Dark Benediction

by Walter M. Miller

"Well, she said she hadn't heard from you. I couldn't very well say no, so I told her I'd be there, at least."

  "You—?"

  "Oh, I didn't say about you, Terry. I said you'd like to go, but you might have to work. I'll go alone if you don't want to."

  He stared at her with a puzzled frown. "You want to go to the psuedoparty?"

  "Not particularly. But I've never been to one. I'm just curious."

  He nodded slowly, felt grim inside. She finished with the ointment, patted his cheek, managed a cheerful smile.

  "Come on, Terry. Let's go unload your nine neutroids." He stared at her dumbly.

  "Let's forget about this morning, Terry."

  He nodded. She averted her face suddenly, and her lip quivered. "I—I know you've got a job that's got to be—" She swallowed hard and turned away. "See you out in the kennels," she choked gaily, then hurried down the hall toward the door. Norris scratched his chin unhappily as he watched her go.

  After a moment, he dialed the mnemonic register again. "Keep a line on this number," he ordered after identifying himself. "If Yates or Franklin calls, ring continuously until I can get in to answer. Otherwise, just memorize the call."

  "Instructions acknowledged," answered the circuitry.

  He went out to the kennels to help Anne unload the neutroids.

  A sprawling concrete barn housed the cages, and the barn was sectioned into three large rooms, one housing the fragile, humanoid chimpanzee-mutants, and another for the lesser breeds such as cat-Qs, dog-Fs, dwarf bears, and foot-high lambs that never matured into sheep. The third room contained a small gas chamber, with a conveyor belt leading from it to the crematorium. He usually kept the third room locked, but he noticed in passing that it was open. Evidently Anne had found the keys in order to let Fred Georges dump his package.

  A Noah's Ark Chorus greeted him as he passed through the animal room, to be replaced by the mindless chatter of the doll-like neutroids as soon as he entered the air conditioned neutroidsection. Dozens of blazing blond heads began dancing about their cages. Their bodies thwacked against the wire mesh as they leaped about their compartments with monkey-grace, in recognition of their feeder and keeper.

  Their human appearance was broken only by two distinct features: short beaverlike tails decorated with fluffy curls of fur and an erect thatch of scalp hair that grew up into a bright candle-flame. Otherwise, they appeared completely human, with baby-pink skin, quick little smiles, and cherubic faces. They were sexually neuter and never grew beyond a predetermined age-set which varied for each series. Age-sets were available from one to ten years, human equivalent. Once a neutroid reached its age-set, it remained at this stage of retarded development until death.

  "They must be getting to know you pretty well," Anne said as she came from behind a section of cages. "A big loud welcome for Pappa, huh?"

  He frowned slightly as he glanced around the gloomy room and sniffed the animal odors. "That's funny. They don't usually get this excited."

  She grinned. "Big confession: it started when I came in."

  He shot her a quick suspicious glance, then walked slowly along a row of cages, peering inside. He stopped suddenly be-side a three year old K-76 to stare.

  "Apple cores!"

  He turned slowly to face his wife, trying to swallow a sudden spurt of anger.

  "Well?" he demanded.

  Anne reddened. "I felt sorry for them, eating that goo from the mechanical feeders. So I drove down to Sherman III and bought six dozen cooking apples."

  "That was a mistake."

  She frowned irritably. "We can afford it."

  "That's not the point. There's a reason for mechanical feedings."

  "Oh? What is it?"

  He hesitated, knowing she wouldn't like the answer. But she was already stiffening.

  "Let me guess," she said coldly. "If you feed them yourself they get to love you. Right?"

  "Uh, yeah. They even attach some affection to me because they know that right after I come in, the feeders get turned on."

  "I see. And if they love you, you might get queasy about running them through Room 3's production line, eh?"

  "That's about the size of it," he admitted.

  "Okay, Terry, I feed them apples, you run your production line," she announced firmly. "I can't see anything contradictory about that, can you?"

  Her eyes told him that he had damn well better see something contradictory about it, whether he admitted it or not.

  "Planning to get real chummy with them, are you?" he inquired stiffly.

  "Planning to dispose of any soon?" she countered.

  "Honeymoon's off again, eh?"

  She shook her head slowly, came toward him a little. "I hope not, Terry—I hope not." She stopped again. They watched each other doubtfully amid the chatter of the neutroids.

  After a time, he turned and walked to the truck, pulled out the snare-pole and began fishing for the squealing, squeaking doll-things that bounded about like frightened monkeys in the truck's wire mesh cage. They were one-family pets, always frightened of strangers, and these in the truck remembered him only as the villain who had dragged them away from Mamma into a terrifying world of whirling scenery and roaring traffic.

  They worked for a time without talking; then Anne asked casually: "What's the Delmont case, Terry?"

  "Huh? What makes you ask?"

  "I heard you mention it on the phone. Anything to do with a black eye and a scratched face?"

  He nodded sourly. "Indirectly. It's a long story. Well—you know about the evolvotron."

  "Only that Anthropos Incorporated uses it to induce mutations."

  "It's sort of a sub-atomic surgical instrument—for doing 'plastic surgery' to reproductive cells—Here! Grab this chimp! Got him by the leg."

  "Oop! Got him. . . . Go ahead, Terry."

  "Using an evolvotron on the gene-structure of an ovum is likeplaying microscopic billiards—with protons and deuterons and alpha particles for cue-balls. The operator takes the living ovum, mounts it in the device, gets a tremendously magnified image of it with the slow-neutrino shadowscope, compares the image with a gene-map, starts gouging out submolecular tidbits with single-particle shots. He juggles them around, hammers chunks in where nothing was before, plugs up gaps, makes new gaps. Catch?"

  She looked thoughtful, nodded. "Catch. And the Lord Man made neutroid from the slime of an ape," she murmured.

  "Heh? Here, catch this critter! Snare's choking him!"

  "Okay—come to Mamma . . . Well, go on--tell me about Delmont."

  "Delmont was a green evolvotron operator. Takes years of training, months of practice."

  "Practice?"

  "It's an art more than a science. Speed's the thing. You've got to perform the whole operation from start to finish in a few seconds. Ovum dies if you take too long."

  "About Delmont—"

  "Got through training and practice tryouts okay. Good rating, in fact. But he was just one of those people that blow up when rehearsals stop and the act begins. He spoiled over a hundred ova the first week. That's to be expected. One success out of ten tries is a good average. But he didn't get any successes."

  "Why didn't they fire him?"

  "Threatened to. Guess he got hysterical. Anyhow, he reported one success the next day. It was faked. The ovum had a couple of flaws—something wrong in the nervous system's determinants, and in the endocrinal setup. Not a standard neutroid ovum. He passed it on to the incubators to get a credit, knowing it wouldn't be caught until after birth."

  "It wasn't caught at all?"

  "Heh. He was afraid it might not be caught. So he suppressed the testosterone flow to its incubator so that it would be—later on."

  "Why that?"

  "All the neutroids are potential females, you know. But male hormone is pumped to the foetus as it develops. Keeps female sexuality from developing, results in a neuter. He decided that the inspectors would surely catch a female, and that would be blamed on a mal
function of the incubator, not on him."

  "So?"

  Norris shrugged. "So inspectors are human. So maybe a guy came on the job with a hangover and missed a trick or two. Besides, they all look female. Anyhow, she didn't get caught."

  "How did they ever find out Delmont did it?"

  "He got caught last month—trying it again. Confessed to doing it once before. No telling how many times he really did it."

  Norris held up the final kicking, squealing, tassel-haired doll from the back of the kennel-truck. He grinned down at Anne.

  "Now take this little yeep, for instance. Might be a potential she. Might also be a potential murderer. All these kiddos from the truck came from the machines in the section where Delmont worked last year when he passed that fake. Can't have non-standard models on the loose. Can't have sexed models either—then they'd breed, get out of hand. The evolvotron could be shut down any time it became necessary, and when that generation of mutants died off . . . " He shrugged.

  Anne caught the struggling baby-creature in her arms. It struggled and tried to bite, but subsided a little when she disentangled it from the snare.

  "Kkr-r-reeee!" it cooed nervously. "Kree Kkr-r-reeee!"

  "You tell him you're no murderer," she purred to it.

  He watched disapprovingly while she fondled it. One code he had accepted: steer clear of emotional attachments. It was eight months old and looked like a child of two years—a year short of its age-set. And it was designed to be as affectionate as a human child.

  "Put it in the cage, Anne," he said quietly.

  She looked up and shook her head.

  "It belongs to somebody else. Suppose it transfers its fixation to you? You'd be robbing its owners. They can't love many people at once."

  She snorted, but installed the thing in its cage.

  "Anne—" Norris hesitated, knowing that it was a bad time to approach the subject, but thinking about Slade's pseudoparty tonight, and wondering why she had accepted.

  "What, Terry?"

  He leaned on the snare pole and watched her. "Do you want one of them for yourself? I can sign an unclaimed one over to you. Wouldn't cost anything."

  She stared at him evenly for a moment, glanced down at her feet, paced slowly to the window to stand hugging her arms and looking out into the twilight.

  "With a pseudoparty, Terry?"

  He swallowed a lump of anxiety, found his voice. "Whatever you want."

  "I hear the phone ringing in the house."

  He waited.

  "It stopped," she said after a moment.

  "Well, babe?"

  "Whatever I want, Terry?" She turned slowly to lean back against a patch of gray light and look at him.

  He nodded. "Whatever you want."

  "I want your child."

  He stiffened with hurt, stared at her open-mouthed. "I want your child."

  He thrust his hand slowly in his hip pocket.

  "Oh, don't reach for your social security card. I don't care if it's got 'Genetic triple-Z' on it. I want your child."

  "Uncle Federal says 'no,' babe."

  "To hell with Uncle Federal! They can't send a human through your Room 3! Not yet, anyhow! If it's born, the world's stuck with it!"

  "And the parents are forcibly separated, reduced to common-labor status. Remember?"

  She stamped her foot and whirled to the window again. "Damn the whole hellish world!" she snarled.

  Norris sighed heavily. He was sorry she felt that way. She was probably right in feeling that way, but he was still sorry. Righteous anger, frustrated, was no less searing a psychic acid than the unrighteous sort, nor did a stomach pause to weigh the moral worth of the wrath that drenched it before giving birth to an ulcer.

  "Hey, babe, if we're going to the Slade affair—"

  She nodded grimly and turned to walk with him toward the house. At least it was better having her direct her anger at the world rather than at him, he thought.

  The expectant mother played three games of badminton before sundown, then went inside to shower and dress before the guests arrived. Her face was wreathed in a merry smile as she trotted downstairs in a fresh smock, her neck still pink from the hot water, her wake fragrant with faint perfume. There was no apparent need for the smock, nor was there any pregnant caution in the way she threw her arms around John's neck and kicked her heels up behind.

  "Darling!" she chirped. "There'll be plenty of milk. I never believed in bottle-feeding. Isn't it wonderful?"

  "Great. The injections are working, I guess."

  She looked around. "It's a lovely resort-hospital. I'm glad you didn't pick Angel's Haven."

  "So am I," he grunted. "We'll have the reception room all to ourselves tonight."

  "What time is it?"

  "Seven ten. Oh, the doe called to say he'd be a few minutes late. He was busy all day with a sick baby."

  She licked her lips and glanced aside uneasily. "Class A couple?"

  "No, doll. Class C—and a widow."

  "Oh." She brightened again, watched his face teasingly. "Will you pace and chain-smoke while I'm in delivery?"

  He snorted amusement. "Hey, it's not as if you were really . . " He stopped amid a fit of coughing.

  "Not as if I really what?"

  His mouth opened and closed. He stammered helplessly. "Not as if I were really what?" she demanded, eyes beginning to brim.

  "Listen, darling, I didn't mean . . .”

  A nurse came clicking across the floor. "Mrs. Slade, it's time for your first injection. Doctor Georges just called. Will you come with me please?"

  "Not as if I what, John?" she insisted, ignoring the nurse. "Nothing, doll, nothing—"

  "Mrs. Slade—"

  "All right, nurse, I'm coming." She tossed her husband a hurt glance, walked away dabbing at her eyes.

  "Expectant dames is always cranky," sympathized an attendant who sat on a bench nearby. "Take it easy. She won't be so touchy after it comes."

  John Hanley Slade shot an irritable glare at the eavesdropper, saw a friendly comedian-face grinning at him, returned the grin uneasily, and went over to sit down.

  "Your first?"

  John Hanley nodded, stroked nervously at his thin hair. "I see 'em come, I see 'em go. It's always the same." "Whattaya mean?" John grunted.

  "Same expressions, same worries, same attitudes, same conversation, same questions. The guy always makes some remark about how it' not really having a baby, and the dame always gets sore. Happens every time."

  "It's all pretty routine for you, eh?" he muttered stiffly.

  The attendant nodded. He watched the expectant father for several seconds, then grunted: "Go ahead, ask me." "Ask you what?"

  "If I think all this is silly. They always do."

  John stared at the attendant irritably. "Well—?"

  "Do I think it's silly? No, I don't."

  "Fine. That's settled, then."

  "No, I don't think it's silly, because for a dame ain't satisfied if she plunks down the dough, buys a newt, and lets it go at that. There's something missing between bedroom and baby."

  "That so?"

  John's sarcastic tone was apparently lost on the man. "It's so," he announced. "Physiological change—that's what's missing. For a newt to really take the place of a baby, the mother's got to go through the whole build-up. Doc gives her injections, she craves pickles and mangoes. More injections for morning sickness. More injections, she gets chubby. And finally the shots to bring milk, labor, and false delivery. So then she gets the newt, and everything's right with the world."

  "Mmmph."

  "Ask me something else," the attendant offered.

  John looked around helplessly, spied an elderly woman near the entrance. She had just entered, and stood looking around as if lost or confused. He did not recognize her, but he got up quickly.

  "Excuse me, chum. Probably one of my guests."

  "Sure, sure. I gotta get on the job anyhow."

  The woman t
urned to stare at him as he crossed the floor to meet her. Perhaps one of Mary's friends, he thought. There were at least a dozen people coming that he hadn't met. But his welcoming smile faded slightly as he approached her. She wore a shabby dress, her hair was disheveled in a gray tangle, her matchstick legs were without make-up, and there were fierce red lines around her eyelids. She stared at him with wide wild eyes—dull orbs of dirty marble with tiny blue patches for pupils. And her mouth was a thin slash between gaunt leathery cheeks.

  "Are—are you here for the party?" he asked doubtfully.

  She seemed not to hear him, but continued to stare at or through him. Her mouth made words out of a quivering hiss of a voice. "I'm looking for him."

  "Who?"

  "The doctor."

  He decided from her voice that she had laryngitis. "Doctor Georges? He'll be here soon, but he'll be busy tonight. Couldn't you consult another physician?"

  The woman fumbled in her bag and brought out a small parcel to display. "I want to give him this," she hissed.

  "I could—"

  "I want to give it to him myself," she interrupted.

  Two guests that he recognized came through the entrance. He glanced toward them nervously, returned their grins, glanced indecisively back at the haggard woman.

  "I'll wait," she croaked, turned her back, and marched to the nearest chair where she perched like a sick crow, eyes glued to the door.

  John Hanley Slade felt suddenly chilly. He shrugged it off and went to greet the Willinghams, who were the first arrivals.

  Anne Norris, with her husband in tow, zig-zagged her way through a throng of chattering guests toward the hostess, who now occupied a wheel-chair near the entrance to the delivery room. They were a few minutes late, but the party had not yet actually begun.

  "Why don't you go join the father's sweating circle?" Anne called over her shoulder. "The men are all over with John."

  Norris glanced at the group that had gathered under a cloud of cigar smoke over by the portable bar. John Slade stood at the focus of it and looked persecuted.

  "Job's counselors," Terry grunted.

  A hand reached out from a nearby conversation-group and caught his arm. "Norris," coughed a gruff voice.

  He glanced around. "Oh—Chief Franklin. Hello!"