by Lisa Yaszek
The hut was darkened, and for a moment he could not make out the shapes of things, Chord’s words a muttered undercurrent in the background. He stepped over the high threshold, and looked around, finally making out the form on the bed in the corner.
“Latimer!”
The boy raised himself part way, pulling a blanket close around him. A blanket? Lord, it must be eighty-five or ninety in here! “What the hell is this—letting Chord do your assigned work?”
“Sir, I didn’t—I can’t get up!” The voice was pathetic, and Everett had to force himself to remember that the kid was malingering. “Has Garrett seen you yet?”
“N—no, sir. I—I—”
Everett pulled at the blanket, but the boy pulled it around himself with savage strength, shouting “Leave me alone!” then suddenly burst into tears and fell back on the bed. Chord grabbed Everett’s arm. “Damn it, leave him alone!” Fury trembled the big man’s voice. “Leave him alone—sir.”
Tip’s sobs from beneath the blanket were high, muffled, hysterical. Everett pulled his bruised arm loose from Chord’s great fingers, looking down at the form beneath the blanket; a form strangely, unbelievably distorted—
“Oh, my God,” he said, and left the hut almost running, heading for Fanu’s hillside laboratory.
“But of course it worked, John. Didn’t you believe me?”
Everett paced the floor, running his hands through his hair again and again. “My God, no, no, I—I didn’t. I thought it was some sort of cruel, monstrous joke, a—a ghastly nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”
“Do you want to?”
“Want to? Oh, Lord, Fanu, haven’t you been listening? This is monstrous, it’s—unholy!”
“The word is without meaning to me, John. It is without meaning to the men who wished this done.”
He stopped pacing and sat down. “If you can do this, why can’t you—test tubes—anything but this!”
“It might be possible.”
“It might—then why in God’s name this—blasphemy?”
“John, the word does not exist for me. I could create a fertilized ovum in that matter, but gestation would be tremendously difficult outside its natural element. It would require every moment of two or three men’s time for the entire gestation period. And even if we had so many men at our disposal—”
“But—”
“Hear me out, John. Tip was a poor choice for the—first. I would not have consented. I warned them of the dangers, but Tip insisted. Chord had many reservations, but the younger man won out. He will have difficulty. But even so, incubating a fetus in his body is much safer and surer than any amount of laboratory work.”
“Safer for the fetus.”
“That’s true.”
He lunged to his feet, confronting the alien, furious. “You’re gambling with that boy’s life!”
“Yes, and he knows it. He said—he said that he wanted Chord’s inheritance combined with his.”
Everett turned away, hands to his face. “Oh, God, what am I trapped in? Why didn’t the ship crash coming in?”
“Ask your God, John.”
He jerked around, stunned.
“If you accept your deity’s omnipotence, mustn’t you accept the fact that he has permitted this development?”
“If that boy dies—Fanu, if you’d seen him—”
The alien blinked, solemnly. “Hysteria is perhaps natural,” he confirmed. “Even though he has been prepared for this there is some amount of emotional shock remaining. You must remember, there is a certain chemical imbalance. Tsen will have an easier time.”
John sat down again. The nightmare was rising above his ears, drowning him in its terrifying black waters. He didn’t hear the alien go out.
The jokes had ceased. They concerned too many men now. The men who were concerned and still able did not look too kindly on lewd comments about their partners. Emotional patterns were developing, friendships becoming deeper, the new way of life more and more ingrained. Everett sometimes thought that he sounded like a reactionary preacher, mumbling to himself. They were all against him now. They knew how he felt, and they had stopped discussing it in his hearing. They made their reports when they must, and that was all, a habit not yet broken.
He kept his log. Some day he would either run out of paper or learn to make a substitute. That was something to consider. The one grain they’d been able to grow—he’d have to consult the record tapes; how did you make rice paper? Maybe among his study materials, Tsen had something that would tell him—the hell with Tsen! Why bother? He’d be dead, they’d all be dead before they ran out of paper. Then what use would the log be to any of them?
The rainy season between the two growing seasons was well under way when someone beat on his door, one night. He mumbled admission, not turning.
“Sir!”
“What? Chord, what is it?” The giant looked wild, his hair tousled, his eyes wide. “What is it, man?”
“It’s Tip, sir. He’s awful sick!”
“Hasn’t he been, all along?”
“This is—no, sir, this is different. He . . . he hurts. He’s in awful pain.”
Everett gasped and had to suppress a hysterical laugh. “Oh. Well, isn’t that just what you’ve been waiting for? He ought to have thought of that before he took Fanu’s offer.” He wondered insanely if he ought to offer congratulations.
The big man dug his thumbs into Everett’s shoulders with painful force, his face livid with anger and fear. “Look, sir, I’ve had about enough of your—” he stopped and gulped and said, quite meekly for him, “Look, sir, I’m scared. It—it’s not time yet. Not for about six weeks. And I’m—I’m scared, sir,” he finished pitifully.
The two men hurried to Chord’s hut through the blowing rain, and Everett suppressed another burst of crazy hysteria. Those corny old videocasts on a vanished world! Rainstorms, the black of night, a hurried summons—he found himself dismissing irrelevant, ribald thoughts of a midnight delivery of a . . . child . . . by two men.
But when he stepped into the hut the thoughts fled, beaten away by the pain of the youth on the bed. He was incredibly pale, sweating badly, trying desperately to muffle his outcries and not succeeding very well. His lips were white and blood-specked where he’d chewed on them. Everett found himself concerned, involved; whatever the cause, he could not ignore the agony in the young face. Tip gave the Captain one look, turned his face away and shut his eyes. “Couldn’t you get—Garrett,” he said weakly, and gasped.
“When did this start?” Everett asked, running over his memory quickly for things that would help, and for the first time wishing he’d listened more closely to Fanu’s explanations.
“While ago.” Tip made a smothered sound.
“How long ago?” he snapped, trying to be sympathetic in spite of his worry.
“Couple . . . couple hours.” The boy suddenly threw his head back, muffling a groan, trembling violently. Everett glanced at his chronometer. The spasm lasted nearly two minutes. He kept his eyes averted from the swollen body, its distortion no longer concealable by the blanket. Tip, breathing hoarsely, murmured “How did our women ever—” then his eyes widened in surprise and he slumped back on the bed, unconscious.
“Tip! Tip! Wake up, kid—please,” Chord pleaded, bending over the boy, shaking him gently, stroking the sweat-bathed forehead.
“That’s no help.” Everett felt frantic. Fanu would have to straighten this out. He had to. He couldn’t let the boy die, not after a—sacrifice—like this!
“Can you carry him?” He helped Chord wrap the blanket around the unconscious figure, that still twisted silently, spasmodically beneath their hands. Chord picked him up, and they hurried through the rain, up toward the beacon lights of the alien laboratory.
“And he’d been conscious until then?” Fanu questioned ge
ntly, moving around the moaning figure.
“Yes, all the time,” Chord answered. “It isn’t time, is it? It isn’t time? That’s what he was scared of. He was afraid to say anything. He said it’d go away . . . all those books and tapes he read . . . he . . . by God, if he dies, I’ll kill you!”
“I am not your God,” Fanu said quietly, sadly. “Life and death are not in my hands, but I will do all that I can.”
“Fanu—” Everett began, dragging his eyes away from the obscenely swollen body. He hadn’t seen any of the . . . experiments . . . in clear light until now, and the sight stunned him, brought all this brutally home. Maybe he had been a fool. Why had he, alone, been kept in the dark? He realized only now; there had been a conspiracy of sorts, to keep Tip, and Tsen, and young Reading, the ComCon man, out of his way.
“You’ve got to do something. Chord says it isn’t time.”
“Seven and a half or better of your gestation counts. Better than I hoped.”
“Fanu . . . the human male was never designed for . . . this . . .” he found himself wanting to giggle, more with fright than amusement. Tip was regaining consciousness, moaning slightly, grunting like an animal. Garrett was there, white-coated, his hand reassuring over Tip’s, calm and matter of fact as he explored the boy’s body briefly with a stethoscope. “Heartbeat fine so far, Dr. Fanu. But we can’t monkey around too long.”
“Chord, carry him in there. I must operate this time, I am afraid.” As Tip’s eyes focused on him, the alien’s voice—and it no longer sounded toneless to Everett—said kindly “I’m sorry, Tip. You are too masculinely constructed. Remember, I warned you.”
The boy nodded wordlessly, biting his lip. Then, as Chord picked him up, he gasped between his teeth “If it comes to a choice—remember what you promised me, Doc—”
Everett sank down in a chair and buried his face in his hands, and consciousness was swamped in black nightmare. The next thing he knew, Chord stumbled out of the operating room door, and Everett, feeling nightmarishly idiotic, watched him give a startling performance of expectant fatherhood.
“Female,” Fanu announced, his tiny mouth curving in the nearest approach to a smile he could manage. Chord caught at the alien’s clothing.
“Tip? Tip?”
“He’s all right. Very weak, but fine. You can go in and see him. Be very gentle, though.”
Chord’s face went limp all over. “Oh, thank God,” he muttered, “thank God! Cap’n, that idiot kid made the Doc promise—to save the kid if it came a choice—”
He pushed past them into the other room.
“Female?”
“Female,” Fanu confirmed. “I arranged things that way—with all of them.”
“But—”
“Did you think this was permanent?”
“Well—well, yes, I did.”
Fanu made a sound of alien amusement. “That’s what’s been troubling you. No, John. In fifteen years your planet will have four or five nubile females, at least. The climate will aid precocity. In two generations you will be on firm footing. Your race is intelligent, hardy, ingenious, young—all the things mine wasn’t. Tip’s case was the most difficult. He’ll have to wait two years before attempting this again.”
“Again?” Everett gaped.
“His own request. I had difficulty making him agree even to that, or I should have taken measures to end it now. I shall, next time. When the females are grown, his chore will be done.”
“When the females are grown—what happens to the—to the converted men then? The—attachments, the—the lovers, Fanu?”
Fanu blinked sadly. “I don’t know, John. I shall not be here. I am old, John—old. But I’m sure you’ll solve it.”
Everett turned and walked over to the window, staring down at the twinkling lights from the huts, the rebirth of homo sapiens. Somewhere behind him he could hear an infant wailing. The rain had stopped, and stars were coming out, the strange stars of a strange world.
“All right,” he said softly, “I was wrong. Now, for Your sake, tell us what’s next?”
1963
SONYA DORMAN
When I Was Miss Dow
THESE hungry, mother-haunted people come and find us living in what they like to call crystal palaces, though really we live in glass places, some of them highly ornamented and others plain as paper. They come first as explorers, and perhaps realize we are a race of one sex only, rather amorphous beings of proteide; and we, even baby I, are Protean, also, being able to take various shapes at will. One sex, one brain lobe, we live in more or less glass bridges over the humanoid chasm, eating, recreating, attending races and playing other games like most living creatures.
Eventually, we’re all dumped into the cell banks and reproduced once more.
After the explorers comes the colony of miners and scientists. The warden and some of the other elders put on faces to greet them, agreeing to help with the mining of some ores, even giving them a koota or two as they become interested in our racing dogs. They set up their places of life, pop up their machines, bang-bang, chug-chug; we put on our faces, forms, smiles and costumes; I am old enough to learn to change my shape, too.
The Warden says to me, “It’s about time you made a change, yourself. Some of your friends are already working for these people, bringing home credits and sulfas.”
My Uncle (by the Warden’s fourth conjunction) made himself over at the start, being one of the first to realize how it could profit us.
I protest to the Warden, “I’m educated and trained as a scholar. You always say I must remain deep in my mathematics and other studies.”
My Uncle says, “You have to do it. There’s only one way for us to get along with them,” and he runs his fingers through his long blond hair. My Uncle’s not an educated person, but highly placed, politically, and while Captain Dow is around my Uncle retains this particular shape. The Captain is shipping out soon, then Uncle will find some other features, because he’s already warned that it’s unseemly for him to be chasing around in the face of a girl after the half-bearded boys from the space ships. I don’t want to do this myself, wasting so much time, when the fourteen decimals even now are clicking on my mirrors.
The Warden says, “We have a pattern from a female botanist, she ought to do for you. But before we put you into the pattern tank, you’ll have to approximate another brain lobe. They have two.”
“I know,” I say, sulkily. A botanist. A she!
“Into the tank,” the Warden says to me without mercy, and I am his to use as he believes proper.
I spend four days in the tank absorbing the female Terran pattern. When I’m released, the Warden tells me, “Your job is waiting for you. We went to a lot of trouble to arrange it.” He sounds brusque, but perhaps this is because he hasn’t conjoined for a long time. The responsibilities of being Warden of Mines and Seeds come first, long before any social engagement.
I run my fingers through my brunette curls, and notice my Uncle is looking critically at me. “Haven’t you made yourself rather old?” he asks.
“Oh, he’s all right,” the Warden says. “Thirty-three isn’t badly matched to the Doctor, as I understand it.”
Dr. Arnold Proctor, the colony’s head biologist, is busy making radiograph pictures (with his primitive X-rays) of skeletal structures: murger birds, rodents, and our pets and racers, the kootas—dogs to the Terrans, who are fascinated by them. We breed them primarily for speed and stamina, but some of them carry a gene for an inherited structural defect which cripples them and they have to be destroyed before they are full grown. The Doctor is making a special study of kootas.
He gets up from his chair when I enter his office. “I’m Miss Dow, your new assistant,” I say, hoping my long fingernails will stand up to the pressure of punch keys on the computer, since I haven’t had much practise in retaining foreign shapes
. I’m still in uncertain balance between myself and Martha Dow, who is also myself. But one does not have two lobes for nothing, I discover.
“Good morning. I’m glad you’re here,” the Doctor says.
He is a nice, pink man, with silver hair, soft-spoken, intelligent. I’m pleased, as we work along, to find he doesn’t joke and wisecrack like so many of the Terrans, though I am sometimes whimsical. I like music and banquets as well as my studies.
Though absorbed in his work, Dr. Proctor isn’t rude to interrupters. A man of unusual balance, coming as he does from a culture which sends out scientific parties that are ninety per cent of one sex, when their species provides them with two. At first meetings he is dedicated but agreeable, and I’m charmed.
“Dr. Proctor,” I ask him one morning. “Is it possible for you to radiograph my koota? She’s very fine, from the fastest stock available, and I’d like to breed her.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he promises with his quick, often absent, smile. “By all means. You wish to breed only the best.” It’s typical of him to assume we’re all as dedicated as he.
My Uncle’s not pleased. “There’s nothing wrong with your koota,” he says. “What do you want to X-ray her for? Suppose he finds something is wrong? You’ll be afraid to race or breed her, and she won’t be replaced. Besides, your interest in her may make him suspicious.”
“Suspicious of what?” I ask, but my Uncle won’t say, so I ask him, “Suppose she’s bred and her pups are cripples?”
The Warden says, “You’re supposed to have your mind on your work, not on racing. The koota was just to amuse you when you were younger.”
I lean down and stroke her head, which is beautiful, and she breathes a deep and gentle breath in response.
“Oh, let him go,” my Uncle says wearily. He’s getting disgusted because they didn’t intend for me to bury myself in a laboratory or a computer room, without making more important contacts. But a scholar is born with a certain temperament, and has an introspective nature, and as I’m destined to eventually replace the Warden, naturally I prefer the life of the mind.
