Beyond This Horizon (7 page)

In the nucleus of every cell of every zygote, whether man or fruit fly, sweet pea or race horse, is a group of threadlike bodies—chromosomes. Along the threads are incredibly tiny somethings, on the order of ten times the size of the largest protein molecules. They are the genes, each one of which controls some aspect of the entire structure, man, animal, or plant, in which the cell is lodged. Every living cell contains within it the plan for the entire organism.

Each man’s cells contain forty-eight chromosomes—twenty-four pairs. Half of them he derived from his mother, half from his father. In each one of a pair of chromosomes, there are genes, thousands of them, in one-to-one correspondence with the genes from the chromosomes of the other parent. Thus each parent “casts a vote” on each characteristic. But some “votes” carry more weight than others. Such “votes” are called dominant, the weaker, recessive. If one parent supplies the gene for brown eyes, while the other parent supplies the gene for blue eyes, the child will have brown eyes—brown is “dominant.” If both parents supply the gene for brown eyes, the vote is unanimous, but the result is the same—for that generation. But it always requires “unanimous vote” to produce blue eyes.

Nevertheless, the gene for blue eyes may be passed on from generation to generation, unnoticed but
unchanged
. The potentialities of a race are passed on unchanged—except for mutation—from parent to child. They may be shuffled and dealt and shuffled again, producing an inconceivable number of unique individuals, but the genes are unchanged.

Chess men may be arranged on the board in many combinations, but the unit men do not vary. Fifty-two playing cards may be dealt to produce an enormous number of different hands, but the cards are the original fifty-two. One hand may be full of high cards; another may be worthless—pure chance.

But suppose you were permitted to make up the best hand of five cards possible out of the first ten cards dealt? The chance of getting the best possible hand has been increased two hundred and fifty-two times! (Check it.)

Such is the method of racial improvement by gene selection.

A life-producing cell in the gonads of a male is ready to divide to form gametes. The forty-eight chromosomes intertwine frantically, each with its opposite number. So close is this conjugation that genes or groups of genes may even trade places with their opposites from the other chromosomes. Presently this dance ceases. Each member of a pair of chromosomes withdraws from its partner as far as possible, until there is a cluster of twenty-four chromosomes at each end of the cell. The cell splits, forming two new cells, each with only twenty-four chromosomes, each containing exactly half of the potentialities of the parent cell and parent zygote.

One of these cells contains a chromosome—the X-chromosome—which declares that any zygote formed with its help will be female.

The two cells divide again. But in this fission the chromosomes themselves divide, endwise, thereby conserving every gene and every one of the twenty-four chromosomes. The end product is four wigglers—male gametes, spermatozoa—half of whom can produce females; half, males. The male producers are exactly alike in their gene assortments
and are exact complements of the female producers
. This is the key point in the technique of gene selection.

The heads of the male producers average four microns in length; the heads of the female producers average five microns in length—another key point.

In the female gonad the evolution of the gamete, or ovum, is like that described for the male gametes, with two exceptions. After the reduction-division in which the number of chromosomes per cell is reduced from forty-eight to twenty-four the result is not two ova, but one ovum and one “polar body.” The polar body is a pseudo egg, containing a chromosome pattern complementary to that of the true gamete, but it is sterile. It’s a nobody that never will be anybody.

The ovum divides again, throwing off another polar body which has the same pattern as the ovum. The original polar body divides again, producing two more polar bodies of complementary pattern. Thus the polar bodies of pattern complementary to the ovum always exceed in number those of identical pattern. This is a key fact.

All ova may become either male or female. Sex of the infant zygote is determined by the cell provided by the father; the mother has no part in it.

The above is a very rough picture. It is necessary to compress, to exaggerate, to omit detail, to use over-simplified analogy. For example, the terms “dominant” and “recessive” are relative terms; and characteristics are rarely determined by one gene alone. Furthermore, mutations—spontaneous changes in the genes themselves—occur with greater frequency than this account has emphasized. But, the picture is reasonably correct in its broad outlines.

How can these facts be used to produce the sort of man or woman one wishes to produce? Offhand, the question appears simple. An adult male produces hundreds of billions of gametes. Ova are produced on no such wholesale scale, but in quite adequate numbers. It would appear to be a simple matter to determine what combination you want and then wait for it to show up…or at least to wait for a combination near enough to be satisfactory.

But it is necessary to recognize the combination wanted when it shows up. And that can be done only by examining the gene patterns in the chromosomes.

Well? We can keep gametes alive outside the body…and genes, while infinitesimally small, are large enough to be recognized under our ultramicroscopes. Go ahead. Take a look. Is it the gamete we want, or is it one of its lesser brothers? If the latter, then reject it, and look again.

Wait a moment! Genes are such tiny things that to examine one is to disturb it. The radiations used to see a gamete closely enough to tell anything about its chromosomes will produce a storm of mutations. Sorry…the thing you were looking for isn’t there any more. You’ve changed it—more probably killed it.

So we fall back on the most subtle and powerful tool of research…inference. You will remember that a single male gonad cell produces two groups of gametes, complementary in their chromosome patterns. The female producers have the larger heads; the males are more agile. We can separate them.

If, in a given small constellation of male gametes, enough members are examined to determine that they all stem from the same parent cell, then we may examine in minute detail the group producing the sex we do
not
want. From the chromosome-gene pattern of the group examined we can infer the complementary pattern of the group kept free of the perils of examination.

With female gametes the problem is similar. The ovum need not leave its natural environment in the body of the female. The polar bodies, worthless and non-viable in themselves, are examined. Their patterns are either identical with that of their sister cell, or complementary. Those that are complementary are more numerous than those identical. The pattern of the ovum may be inferred with exactness.

Half the cards are face up. Therefore we know the value of the cards face down. We can bet—or wait for a better hand.

Romantic writers of the first days of genetics dreamed of many fantastic possibilities—test-tube babies, monsters formed by artificial mutation, fatherless babies, babies assembled piece by bit from a hundred different parents. All these horrors are possible, as the geneticists of the Great Khans proved, but we citizens of this Republic have rejected such tampering with our life stream. Infants born with the assistance of the neo-Ortega-Martin gene selection technique are normal babies, stemming from normal germ plasm, born of normal women, in the usual fashion.

They differ in one respect only from their racial predecessors: they are the
best
babies their parents can produce!

Boy Meets Girl

M
ONROE-ALPHA called for his ortho-wife again the next evening. She looked up and smiled as he came into her apartment. “Two nights running,” she said. “Clifford, you’ll have me thinking you are courting me.”

“I thought you wanted to go to this party,” he said woodenly.

“I do, my dear. And I appreciate your taking me. Half a minute, while I gown.” She got up and slipped out of the room with a slow-seeming, easy glide. Larsen Hazel had been a popular dancing star in her day, both record and beamcast. She had wisely decided to retire rather than fight it out with younger women. She was now just thirty, two years younger than her spouse.

“All ready,” she announced after an interval hardly longer than her promise mentioned.

He should have commented on her costume; it deserved comment. Not only did it do things with respect to her laudable figure, but its color, a live Mermaid green, harmonized with her hair and with her sandals, her hair ornaments, and her costume clips. They all were of the same dull gold as the skin tight metallic habit he had chosen.

He should at least have noticed that she had considered what he was wearing in selecting her own apparel. Instead he answered, “Fine. We’ll be right on time.”

“It’s a new gown, Clifford.”

“It’s very pretty,” he answered agreeably. “Shall we go?”

“Yes, surely.”

He said very little during the ride, but watched the traffic as if the little car were not capable of finding its way through the swarming traffic without his supervision. When the car finally growled to a stop at the top floor of an outlying residence warren he started to raise the shell, but she put a hand on his arm. “Let it be, for a moment, Clifford. Can we talk for a little before we get lost in a swarm of people?”

“Why surely. Is something the matter?”

“Nothing—and everything. Clifford, my dear—there’s no need for us to go on as we have been going.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean if you stop to think about it. I’m not necessary to you any more—am I?”

“Why, uh—Hazel, I don’t know why you should say a thing like that. You’ve been swell. You’re a swell girl, Hazel. Nobody could ask for anything more.”

“Mmmm…that’s as may be. I don’t have any secret vices and I’ve never done you any harm that I know of. But that’s not what I mean. You don’t get any pleasure out of my company any more—any
lift
.”

“Uh…that’s not so. I couldn’t ask for any better pal than you’ve been. We’ve never had an argu—”

She checked him with her hand. “You still don’t understand me. It might be better if we did quarrel a little. I’d have a better idea of what goes on behind those big solemn eyes of yours. You don’t dislike me. In fact, I think you like me as well as you like anybody. You even like to be with me, sometimes, if you’re tired and I happen to fit your mood. But that isn’t enough. And I’m fond enough of you to be concerned about you, darling. You need something more than I’ve been able to give you.”

“I don’t know how any woman could do any more than you’ve done for me.”

“I do. I do, because I was once able to do it. Do you remember when we first registered? I gave you a lift then. You were happy. It made me happy, too. You were so pathetically pleased with me and with everything about me that sometimes I could cry, just to look at you.”

“I haven’t stopped being pleased with you.”

“Not consciously. But I think I know what happened.”

“What?”

“I was still dancing then. I was the great Hazel, premiere danseuse, I was everything you had never been. Glamour and bright lights and music. I remember how you used to call for me after a performance, looking so proud and so glad to see me. And I was so impressed by your intellect (I still am, dear) and I was so flattered that you paid attention to me.”

“Why you could have had your pick of all the braves in the country.”

“They didn’t look at me the way you did. But that isn’t the point. I’m not really glamorous and never was. I was just a working girl, doing the job she could do best. Now the lights are out and the music has stopped and I’m no longer any help to you.”

“Don’t say that, kid.”

She placed a hand on his arm. “Be honest with yourself, Cliff. My feelings aren’t hurt. I’m not a romantic person. My feelings have always been maternal, rather than anything else. You’re my baby. You aren’t happy and I want you to be happy.”

He shrugged helplessly. “What is there to do about it? Even if everything you say is true, what is there to do?”

“I could make a guess. Somewhere there is a girl who is everything you thought I was. Someone who can do for you what I once did by just being herself.”

“Hunnh! I don’t know where I’d find her. There isn’t any such person. No, kid, the trouble is with me, not with you. I’m a skeleton at the feast. I’m morose by nature. That’s what.”

“Hummph right back at you. You haven’t found her because you haven’t been looking for her. You’ve fallen into a rut, Cliff. Tuesdays and Fridays, dinner with Hazel. Mondays and Thursdays, work out at the gymnasium. Weekends, go to the country and soak up some natural vitamin D. You need to be shaken out of that. I’m going down tomorrow and register a consent.”

“You wouldn’t really!”

“I certainly shall. Then, if you find someone who pleases your fancy, you can confirm it without any delay.”

“But Hazel, I don’t
want
you to turn me loose.”

“I’m not turning you loose. I’m just trying to encourage you to have a roving eye. You can come to see me whenever you like, even if you remarry. But no more of this Tuesday-and-Friday stuff. That’s out. Try phoning me in the middle of the night, or duck out of your sacred office during working hours.”

“Hazel, you don’t really want me to go chasing after other women, do you?”

She took his chin in her hand. “Clifford, you are a big sweet dope. You know all there is to know about figures, but what you don’t know about women would fill reels.” She kissed him. “Relax. Mamma knows best.”

“But—”

“The party waits.”

He raised the shell of the car. They got out and went on in.

The town house of the Johnson-Smith Estaire occupied the entire top platform of the warren. It was a conspicuous example of conspicuous waste. The living quarters (that great pile of curiously assembled building materials could hardly be called a home) occupied perhaps a third of the space, the rest was given over to gardens, both open and covered. Her husband’s ridiculously large income was derived from automatic furniture; it was her fancy to have her house display no apparent evidence of machine domination.