Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “One other thing,” Tony called to Jim, who was already at the door. “Nipples. Get Bob Carmichael for that. I think he can figure out some way . . . make sure he checks with Anna on the size.”

  “Right.” Jim closed the door behind him.

  ii

  THEY had the milk boiling on the alky stove when Anna arrived with the first bottle. “The others are still cooling,” she explained. “I’ll go back for them later, but I thought you’d need one right away.” She handed it over, went to look down at the calmly sleeping baby, and asked Polly, “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. The doctor’s showing me how to make formula and I suppose that’s all there is. It was awfully nice of you to get up to make the bottles. I feel terrible about making so much trouble, but I just . . .” She trailed off helplessly.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Anna told her, then asked the doctor: “Do you want me to take over with the formula?”

  “There’s no need to,” Tony told her. “For that matter, you can go back to bed if you want to. There shouldn’t be any more trouble tonight.”

  “I have to go back and get the other bottles later anyhow,” she protested. She took over at the stove, showing Polly the simple procedures of sterilization and measuring involved in the baby’s formula.

  Jim came back from a second trip to the Lab in time to boil up one of the new nipples, and fill a bottle before Sunny woke. Polly, still shaken, but determined to behave normally, picked the baby up and changed him, warmed the bottle herself under Anna’s watchful eye, and settled herself on a chair with baby and bottle.

  “You want to make sure the neck of the bottle is full of milk,” Tony told her. “Aside from that, there’s nothing difficult about it. Don’t try to force his position. Let him wriggle around just as if he was at the breast.” He watched while she nudged the new plastic nipple into his mouth. “That’s right. Fine. I think he’s going to take it all right.”

  Sunny sucked hungrily, wriggled, pushed his mouth sidewise, and then to the other side, sucking all the time. Milk spilled out the side of his mouth as he sucked without swallowing, and turned his reddening face from side to side, squirming desperately.

  Tony, suddenly frightened, took a step forward. He could see the trouble clearly enough, but from above, looking down at the baby’s face, Polly couldn’t possibly see what was happening.

  Sunny was trying to make use of the peculiar sidewise suckling he had developed at his mother’s breast, but he couldn’t wedge his small mouth around the comparatively firm plastic of the new nipple. Tony opened his mouth to speak; in a minute the baby would . . .

  “Stop it! O-o-b-h stop it! You’re choking—!”

  Polly’s hand, holding the bottle, shot away from the baby’s mouth. Tony whirled to see Anna crumble to the floor, her mouth still open in the drawn-out shriek.

  “Jim!” he shouted. “Quick! Take care of her!” Then he turned back again without waiting to see what Kandro did. He lifted the choking, convulsive infant out of Polly’s limp arms, turned him upside down, and stroked the small stiff back vigorously. Within seconds, a thick curd of milk dribbled out of the baby’s mouth, and the terrible gasping sounds turned into a low monotonous wailing.

  TONY put the baby back in his mother’s arms, and turned briefly to look at Anna. Jim had lifted her on to the wall bunk. Tony checked quickly to make sure she hadn’t hurt herself.

  “Just fainted,” he said, puzzled, and gave Kandro instructions to restore consciousness.

  Sunny’s wailing was turning into a steady, vigorous hunger cry. The doctor picked him up again, and wrapped him in one of the warm new blankets.

  “Where are you taking Sunny?” asked Polly with shrill nervousness.

  “To the hospital.” He turned to Jim, still standing over the unconscious Anna. “Don’t let her leave when she comes to, Jim. I’ll be back later.”

  He went out, carrying the screaming baby in one arm and his black bag in the other.

  The walk back to his own house was haunted. The ghost of a newborn baby went with him along the curving street in the dark, a ghost that gasped and choked as Sunny did, twisting in agony until it died again as it had already died a thousand thousand times for Tony, only the first time was the worst, the first baby born and the first one dead in Sun Lake, and he’d had to watch it all, the ghost of a baby that died for want of air . . .

  He went in by the hospital door. He didn’t want to see Graham.

  Systematically, he turned on the lights and assembled his instruments in the sterilizer, turned a heat lamp on the examination table, and stripped off the baby’s clothes. This couldn’t go on; there had to be an answer to Sunny’s troubles, and he was going to find it now, tonight.

  Tony examined the child with every instrument and technique in his repertory. He felt it, probed and thumped it, listened to its interior plumbing. He could find nothing that resembled organic trouble. And he could think of no rational explanation for a mask baby breathing through its mouth.

  “It’s got to be nasal,” he said out loud. Three times he had used the otoscope, and three times he had found no obstruction. But—

  CAREFULLY, Tony slipped the mask off Sunny’s nose. He slipped it over the mouth instead, stifling its scream in mid-voice. At least, he thought grimly, the baby would have to breathe through the mask now if it wanted to keep on crying. The doctor began to probe delicately into one nostril, and Sunny promptly reacted with the unexpected. Impossible or not, he tried to draw a breath through his exposed nostrils, found an impediment and began to choke again.

  Tony withdrew the slender probe and stared at the gasping, red-faced infant. For just a moment, a clear and frightening picture of the other baby blotted out what was before his eyes—the ghost baby that had come up the street with them. Then he looked at Sunny again and everything began to fall into place.

  Sunny was the wrong color.

  He should have been blue and he wasn’t. He was gasping for air, he couldn’t breathe; he should have been oxygen starved. And he Weis flushed a bright: crimson!

  It wasn’t lack of oxygen, then. It was impossible! But it was the only logical answer. Tony removed the mask from the baby’s face with trembling hands.

  He wailed.

  It took Sun Lake City Colony Kandro less than thirty seconds to do what Tony knew he couldn’t do—and most certainly would do. Sunny gasped sharply for a moment. Then this breathing became even, his color turned a normal healthy pink, and he resumed his monotonous hunger cry.

  Sunny didn’t need an oxygen mask at all to survive on Mars, nor did he need OxEn.

  The fact was scientifically paralyzing . . . the child was adapted not to the rich air of Earth, but the deadly thin atmosphere of Mars!

  CONCLUDED NEXT MONTH

  Mars Child

  CONCLUSION OF A THREE-PART SERIAL

  The Martian colonists had tried hard work, stubbornness, political pull to save their colony from death. Only a miracle was left!

  SYNOPSIS

  FORTY years have passed since the first rocket crashed on Mars; and now, for the first time, the ancient planet shows some promise of becoming a real home for men. Sun Lake City Colony, established fourteen months ago, is unique on Mars: a cooperative, without industrial backing, designed for permanence rather than profit. Its members range from unskilled laborers to accomplished scientists, with one conviction in common, that Earth is through as a habitation for man, because of its wrecked ecology, overcrowding, and the inevitability of a cataclysmic radiological war.

  In the Sun Lake Laboratory, radioisotopes are produced from Mars’ naturally low-radioactive soil, for export to Earth. But the Colony’s goal is independence, and this trade will cease as soon as an agricultural cycle can be established, and when an acceptable substitute is found for Earth-import OxEn—the “oxygen enzyme” pills that enable humans to breathe Mars air.

  One of the few qualifications for residence in Sun Lake is the �
�M or M” ruling; all members must be either married or marriageable. JIM and POLLY KANDRO came to the Colony partly to get away from the scene of half a dozen tragic miscarriages on Earth, so there is double cause for celebration when the first baby actually conceived in the Colony is born to Polly.

  The birth is attended by the Sun Lake doctor, TONY HELLMAN, in his one room rammed “earth” hospital. At thirty-two, Tony is one of the older scientists, although still unmarried. He is a member of the Colony Council, and is also the Lab’s radiological safety monitor. Since OxEn cannot be absorbed by infants, the doctor fits the new baby with a specially designed oxygen mask. The baby is named SUN LAKE CITY COLONY KANDRO—“Sunny” for short.

  But the Colony is visited by HAMILTON BELL. Planetary Affairs Commissioner on Mars for the Panamerican World Federation. Bell is acting on a complaint made by HUGO BRENNER, notoriously wealthy drug manufacturer; 100 kilograms of mar came have been stolen; the “scent” was traced to the Colony with an electronic device known as the “Bloodhound.”

  Commissioner Bell now proposes to conduct a ruinous search, which would destroy delicate equipment and contaminate ready-to-go shipments. The colonists bargain with him, and accept a desperate alternative. They may conduct their own search, but if they fail to deliver up thief and marcaine both by Shipment Day, the Colony will be sealed off by a military cordon for six months to permit an official search. Sun Lake’s economy could not possibly survive such a blow.

  Tony meets with the other members of the Colony Council; blackhaired, sharp-eyed MIMI JONATHAN, formerly a top-flight insurance executive, now Lab Administrator; JOE GRACEY, senior agronomist at Sun Lake, once a college professor; and NICK CANTRELLA, an inspired engineer-without-degree, who found no way to utilize his talents on Earth.

  Electro-encephalograph tests are given the entire community, to test for the characteristic brain-waves of marcaine usage. The results are negative. The colonists attempt to procure a “Bloodhound,” but Bell refuses them the use of police equipment. They lay plans for the difficult job of searching the Colony without one.

  All the while, the doctor has his own work to do. Sunny has trouble suckling, and Polly, after her years of waiting, is overanxious. The doctor becomes seriously worried about her when her hysteria produces hallucinations about “Brownies,” a legendary native life-form, supposed to look much like the Earthside story book creatures, and reported to steal human babies for ritual feasts.

  Another problem patient is Joan Radcliff, who is dying of a mysterious Martian ailment which Tony cannot even diagnose, let alone treat. She refuses to return to Earth partly because of her intense idealism about the Colony; partly because of her husband, HANK RADCLIFF, a romantic youngster, whose life-dream was to come to Mars. If Joan leaves, he must go too. And if Bell’s ultimatum means the end of Sun Lake, it will break both their hearts—but save Joan’s life.

  An added problem is ANNA WILLENDORF, the doctor’s part-time assistant and nurse. A quiet, unobtrusive person, she came to the Colony as a glassblower, but now has her working equipment set up next to the hospital, where she is always at hand. Her extraordinary empathy endears her to Tony, but he is not yet ready to tie himself to the Colony by marriage. Nor can he quite disregard the interest he feels in BEAU JUAREZ, the Colony’s daredevil girl pilot.

  But medical and personal problems both grow insignificant when the news is received that the Earth rocket is already in radio range—two weeks early.

  There is now just one more week to Shipment Day!

  Tony flies to Marsport with Bea to meet the rocket. There he is approached by Brenner, who offers him a fabulous salary to leave Sun Lake.

  Tony indignantly refuses to doctor up drug addicts, and a brief scuffle ensues. Another industrialist, who has observed the scene, congratulates Tony on his stand, and hints at a frameup, with collusion between Bell and Brenner to get the Sun Lake Lab for the drug man.

  Before the doctor can digest this news, a new surprise is thrust on him. Among the rocket arrivals is DOUGLAS GRAHAM, a famous gunther who has come to write a book, “This Is Mars!”—and has chosen Sun Lake as his first stopping-point. The reporter gets his first look at Mars when a radio message requests the doctor to stop at Sun Lake’s nearest neighbor, Pittco 3, to examine a seriously injured woman.

  Tony arrives too late to help; ”Big Ginny,” an inmate of the Pittco company brothel, is dead, the victim of a clumsy attempt at self-abortion, followed by a vicious beating about the head, shoulders, and chest, and finished off by inept first aid.

  Back at Sun Lake, Tony plunges into the job of monitoring the Lab search. He also finds himself elected host-in-chief to the reporter. When it becomes clear that no stolen marcaine is going to be found, Tony appeals to Graham for aid, for the reporter has a long-standing quarrel with Commissioner Bell.

  Graham promises to write a smashing expose.

  It comes as a brutal shock, then, when the doctor finds Polly ill from an overdose of marcaine. Graham’s help has been won on the assumption that no marcaine could be found.

  As a doctor, however, Tony’s first concern must be the baby; Polly’s milk how contains marcaine. In the early hours of the morning, Anna is routed out of bed to make bottles, and a lab technician to make plastic nipples. A formula is prepared, but the first bottle feeding offered to Sunny brings on a crisis. The baby has always had trouble suckling—this time, Sunny chokes, flushes a bright crimson, arid seems to stop breathing altogether, at the just same instant that Anna, standing by, suddenly shrieks and falls into a dead faint.

  Tony leaves the unconscious woman at the Kandros’, and carries the baby back to his hospital room, determined to locate the trouble. After a careful examination and a sudden hunch, Tony tries a desperate experiment—he removes Sunny’s mask. The baby immediately begins to breathe normally.

  Earth air is too rich for him! Sunny is Marsworthy right from birth!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “SUNNY!” Polly ran to the table where Sunny still lay crying, wrapped in his blanket again, hungry, angry, and perfectly safe. “Doctor, what did you—how can he—?”

  “He’s fine,” Tony assured her. “Just leave him alone. He’s hungry, that’s all.”

  Polly stared, fascinated by the naked-looking baby. “How can he breathe without a mask?”

  “I don’t know,” Tony said bluntly, “but I tried it and it worked. I guess he’s got naturally Marsworthy lungs. Seems to have been the only trouble he had.”

  “You mean—I thought Marsworthy lungs just meant you could breathe Mars air; people like that can breathe Earth air, too, can’t they?”

  Tony shrugged helplessly. He was licked and didn’t care who knew it as long as Sunny was all right. For the time being, it was enough to know that the baby had been breathing through his mouth all along just because he did prefer Mars air. He got too much oxygen through the mask, so he didn’t use his nose; a simple reversal of the theory on which the mask was based. When his source of Mars air was blocked—first by his mother’s breast, and then, when he had learned to adapt to that, by the less flexible plastic nipples—he had to breathe the richer air through his nose, and he turned red, coughed, sputtered, and choked.

  “I want to take him back now,” said the doctor, “and try another feeding. Bet he’ll eat right away.” He picked up the baby, firmly refusing to surrender him to his mother, and led the way out of the hospital room and back to the Kandros’ house.

  Just before they left, Tony heard for the first time, consciously, the steady clicking of Graham’s typewriter in the other part of the house. He realized it had been going almost continuously, and thought briefly of going inside to say hello, then decided against it. I’ll see him later on, he thought . . . I can explain everything then. Obviously, the writer understood that an emergency was in progress, or else he was so busy himself that he didn’t want to be bothered, either.

  ii

  JIM was thunderstruck by his maskless Sunny. Anna seemed to
have recovered from her faint. She was a little pale, but otherwise normal, moving about briskly, picking up scattered blankets and baby equipment.

  “I tried to make her rest,” Jim explained, “but she said she felt fine.”

  “You take it easy, Anna,” the doctor told her. “And I want to talk to you later—as soon as I’m finished with the baby.”

  “I’m perfectly all right,” she insisted. “I can’t imagine what made me do anything so foolish. I’m awfully sorry . . .”

  “Polly, I want you to go to bed right away. You’ve had enough tonight—this morning, rather. Jim, you can handle the baby, can’t you? You want to change him and get him ready for his feeding?”

  Jim stooped over his son at the wall bunk, his big hands fumbling a little with closures on the small garments. Tony sat down and leaned back, closing his eyes. The baby screamed steadily, demanding nourishment.

  “Doc, I still don’t get it. How did you figure it out?”

  Patiently, without opening his eyes, Tony repeated his explanation for Jim.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” the man said finally, “but I’ll be darned if I can understand it. Okay, Doc, I guess he’s all fixed up.” Tony stood up. “Do you know how to fix a bottle? I’ll show you.”

  “Here.” Anna was at his elbow. “I thought you might want one,” she said, as though apologizing, and handed it over.

  “Thanks.” Tony dashed a drop on his wrist—temperature just right—and passed it to Jim. “Let’s try.”

  The big man, looking absurdly cautious, put the bottle to Sunny’s mouth. Then he looked up, a tremendous grin on his face and his eyes a little wet. “How do you like that?” he said softly. The little mouth and jaw were working away busily; Sunny was feeding as though he’d been doing it for months.

  They watched while he took a whole three and a half ounces, and then fell asleep, breathing quietly and regularly.

  “A Mars child,” said Anna gently, looking down at Sunny. “Jim, you have a real Mars child.”