Beyond This Horizon
Page 3
“It was two, three weeks before they called us back. ‘Well, Doc,’ I said, soon as we were inside, ‘what’s the answer? What had we better select for?’ ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he says. ‘You’re both good sound types and the state needs controls like you. I’m willing to recommend an increase in benefit, if you’ll drop it.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I know my rights. Any citizen, even a control natural, can practice gene selection if he wants to.’ Then he let me have it, full charge.”
“Well?”
“There wasn’t anything to select for in either of us.”
“Huh?”
“’S truth. Little things, maybe. We could have arranged to leave out my wife’s hay fever, but that was about all. But as for planning a child that could compete on even terms with the general run of planned children, it just wasn’t in the cards. The material wasn’t there. They had made up an ideal chart of the best that could be combined from my genes and my wife’s and it still wasn’t good enough. It showed a maximum of a little over four percent over me and my wife in the general rating scale. ‘Furthermore,’ he told us, ‘you couldn’t plan on that score. We might search your germ plasm throughout your entire fertile period and never come across two gametes that could be combined in this combination.’”
“‘How about mutations?’” I asked him. “He just shrugged it off. ‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘it’s damned hard to pick out a mutation in the gene pattern of a gamete itself. You generally have to wait for the new characteristic to show up in the adult zygote, then try to locate the variation in the gene pattern. And you need at least thirty mutations, happening all at once, to get the child you want. It’s not mathematically possible.’”
“So you gave up the idea of planned children?”
“So we gave up the idea of children period. Martha offered to be host-mother to any child I could get, but I said ‘No, if it ain’t for us, it ain’t for us.’”
“Hmmm. I suppose so. Look—if you and your wife are both naturals, why do you bother to run this place? The citizen’s allowances plus two control benefits add up to quite a tidy income. You don’t look like a man with extravagant tastes.”
“I’m not. To tell you the truth we tried it, after our disappointment. But it didn’t work out. We got uneasy and fretful. Martha comes to me and says ‘Herbert, please yourself, but I’m going to start my hairdressing studio again.’ And I agreed with her. So here we are.”
“Yes, so we are,” Hamilton concurred. “It’s a queer world. Let’s have another drink.”
Herbert polished the bar before replying. “Mister, I wouldn’t feel right about selling you another unless you checked that gun with me and let me loan you a brassard.”
“So? Well, in that case I guess I’ve had enough. Good night.”
“G’night.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief—”
HIS TELEPHONE started to yammer as soon as he was home. “Nuts to you,” said Hamilton. “I’m going to get some sleep.” The first three words were the code cut-off to which he had set the instrument; it stopped mournfully in the middle of its demand.
Hamilton swallowed eight hundred units of thiamin as a precautionary measure, set his bed for an ample five hours of sleep, threw his clothes in the general direction of the service valet, and settled down on the sheet. The water rose gently under the skin of the mattress until he floated, dry and warm and snug. The lullaby softened as his breathing became regular. When his respiration and heart action gave positive proof of deep sleep, the music faded out unobtrusively, shut off without so much as a click.
“It’s like this,” Monroe-Alpha was telling him, “we’re faced with a surplusage of genes. Next quarter every citizen gets ninety-six chromosomes—” “But I don’t like it,” Hamilton protested. Monroe-Alpha grinned gleefully. “You have to like it,” he proclaimed. “Figures don’t lie. Everything comes out even. I’ll show you.” He stepped to his master accumulator and started it. The music swelled up, got louder. “See?” he said. “That proves it.” The music got louder.
And louder.
Hamilton became aware that the water had drained out of his bed, and that he lay with nothing between him and the spongy bottom but the sheet and the waterproof skin. He reached up and toned down the reveille, whereupon the insistent voice of his telephone cut through to him. “Better look at me, Boss. I got troubles. Better look at me Boss. I got troubles. Better look at me, Boss. I got troubles—”
“So have I. Thirty minutes!” The instrument shut off obediently. He punched for breakfast and stepped into the shower, eyed the dial, and decided against the luxury of a long work-out. Besides, he wanted breakfast. Four minutes would do.
Warm soapy emulsion sprayed over his body, was scrubbed in by air blast, was replaced at the end of the first minute by water of the same temperature in needle jets. The temperature dropped, the needle jets persisted for a few seconds, then changed to a gentle full stream which left him cool and tingling. The combination was his own; he did not care what the physiotherapists thought of it.
The air blast dried him with a full minute to spare for massage. He rolled and stretched against the insistent yielding pressure of a thousand mechanical fingers and decided that it was worthwhile to get up, after all. The pseudodactyls retreated from him. He pushed his face for a moment into the capillotomer. Shave completed, the booth sprayed him with scent and dusted him off. He was beginning to feel himself again.
He tucked away a quarter litre of sweet-lemon juice and went to work seriously on the coffee before turning on the news roundup.
The news contained nothing fit to be recorded permanently. No news, he thought, makes a happy country but a dull breakfast. The machine called out the plugs for a dozen stories while the accompanying flash pictures zipped past without Hamilton disturbing the setting. When he did so, it was not because the story was important, but because it concerned him. The announcer proclaimed “Diana’s Playground Opened to the Public!”; the flash panned from a crescent moon down to the brutal mountain surface and below to a gaily lighted artificial dream of paradise. Hamilton slapped the tell-me-more.
“Leyburg, Luna. Diana’s Playground, long touted by its promoters as the greatest amusement enterprise ever undertaken off earth or on, was invaded by the first shipload of tourists at exactly twelve thirty-two, Earth Prime. These old eyes have seen many a pleasure city, but I was surprised! Biographers relate that Ley himself was fond of the gay spots—I’m going to keep one eye on his tomb while I’m here; he might show up—” Hamilton gave half an ear to the discourse, half an eye to the accompanying stereos, most of his attention to half a kilo of steak, rare.
“—bewilderingly beautiful, weirdly sensuous low-gravity dancing.
“The gaming rooms are thronged; the management may have to open annexes. Particularly popular are the machines offered by Lady Luck, Incorporated—Hamilton’s Hazards they are called by the trade. In fact—” The picture that went with the spiel did not show a throng in Hamilton’s estimation; he could almost feel the trouble the pick-up man had gone to in order to shoot favorable angles.
“—round trip excursion tickets which entitle the holder to visit every place of amusement in the Playground, with three days hotel accommodations, strictly high-gravity, every room centrifuged.”
He switched it off: and turned to the telephone. “Connection—one one one zero.”
“Special service,” a husky contralto answered him presently.
“Gimme the Moon, please.”
“Certainly. To whom do you wish to speak, Mr.—uh, Hamilton?”
“Hamilton is correct. I would like to talk to Blumenthal Peter. Try the manager’s office at Diana’s Playground.”
There was a delay of several seconds before an image appeared on the screen. “Blumenthal speaking. That you, Felix? The image at this end is lousy. Ail streaked up with incidentals.”
“Yeah, it’s me. I called to
ask about the play, Pete…what’s the matter? Can’t you hear me?”
The face of the image remained quiet for a long three seconds, then said suddenly, “Of course I can hear you. Don’t forget the lag.”
Hamilton looked sheepish. He had forgotten the lag—he always did. He found it difficult to remember, when staring right into a man’s live features, that there would be a second and a half delay before that man—if on the Moon—could hear, another second and a half for his voice to travel back, three seconds lag in all. Three seconds lag seems inconsiderable but it is long enough to stride six paces, or fall forty-one metres.
He was glad there was no phone service to the minor planets; it would be maddening to wait ten minutes or so between sentences—easier to stat a letter. “Sorry,” he said. “My mistake. How was the play? The crowds didn’t look so good.”
“Naturally the crowd was light. One shipload isn’t Noah’s Ark. But the play was okay. They had plenty of scrip and were anxious to spend. We reported to your agent.”
“Sure. I’ll get the report, but I wanted to know what gadgets were popular.”
“Lost Comet went strong. And so did Eclipses.”
“How about Claiming Race and Who’s Your Baby?”
“Okay, but not too heavy. Astronomy is the angle for this dive. I told you that.”
“Yes, I should have listened to you. Well, I’ll figure out a revamp. You could change Claiming Race right now. Call it High Trajectory and rename the mobiles after some of the asteroids. Get it?”
“Right. We’ll redecorate it in midnight blue and silver.”
“That’s right. I’ll send a stat to confirm. That’s all, I guess. I’m clearing.”
“Wait a minute. I took a whirl at Lost Comet myself, Felix. That’s a great game.”
“How much did you drop?”
Blumenthal looked suspicious. “Why about eight hundred and fifty, if you must know. Why do you assume I lost? Isn’t the game level?”
“Certainly it’s level. But I designed that game myself, Pete. Don’t forget that. It’s strictly for suckers. You stay away from it.”
“But look—I’ve figured out a way to beat it. I thought you ought to know.”
“That’s what you think. I know. There is no way to beat the game.”
“Well—okay.”
“Okay. Long life!”
“And kids.”
As soon as the circuit was clear the phone resumed its ubiquitous demand. “Thirty minutes. Better look at me, Boss. I got troubles. Better—”
He removed a stat from the receiver; it shut up. “To Citizen Hamilton Felix 305-243 B47,” it read, “Greetings. The District Moderator for Genetics presents his compliments and requests that Citizen Hamilton visit him at his office at ten hundred tomorrow.” It was dated the previous evening and had an added notation requesting him to notify the moderator’s office if it were not convenient to keep the appointment, refer to number such-and-so.
It lacked thirty minutes of ten hundred. He decided to comply with the request.
The Moderator’s suite struck Hamilton as being rather less mechanized than most places of business, or perhaps more subtly so. It was staffed with humans where one expects autogadgets—the receptionist, for example. The staff was mostly female, some grave, some merry, but all were beautiful, very much alive, and obviously intelligent.
“The Moderator will see you now.”
Hamilton stood up, chucked his cigaret into the nearest oubliette, and looked at her. “Do I disarm?”
“Not unless you wish. Come with me, please.”
She ushered him as far as the door to the Moderator’s private office, dilated it, and left him as he stepped through. “Good morning, sir!” a pleasant voice called out.
Hamilton found himself staring at the Moderator. “Good morning to you,” he answered mechanically, then, “For the love o’—!” His right hand slid of its own volition toward his sidearm, hesitated, changed its mind, and stopped.
The Moderator was the gentleman whose dinner party had been disturbed by the incident of the wayward crab leg.
Hamilton recovered some of his poise. “Sir,” he said stiffly, “this is not proper procedure. If you were not satisfied, you should have sent your next friend to wait on me.”
The Moderator stared at. him, then laughed in a fashion that would have been rude in another man—but from him it was simply Jovian. “Believe me, sir, this is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. I had no idea that the gentleman who exchanged courtesies with me yesterday evening was the one I wished to see this morning. As for the little contretemps in the restaurant—frankly, I would not have made an issue of the matter, unless you had forced me to the limit. I have not drawn my tickler in public for many years. But I am forgetting my manners—sit down, sir. Make yourself comfortable. Will you smoke? May I pour you a drink?”
Hamilton settled himself. “If the Moderator pleases.”
“My name is Mordan”—which Hamilton knew—“my friends call me Claude. And I would speak with you in friendship.”
“You are most gentle—Claude.”
“Not at all, Felix. Perhaps I have an ulterior motive. But tell me: what was that devil’s toy you used on the cocky young brave? It amazed me.”
Hamilton looked pleased and displayed his new weapon. Mordan looked it over. “Oh, yes,” he said, “a simple heat engine burning a nitrate fuel. I think I have seen its pattern, have I not, on display at the Institution?”
Felix acknowledged the fact, a little crestfallen that Mordan was so little surprised at his toy. But Mordan made up for it by discussing in detail with, apparently, lively interest the characteristics and mechanism of the machine. “If I were a fighting man, I would like to have one like it,” he concluded.
“I’ll have one fashioned for you.”
“No, no. You are kind, but I would have no use for it.”
Hamilton chewed his lip. “I say…you’ll pardon me…but isn’t it indiscreet for a man who does no fighting to appear in public armed?”
Mordan smiled. “You misconstrue. Watch.” He indicated the far wall. It was partly covered with a geometrical pattern, consisting of small circles, all the same size and set close together. Each circle had a small dot exactly in the center.
Mordan drew his weapon with easy swiftness, coming up, not down, on his target. His gun seemed simply to check itself at the top of its swing, before he returned it to his holster.
A light puff of smoke drifted up the face of the wall. There were three new circles, arranged in tangent trefoil. In the center of each was a small dot.
Hamilton said nothing. “Well?” inquired Mordan.
“I was thinking,” Hamilton answered slowly, “that it is well for me that I was polite to you yesterday evening.”
Mordan chuckled.
“Although we have never met,” Mordan said, “you and the gene pattern you carry have naturally been of interest to me.”
“I suppose so. I fall within the jurisdiction of your office.”
“You misunderstand me. I cannot possibly take a personal interest in every one of the myriad zygotes in this district. But it is my duty to conserve the best strains. I have been hoping for the past ten years that you would show up at the clinic, and ask for help in planning children.”
Hamilton’s face became completely expressionless. Mordan ignored it and went on. “Since you did not come in voluntarily for advice, I was forced to ask you to visit me. I want to ask you a question: Do you intend to have children any time soon?”
Hamilton stood up. “This subject is distasteful to me. May I have your leave, sir?”
Mordan came to him and placed a hand on his arm. “Please, Felix. No harm can be done by listening to me. Believe me, I do not wish to invade your private sphere—but I am no casual busybody. I am your moderator, representing the interests of all of your own kind. Yours among them.”
Hamilton sat down without relaxing. “I will listen.”
“How?”
“You know how. You represent the careful knitting together of favorable lines over four generations. Literally tens of thousands of gametes were examined and rejected before the thirty gametes were picked which constitute the linkage of your ancestral zygotes. It would be a shame to waste all that painstaking work.”
“Why pick on me? I am not the only result of that selection. There must be at least a hundred citizens descended from my great gross grandparents. You don’t want me—I’m a cull. I’m the plan that didn’t pan out. I’m a disappointment.”
“No,” Mordan said softly, “no, Felix, you are not a cull. You are the star line.”
“Huh?”
“I mean it. It is contrary to public policy to discuss these things, but rules were made to be broken. Step by step, back to the beginning of the experiment, your line has the highest general rating. You are the only zygote in the line which combines every one of the favorable mutations with which my predecessors started. Three other favorable mutations showed up after the original combinations; all of them are conserved in you.”
Hamilton smiled wryly. “That must make me still more of a disappointment to you. I haven’t done very much with the talents you attribute to me, have I?”
Mordan shook his head. “I have no criticism to make of your record.”
“But you don’t think much of it, do you? I’ve frittered away my time, done nothing more important than design silly games for idle people. Perhaps you geneticists are mistaken in what you call ‘favorable characteristics’.”