The Haploids

by Jerry Sohl

  Her face glowed from a weird inner light now as she swept on. "There was to be a new race. The basic laws were to be changed. Why should a man and a woman come together to have a child? I would change the fundamental law. I would make man unnecessary. I would wipe out the stumbling block of civilization. Levers and motors were to replace the muscles of men. I would create a haploid race. A race without worry of sex and its manifold frustrations.

  A race without childbirth. A race whose only thought would be the improvement of itself to the end of time. A single race with no barrier of color, race or creed, a race with only one thought in mind: to rule itself, work for itself and improve itself. A race of superwomen of which this is only the beginning."

  She broke off and glanced at Travis and Dr. Leaf closely, as if daring them to betray a flicker of amusement or horror. There being none, she went on.

  "How, may you ask, did I know I could do this? Dr. Tis-dial is the answer. Little by little I got out of him details of experiments he had conducted, ideas he had along certain lines. Later he found out what I had in mind, helped me conduct my own experiments just out of scientific interest. But it was never the same between him and me after the night Ronny left for the army.

  "I have read only recently of the astounding work of Dr. Gregory Pincus with his 'multiple ovulation' technique ' She laughed. "It was in 1918 that Dr. Tisdial and I worked out the details of that. But we weren't telling the world about it. It was a sort of hobby with us. The injection of certain hormones increased the number of eggs released from the ovaries at each monthly ovulation.

  "The next step was flushing the eggs from the mother. We solved that in short order. It was a simple trick of mechanics. The really hard one was storing the eggs. The secret was suspended animation at a temperature near absolute zero. Together we built one of the first deep freeze units for this purpose."

  "This is amazing," Dr. Leaf murmured.

  Dr. Garner smiled at him tolerantly. "An understatement, Doctor, as you will soon see. There was no reason to presume an ovum couldn't grow into an adult woman without benefit of fusion with a sperm. The only thing a spermatozoan does is stimulate the growth process once it enters the cytoplasm. Virgin reproduction is nothing new; I don't have to tell you that.

  "You no doubt have read about such things as the development of sea urchin, starfish, worms, snails and even frogs without being fertilized by a male, Mr. Travis. I'm sure the doctor has. The fatherless young produced are as healthy as those arising the usual way.

  "What does the male sperm contribute? The other X chromosome or a Y chromosome and 23 other chromosomes. They aren't necessary. As a matter of fact, the male's part in the game is weakness. Males are the weaker sex, not only before birth but afterwards. Any biologist will tell you that. They are more susceptible to defect or death while being born, they are more often miscarried and more often die before or immediately after birth or enter the world defective.

  "More Y-bearing spermatozoa meet the egg than X. They win the first race, create a male, but lose the rest of the way through life. From birth on the males drop out at a higher rate than the females. The hormonal balance has a lot to do with it."

  Dr. Garner went back to her tea, drank a little of it. "To get back to the story. It wasn't too long before Dr. Tisdial noticed that I had more than a passing interest in parthenogenesis. He objected to my experimenting with growing an ovum in an artificial placenta, stimulating growth by a sudden drop in temperature and piercing the cytoplasm with a sharp needle—a delicate operation, incidentally, but one we have mastered.

  "It was in 1920, when I set up my own laboratory to carry on in the face of his opposition, that we separated. He went his way, I went mine. I was occupied with growing haploids, gentlemen. I grew them by the hundreds, by the thousands. They are still being grown today.

  "It was only a few months ago that Dr. Tisdial sought me out, having run on to some of my work in the technical journals. I have to sell ideas and inventions once in a while to get the funds I need to carry on the work. He came out here to pay a friendly call and was aghast at what he saw, he said.

  "Imagine that, gentlemen," she said curling her lips down, hate in her eyes. "The mind of a man 'aghast' at the possibility of a better world. The mind of the same man undisturbed at the thought of war. The mind of the same man who helped create the atom bomb. It's an impossible thing, how a man will justify his action.

  "Since he did not approve, there was nothing else to do but keep him here, to keep him from spoiling the plans more than twenty years in the making. I kept him here under lock and key. Then one day he escaped. He fled into town to find me in the house on Winthrop Street, where we turned out thousands of those black metal boxes. There he nearly ruined everything after an accident with one of the machines. He had a fatal dose of radiation, went out of his head, ran out of the house. We had to dismantle everything, burn the house down."

  "Then it was Dr. Tisdial," Travis said. "He was the first gray patient."

  "That was Dr. Tisdial," she said without emotion.

  THIRTEEN

  Faircrest Sanitarium was a white, frame T-like structure with the tail of the T running several hundred feet back from the wide front. It was into this section of the building that the party moved, Dr. Garner explaining the sights as if to distinguished visitors.

  "The sanitarium in the front part of the building is actually a wonderful place to recuperate," she said. "As a rest home for the nervously or mentally ill, hundreds of people have found in it relaxation, recovery, and hope. It has proved t6 be a profitable enterprise. But this rear part of the sanitarium has nothing to do with the front part, as you will see.

  They walked down the brightly lighted corridor which was flanked by large, well-lighted cubicles divorced from the hallway by glass from the floor to the ceiling. White-clad women were busy within them, some working with charts and diagrams, others with shiny laboratory equipment. Still others worked over electronic devices—electrical contrivances with dials, gauges, tubes, and wires. Some of the workers looked up in surprise as soon as they saw the men.

  "A few years ago, because of our increasing activity all over the world, we had to change some of these little laboratories into business offices. The reports from our haploids everywhere are received here."

  The doctor inserted a key in a wall. A thick metal door slid slowly open and a breath of warm air was wafted to them. Once inside the corridor within they saw a large double glass panel with a door at one side. From inside the glass in front of them to the next wall fifty feet away were glass retorts of graduated sizes. They nearly filled the enormous room, leaving only a narrow aisle between.

  "The artificially fertilized ovum is placed in the smallest retort to begin with," Dr. Garner explained. "Inside is a physiological saline solution, the equivalent of body fluid in its chemical constituents. The correct osmotic pressure and diffusion pressure are maintained as the cells develop in vitro. There is segmentation almost at once. The cell, you see, quickly buries itself in the thickest part of the solution as it would in the wall of the uterus. It is continually bathed by the life fluid of the placenta and soon starts to absorb nourishment.

  "As the growing cells are transferred from the smaller to the progressively larger retorts you can see the beating heart, the beginnings of a nervous system, the sprouts that become limbs. The whole creation is thrilling to me, even after these many years." The doctor's eyes were bright.

  "As with a real mother, there is no connection between the growing haploid and her mother material. They are separated by only a membrane of tissue—the placenta. The embryo gets food and oxygen from the solution, gives up its waste products to it. When the time comes for birth the child is merely plucked 'out of her retort, spanked much the way it is done in regular childbirth, and a new haploid is born.

  "Each one is given a name and a serial number and the birth site is recorded, for there are several such laboratories in various sections of the country,
though none is as elaborate as this."

  "What a pity it all is," Dr. Leaf said. "What a pity that you could not have turned your great talent to constructive things."

  "I could not expect you to understand or sympathize, Doctor, since it is your sex that is to be eliminated."

  "But annihilation! Your discoveries would certainly benefit mankind!"

  "Mankind? Yes, mankind." Dr. Garner's eyes blazed. "That is the trouble with you men. Everything centers about you. Even the words. A woman must even assume a man's name in the world during part of her life. You have subjugated women—the biologically superior counterpart of the species—ever since the beginning of time."

  "It was -necessary," Travis volunteered. "In the beginning the family's existence depended on the strong arm of the man."

  "Yes, and now that arm is no longer necessary," Dr. Garner replied. "Now there are machines to perform the laborious tasks."

  "Your thinking," Dr. Leaf interposed, "is not logical. Also it was not only the strong arm but childbirth that put a woman down. What could a woman do when she was pregnant?"

  "Pregnancy is no great handicap," the woman retorted. "Except perhaps the final month. Possibly not even then. Women have allowed themselves to be hopelessly pampered. There will be no more pregnancy, except for normal women who have a wish for it or if it should be necessary to grow haploids within the haploids."

  "But to annihilate—to kill indiscriminately—"

  "Don't be childish, Doctor. You yourself in the laboratory have killed. This is merely the survival of the fittest." Her eyes gleamed with fanatic fervor. "And we are the fittest. You are the weaker. You would kill us all, you and your atom bombs. Actually, we are saving civilization men would destroy in his insane pursuit of war."

  Dr. Leaf's face was flushed, but he did not pursue the subject further in the face of her growing anger.

  "What happens," Travis asked, leading the subject back to the row on row of growth receptacles, "what happens when the child is born? Where does she go? Who rears her?"

  Dr. Garner turned back to the birth room. "We have nurseries. Most of the girls are adopted sooner or later by someone. We keep a record of every one and when the girl is old enough she is sought out and told the truth. This happens anywhere from age fifteen to eighteen, depending on the girl. Sometimes it is quite a shock to her. Sometimes it is not. Most have, strangely enough, suspected they are not like other girls."

  "Suppose," Dr. Leaf said, "the girl doesn't fall in with the plans you have for her?"

  The woman smiled. "There are many choices. Suicide for one. If she does not have the courage for that we see to it that the girl vanishes without a trace. If a girl comes from an influential home, where she is apt to have money or be in a position to help us tremendously, there is also menticide."

  "Menticide?" Travis said. "What's that?"

  "A term invented by Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo, Mr. Travis. It is the synthetic injection of one's own thoughts and words into the minds and mouths of the persons you wish to control. It destroys free thought and makes servile, mechanical instruments of their inviolate thought processes. It sounds terribly technical; modern psychiatry, however, makes this possible through sheer repetition of a thought, an idea, under duress. It makes the mind unwilling to accept any reality other than that extended by the person wielding the influence. It has not failed us yet."

  "And these girls have lived in our world as normal human beings for a long time," Travis said. "Some for as long as thirty-two years, is that right?"

  "Yes, there are a few that old. But they have been poised for some time, ready to strike. We have thought man might destroy himself through wars, but he has not done so yet. We can wait no longer, since a war of the magnitude he has planned might very well annihilate us as well. We are speeding things up with the little black boxes. Haploids around the country have had them for weeks now, waiting for today.

  "Another thing that might interest you. A haploid cannot have a child, except an artificially inseminated ovum already activated, since because of the reduction division in the ovaries her 23X chromosome cell would divide into an 11 chromosome and a 12X chromosome cell, neither of which will accept a 23X or 23Y sperm cell. She is sterile. This does not stop her from marriage, however."

  "How is that possible?"

  "To a true haploid sex is only a function to be endured, a stupid, unnecessary function she must perform until the time she is emancipated. A haploid finds little real pleasure in it, for she is conditioned to hate men, to look forward only to the day she is freed of the shackle, the day men are eradicated as the inferior sex they are."

  She laughed. "Have you ever wondered why there are so many childless married couples today? Many who seem to be frantically searching for the reason for their sterility are in reality haploids building up a case for adoption. She must keep up the act so that in the end, through her urging, she and her husband—to satisfy her mother urge, she tells him—adopt a child. A haploid, of course. The haploid wife always checks with us first. It solves the adoption problem for us in many cases; it's all part of the plan.

  "And have you ever wondered why certain nice-looking girls prefer being old maids? Hatred of the males makes them unable to even consider marriage for appearances' sake or for the cause of haploid adoption. They cannot emotionally compromise. They are the best haploids, for they live only for the day when they will be free of men, free to construct the new world they have dreamed of. That day, of course, is not far distant now. The fact that men with AB blood will apparently stand in the way I do not consider too serious a factor. We shall root them out."

  "What about normal women?" Travis asked.

  "What about them?" the doctor snapped back. "Spineless creatures. Because you made them so. After the men are gone, if she wants to have a child she still can. We'll plant a fertilized ovum in her or we'll fertilize her own and implant it. The mother's own haploid child will be her image.

  "If there are women who don't want to go along with the plan they can merely die out. If they actively oppose the program they will have to be liquidated. But I'm not worried about that. Weak creatures as they have been made to be, they will go along."

  The doctor opened the metal door to the corridor again and the cool air of it seemed clear and healthy to Travis. What he had heard had been shocking and just a little sickening. They followed her down the hall. She stopped before a window.

  "In there," she said, pointing to a porcelain and chromium wall, "are deep freeze units we developed years ago. Ova from women as far back as twenty years are locked in suspended animation in there. Billions of them. We'll never run out."

  From farther down the hallway came a clack-clack noise Travis instantly recognized. Teletype machines. The woman doctor noticed his interest.

  "Our communications center," she said, walking to the room. They went inside. It was a large room filled with desks and teletype machines and women. There were the usual hostile glares by the busy haploids.

  "It's all right, girls," Dr. Garner said reassuringly, going to a long table on which many of the long teletype reports were spread. She picked up several of them.

  "Our Chicago office reports the FCC is unable to keep up with the new placements of gamma ray machines. The authorities have turned off the electricity, but our girls are very capable in converting battery current or portable generators into doing the job.

  "As soon as the men start dying there will go up the usual call for women volunteers. That's where the haploids come in. They will always be the volunteers. We have thousands of them in WAC units ready to do their work in the stricken cities."

  Dr. Garner laughed again and put down the report. "Do you realize we have nearly a half million haploids between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three all the way around the world? The only country we haven't penetrated is Russia and some of her satellites. What chance has man?"

  She indicated the report. T laughed because it says the

  U. S.
has announced that its plans to test a new and terrible weapon that could destroy an entire country in a split second has been put off because of the current menace. Sheer bluff. The U. S. is afraid Russia might strike now that our male population is diminishing. Let them strike. We'll destroy them, too."

  "Dr. Garner," Dr. Leaf said, "what happens when one of your girls gets caught? When Alice Gilburton was caught, for example, she killed herself with some form of poison."

  "Yes, Dr. Leaf, it was empithenal, something we developed right here. Each haploid carries a small vial of it to be used when she gets into an impossible situation. A swift, painless death as soon as she bites into it."

  At that moment a girl pushed into the room and nearly bumped into the group. Dr. Garner gave her a stony stare.

  "Miss Pease!" Travis exclaimed. It was the nurse he had known in the hospital, the one who had worked under Mrs. Nelson, the supervisor.

  "You two know each other, it seems."

  "Yes, Dr. Garner," the girl said, coloring. I had to block his way out of Dr. Tisdial's room so he couldn't chase Betty."

  "So that was it!" Travis cried. "You blocked my way!"

  "I had forgotten about that," Dr. Garner said, looking at Travis with new interest. "You're the one who could have recognized my daughter. I sent her after you—"

  "Your daughter?

  "A haploid," Dr. Garner said stiffly. "I picked her out of the 1929 vintage. Where is Betty?" she asked Miss Pease. "In the filing room, I think."

  "Go get her, please."

  When Betty came out of the small room just off the main communications room she stopped in mid-stride when she saw Travis. Then she came on.