The Complete Dangerous Visions

by Anthology

  She lay there passively, waiting for him to proceed.

  Angry, now, he pulled back, plunged, withdrew and plunged again, his sword impaling only phantoms.

  And felt his weapon growing flaccid. “Bitch,” he said. But it was the bovine, not the canine, image that had unmanned him. It just wasn’t in him to fornicate with a placid, mindless cow.

  She looked up at him reproachfully as he disengaged and covered up, but he was too disturbed to care. “Get up, animal. You want bull, you’ll get bull.”

  She stood up and he took hold of the harness leash and jerked her forward. “Move,” he said firmly, and she moved. There was, it seemed, a trick to handling animals, and he had mastered it out of necessity. He was becoming an experienced farmer.

  They traveled down long dim corridors to the bullpen, she tugging eagerly at the leash and seeking to poke into side passages. She had forgotten the frustration of the recent episode already. Obviously she had never been in this section of the barn before, and curiosity had not been entirely suppressed along with intelligence. She was stupid, of course; otherwise he would not have failed with her.

  He didn’t know much about lobotomy, but this didn’t seem like it. Yet what technique . . . ?

  The bull was a giant of a man, full-bearded and hirsute. His feet and hands were crusted with callus and there was dirt on his belly. His tremendous penis hoisted, derrick-like, the moment he winded Iota, and he hurled himself around his large pen. Only the stout double harness and chained collar that bound him to the far rail inhibited his savage lunges. He stank of urine.

  Hitch loosed Iota and shoved her into the pen. He was anxious to have the bull cover up any guilty traces of his own abortive gesture.

  She was abruptly hesitant, standing just beyond the range of the man-monster that reared and chafed and bellowed to get at her and bucked awesomely with his tumescence. She wasn’t afraid of him, though his mass was easily twice hers; she was merely uncertain how to proceed in the face of so much meat.

  She made as if to step forward, then withdrew. She was trying to flirt! Hitch found quick sympathy for the bull, allied with his own apprehension. “You idiotic tease, get over there!” he cried at her.

  Startled, she did.

  The bull reached out and grabbed her by one shoulder, employing the same five-fingered mitten-grip Hitch had observed with the cows. Iota spun under the force of it, thrown off-balance, and the bull caught at her opposite hip and hauled her in to his chest backwards. He clubbed her so that she doubled over and rammed his spurting organ into her narrow cleft, thrusting again and again so fiercely that her abdomen bowed out with each lunge.

  That was the treatment she had been waiting for! She hadn’t even been aware of Hitch’s effort, thinking it only the preliminary inspection.

  Then Iota tumbled to the floor, stunned by the impact of the courtship but hardly miserable. She was in heat, after all, and now that she had found out what it was all about, she liked it. She lay on her back in the soiled straw, smiling, legs lifted, though Hitch was sure she would suffer shortly from terrible bruises inside and out. What a performance!

  The beast was on her again, this time from the front, biting at her breasts while trying to get into position for another assault. His organ glistened moistly, still erect.

  “Get that heifer out of there!” someone shouted, and Hitch started. It was another farmhand. “Want to sap our best stud?”

  Hitch ran out into the pen, wary of the bull, and caught hold of one of Iota’s blissfully outstretched arms. It was obvious that she would happily absorb all the punishment the creature chose to deliver. A festoon of white goo stretched downward from the bull’s penis as he made a last attempt at the vanishing target. Then Hitch hauled Iota across the floor until they were entirely out of range of the monster and stood her on her feet. She was still dazed as he reharnessed her, not even wincing as the strap chafed across the deep toothmarks on her breast.

  The other farmhand glanced at him as they trooped by, but did not say anything. Just as well.

  About halfway back, Hitch remembered that he had forgotten to post the time of service on the bull’s chart. He decided not to risk further embarrassment by returning for that errand. The bull seemed to have sufficient pep to go around, anyway.

  Iota was dreamily contented as he returned her to her stall, though there was a driblet of gluey blood on one leg. Apparently there had been a hymen . . . Well, she was out of heat now, and she wasn’t a virgin heifer any more!

  There was trouble in the final stall. He had been so occupied with the prior chores on the schedule that he hadn’t bothered to read ahead, and now he regretted it. He had just witnessed, per instructions, a copulation, and it was as though gestation had occurred in minutes. This next cow was delivering!

  She lay on her side, legs pulled up, whimpering as her body strained. There was something funny about her tongue too, as it projected between her teeth. Was there a physical reason these animals never spoke? The head of the calf had already emerged, its hair brown like that of the mother. Hitch had thought all babies were bald. All human babies . . .

  Should he summon help? He was no obstetrician!

  But then he would have to explain why he hadn’t notified anyone earlier, and he had no excuse apart from carelessness and personal concupiscence. Better to stick with it himself.

  Odd, he thought, how one could become committed against his intention. This laboring cow was not really his problem, and she belonged literally to another world, yet he had to do what he could for her. The activities of this brutal barn were as important to him at this moment as anything he could remember. Even its most repulsive aspects fascinated him. It represented a direct personal challenge as well as an intellectual one. Iota—

  As the cow struggled to force out the massive bundle, Hitch skimmed nervously through the manual. Good—the stock was generally hardy, and seldom required more than nominal supervision during parturition. Signs of trouble? No, none of the alarm signals itemized were evident. This was a normal delivery.

  But the text stressed the importance of removing the new-birthed calf immediately and taking it to the nursery for proper processing. The mother was not supposed to have any opportunity to lick it down, suckle it or develop any attachment.

  And how about the father? How about any observer with a trace of human feeling? It was as though he had impregnated a cow, and now his offspring was being manifested. He had failed with Iolanthe, he had failed with Iota, but he still had something to prove. Something to salvage from this disaster of a world.

  The cow heaved again, and more of the balled-up calf emerged. There was blood soaking into the pallet, but the manual assured him callously that this was normal. He wanted to do something, but knew that his best bet was noninterference. He was sure now that a human woman could not have given birth so readily without anesthetic or medication. In some ways the animals were fortunate, not that it justified any part of this. That large, loose vagina—

  “What’s going on here?”

  Hitch jumped again. The voice behind him was that of the owner! For an experienced investigator, he had been inexcusably careless about his observations. Twice now, men had come upon him by surprise.

  “She’s birthing,” he said. “Routine, so I didn’t—”

  “In the nightstall?” the man demanded angrily, his white hair seeming to stand on end. It was the way he combed it, Hitch decided irrelevantly. “On a bare pallet?”

  Oops—he must have missed a paragraph. “I told you it’s been a while since I—the other farm didn’t have separate places to—”

  “That farm was in violation of the law, not to mention the policies of compassionate procedure.” The owner was already inside the stall and squatting down beside the laboring cow. “It was a mistake, Esmeralda,” he said soothingly. “I never meant to put you through this here. I had a special delivery-booth for you, with fresh clean straw and padded walls . . .” He stroked her hair and patt
ed her shoulder, and the animal relaxed a little. Obviously she recognized the gentle master. Probably he came by the stables periodically to encourage the beasts and grant them lumps of sugar. “In just a moment I’ll give you a shot to ease the pain, but not just yet. It will make you sleepy, and we have to finish this job first. You’ve been very good. You’re one of my best. It’s all right now, dear.”

  Hitch realized with a peculiar mixture of emotions that it wasn’t all acting. The farmer really did care about the comfort and welfare of his animals. Hitch had somehow assumed that brutality was the inevitable concomitant of the degradation of human beings. But actually he had seen no harshness; this entire barn was set up for the maximum creature comfort compatible with efficiency, with this backward technology. Had he misjudged the situation?

  Under the owner’s sure guidance the calving was quickly completed. The man lifted the infant—a female—and spanked her into awareness before cutting and tying off the umbilical cord. He wrapped her in a towel that materialized from somewhere and stood up. “Here,” he said to Hitch, “take it to the nursery.”

  Hitch found himself with babe in arms.

  “All right, Esme,” the owner said to the cow, his voice low and friendly. “Let’s take care of that afterbirth. Here—I’ll give you that shot I promised. It only stings for a second. Hold still—there. You’ll feel much better soon. Just relax, and in a moment you’ll be asleep. In a few days you’ll be back with the herd where you belong, the finest milker of them all.” He looked up and spied Hitch still standing there. “Get moving, man! Do you want her to see it?”

  Hitch got moving. He did not feel at all comfortable carrying the baby, for all his determination of a moment ago to help it in some way, but that was the least of it. Its cries, never very loud (did they breed for that, too?), had subsided almost immediately as it felt the supposed comfort of human arms, and probably that was fortunate because otherwise the mother would have been attracted to the sound. But this removal of the baby so quickly from its parent, so that it could never know a true family—how could that be tolerated? Yet he was cooperating, carrying it down the dusky passages to the nursery.

  The fact that he had witnessed its arrival did not make him responsible for it, technically—but the baby had, in more than a manner of speaking, been given into his charge. His prior mood returned, intensified; he did feel responsible.

  “I’ll take care of you, little girl,” he said inanely. “I’ll keep you safe. I’ll—”

  He was talking like a hypocrite. There was very little he could do for this baby except put it in the nursery. He didn’t know the first thing about child care. And—he was no longer entirely certain that he should do anything specific if he had the opportunity.

  He had been ready to condemn this entire world out of hand, but in the face of this last development he wasn’t sure, oddly. This breeding and milking of human beings was shocking—but was it actually evil? The preliminary report had remarked on the strange peacefulness of this alternate Earth: computer analysis suggested that there was no war here, and had not been for some time. That was another riddle of #772. Was it because those who ruled it were compassionate men, despite the barbarity of their regime?

  Which was better: to have a society peacefully unified by a true segregation of functions—men-men vs animal-men—or to have every person born to contend so selfishly for the privileges of humanity that all succeeded only in being worse than animals? Earth-Prime remained in serious jeopardy of self-extermination; was that the preferred system to impose on all the alternate Earths too?

  #772 did have its positive side. Economically it functioned well, and it would probably never have runaway inflation or population increase or class warfare. Could it be that with the breakup of the family system, the human rights and dignities system, the all-men-are-created-equal system—could it be that this was the true key to permanent worldwide peace?

  He had not seen a single discontented cow.

  By taking this baby from its mother and conveying it to the impersonal nursery, was he in fact doing it the greatest favor of its existence?

  He wondered.

  The nursery caught him by surprise. It was a cool quiet area more like a laboratory than the playroom he had anticipated. A series of opaque tanks lined the hall. As he passed between them he heard a faint noise, like that of an infant crying in a confined space, and the baby in his arms heard it and came alive loudly.

  Hitch felt suddenly uneasy, but he took the squalling bundle hastily up to the archaically garbed matron at a central desk. “This is Esmeralda’s offspring,” he said.

  “I don’t recognize you,” the woman said, glowering at him. Epitome of grade-school disciplinarian. He almost flinched.

  “I’m a new man, just hired this morning. The boss is in with the mother now. He said to—”

  “Boss? What nonsense is this?”

  Hitch paused, nonplussed, before he realized that he had run afoul of another slang expression. This one evidently hadn’t carried over into #772. “The owner, the man who—”

  “Very well,” she snapped. “Let me see it.”

  She took the bundle, put it unceremoniously on the desk, and unwrapped it. She probed the genital area with a harsh finger, ignoring the baby’s screams. This time Hitch did flinch. “Female. Good. No abnormalities. Males are such a waste.”

  “A waste? Why?”

  She unrolled a strip of something like masking tape and tore it off. She grasped one of the baby’s tiny hands. “Haven’t you worked in a barn before? You can’t get milk from a bull.”

  Obviously not. But a good bull did have his function, as Iota’s experience had shown. Hitch watched the woman tape the miniature thumb and fingers together, forming a bandage resembling a stiff mitten, and something unpleasant clicked. Hands so bound in infancy could not function normally in later life; certain essential muscles would atrophy and certain nerves would fail to develop. It was said by some that man owed his intelligence to the use of his opposable thumb . . .

  “I haven’t been involved with this end of it,” he explained somewhat lamely. “What happens to the males?”

  “We have to kill them, of course, except for the few we geld for manual labor.” She had finished taping the hands; now she had a bright scalpel poised just above the little face.

  Hitch assumed she was going to cut the tape away or take a sample of hair. He wasn’t really thinking about it, since he was still trying to digest what he had just learned. Slaughter of almost all males born here . . .

  She hooked thumb and forefinger into the baby’s cheeks, forcing its mouth open uncomfortably. The knife came down, entered the mouth, probed beneath the tongue before Hitch could protest. Suddenly the screams were horrible.

  Hitch watched, paralyzed, as bubbling blood overflowed the tiny lip. “What—?”

  “Wouldn’t want it to grow up talking,” she said. “Amazing how much trouble one little cut can save. Now take this calf down to tank seven.”

  “I don’t—” There was too much to grapple with. They cut the tongues so that speech would be impossible? There went another bastion of intelligence, ruthlessly excised.

  With the best intentions, he had delivered his charge into this enormity. He felt ill.

  The matron sighed impatiently. “That’s right, you’re new here. Very well. I’ll show you so you’ll know next time. Make sure you get it straight I’m too busy to tell you twice.”

  Too busy mutilating innocent babies? But he did not speak. It was as though his own tongue had felt the blade.

  She took the baby down to tank seven, ignoring the red droplets that trailed behind, and lifted the lid. The container was about half full of liquid, and a harness dangled from one side. She pinned the baby in the crook of one elbow and fitted the little arms, legs and head into the loops and tightened the fastenings so that the head was firmly out of the fluid. Some of it splashed on Hitch when she immersed the infant, and he discovered that it wa
s some kind of thin oil, luke-warm.

  The baby screamed and thrashed, afraid of the dark interior or perhaps bruised by the crude straps, but only succeeded in frothing redly and making a few small splashes with its bound hands. The harness held it secure and helpless.

  The matron lowered the lid, checking to make sure the breathing vents were clear, and the pitiful cries were muted.

  Hitch fumbled numbly for words. “You—what’s that for? It—”

  “It is important that the environment be controlled,” the woman explained curtly. “No unnecessary tactile, auditory or visual stimulation for the first six months. Then they get too big for the tanks, so we put them in the dark cells. The first three years are critical; after that it’s fairly safe to exercise them, though we generally wait another year to be certain. And we keep the protein down until six; then we increase the dose because we want them to grow.”

  “I—I don’t understand.” But he did, horribly. In his mind the incongruous but too-relevant picture of a bee-hive returned, the worker-bees growing in their tight hexagonal cells. His intuition, when he first saw the cows, had been sure.

  “Don’t you know anything? Protein is the chief brain food. Most of the brain develops in the first few years, so we have to watch their diet closely. Too little, and they’re too stupid to follow simple commands; too much, and they’re too smart. We raise good cows here; we have excellent quality control.”

  Hitch looked at the rows of isolation tanks: quality control. What could he say? He knew that severe dietary deficiencies in infancy and childhood could permanently warp a person’s mental, physical and emotional development. Like the bees of the hive, the members of the human society could not achieve their full potential unless they had the proper care in infancy. Those bees scheduled to be workers were raised on specially deficient honey, and became sexless, blunted insects. The few selected to be queens were given royal jelly and extra attention, and developed into completely formed insects. Bees did not specialize in high intelligence, so the restriction was physical and sexual. With human beings, it would hit the human specialization: the brain. With proper guidance, the body might recover almost completely from early protein deprivation, but never the mind.