Orbit 15 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Damon Knight

  At seven the hospital cafeteria was crowded when Walt stood up to make his announcement. “There’s not a person in this room hungry tonight. We don’t have any more plague here. The rain is washing away the radioactivity. We have food stores that will carry us for years even if we can’t plant crops in the spring. We have men capable of doing just about anything we might ever want done.” He paused and looked at them again, from left to right, back again, taking his time. He had their absolute attention. “What we don’t have,” he said, his voice hard and flat now, “is a woman who can conceive a child, or a man who could impregnate her if she was able to bear.”

  There was a ripple of movement, like a collective sigh, but no one spoke. Walt said, “You know how we are getting our meat. You know the cattle are good, the chickens are good. Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, we will have our own babies developed the same way.”

  There was a moment of utter silence, of stillness, then they broke. Clarence leaped to his feet shouting at Walt. Vernon fought to get to the front of the room, but there were too many people between him and Walt. One of the women pulled on Walt’s arm, almost dragging him over, screaming in his face. Walt yanked free and climbed onto a table. “Stop this! I’m going to answer any questions, but not this way.”

  For the next three hours they questioned, argued, prayed, formed alliances, reformed them as arguments broke out in the smaller groups. At ten Walt took his place on the table again and called out, “We will recess this discussion until tomorrow night at seven. Coffee will be served now, and I understand we have cakes and sandwiches.” He jumped from the table and moved to the door too fast to let any of them catch up to him. He and David hurried to the cave entrance and went through, locking the massive door behind them.

  “Clarence was ugly,” Walt muttered. “Bastard.”

  David’s father, Walt, and Clarence were brothers, David reminded himself, but he couldn’t help regarding Clarence as an outsider, a stranger with a fat belly and a lot of money who expected instant obedience from the world.

  “They might organize,” Walt said after a moment. “We’ll have to be ready for them.”

  David nodded. They had counted on delaying this meeting until they had live babies, human babies that laughed and gurgled and took milk from the bottle. Instead they would have a roomful of not-quite-finished preemies, certainly not human-looking, with no more human appeal than a calf born too soon.

  They worked all night preparing the nursery. Sarah had enlisted Margaret, Hilda, Lucy, and half a dozen other women. They were all gowned and masked professionally. One of them dropped a basin and three others screamed in unison. David cursed under his breath. They would be all right when they had the babies, he told himself.

  The bloodless births started at five forty-five, and at twelve thirty they had twenty-five infants. Four died in the first hour, another died three hours later; the rest of them thrived. The only baby left in the tanks was the fetus that would be Celia, nine weeks younger than the others.

  The first visitor Walt permitted in the nursery was Clarence. After that there was no further talk of destroying the inhuman monstrosities.

  There was a celebration party, and a drawing was held to select eleven female names and ten male. In the record book the babies were labeled R-1 strain: Repopulation 1. But in David’s mind, as in Walt’s, the babies were W-1, D-1, and soon, C-1 . . .

  For the next months there was no shortage of nurses, male or female, no shortage of help doing any of the chores that so few had done before. Everyone wanted to become a doctor or a biologist, Walt grumbled, but he was sleeping more now, and the fatigue lines on his face were smoothing out. Often he would nudge David and tow him along, away from the nursery, propel him toward his own room in the hospital and see to it that he remained there for a night’s sleep. One night as they walked side by side back to their rooms, Walt said, “Now you understand what I meant when I said this was all that mattered, don’t you?”

  David understood. Every time he looked down at the tiny, pink new Celia he understood more fully.

  David watched the boys from the window in Walt’s office. There was Clarence, already looking too pudgy—he’d be fat in another three or four years. And a young Walt, frowning in concentration over a problem that he wouldn’t put on paper until he had a solution. Mark, too pretty almost, but determinedly manly, always trying harder than the others to endure, to jump higher, run faster, hit harder. And D-4, himself ... He turned away and pondered the future of the boys, uncles, fathers, grandfathers, all the same age. He was starting a headache again.

  “They’re inhuman, aren’t they?” he said bitterly to Walt. “They come and go, and we know nothing about them. What do they think? Why do they hang so close to each other? Why won’t they talk to us?”

  “Remember that old cliche, generation gap? It’s here, I reckon.” Walt was looking very old. He was tired, and seldom tried to hide it any longer. He looked up at David and said, “Maybe they’re afraid of us.”

  David nodded. He had thought of that, too. “I know why Hilda did it,” he said. “I didn’t at the time, but now I know.” Hilda had strangled the small girl who looked more like her every day.

  “Me too.” Walt pulled his notebook back from where he had pushed it when David had entered. “It’s a bit spooky to walk into a crowd that’s all you, in various stages of growth. They do cling to their own kind.” He started to write then, and David left him.

  Spooky, he thought, and veered from the laboratory where he had been heading originally. Let the damn embryos do their thing without him. He knew he didn’t want to enter because D-1 or D-2 would be there working. The D-4 strain would be the one, though, to prove or disprove the experiment. If Four didn’t make it, then chances were that Five wouldn’t either, and then what? A mistake. Woops, wrong, sir. Sorry about that.

  Behind the hospital, he climbed the ridge over the cave, and sat down on an outcrop of limestone that felt cool and smooth. The boys were clearing another field. They worked well together, with little conversation and much laughter that seemed to arise spontaneously. A line of girls came into view from nearer the river; they were carrying baskets of berries. Blackberries and gunpowder, he thought suddenly, and he remembered the ancient celebrations of the Fourth of July, with blackberry stains and fireworks, sulfur for the chiggers. And birds. Thrushes, mea-dowlarks, warblers, purple martins. Three Celias came into view, swinging easily with the weight of the baskets, a stairway succession of Celias. He shouldn’t do that, he reminded himself harshly. They weren’t Celias, none of them had that name. They were Mary and Ann and something else. He couldn’t remember for a moment the third one’s name, and he knew it didn’t matter. The one in the middle might have pushed him from the loft just yesterday; the one on the left might have been the one who rolled in savage combat with him in the mud.

  Once, three years ago, he had had a fantasy in which Celia-3 had come to him shyly and asked that he take her. And in the fantasy he had taken her; in his dreams for weeks to come, he had taken her, over and over and over again. And he had awakened weeping for his own Celia. Unable to endure it any longer, he had sought out C-3 and asked her haltingly if she would come to his room with him, and she had drawn back quickly, involuntarily, with fear written too clearly on her smooth face for her to pretend it was not there.

  “David, forgive me. I was startled . . .”

  They were promiscuous, indeed it was practically required of them to be free in their loving. No one could anticipate how many of them eventually would be fertile, what the percentage of boys to girls would be. Walt was able to test the males, but since the tests for female fertility required rabbits, which they did not have, he said the best test for fertility was pregnancy. The children lived together, and promiscuity was the norm. But only with one another. They all shunned the elders. David had felt his eyes burning as the girl spoke, still moving away from him.

  He had turned and left abruptly, and had not spoken to
her again in the intervening years. Sometimes he thought he saw her watching him warily, and each time he glared at her and hurried away.

  C-1 had been like his own child. He had watched her develop, watched her learn to walk, talk, feed herself. His child, his and Celia’s. C-2 had been much the same. A twin, somewhat smaller, identical nevertheless. But C-3 had been different. No, he corrected himself, his perceptions of her had been different. When he looked at her now he saw Celia, and he ached.

  He had grown chilled on the ridge, and he realized that the sun had set long ago and that the lanterns had been lighted below. The scene looked pretty, like a sentimental picture titled “Rural Life.” The large farmhouse with glowing windows, the blackness of the barn; closer, the hospital and staff building with the cheerful yellow lights in the windows. Stiffly he descended into the valley again. He had missed dinner, but he was not hungry.

  “David!” one of the youngest boys, a Five, called to him. David didn’t know whom he had been cloned from. There were many people he hadn’t known when they were that young. He stopped and the boy ran to him, then past him, calling as he went, “Dr. Walt wants you.”

  On Walt’s desk and spread over a table were the medical charts of the Four strain. “I’ve finished,” Walt said. “You’ll have to double-check, of course.”

  David scanned the final lines quickly, H-4 and D-4. He didn’t look up, but nodded. “Have you told the two boys yet?”

  “I told them all. They understand.” Walt rubbed his eyes. “They have no secrets from each other,” he said. “They understand about the girls’ ovulation periods, about the necessity of keeping records. If any of those girls can conceive, they’ll do it.” His voice was almost bitter when he looked up at David. “They’re taking it over completely from now on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “W-1 made a copy of my records for his files. He’ll follow it through.”

  David nodded. The elders were being excluded again. The time was coming when they wouldn’t be needed for anything— extra mouths to feed, nothing else. He sat down and for a long time he and Walt sat in companionable silence.

  In class the following day nothing seemed different. No pair bonding, David thought cynically. They accepted being mated as casually as the cattle did. If there was any jealousy of the two fertile males, it was well hidden. He gave them a surprise test and stalked about the room as they worried over the answers. They would all pass, he knew—not only pass, but do well. They had motivation. They were learning in their teens what he hadn’t grasped in his twenties. There were no educational frills, no distractions. Work in the classroom, in the fields, in the kitchens, in the laboratories. They worked interchangeably, incessantly— the first really classless society. He pulled his thoughts back when he realized that they were finishing already. He had allowed an hour, and they were finishing in forty minutes—slightly longer for the Fives, who, after all, were two years younger than the Fours.

  The two oldest D’s headed for the laboratory after class, and David followed them. They were talking earnestly until he drew near. He remained in the laboratory for fifteen minutes of silent work, then left. Outside the door he paused and once more could hear the murmur of quiet voices. Angrily he tramped down the hallway.

  In Walt’s office, he raged. “Damn it, they’re up to something! I can smell it.”

  Walt regarded him with a detached thoughtfulness. David felt helpless. There was nothing he could point to, nothing he could attach significance to, but there was a feeling, an instinct that wouldn’t be quieted.

  “All right,” David said, almost in desperation. “Look at how they took the test results. Why aren’t the boys jealous? Why aren’t the girls making passes at the two available studs?”

  Walt shook his head.

  “I don’t even know what they’re doing in the lab anymore,” David said. “And Harry has been relegated to caretaker for the livestock.” He paced the room in frustration. “They’re taking over.”

  “We knew they would one day,” Walt reminded him gently.

  “But there are only seventeen Fives, eighteen Fours. Out of the lot there might be six or seven fertile ones. With a decreased life expectancy. With an increased chance of abnormality. Don’t they know that?”

  “David, relax. They know all that. They’re living it. Believe me, they know.” Walt stood up and put his arm about David’s shoulders. “We’ve done it, David. Can’t you understand that? We made it happen. Even if there are only three fertile girls now, they could have up to thirty babies, David. And the next generation will have more who will be fertile. We have done it, David. Let them carry it now if they want to.”

  By the end of summer two of the Four girls were pregnant. There was a celebration in the valley that was as frenetic as any Fourth of July holiday any of the older people could remember.

  ~ * ~

  The apples were turning red on the trees when Walt became too ill to leave his room. Two more girls were pregnant; one of them was a Five. Every day David spent hours with Walt, no longer wanting to work at all in the laboratory, feeling an outsider in the classrooms, where the Ones were gradually taking over.

  “You might have to deliver those babies come spring,” Walt said, grinning. “Might start a class in delivery procedures. Walt-3 is ready, I guess.”

  “We’ll manage,” David said. “Don’t worry about it. I expect you’ll be there.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.” Walt closed his eyes for a moment and said, “You were right about them, David. They’re up to something.”

  David leaned forward, and involuntarily lowered his voice. “What do you know?”

  Walt looked at him and shook his head. “About as much as you did when you first came to me early this summer. David, find out what they’re doing in the lab. And find out what they think about the pregnant girls. Harry tells me they have devised a new immersion suspension system that doesn’t require artificial placentas. They’re adding them as fast as they can.” He sighed. “Harry has cracked, David. Senile or crazy. W-1 can’t do anything For him.”

  David stood up, but hesitated. “Walt, I think it’s time you told me. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Get out of here, damn it,” Walt said, but the timbre of his voice was gone, the force that should have propelled David from the room was not there.

  David walked by the river for a long time. Find out. How? He hadn’t been in the lab for weeks, months perhaps. No one needed him there any longer. The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before: the sky a clear endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen.

  The hospital wing where W-1 and W-2 were working now was ablaze with lights when David turned toward it. As he neared the hospital he began to hurry; there were too many lights, and he could see people moving behind the windows, too many people, elders.

  Margaret met him in the lobby. She was weeping silently, oblivious of the tears that ran erratically down her cheeks. She wasn’t yet fifty, but she looked older; she looked like an elder, David thought with a pang. When had they started calling themselves that? Was it because they had to differentiate somehow, and none of them had permitted himself to call the others what they were? Clones! he said to himself vehemently. Clones! Not quite human.

  “What happened, Margaret?” She clutched his arm but couldn’t speak, and he looked over her head at Warren, who was pale and shaking. “What happened?”

  “Accident down at the mill. Jeremy and Eddie are dead. A couple of the young people were hurt. Don’t know how bad. They’re in there.” He pointed toward the operating-room wing. “They left Clarence. Just walked away and left him. We brought him up, but I don’t know.” He shook
his head. “They just left him there and brought up their own.”

  David put Margaret aside and ran down the hall toward the emergency room. Sarah was working over Clarence while several of the elders moved back and forth to keep out of her way without leaving entirely.

  David breathed a sigh of relief. Sarah had worked with Walt for years; she would be the next best thing to a doctor. He flung his coat off and hurried to her. “What can I do?”

  “It’s his back,” she said tightly. She was very pale, but her hands were steady as she swabbed a long gash on Clarence’s leg and put a heavy pad over it. “This needs stitches. But I’m afraid it’s his back.”

  “Broken?”

  “I think so. Internal injuries.”

  “Where the hell is W-1 or W-2?”

  “With their own. They have two injuries, I think.” She put his hand over the pad. “Hold it tight a minute.” She used her stethoscope deliberately, peered into Clarence’s eyes, and finally straightened and said, “I can’t do a thing for him.”

  “Stitch his leg. I’m going to get W-1.” David strode down the hall fast, not seeing any of the elders who moved out of his way. At the door to the operating room he was stopped by three of the young men. He saw an H-3 and said to him, “We have a man who’s probably dying. Where’s W-2?”