The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) (7 page)

‘There is a place for you,’ offered the Harvester. ‘There is always work to be done. You will feel useful. Humans will depend on you.’

Yes, it is what his deity would want. The miasmas did not exist in his small circuits. Powerful impulses from the CO drove his logic sequences. He left the fields and approached the shaft cap – the door to the Hive.

‘Yes?’ said the door, unfamiliar with the newcomer’s manner. ‘What brings you to this shaft city?’

‘I’ve come to serve Man.’

Door did not move.

‘Harvester said there was work for me. He checked with the CO and . . .’

‘Let me double-check. We don’t get many mobile units without proper clearance. What is your name?’

‘Trilobite – Iron. I don’t have any elemental iron in my body. My deity just calls me that . . .’

‘Yes. Here are your orders.’

‘What am I to do?’ asked Trilobite, his telltales all aglitter with eagerness.

‘Report for dismemberment!’

Embryoteck Bohart leaned on the call button to quiet its incessant ringing. The face on the screen was patient but firm.

‘Sorry, sir but things are a bit hectic—’

‘Where is that “therapeutic”, Bo? Psych has been calling all morning.’

Bohart glanced around helplessly. ‘I’ve checked everywhere, sir, but we’ve run out of “full terms”. Could she wait a week?’

The face on the screen grew a thought asterisk between its brows. ‘No. I’m afraid not. You know how brittle some of these females can get.’

Bo shrugged. ‘But I’ve checked—’

‘It doesn’t have to be fully certified. Find her something – anything – just so it lives long enough to cure her Fine Body Movements. She can always exchange it for a regular model after this rush is over.’

‘Right away, sir,’ said Bo, signing off.

Bo pulled on his hooded Closed-Environment suit and cycled himself into the oxygen-rich Embryolab. Hooded tecks worked over open pans of Robert’s Electrolyte. Pink, eight-millimetre, ‘C’-shaped embryos drifted from hand to hand – larval humans trailing cord and placenta – protected by two atmospheres of oxygen and Robert’s sugars.

A Benchteck recharged his cryoprobe and reached for the next embryo, steering it between the steriotactic bit. Micro-manipulators adjusted its cephalic fold in 1200× viewer. The probe slipped into the midbrain, freezing a few micrograms of tissue in the floor of the third ventrical – primordial pituitary cells. The newly ‘pitted’ embryo was placed in an out tray.

‘I’m looking for a reject for Psych. Do you know of any surpluses?’ asked Bo.

The hood shook. ‘No,’ said a muffled voice. ‘The red sign is up. Try again next week.’

Bo carried a brimming tray into the Jarring Department where each embryo received its own container. The tiny placentas were pinned to the bottoms of the bottle-jars by loose bands of foaming matrix – a synthetic endometrium that encouraged attachment. A polarized-light screen was placed over each jar. The haemoglobin-myoglobin colour index was checked before each jar left the oxygen squeeze.

‘This one is too pale: not enough oxygen-carrying capacity to leave the squeeze. I’ll give it an extra day – plus a dose of Amnioferon.’

Bo watched the iron-protein liquid fall into the amniotic fluids – brown drops of apoferritin matrix with 23 percent ferric hydroxide in the form of micelles – charged ions dispersed in a colloid.

The Haemoteck turned to Bo saying, ‘Yes?’

‘I need a spare infant. Do you have any that haven’t been certified?’

‘Certainly. There are always spares. Follow me.’ She led him through the air lock and removed her hood, shaking out a stubby bush of black hair. ‘When will you be needing it?’

‘Now? Today?’

‘Sorry, Bo. But you know that the final culling is in the thirty-second week. They all carry numbers after that.’

Bo glanced around. Thousands of bottle-jars incubated quietly on dark belts, moving slowly towards the trimming section, where unwanted tails and toes were removed. Thousands! But they were only one to ten centimetres in length. Nonviable. Shrugging, he walked down to the Decontainerization Section. The jars came down the belt six abreast and dumped crying infants on to the sorting boards in pools of cloudy curds. The attendants wrapped towels around each infant at the rate of six or eight a minute and dumped them in large transparent bassinets.

‘I’m looking for a spare infant. Do you have one?’ asked Bo.

The attendant’s hands and eyes continued with the wrapping and packing while he answered: ‘Nothing here. Try the reject belt.’

‘Rejects? Aren’t they the premature ones?’

‘Some are,’ said the attendant. ‘But there is an occasional gargoyle or simian. It’s your best bet.’

Bohart strode off, following the discard belt. It moved slowly and contained an occasional twitching form on its way to the Chute. Most did look simply premature – with a tendency toward lethal hyaline membranes in the lungs. Psych was in a hurry for their therapeutic infant. A hairy simian wouldn’t satisfy them, but a gargoyle might. All it had wrong with it was a bad case of the ‘uglies’ – bulging eyes, ocular muscles overdeveloped from being embryonated with a defective light screen. The eye buds were stimulated into early and redundant growth.

The Psychteck focused his battery of desk sensors on the waiting patient to monitor her Fine Body Movements. She sat up straight, rigid, on the edge of her chair, wringing her hands. Her eyes were darting around the waiting room, fixing on this object, then that. Her hair was stringy and black, frequently finger-combed and pushed back. Fine Body Movements increased steadily. The Psychokinetoscope gave a clear warning.

‘FBMs are increasing,’ said the teck, leaning towards his Com Screen and whispering, ‘Where is that therapeutic infant? We’d better make a mother of this one quickly or it’ll be drugs for her.’

The screen flickered from terminal to terminal as it searched for Bo. It finally focused on him at the Chute, where he was sorting through a variety of limp infants.

‘Find one?’

Bo shook his head. ‘Just some weak premies. None that looks strong enough to live out the week.’

‘Well, bring one up anyway. Even if it only survives for a couple of days it’ll get us over this crisis.’

Bo picked one up at random. It died. He set it back on the moving belt and fingered others. All were cooling. None would fool even a muddled hebephrenic. The high belts around him carried hazy bottle-jars that had just been emptied. A cleanup crew stood at their stations with brushes and steam nozzles. At their feet lay a heap of debris – placental and fetal – just so much surplus protein for the robot sweeper.

Something moved in the debris!

Bo rushed over to see the welcome face of a gargoyle – ugly – trying to push its way out of the cold wetness. He picked up the muscular form, already hunchbacked from trying to hide its embryonic eyes from the excessive light in its bottle-jar. He rinsed and wrapped it, glancing around for the department supervisor to make his explanations. No one focused on him.

Bohart found the female patient speaking into a Com Screen, punctuating her loud, rapid speech with giggles and hand gestures. He composed his face for the occasion and called her over to see the bundle asleep on his shoulder.

‘Clover?’

She toggled off and turned towards him. ‘Yes?’

‘I have your little ward – baby Harlan.’

Her mood sobered. Trauma-anxiety lines melted from her haggard face.

‘He needs you,’ said Bo.

She took the bundle and clutched it to her breast with firm tenderness – unconsciously increasing the force – trying to squeeze a little security out of the reality of the tiny life. As the pressure increased the gargoyle’s eyes opened silently – stoically – the behaviour pattern that would typify his life. At least this mother-figure was warm.

Bohart mumbled routine instructions, using his best teck monotone – lulling her into the routine of the therapeutic pseudoadoption. She left with a smile, the bug-eyed infant staring back over her shoulder.

‘How did it go?’ asked Bo, glancing at the scope.

‘Fine.’ The tech smiled. ‘FBMs decreased the moment you came into the room. I guess we saved her from the shaft floor. How long can she keep Harlan?’

Bo shrugged. ‘He came from the slush pile, so he was not pitted or trimmed.’

‘Not certified for life?’

‘No,’ said Bo. ‘They just aren’t letting anyone through with five toes or an intact pituitary anymore. The Chucker Team will be looking for him someday.’

‘Baby Harlan has about a year,’ speculated the Psychteck. ‘Well, that’s an improvement over the slush pile, I guess.’

‘I guess.’ Bo shrugged.

Clover enjoyed her role as surrogate mother. She took her lactogenic agents faithfully and kept baby Harlan on her breast most of the time. He lived off his stored fat until colostrum came in on the third day. He grew rapidly. With his visual cortex already functioning, it set the pace for the rest of his neuromuscular development. He crawled about the cubicle, probing with his hands those dark recesses where his eyes could not reach. The black, granular soot tasted acrid. The soft furry things scurried away. He collected loose items around himself and sat in his corner watching the other members of the household go about their daily routines. Occasionally he was tossed a word or a food item, but mostly he was ignored. Had he been older, he might have thought his ugliness accounted for his isolation. Or that his untrimmed feet, with their five toes, indicated his bestiality, earning him this low neglected station in life. But this reasoning would be wrong, for the adults were just too dim-minded to relate.

Clover’s feeble grasp on reality was shaken loose by the Chucker Team. They stood in her doorway – three of them wearing gaudy smocks and carrying toys – and asked for Little Har. She pointed numbly at the toddler in the centre of the cubicle.

‘But he’s so small . . .’ she stammered.

‘If he walks or talks he needs a permit,’ said the Team Leader. ‘Here, Har, see the toy.’

Clover’s mind retreated into the dark furrows of her brain. Her face went slack, expressionless. ‘Harlan,’ she said blandly, ‘go with these men. Return to the protein pool.’

He tilted his head up quizzically. The words meant nothing, but the blank expression on her face frightened him. Her eyes did not focus on his anymore. He ran to her, grasping her knees. ‘Ma!’ Rough hands pried him away and set him in the Chuck Wagon. He scrambled out. The net fell on him.

When he saw the ominous, dark Chute he quieted. Its foul vapours chilled his heart. ‘Ma!’ His tiny fingers clung to the net, to the sleeve of a Chucker, and to the crusted rim of the Chute. The struggle was brief. His cries faded down the Chute.

Clover sat quietly in her darkened cubicle – her FBMs returning.

Little Har’s fall was brief, interrupted by a pillowy catcher’s mitt attachment. The White Meck operating the mitt was counting ‘lives saved’. When the daily quota was achieved, the mitt was removed and the Chute panel replaced. Subsequent objects completed their trip to the blades.

Har sat in the musty darkness quietly. He had started to crawl, but found that he was on a narrow beam. Echoes told him that he was surrounded by vast space – dangerously long drops if he slipped. A small heap of puzzled and confused infants surrounded him. One did wander off and drop. Its scream was interrupted by the strum of a tight cable far below. One adult had been rescued – a weak, old derelict who promptly died.

The White Meck flashed its light around, picked up the infants and placed them in its dorsal stretcher cradle. One of the more vigorous, a wily simian, crept away into the darkness. Har liked the gentle way he was handled. He trusted the meck and gripped the cradle straps as it rolled down a spiral air vent. The darkness was broken by scant light sources, weak reds and blues on control panels, jagged whites where seams opened to living quarters – enough to teach him the three-dimensional aspect of their journey to City-base. They were going down; his mother was up.

The meck quickly deposited its living contraband in a maze of pipes and conduits – a jungle of sweating, pulsing, hissing tubes that were the City’s vascular system. Har caught glimpses of other fugitives cowering in the perpetual shadows. He turned to look for the meck. It was gone. He sat down and cried, the simple weeping of a little lost soul. He slept. When he awoke he was changed. His strong genes surfaced – unpitted. The little stoic was driven by hunger and thirst – and the desire to return to his mother-figure.

He followed the sound of water: dripping, splashing, and lapping. He found two larger children drinking from a pool under a cold, frosty pipe. When he approached them, he was met by a kick and a snarl. He crouched quietly and waited for them to finish. After they moved on he approached and drank. The taste was fresh and clean. He’d remember this place. He filled his belly, waited, and filled it again. The sounds of the two older children were easy to follow. They had survived somehow. He’d follow and survive too.

City-base formed a gravity well for refuse. Everything that dropped from any of the mile-high living levels ended up here. Some things were edible. Most were not. Little Har’s job was to get to fallen objects before the rats. Sweeper Mecks came through infrequently; the refuse piles were over twenty feet deep. Each thump attracted a crowd of hungry investigators – rodent and human. Har carried a heavy length of pipe to ward off the competition.

‘Ma!’ he called. The louvers over the air vent were matted with dust. He wiped them, releasing a cloud that entered his old room. The ill female that turned towards the sound of his voice was toothless and hollow-eyed. He backed down the conduit, moving against the airflow. ‘Ma?’ he mumbled. The old woman turned her head this way and that. Menopause had drained her. As steroids dropped, so did her body protein.

Har couldn’t believe it. Cautiously he crept back and re-examined the room. Same built-ins. Same scratches and dents. The family-five oven had three original members. Yes, that female had been his mother-figure. Now she too was gone – metabolically and mentally. He was sorry he had climbed this way. For years he had had the hopeful fantasies of returning to Mother someday. Now these hopes were gone, replaced by the harsh realities of being a Tweenwaller. He returned to City-base to scavenge.