by Jerry
John scowled. “Why should we believe you?”
“For one thing, because this is neither a first visit nor a permanent stay. Humankind owes its progress to earlier meetings.”
“What—?”
“Evolutionary progress is born of mutation, sudden chromosomal changes. Infuse alien blood into a species according to a precalculated plan, and you shape the whole course of the developmental pattern of that species.”
John stared. “You’ve got to be joking!”
“On the contrary, I’m quite serious. It’s the only logical solution to the problem of communication.” Miss Undahl moved across the room, then back again. “You see, the nonhumanoid group that arranged this is . . . distinctly nonhuman in appearance. Just the knowledge that such beings have reached Earth would bring instant panic. But even if that could be averted, the two groups would still face impossible difficulties in exchanging information.”
“Impossible how?”
“Have you ever tried to conduct a meaningful dialogue with a sporophore or a cockroach? Or even a mouse?”
“So communication’s the roadblock,” Redding interjected. “What’s the answer?”
“You treat the problem as an exercise in data processing.”
“Data processing?”
“Yes, of course. To achieve communication between species, what you need is a computer.”
“But hybridization . . .?”
“It provides the computer: a specialized biochemical unit—compact, brilliantly efficient, with a capacity that enables it to integrate the essential data from both species into a universe of discourse.” Miss Undahl smiled, ever so slightly. “You’re familiar with the device, of course. It’s called the human brain.”
John Greer had reached that point when shock no longer shocks. Now he could only cling to Miss Undahl’s line of thought with the desperate intensity of a man aboard a bucking nightmare.
“The issue,” she continued, “is merely to reprogram the genetic code to deal with the concepts of both species. It’s as if you were setting out to establish an ideal heredity for a child before that child was conceived. To handle the assignment properly, you’d first have to decide precisely what characteristics were important.
“In our case, the hybrid must function within the frames of reference of both species. So the pattern we need is incorporated into the genes and chromosomes and a simulation of an individual human’s body is built up, molecule by molecule. When the body is complete, it’s fed an appropriate knowledge input from both cultures. The result is a being that appears human. But since that being is actually a cross, it’s capable of full communication with either species.”
“And that’s what happened to Orpha and Miss Pellegrini?”
A nod.
“To you, too?”
“Yes. Nothing is taken away. That’s a key point in the ethics of the process. To synthesize a being more limited than either of those from which you started would be equivalent to incorporating a tendency to heart disease or diabetes.”
“Yet your personalities changed . . .”
“Our attitudes toward sex, you mean?” Miss Undahl laughed. “That’s true. But the loss was of conditioned inhibitions and guilt reactions, not hereditary traits. In essence, I’m still me, and Sybil is Sybil, and Orpha’s Orpha.”
“What was the logic behind the change?” Redding asked.
Miss Undahl shrugged. “Earth’s population is in the billions. Simulation is too complex a process to utilize on a mass basis—especially when a sexually passionate hybrid will pass on desired traits by normal propagation, much the way a nurseryman grafts an exotic tree onto native root-stock. It’s a continuing process. Every few thousand years, contact is made and humankind is given a new infusion of superior blood through long-lived hybrids. The Piltdown, the Neanderthal, the Cro-Magnon—each of them represented another visit.”
It was the kind of statement that puts an end to a discussion. John and Redding exchanged helpless glances. Then John turned back to Miss Undahl. “So?”
“So, please say nothing. Knowing everything, and knowing that our goal is humankind’s own good, be content to keep our secret.”
Again, John and Redding stared at each other.
“Our ethical standard is rigid, gentlemen,” Miss Undahl pressed. “We won’t use violence to silence you. Your course of action must be of your own choosing. But take my word, there’s no way you can stop what’s happening. If you try, your own people will be the losers.” Another moment. Then John nodded. “All right. I’ll keep quiet.”
“And you, Doctor?”
“Agreed.”
Some of Miss Undahl’s tension seemed to leave her. “Oh, I’m so glad! Believe me, you won’t regret it.”
Low heels thudding, she crossed to the door, Sybil Pellegrini close behind her. Orpha started after them, then hesitated, peering at John with anxious eyes. Never had he been more acutely conscious of the crinkled skin, the sagging flesh, the vacuous mind. The contrast between her and Sybil was almost more than he could bear.
But she was his wife. Both he and Sybil had lived up to that fact to the letter, no matter what might have gone on in their minds.
“Stick around, Orpha,” he said. “You can ride home with me.”
The door closed behind Sybil and Miss Undahl in the same instant.
As if the latch-click were a signal, Redding spun about. “John! Hold Orpha!” He snatched up the phone receiver as he spoke.
John stared. “Who are you calling?”
“Security.”
“But you said—”
“That I’d keep quiet?” Redding laughed harshly. “How naive can you get? This is a cataclysm!”
John strained to keep his poise. “What makes you so sure this—this invasion, or whatever you want to call it, is really a disaster, Ed?”
Redding put the phone down. “Are you out of your mind, John?” Let this go on, and Earth will end up with a totally hybrid population. Humankind as we know it will be doomed within a generation.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“What?”
“A good many things are beyond me,” John admitted. “However, as a geneticist, I do know hybridization and selective breeding. From what I’ve seen and heard here today, I think the human race stands to gain, not lose, by this crossbreeding.”
“And I don’t. Being in favor of it, to me, looks suspiciously like treason to our species.”
John found himself having trouble with his breathing. “That’s not much of a threat, Ed, when you throw it at a man who can deny that any of this ever happened.”
Knots of muscle came to the hinges of Redding’s jaw. “You’re an old fool, Greer. This whole session’s on tape. That’s why I got you all to do your talking in this office.” His eyes glittered. “Let me stop this thing, and they’ll have my name in the history books for the next hundred years—maybe the next five hundred! If you think for one minute I’m going to pass it up, you’re crazy!”
“But the damage—”
“To hell with the damage!”
From one side, a small whisper of sound. As one, John and Redding turned.
Orpha ran for the door.
It was an apocalyptic moment. “Stop her!” Redding shouted, hurling himself after her. She crashed back against the wall under his impact, tottering and clawing as she struggled to squeeze past him.
Cursing, Redding stepped back. Then, coldly and deliberately, he slapped her across the mouth.
Without quite knowing how or why he did it, John too lunged forward. Catching Redding’s shoulder, he spun him about and threw a short, hard right.
The blow connected. Solidly. Redding staggered backward, hand to face. “My nose!” he bellowed. “Damn you, you bastard, you broke my nose!”
Seizing an onyx bookend, Redding swung it at John. The bookend hit where neck joined shoulder. John’s whole side went dead, paralyzed. Only pure reflex action with his other hand enabled
him to wrench the bookend from Redding’s grasp.
A letter opener lay on the desk. His face a mask of pure maniacal fury, Redding snatched it up and lunged.
Desperately, John swung the bookend. It caught Redding just below the temple with such force as to leave the kind of deep, visible indentation that happens when a thrown brick hits a melon. A surprised look passed over his face, and then Redding crumpled to the floor.
Panting, John turned. Orpha was nowhere to be seen. The door stood open. John ran to it.
Orpha stood teetering on the curb. But just as he appeared, she launched herself out into the street, waddling frantically toward the other side as a car bore down on her. In soaring panic, John tried to cry out, to lunge after her. But iron clamps seemed to close about his throat, and his legs buckled in a spasm of pain.
“Orpha—!” he choked.
At least, he thought he did. He could never be quite sure. Because even as he spoke, a weird, translucent haze billowed up about him, wafting reality away . . .
John Greer recovered consciousness in a world of strange, velvety blackness. He lay on his back on what seemed to be some sort of couch. When, awkwardly, he reached up to loosen his collar, his fingers touched unfamiliar fabric, cut in a style unlike that of any garment he’d ever owned.
His spine prickling, he let go of the collar.
The darkness vanished in the same instant, replaced by a gentle radiance that hardly seemed to fit into the category he knew as light. A cordial, somehow familiar voice said, “Welcome aboard, Mr. Greer. I trust you’ve not experienced too much discomfort.”
The prickling along John’s spine focused into a tight, paroxysmal tremor at the nape of his neck. But panic was hardly a constructive reaction, so he made it a point to lie still for a moment longer. Then, with a great pretense of self-possession, he stretched and, rolling onto his side and sitting up, glanced casually in the direction of the speaker.
An open doorway faced him, set in a wall that resembled mother-of-pearl. Gray-haired Astrid Undahl stood just inside. She wore a smocklike, professional-looking garment, strangely glossy, with a high collar and three-quarter sleeves.
The collar style rang a bell. John knew instantly that this was the cut and fabric of his own attire.
It was hardly a time to discuss fashions, however. Wariness masked by an air of affability seemed more appropriate.
Miss Undahl matched his smile. “You have questions, of course,” she observed briskly. “To save time, I’ll simply reassure you: you’re among friends.”
“Nonhuman friends?”
“That’s one way to describe them.”
“What about Orpha?”
Miss Undahl looked away. “I’m sorry . . .”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes.”
A numbness settled about John’s heart. But that was pure reflex, and he knew it. . . senseless, in view of the way his marriage had worked out these past twenty years.
Shaking off the mood, he asked, “Where are we?”
“You might call it a space ship,” Miss Undahl answered, after a moment’s consideration. “But that would oversimplify the issues. Or, you could say it’s a mobile world, but there are implications to that concept that are difficult to comprehend. So perhaps the best way to put it would be to say that you’re. . . elsewhere: far away from, but still in contact with, your planet Earth.”
“How did I get here?”
“You were . . . transported.”
“Why?”
The woman shrugged. “In view of the circumstances surrounding Dr. Redding’s death, you certainly would have been subjected to rigorous police or court interrogation. That might have proved disastrous. Consequently, it seemed desirable to remove you from the hazard area.”
“How long do I have to stay?”
Miss Undahl fell back a step. She smoothed her hair. “You may as well know the truth, Mr. Greer. Officially, you’re a fugitive. You have no choice but to stay here, in sanctuary, for the rest of your life.”
A ripple of sound, at once musical and dissonant, came like a period to her statement. She looked around quickly, then said, “I’m sorry. I have to go now. We’ll talk more later.”
Alone again, John settled back on the long couch.
On the material side, he decided, he had little to complain about. This seemed like a place of creature comforts, and he was safely out of reach of Earth’s law.
Yet there was no peace in the thought. For, safe or not, at best he was an aging human among hybrids. His world was gone. He faced a future without goal or purpose: a succession of endless hours of idleness and boredom.
Loneliness closed in around him like a wall. Why did he have to be the one? A younger man might have built a new life here; perhaps even might have met someone who would share it. And this hybridization project, reshaping humankind through new mutations—for a geneticist its implications were staggering. He could have carved out a place for himself, found a role to play . . .
A whisper of footsteps. He half turned on the couch.
The portal through which Astrid Undahl had departed now framed Sybil Pellegrini. “Hello, John.” Her smile was as warm and wonderful as always.
“Sybil . . .”
“What am I doing here, you mean?” She moved a step closer as she spoke; and as she did, the room’s radiance struck new highlights of loveliness in her blonde hair. “I’m your assistant, of course, just as on Earth. All your life you’ve underrated yourself, your abilities. Now, that’s over. Your work has implications for other worlds you can’t even suspect. It was taken for granted that a man with a mind as active and original as yours would want to continue with it.”
“But you . . .”
“I asked for the assignment.”
Briefly, John sat silent. But inside him, his heart was pounding.
It couldn’t last, though. He didn’t dare let it. “I’m sorry, Sybil. I don’t want you.”
Sybil’s face seemed to fall apart. “You . . . don’t want me . . .?”
“Not under these conditions.”
“Conditions? What conditions?”
John stared at the floor. “I’ll give it to you straight,” he said finally. “I’m fifty years old. You’re still in your twenties. If I let you stay here with me, the day’s going to come when I die. You’d be left alone.
“You deserve better than that. I couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen. So, there’s no choice but for you to go back. Your friends can dig me up another helper.”
For a moment there was utter silence. Then, abruptly, Sybil’s violet eyes widened and she laughed aloud. “You mean—nobody told you?”
“Told me?” John stared. “Told me what?”
“About the aging process.”
“What about the aging process?”
“Can’t you guess? Your fringe benefits here include a small medical marvel. It manipulated aging—suspends it, for all practical purposes.” Sybil came close, still smiling. “Don’t you see, John? When Astrid mentioned long-lived hybrids. . . well, on Earth, you were on your way to becoming an old man. Here, you’re just getting started.”
The hair along the back of John’s neck prickled. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak.
He couldn’t.
Sybil’s laugh was warm with understanding. “Some ideas—they take a little time to sink in, don’t they? About as long, say, as we’ll need to look over your new laboratory.”
John considered. “Just about that long,” he agreed. “That is, if we hurry.”
He took her arm. Together they strolled through the door of light.
TOO CLEAN TO BE DEAD
Wesley Herbert
NELSON, 2017
First thing was the hospital. One long bleached-out room of fluorescent light on white tables and silvered chrome. Handlers who took us two at a time with rubberized hands, breathing into masks. Onto hard, cool sheets and foam padding, surrounded by black plastic arms and wires of
diagnostic mechanicals. One man behind a comm terminal with my gene scan twisting across the screen, asking, “Any history of heart disease, diabetes, asthma, intestinal disorder, high blood pressure, kidney problems? Do you smoke? Any eye problems, cataracts? Do you wear glasses? Any skin problems, eczema, venereal disease, ear infections—” and my quiet return of “No, no, no,” while they started peeling off layer after layer of my dirty cloth/skin. Biking boots with leather cracked and worn thin on heels and toes. My jacket crunching in newness like wet snow underfoot. Frayed black denim jacket dirty around the collar and jeans with the knees out. Crusty T-shirt, socks with no heels, until it’s just me all shivers and thin limbs on the table. I looked and it was all of us like that. Undernourished or sick or worn down but keeping it all armoured under clothes and padding with rags tied around the parts that wore thin.
And the white coats took my blood pressure and prodded and checked my eyes and ears and any other orifices with machines and cameras and the guy at the comm telling them to check for this or that or his scan doesn’t show any tendencies there. Until they said, “Last thing, Mister Nelson,” and started taking blood. I turned away and just watched the bottles pile up with big stickers pasted on. They gave me back my jacket and the rest went into bins marked WASTE with most everyone else’s crap.
*
SANDER, 2048
When the knock at the door came, I wanted to blow a hole through it with the shotgun, but the thought passed in a moment. Instead I asked, “Yeah, who is it?”
“It’s me, Sander. Windmoon.”
“C’mon in, Moon.”
One hand rubbing the gun-stock, Polaroids and colour 8x10’s scattered under the other; all my senses collapsed inwards. An apple core of tightness in my chest. Moon was dark of hair and sweater, with good skin. Perfect skin.