"Tell me."
"Well, Delmont was a green-horn evolvotron operator at the Bermuda
plant. His job was taking the unfertilized chimpanzee ova out of the
egg-multiplier, mounting them in his machine, and bombarding the
gene structure with sub-atomic particles. It's tricky business. He
flashes a huge enlargement of the ovum on the electron microscope
screen--large enough so he can see the individual protein molecules. He
has an artificial gene pattern to compare it with. It's like shooting
sub-atomic billiards. He's got to fire alpha-particles into the gene
structure and displace certain links by just the right amount. And
he's got to be quick about it before the ovum dies from an overdose of
radiation from the enlarger. A good operator can get one success out of
seven tries.
"Well, Delmont worked a week and spoiled over a hundred ova without a
single success. They threatened to fire him. I guess he got hysterical.
Anyway, he reported one success the next day. It was faked. The ovum
had a couple of flaws--something wrong in the central nervous system's
determinants, and in the glandular makeup. 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?" Anne asked.
"Funny thing, he was afraid it wouldn't be. He got to worrying about
it, thought maybe a mental-deviant would pass, and that it might be
dangerous. So he went back to its incubator and cut off the hormone
flow into its compartment."
"Why that?"
"So it _would_ develop sexuality. A neutroid would be born a female
if they didn't give it suppressive doses of male hormone prenatally.
That keeps ovaries from developing and it comes out neuter. But
Delmont figured a female would be caught and stopped before the final
inspection. They'd dispose of her without even bothering to examine for
the other defects. And he could blame the sexuality on an equipment
malfunction. He thought it was pretty smart. Trouble was they didn't
catch the female. She went on through; they all _look_ female."
"How did they find out about it now?"
"He got caught last month, trying it again. And he 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 at his wife. "This little
fellow, for instance. It might be a potential she. It might also be a
potential murderer. _All_ these kiddos are from the machines in the
section where Delmont worked."
Anne snorted and caught the baby-creature in her arms. It struggled and
tried to bite, but subsided a little when she disentangled it from the
snare. "Kkr-r-reee," it cooed nervously. "Kkr-r-reee!"
"You tell him you're no murderer," Anne purred to it.
Norris watched disapprovingly while she fondled it. One thing he had
learned: to 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. If it fixes a libido attachment on you,
you're actually robbing its owner. They can't love many people at once."
She snorted, but installed the thing in its cage.
"Anne--" Norris hesitated, hating to approach the subject. "Do
you--want one--for yourself? I can sign an unclaimed one over to you to
keep in the house. It won't cost us anything."
Slowly she shook her head, and her pale eyes went moody and luminous.
"I'm going to have one of my own," she said.
He stood in the back of the truck, staring down at her. "Do you realize
what--"
"I know what I'm saying. We're class-C on account of heart-trouble in
both our families. Well, I don't care, Terry. I'm not going to waste a
heart over one of these pathetic little artificial animals. We're going
to have a baby."
"You know what they'd do to us?"
"If they catch us, yes--compulsory divorce, sterilization. But they
won't catch us. I'll have it at home, Terry. Not even a doctor. We'll
hide it."
"I won't let you do such a thing."
She faced him angrily. "Oh, this whole rotten _world_!" she choked.
Suddenly she turned and fled out of the building. She was sobbing.
* * * * *
Norris climbed slowly down from the truck and wandered on into the
house. She was not in the kitchen nor the living room. The bedroom door
was locked. He shrugged and went to sit on the sofa. The television
set was on, and a newscast was coming from a local station.
"... we were unable to get shots of the body," the announcer was
saying. "But here is a view of the Georges residence. I'll switch you
to our mobile unit in Sherman II, James Duncan reporting."
Norris frowned with bewilderment as the scene shifted to a two-story
plasticoid house among the elm trees. It was after dark, but the mobile
unit's powerful floodlights made daylight of the house and its yard and
the police 'copters sitting in a side lot. An ambulance was parked in
the street. A new voice came on the audio.
"This is James Duncan, ladies and gentlemen, speaking to you from our
mobile unit in front of the late Doctor Hiram Georges' residence just
west of Sherman II. We are waiting for the stretcher to be brought out,
and Police Chief Erskine Miler is standing here beside me to give us a
word about the case. Doctor Georges' death has shocked the community
deeply. Most of you local listeners have known him for many years--some
of you have depended upon his services as a family physician. He was a
man well known, well loved. But now let's listen to Chief Miler."
Norris sat breathing quickly. There could scarcely be two Doctor
Georges in the community, but only this morning....
A growling drawl came from the audio. "This's Chief Miler speaking,
folks. I just want to say that if any of you know the whereabouts of a
Mrs. Sarah Glubbes, call me immediately. She's wanted for questioning."
"Thank you, Chief. This is James Duncan again. I'll review the facts
for you briefly again, ladies and gentlemen. At seven o'clock,
less than an hour ago, a woman--allegedly Mrs. Glubbes--burst into
Doctor Georges' dining room while the family was at dinner. She was
brandishing a pistol and screaming, 'You stole my baby! You gave me the
wrong baby! Where's my baby?'
"When the doctor assured her that there was no other baby, she fired,
shattering his salad plate. Glancing off it, the bullet pierced his
heart. The woman fled. A peculiar feature of the case is that Mrs.
Glubbes, the alleged intruder, _has no baby_. Just a minute--just a
minute--here comes the stretcher now."
Norris turned the set off and went to call the police. He told them
what he knew and promised to make himself available for questioning if
it became necessary. When he turned from the phone, Anne was standing
in the bedroom doorway. She might have been crying a little, but she
concealed it well.
"What was all that?" she asked.
"Woman killed a man. I happened to know the motive."
"What was it?"
"Neutroid trouble."
"You meet up with a lot of unpleasantness in this business, don't you?"
"Lot of unpleasant emotions tangled up in it," he admitted.
"I know. Well, supper's been keeping hot for two hours. Shall we eat?"
* * * * *
They went to bed at midnight, but it was after one when he became
certain that his wife was asleep. He lay in darkness for a time,
listening to her even breathing. Then he cautiously eased himself out
of bed and tiptoed quietly through the door, carrying his shoes and
trousers. He put them on in the kitchen and stole silently out to the
kennels. A half moon hung low in a misty sky, and the wind was chilly
out of the north.
He went into the neutroid room and flicked a switch. A few sleepy
chatters greeted the light.
One at a time, he awoke twenty-three of the older doll-things and
carried them to a large glass-walled compartment. These were the
long-time residents; they knew him well, and they came with him
willingly--like children after the Piper of Hamlin. When he had gotten
them in the glass chamber, he sealed the door and turned on the gas.
The conveyor would automatically carry them on to the incinerator.
Now he had enough cages for the Bermuda-K-99s.
He hurriedly quit the kennels and went to sit on the back steps. His
eyes were burning, but the thought of tears made him sicker. It was
like an assassin crying while he stabbed his victim. It was more honest
just to retch.
When he tiptoed back inside, he got as far as the hall. Then he saw
Anne's small figure framed in the bedroom window, silhouetted against
the moonlit yard. She had slipped into her negligee and was sitting on
the narrow windowstool, staring silently out at the dull red tongue of
exhaust gases from the crematory's chimney.
Norris backed away. He went to the parlor and lay down on the couch.
After a while he heard her come into the room. She paused in the center
of the rug, a fragile mist in the darkness. He turned his face away and
waited for the rasping accusation. But soon she came to sit on the edge
of the sofa. She said nothing. Her hand crept out and touched his cheek
lightly. He felt her cool finger-tips trace a soft line up his temple.
"It's all right, Terry," she whispered.
He kept his face averted. Her fingers traced a last stroke. Then she
padded quietly back to the bedroom. He lay awake until dawn, knowing
that it would never be all right, neither the creating nor the killing,
until he--and the whole world--completely lost sanity. And then
everything would be all right, only it still wouldn't make sense.
* * * * *
Anne was asleep when he left the house. The night mist had gathered
into clouds that made a gloomy morning of it. He drove on out in the
kennel-truck, meaning to get the rest of the Bermuda-K-99s so that he
could begin his testing.
Still he felt the night's guilt, like a sticky dew that refused to
depart with morning. Why should he have to kill the things? The answer
was obvious. Society manufactured them because killing them was
permissible. Human babies could not be disposed of when the market
became glutted. The neutroids offered solace to childless women, kept
them satisfied with a restricted birth rate. And why a restricted
birth rate? Because by keeping the population at five billions, the
Federation could insure a decent living standard for everybody.
Where there was giving, Norris thought glumly, there was also taking
away. Man had always deluded himself by thinking that he "created," but
he created nothing. He thought that he had created--with his medical
science and his end to wars--a longer life for the individual. But he
found that he had only taken the lives of the unborn and added them to
the years of the aged. Man now had a life expectancy of eighty, except
that he had damn little chance of being born to enjoy it.
A neutroid filled the cradle in his stead. A neutroid that never ate
as much, or grew up to be unemployed. A neutroid could be killed if
things got tough, but could still satisfy a woman's craving to mother
something small.
Norris gave up thinking about it. Eventually he would have to adjust
to it. He was already adjusted to a world that loved the artificial
mutants as children. He had been brought up in it. Emotion came in
conflict with the grim necessities of his job. Somehow he would have
to love them in the parlor and kill them in the kennel. It was only a
matter of adjustment.
* * * * *
At noon, he brought back another dozen K-99s and installed them in his
cages. There had been two highly reluctant mothers, but he skipped
them and left the seizure to the local authorities. Yates had already
brought in the three from yesterday.
"No more scratches?" Anne asked him while they ate lunch. They did not
speak of the night's mass-disposal.
Norris smiled mechanically. "I learned my lesson yesterday. If
they bare their fangs, I get out without another word. Funny thing
though--I've got a feeling one mother pulled a fast one."
"What happened?"
"Well, I told her what I wanted and why. She didn't like it, but she
let me in. I started out with her newt, but she wanted a receipt. So I
gave her one; took the serial number off my checklist. She looked at
it and said, 'Why, that's not Chichi's number!' I looked at the newt's
foot, and sure enough it wasn't. I had to leave it. It was a K-99, but
not even from Bermuda."
"I thought they were all registered," Anne said.
"They are. I told her she had the wrong neutroid, but she got mad. Went
and got the sales receipt. It checked with her newt, and it was from
O'Reilley's pet shop--right place, wrong number. I just don't get it."
"Nothing to worry about, is it Terry?"
He looked at her peculiarly. "Ever think what might happen if someone
started a black market in neutroids?"
They finished the meal in silence. After lunch he went out again to
gather up the rest of the group. By four o'clock, he had gotten all
that were to be had without the threat of a warrant. The screams and
pleas and tears of the owners left him gloomily despising himself.
If Delmont's falsification had been widespread, he might have to turn
several of the thirty-five over to central lab for dissection and
ultimate destruction. That would bring the murderous wrath of their
owners down upon him. He began to understand why bio-inspectors were
frequently shifted from one territory to another.
On the way home, he stopped in Sherman II to check on the missing
number. It was the largest of the Sherman communities, covering fifty
blocks of commercial buildings. He parked in the outskirts and took a
sidewalk escalator toward O'Reilley's address.
It was on a dingy sidestreet, reminiscent of past centuries, a street
of small bars and bowling alleys and cigar stores. There was even a
shop with three gold balls above the entrance, but the place was now
an antique store. A light mist was falling when he stepped off the
escalator and stood in front of the pet shop. A sign hung out over the
sidewalk, announcing:
J. "DOGGY" O'REILLEY
PETS FOR SALE
DUMB BLONDES AND GOLDFISH
MUTANTS FOR THE CHILDLESS
BUY A BUNDLE OF JOY
Norris frowned at the sign and wandered inside. The place was warm
and gloomy. He wrinkled his nose at the strong musk of animal odors.
O'Reilley's was not a shining example of cleanliness.
Somewhere a puppy was yapping, and a parrot croaked the lyrics of _A
Chimp to Call My Own_, which Norris recognized as the theme song of a
popular soap-opera about a lady evolvotron operator.
He paused briefly by a tank of silk-draped goldfish. The shop had a
customer. An elderly lady was haggling with a wizened manager over the
price of a half grown second-hand dog-F. She was shaking her last dog's
death certificate under his nose and demanding a guarantee of the dog's
alleged F-5 intelligence. The old man offered to swear on a Bible, but
he demurred when it came to swearing on a ledger.