite a while studying the 1300 credit indicator. She thought about using the money to buy a "pick-up-immediately advertisement" on the omnivision. She was not sure of the rates, but she thought the amount might even stretch to include a picture of her. She did not know. She did not even know if she would be expected to be nude or dressed for the picture. In the end, she decided not to try an advertisement because there would not be time enough to employ a reply-receiving address. All that would be accomplished would be to put every predator within miles in possession of the address of an Abandoned.
She took a dictator and said into it: "Dear children, I am leaving you 1300 credit." She stopped then and shook her head. The tears made it so that she could not see, and she did not seem to be able to think. "Correction," she sobbed "Erase preceding. Dear Children of Yan, I make you this gift of 1300. I am sure that your excellence will continue to deserve much more than so small a gift. I send love with this small gift."
There could, of course, be no signature. An Abandoned had none.