Anderson, Poul - Tomorrow's Children 01
Page 4
They found some flowers, potted in a hou§e, and Robinson bought them with the last of his tobacco. By the time he reached the hospital, he was sweating. The sweat froze on his face as he walked.
The hospital was the town’s biggest building, and fairly well equipped. A nurse met them as they entered.
“I was just going to send for you, General Robinson,” she said. “The baby’s on the way.”
“How ... is she?"
“Fine, so far. Just wait here, please.”
Drummond sank into a chair and with haggard eyes watched Robinson’s jerky pacing. The poor guy. Why is it expectant fathers are supposed to be so funny? It’s like laughing at a man on the rack. I know, Barbara, I know.
“They have some anaesthetics," muttered the general. “They . . . Elaine never was very strong.”
“She’ll be all right.” It’s afterward that worries me.
“Yeah—Yeah— How long, though, how long?”
“Depends. Take it easy.” With a wrench, Drummond made a sacrifice to a man he liked. He filled his pipe and handed it over. “Here, you need a smoke.”
“Thanks.” Robinson puffed raggedly.
The slow minutes passed, and Drummond wondered vaguely what he’d do when—it—happened. It didn’t have to happen. But the chances were all against such an easy solution. He was no psychologist. Best just to let things happen as they would.
The waiting broke at last. A doctor came out, seeming an inscrutable high priest in his white garments. Robinson stood before him, motionless.
“You’re a brave man,” said the doctor. His face, as he removed the mask, was stern and set. “You’ll need your courage.”
“She—” It was hardly a human sound, that croak.
“Your wife is doing well. But the baby—”
A nurse brought out the little wailing form. It was a boy. But his limbs were rubbery tentacles terminating in boneless digits.
Robinson looked, and something went out of him as he stood there. When he turned, his face was dead.
“You’re lucky,” said Drummond, and meant it. He’d seen too many other mutants. “After all, if he can use those hands he’ll get along all right. He’ll even have an advantage in certain types of work. It isn’t a deformity, really. If there’s nothing else, you’ve got a good kid.”
“If! You can’t tell with mutants.”
“I know. But you’ve got guts, you and Elaine. You’ll see this through, together.” Briefly, Drummond felt an utter personal desolation. He went on, perhaps to cover that emptiness: “I see why you didn’t understand the problem. You wouldn’t. It was a psychological bloc, suppressing a fact you didn’t dare face. That boy is really the center of your life. You couldn't think the truth about him. so your subconscious just refused to let you think rationally on that subject at all.
“Now you know. Now you realize there’s no safe place, not on all the planet. The tremendous incidence of mutant births in the first generation could have told you that alone. Most such new characteristics are recessive, which means both parents have to have it for it to show in the zygote. But genetic changes are random, except for a tendency to fall into roughly similar patterns. Four-leaved clovers, for instance. Think how vast the total number of such changes must be, to produce so many corresponding changes in a couple of years. Think how many, many recessives there must be, existing only in gene patterns till their mates show up. We’ll just have to take our chances of something really deadly accumulating. We’d never know till too late.”
“The dust—”
“Yeah. The radiodust. It’s colloidal, and uncountable other radiocolloids were formed when the bombs went off, and ordinary dirt gets into unstable isotopic forms near the craters. And there are radiogases too, probably. The poison is all over the world by now, spread by wind and air currents. Colloids can be suspended indefinitely in the atmosphere.
“The concentration isn’t too high for life, though a physicist told me he’d measured it as being very near the safe limit and there’ll probably be a lot of. cancer. But it’s everywhere. Every breath we draw, every crumb we eat and drop we drink, every clod we walk on, the dust is there. It’s in the stratosphere, clear on down to the surface, probably a good distance below. We could only escape by sealing ourselves in air-conditioned vaults and wearing spacesuits whenever we got out, and under present conditions that’s impossible.
"Mutations were rare before, because a charged particle has to get pretty close to a gene and be moving fast before its electromagnetic effect causes physico-chemical changes, and then that particular chromosome has to enter into reproduction. Now the charged particles, and the gamma rays producing still more, are every
where. Even at the comparatively low concentration, the odds favor a given organism having so many cells changed that at least one will give rise to a mutant. There’s even a good chance of like recessives meeting in the first generation, as we’ve seen. Nobody’s safe, no place is free.”
“The geneticist thinks some true humans will continue.”
“A few, probably. After all, the radioactivity isn’t too concentrated, and it’s burning itself out. But it’ll take fifty or a hundred years for the process to drop to insignificance, and by then the pure stock will be way in the minority. And there'll still be all those unmatched recessives, waiting to show up.”
“You were right. We should never have created science. It brought the twilight of the race.”
“I never said that. The race brought its own destruction, through misuse of science. Our culture was scientific anyway, in all except its psychological basis. It’s up to us to take that last and hardest step. If we do, the race may yet survive.” Drummond gave Robinson a push toward the inner door. “You’re exhausted, beat up, ready to quit. Go on in and see Elaine. Give her my regards. Then take a long rest before going back to work. I still think you’ve got a good kid.”
Mechanically, the de facto President of the United States left the room. Hugh Drummond stared after him a moment, then went out into the street.