Thorns

by Robert Silverberg

  “I don’t like to see people hurting.”

  “Who does, aside from Chalk? But how can you possibly get involved with these two? Where’s the handle? They’re too remote from us. They’re grotesques. They’re baroques. I don’t see how Chalk can sell them to the public.”

  Nikolaides said patiently, “Individually they’re baroques. Put them together and they’re Romeo and Juliet. Chalk has a certain genius for things like that.”

  Aoudad eyed the girl’s empty face and then the eerie, distorted mask that was the face of Minner Burris. He shook his head. The car rocketed forward, a needle penetrating the black fabric of the night. He switched off the screens and shut his eyes. Women danced through his brain: real women, adults, with soft, rounded bodies.

  The snow became thicker in the air about them. Even in the shielded snout of the womb-like car, Bart Aoudad felt a certain chill.

  FOUR

  CHILD OF STORM

  ■

  ■ Lona Kelvin donned her clothes. Two undergarments, two overgarments, gray on gray, and she was dressed. She walked to the window of her little room and looked out. Snowfall. White swirls in the night. They could get rid of the snow fast enough once it hit ground, but they couldn’t keep it from falling. Not yet.

  A walk in the Arcade, Lona decided. Then sleep and another day put to rest.

  She drew her jacket on. Shivered in anticipation. Looked about her.

  Pasted neatly to the walls of the room were photographs of babies. Not a hundred babies; more like sixty or seventy. And not her babies. But sixty baby photographs might just as well be a hundred. And to a mother like Lona, any babies might be her babies.

  They looked as babies look. Rounded, unshaped faces with button noses and glossy, drooling lips and unseeing eyes. Tiny ears, painfully perfect. Clutching little hands with improbably splendid fingernails. Soft skin. Lona reached out and touched the photograph nearest the door and imagined that she was touching baby-velvet. Then she put her hand to her own body. Touched the flat belly. Touched a small, hard breast. Touched the loins from which a legion of infants had and had not sprung. She shook her head in what might have been thought a self-pitying gesture, but most of the self-pity had been drained away by now, leaving only a gritty residual sediment of confusion and emptiness.

  Lona went out. The door quietly sealed itself behind her.

  The dropshaft took her swiftly to ground level. Wind whipped down the narrow passage between the tall buildings. Overhead, the artificial glow of night pressed back the darkness; colored globes moved silently to and fro. Snowflakes danced against them. The pavement was warm. The buildings that flanked her were brightly lit. To the Arcade, Lona’s feet told her. To the Arcade to walk awhile in the brightness and the warmth of this snowy night.

  Nobody recognized her.

  Only a girl out by herself for the evening. Mouse-colored hair flipping about her ears. A thin-naped neck, slumping shoulders, an insufficient body. How old? Seventeen. Could be fourteen, though. No one asked. A mousy girl.

  Mousy.

  Dr. Teh Ping Lin, San Francisco, 1966:

  “At the scheduled time of hormonally induced ovulation, female mice of the black-agouti C3H/HeJ strain were caged with fertile males of an albino strain, either BALB/c or Cal A (originally A/Crgl/2). Nine to twelve hours after the expected mating, eggs were flushed from the oviducts, and fertilized eggs were identified by the presence of the second polar body or by observation of pronuclei.”

  It was a taxing experiment for the doctor. Microinjection of living cells was nothing new even then, but work with mammalian cells had been flawed. The experimenters had not been able to safeguard the structural or functional integrity of the whole ovum.

  No one had ever informed Lona Kelvin that:

  “The mammalian egg is apparently more difficult to inject than other cells because of the thick zona pellucida and the vitelline membrane, both of which are highly elastic and resistant to the penetration of a microinstrument, especially at the unfertilized stage.”

  Crowds of boys were gathered, as usual, in the vestibule that led to the Arcade. With some of them were girls. Lona eyed them shyly. Winter did not extend to this vestibule; the girls had shucked their thermal wraps and stood proudly on display. This one had given her nipples a phosphorescence. That one had shaved her skull to exhibit the fine bony structure. There, voluptuous in the final weeks of pregnancy, a redhead linked her arms with two tall young men and laughingly roared obscenities.

  Lona viewed her, edge-on. Big belly, bulky burden. Can she see her toes? Her breasts are swollen. Do they hurt? The child was conceived in the old way. Lona blinked. Gasp and thrust and shudder in the loins and a baby made. One baby. Possibly two. Lona drew her narrow shoulders back, filled her pinched lungs with air. The gesture raised her breasts and thrust them outward, and color came to her angular cheeks.

  “Going to the Arcade? Go with me.”

  “Hey, robin! Let’s chirp!”

  “Need a friend, friend?”

  Eddies of talk. Buzzing basso invitations. Not for her. Never for her.

  I am a mother.

  I am the mother.

  “These fertilized eggs were then placed in a medium consisting of three parts modified Locke’s solution, one part 2.9 percent sodium citrate dihydrate, and 25 mg of bovine gamma globulin (BGG, Armour) per milliliter of the citrate-Locke’s solution. Penicillin (100 unit/ml) and streptomycin (50/μg/ml) were added to the medium. Viscosity of the medium at 22° C was 1.1591 cp and its pH 7.2. Eggs were retained for micromanipulation and injection within a drop of the bovine gamma globuline-citrate-Locke’s solution (GCL) which was covered with mineral oil in a Vaseline well on a microscope slide.”

  Tonight there was a small surprise for Lona. One of the loungers at the vestibule approached her. Was he drunk? So sexually deprived that she was attractive to him? Moved by pity for the waif? Or did he know who she was and wish to share her glory? That was the least probable of all. He did not know, would not wish. Of glory there was none.

  He was no beauty, but not conspicuously repulsive. Of medium height; black hair slicked straight forward almost to his eyebrows; eyebrows themselves slightly distorted surgically to arch in a skeptical inverted V; eyes gray, and bright with shallow craftiness; chin weak; nose sharp, prominent. About nineteen years old. Sallow skin marked with underlying striations, sun-sensitive patterns that would blaze in glory at noon. He looked hungry. On his breath a mixture of things: cheap wine, spiced bread, a hint of (splurge!) filtered rum.

  “Hello, lovely. Let’s match. I’m Tom Piper, Tom Piper’s son. You?”

  “Please—no,” Lona murmured. She tried to move away. He blocked her, exhaling.

  “Matched already? Meeting someone inside?”

  “No.”

  “Why not me, then? You could do worse.”

  “Let me be.” A faint whimper.

  He leered. Small eyes boring into her own. “Starman,” he said. “Just in from the outer worlds. We’ll get a table and I’ll tell you all about them. Mustn’t turn a starman down.”

  Lona’s forehead furrowed. Starman? Outer worlds? Saturn dancing within its rings, green suns beyond the night, pale creatures with many arms? He was no starman. Space marks the soul. Tom Piper’s son was unmarked, Even Lona could tell that. Even Lona.

  “You aren’t,” she said.

  “Am. I’ll tell you the stars. Ophiuchus. Rigel. Aldebaran. I’ve been out there. Come on, flower. Come with Tom.”

  He was lying. Glamorizing himself to enhance his magnetism. Lona shivered. Past his thick shoulder she saw the lights of the Arcade. He leaned close. His hand descended, found her hip, curled lasciviously over the fiat haunch, the lean flank.

  “Who knows?” he whispered huskily. “The night could go anywhere. Maybe I’ll give you a baby. I bet you’d like that. You ever had a baby?”

  Her nails raked his cheek. He reeled back, surprised, bloodied, and for a moment the banded ornaments bene
ath his skin glowed brightly even in the artificial light. His eyes were wild. Lona swung around and sidestepped him, losing herself in the throng surging through the vestibule.

  Elbows busy, she sliced a path into the Arcade.

  Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, give you a baby before he’s done…

  “Three hundred and one newly fertilized eggs were maintained in Vaseline well preparations and each received one of the following experimental treatments: (i) no pipette puncture and no injection; (ii) puncture of egg but no injection; (iii) injection of 180μ3 of the solution containing about 5 pg of BGG; (iv) injection of 770μ3 of the solution containing 20 pg of BGG; or (v) injection of 2730μ3 of the solution containing 68 pg of BGG.”

  The Arcade glittered. Here were all the cheaper pleasures, gathered under one glassy roof. As Lona passed the gate, she thrust her thumb against the toller to register her presence and be billed for her visit. It was not costly to enter. But she had money, she had money. They had seen to that.

  She planted her feet squarely and looked up at tier after tier, reaching toward the roof two hundred feet above. Up there snow was falling but not landing; efficient blowers kept it from touching the arching roof, and the flakes fell to a sticky death on the heated pavement.

  She saw the gambling tiers where a man could play any game for any stake. The stakes were generally not high. This was a place for the young, for the purse-poor. For the grubby. But with a will a man could lose thickly here, and some had. Up there wheels turned, lights flashed, buttons clicked. Lona did not understand the gambling games.

  Farther up, in mazy networks of corridors, flesh could be purchased by those with the need or the inclination. Women for men, men for women, boys for girls, girls for boys, and any conceivable combination. Why not? A human being was free to make disposition of his body in any way that did not directly interfere with the well-being of another. Those who sold were not forced to sell. They could become shopkeepers instead. Lona did not go to the houses of flesh.

  Here on the main level of the Arcade were the booths of small merchants. A handful of coins would buy a pocketful of surprises. What about a tiny rope of living light to brighten the dull days? Or a pet from another world, so they said, though in truth the jewel-eyed toads were cultured in the laboratories of Brazil? What of a poetry box to sing you to sleep? Photographs of the great ones, cunningly designed to smile and speak? Lona wandered. Lona stared. Lona did not touch, did not buy.

  “Viability of eggs was tested by transplantation into mated inbred albino BALB/c or Cal A recipients which were under anesthesia. The recipients had been induced by hormone injection to ovulate simultaneously with the agouti C3H donors and had been mated with fertile males of their own albino strain.”

  Someday my children will come here, Lona told herself. They’ll buy toys. They’ll enjoy themselves. They’ll run through the crowds—

  —a crowd all by themselves—

  She sensed breath on her nape. A hand caressed her rump. Tom Piper? She turned in panic. No, no, not Tom Piper, just some giraffe of a boy who studiously stared upward at the distant tiers of the fleshmongers. Lona moved away.

  “The entire procedure from the time experimental eggs were flushed from the donor oviduct to the time of their transplantation into the recipient infundibulum required 30 to 40 minutes. During this period of maintenance in vitro at room temperature many eggs shrank within their zonae pellucidae.”

  Here was the zoo exhibit. Caged things pacing, peering, imploring. Lona went in. The last beasts, here? A world swept free of animals? Here was the giant anteater. Which was the snout, which the tail? A tree sloth lavishly hooked its claws into dead wood. Nervous coati-mundis paced their quarters. The stink of beasts was flogged from the room by whirring pumps beneath the flagstone floor.

  “…the shrunken eggs usually survived and were regarded as essentially normal…”

  The animals frightened Lona. She moved away, out of the zoo, circling the main gallery of the Arcade once again…She thought she saw Tom Piper pursuing her. She brushed lightly against the rigid belly of the pregnant girl.

  “…the number of degenerating embryos and resorption sites was also examined in the autopsied recipients…”

  She realized that she did not want to be here at all. Home, safe, warm, alone. She did not know which was more frightening: people in great herds, or one person, singly.

  “…a fair number of eggs survive micromanipulation and injection of a foreign substance…”

  I want to leave, Lona decided.

  Exit. Exit. Where was the exit? Exits were not featured here. They wanted you to stay. Suppose fire broke out? Robots sliding from concealed panels, quenching the blaze. But I want to leave.

  “…a useful method is thus provided…”

  “…the survival of pronuclear eggs after the various treatments is shown in Table 1…”

  “…the fetuses which developed from the microinjected eggs were smaller more frequently than their native littermates, although no other external abnormality was observed…”

  Thank you, Dr. Teh Ping Lin of San Francisco.

  Lona fled.

  She rushed in a frenzied circle around the belly of the bright Arcade. Tom Piper found her again, shouted to her, reached forth his hands. He’s friendly. He means no harm. He’s lonely. Maybe he really is a starman.

  Lona fled.

  She discovered an exfundibulum and rushed to the street. The sounds of the Arcade dwindled. Out here in the darkness she felt calmer, and the sweat of panic dried on her skin, cooling her. Lona shivered. Looking over her shoulder many times, she hurried toward her building. Clasped to her thigh were anti-molestation weapons that would thwart any rapist: a siren, a screen of smoke, a laser to flash pulsations of blinding light. Yet one never could be certain. That Tom Piper; he could be anywhere and capable of anything.

  She reached home. My babies, she thought. I want my babies.

  The door closed. The light went on. Sixty or seventy soft images clung to the walls. Lona touched them. Did their diapers need changing? Diapers were an eternal verity. Had they gurgled milk over their rosy cheeks? Should she brush their curly hair? Tender skulls, not yet knit; flexible bones; snub noses. My babies. Lona’s hands caressed the walls. She shed her clothes. A time came when sleep seized her.

  FIVE

  ENTER CHALK; TO HIM, AOUDAD

  ■

  ■ Duncan Chalk had been studying the tapes on the pair for three days, giving the project nearly his undivided attention. It seemed to him now that he knew Minner Burris and Lona Kelvin as thoroughly as anyone had ever known them. It seemed to him, also, that the idea of bringing them together had merit.

  Intuitively, Chalk had known that from the beginning. But, though he trusted his intuitive judgments, he rarely acted on them until he had had time to make a more rational reconnaissance. Now he had done that. Aoudad and Nikolaides, to whom he had delegated the preliminary phases of this enterprise, had submitted their selections of the monitor tapes. Chalk did not rely on their judgment alone; he had arranged for others to scan the tapes as well and prepare their own anthologies of revealing episodes. It was gratifying to see how well the choices coincided. It justified his faith in Aoudad and Nikolaides. They were good men.

  Chalk rocked back and forth in his pneumatic chair and considered the situation while all about him the organization he had built hummed and throbbed with life.

  A project. An enterprise. A joining of two suffering human beings. But were they human? They had been, once. The raw material had been human. A sperm, an ovum, a set of genetic codons. A whimpering child. So far, so good. A small boy, a small girl, blank planchets ready for life’s imprint. Life had come down hard on these two.

  Minner Burris. Starman. Intelligent, vigorous, educated. Seized on an alien world and transformed against his will into something monstrous. Burris was distressed by what had become of himself, naturally. A lesser man would have shattered. Burris had merely bent. Th
at was interesting and praiseworthy, Chalk knew, in terms of what the public could gain from the story of Minner Burris. But Burris also suffered. That was interesting in Chalk’s own terms.

  Lona Kelvin. Girl. Orphaned early, a ward of the state. Not pretty, but of course her years of maturity were still ahead of her and she might ripen. Insecure, badly oriented toward men, and not very bright. (Or was she brighter than she dared let herself seem to be, Chalk wondered?) She had a thing in common with Bums. Scientists had seized upon her, too: not grisly alien Things, but kindly, benevolent impartial high-order abstractions in white lab smocks, who without injuring Lona in any way had merely borrowed some unnecessary objects stored within her body and had used them in an experiment. That was all. And now Lona’s hundred babies were sprouting in their gleaming plastic wombs. Had sprouted? Yes. Born already. Leaving a certain vacuum within Lona. She suffered.

  It would be an act of charity, Duncan Chalk decided, to bring this suffering pair together.

  “Send Bart in here,” he said to his chair.

  Aoudad entered at once, as though rolling in on wheels, as though he had waited tensely in an anteroom for just this summons. He was gratifyingly tense. Long ago Aoudad had been self-sufficient and emotionally agile, but he had broken down, Chalk knew, under the lengthy strain. His compulsive womanizing was a clue to that. Yet to look at him, one saw the pretense of strength. The cool eyes, the firm lips. Chalk felt the subsurface emanations of fear and edginess. Aoudad waited.

  Chalk said, “Bart, can you bring Burris to see me right away?”

  “He hasn’t left his room in weeks.”

  “I know that. But it’s futile if I go to him. He’s got to be coaxed back into public. I’ve decided to go ahead with the project.”

  Aoudad radiated a kind of terror. “I’ll visit him, sir. I’ve been planning techniques of contact for some while. I’ll offer incentives. He’ll come.”

  “Don’t mention the girl to him just yet.”

  “No. Certainly not.”