[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine April 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What did Genetics and Hansen's Folly have
in common? Why, everything ... Genetics
was statistical and Hansen's Folly impossible!
I
The living room reflected wealth, position, good taste. In size it was
a full ten feet by fourteen, with nearly an eight-foot ceiling. Light
was furnished by glow panels precisely balanced in color to produce
light's most flattering tint for the woman who sat in a delicate chair
of authentic, golden-veined blackwood.
The chair itself must have cost a fortune to ship from Tau Ceti Five.
It was an ostentation in the eyes of the visitor, who viewed it as
evidence of a self-indulgent attitude that would certainly make his job
more difficult.
The air in the room was fresh and very faintly aromatic, pleasing. It
came draftlessly refreshed at a temperature of seventy-six degrees and
a relative humidity of fifty per cent and permitted the entry of no
more than one foreign particle (dust) per cubic foot.
The coffee table was another ostentation, but for a different reason
than the imported chair of blackwood. The coffee table was of
mahogany--terrestrial mahogany--and therefore either antique, heirloom,
or both, and in any combination of cases it was priceless. It gave
the visitor some dark pleasure to sit before it with his comparison
microscope parked on the polished mahogany surface, with the ease of
one who always parked his tools on tables and stands made of treasure
woods.
There were four persons. Paul Hanford swirled brandy in a snifter
with a series of nervous gestures. Mrs. Hanford sat in the blackwood
chair unhappily, despite the flattering glow of the wall-panels. Their
daughter, Gloria, sat in such a way as to distract the visitor by
presenting a target that his eyes could not avoid. Try as he would, his
gaze kept straying to the slender, exposed bare ankle and the delicate,
high-arched foot visible beneath the hem of the girl's dress.
* * * * *
Norman Ross, GSch, was the visitor, and he subvocalized his tenth
self-indictment as he tore his gaze away from Gloria Hanford's ankle to
look into Paul Hanford's face. Ross was the Scholar of Genetics for the
local division of the Department of Domestic Tranquility and he should
have known all about such things, but he obviously did not.
He said, "You can hardly blame yourselves, you know," although he did
not really believe it.
"But what have we done wrong?" asked Mrs. Hanford in a plaintive voice.
Scholar Ross shook his head and caught his gaze in mid-stray before it
returned all the way to that alluring ankle. "Genetics, my dear Mrs.
Hanford, is a statistical science, not a precise science." He waved
vaguely at the comparison microscope. "There are your backgrounds for
seven generations. No one--and I repeat, _no one_--could have foreseen
the issue of a headstrong, difficult offspring from the mating of
characteristics such as these. I checked most carefully, most minutely,
just to be certain that some obscure but important conflict had not
been overlooked by the signing doctor. Doctors, however, do make
mistakes."
Gloria Hanford dandled her calf provocatively and caused the hem of her
skirt to rise another half-inch. The scholar's eyes swung, clung, and
were jerked away again.
"What's wrong with me, Scholar Ross?" she asked in a throaty voice.
"You are headstrong, self-willed, wild, and--" his voice failed because
he wanted to lash out at her for her brazen and deliberate display of
her bare ankle; he struggled to find a drawing-room word for her that
would not wholly offend the hapless parents and ultimately came up
with--"meretricious."