Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume Two (24 page)

On Walt’s desk and spread over a table were the medical charts of the Four strain. “I’ve finished,” Walt said. “You’ll have to double-check, of course.”

David scanned the final lines quickly, H-4 and D-4. He didn’t look up, but nodded. “Have you told the two boys yet?”

“I told them all. They understand.” Walt rubbed his eyes. “They have no secrets from each other,” he said. “They understand about the girls’ ovulation periods, and the necessity of keeping records. If any of those girls can conceive, they’ll do it.” His voice was almost bitter when he looked up at David. “They’re taking it over completely from now on.”

“What do you mean?”

“W-1 made a copy of my records for his files. He’ll follow it through.”

David nodded. The elders were being excluded again. The time was coming when they wouldn’t be needed for anything—extra mouths to feed, nothing else. He sat down and for a long time he and Walt sat in companionable silence.

In class the following day nothing seemed be different. No pair bonding, David thought cynically. They accepted being mated as casually as the cattle did. If there was any jealousy of the two fertile males, it was well hidden. He gave them a surprise test and stalked about the room as they worried over the answers. They would all pass, he knew—not only pass, but do exceptionally well. They had motivation. They were learning in their teens what he hadn’t grasped in his twenties. There were no educational frills, no distractions. Work in the classroom, in the fields, in the kitchens, in the laboratories. They worked interchangeably, incessantly—the first really classless society. He pulled his thoughts back when he realized that they were finishing already. He had allowed an hour, and they were finishing in forty minutes—slightly longer for the Fives, who, after all, were two years younger than the Fours.

The two oldest D’s headed for the laboratory after class, and David followed them. They were talking earnestly until he drew near. He remained in the laboratory for fifteen minutes of silent work, then left. Outside the door he paused and once more could hear the murmur of quiet voices. Angrily he tramped down the hallway.

In Walt’s office he raged, “Damn it, they’re up to something! I can smell it.”

Walt regarded him with a detached thoughtfulness. David felt helpless. There was nothing he could point to, nothing he could attach significance to, but there was a feeling, an instinct, that wouldn’t be quieted.

“All right,” David said, almost in desperation. “Look at how they took the test results. Why aren’t the boys jealous? Why aren’t the girls making passes at the two available studs?”

Walt shook his head.

“I don’t even know what they’re doing in the lab anymore,” David said. “And Harry has been relegated to caretaker for the livestock.” He paced the room in frustration. “They’re taking over.”

“We knew they would one day,” Walt reminded him gently.

“But there are only seventeen Fives. Eighteen Fours. Out of the lot there might get six or seven fertile ones. With a decreased life expectancy. With an increased chance of abnormality. Don’t they know that?”

“David, relax. They know all that. They’re living it. Believe me, they know.” Walt stood up and put his arm about David’s shoulders. “We’ve done it, David. Can’t you understand that? We made it happen. Even if there are only three fertile girls now, they could have up to thirty babies, David. And the next generation will have more who will be fertile. We have done it, David. Let them carry it now if they want to.”

By the end of summer two of the Four girls were pregnant. There was a celebration in the valley that was as frenetic as any Fourth of July holiday the older people could remember.

The apples were turning red on the trees when Walt became too ill to leave his room. Two more girls were pregnant; one of them was a Five. Every day David spent hours with Walt, no longer wanting to work at all in the laboratory, feeling an outsider in the classrooms, where the Ones were gradually taking over.

“You might have to deliver those babies come spring,” Walt said, grinning. “Might start a class in delivery procedures. Walt—three is ready, I guess.”

“We’ll manage,” David said. “Don’t worry about it. I expect you’ll be there.”

“Maybe. Maybe.” Walt closed his eyes for a moment, and without opening them said, “You were right about them, David. They’re up to something.”

David leaned forward and involuntarily lowered his voice. “What do you know?”

Walt looked at him and shook his head slightly. “About as much as you did when you first came to me in early summer. David, find out what they’re doing in the lab. And find out what they think about the pregnant girls. “Harry tells me they have devised a new immersion suspension system that doesn’t require artificial placentas. They’re adding them as fast as they can.” He sighed. “Harry has cracked, David. Senile or crazy. W-1 can’t do anything for him.”

David stood up, but hesitated. “Walt, I think it’s time you told me. What’s wrong with you?”

“Get out of here, damn it,” Walt said, but the timbre of his voice was gone, the force that should have propelled David from the room was not there. For a moment Walt looked helpless and vulnerable, but deliberately he closed his eyes, and this

David walked by the river for a long time. Find out. How? He hadn’t been in the lab for weeks, months perhaps. No one needed him there any longer. The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen.

The hospital wing where W-l and W-2 were working now was ablaze with lights when David turned toward it. As he neared the hospital he began to hurry; there were too many lights, and he could see people moving behind the windows, too many people, elders.

Margaret met him in the lobby. She was weeping silently, oblivious of the tears that ran erratically down her cheeks. She wasn’t yet fifty, but she looked older; she looked like an elder, David thought with a pang. When had they started calling themselves that? Was it because they had to differentiate somehow, and none of them had permitted himself to call the others what they were? Clones! He said to himself vehemently. Clones! Not quite human.

“What happened, Margaret?” She clutched his arm but couldn’t speak, and he looked over her head at Warren, who was pale and shaking. “What happened?”

“Accident down at the mill. Jeremy and Eddie are dead. A couple of the young people were hurt. Don’t know how bad. They’re in there.” He pointed toward the operating-room wing. “They left Clarence. Just walked away and left him. We brought him up, but I don’t know.” He shook his head. “They just left him there and brought up their own.”

David put Margaret aside and ran down the hall toward the emergency room. Sarah was working over Clarence while several of the elders moved back and forth to keep out of her way, without leaving entirely.

David breathed a sigh of relief. Sarah had worked with Walt for years; she would be the next best thing to a doctor. He flung his coat off and hurried to her. “What can I do?”

“It’s his back,” she said tightly. She was very pale, but her hands were steady as she swabbed a long gash on Clarence’s leg and put a heavy pad over it. “This needs stitches. But I’m afraid it’s his back.”

“Broken?”

“I think so. Internal injuries.”

“Where the hell is W-1 or W-2?”

“With their own. They have two injuries, I think.” She put his hand over the pad. “Hold it tight a minute.” She used her stethoscope deliberately, peered into his eyes, and finally straightened and said, “I can’t do a thing for him.”

“Stitch his leg. I’m going to get W-1.” David strode down the hall fast, not seeing any of the elders who moved out of his way. At the door to the operating room he was stopped by three of the young men. He saw an H-3 and said to him, “We have a man who’s probably dying. Where’s W-2?”

“Who?” H-3 asked, almost innocently.

David couldn’t think of the name immediately. He stared at the young face and felt his fist tighten. “You know damn well who I mean. We need a doctor, and you have one or two in there. I’m going to bring one of them out.”

He became aware of movement and turned to see four more of them approaching, two girls, two boys. Interchangeable, he thought. It didn’t matter which ones did what. “Tell him I want him,” he said harshly. One of the newcomers was a C1-2, he realized, and still more harshly he said, “It’s Clarence. Sarah thinks his back is broken.”

C1-2 didn’t change his expression. They had moved very close. They encircled him, and behind him H-3 said, “As soon as they’re through in there, I’ll tell them, David.” And David knew there was nothing he could do, nothing at all.

He stared at their smooth young faces; so familiar, living memories every one of them, like walking through his own past, seeing his aged and aging cousins rejuvenated, but rejuvenated with something missing. Familiar and alien known and unknowable. Behind H-3 the swinging door opened and W-1 came out, still in surgical gown and mask, now down about his throat.

“I’ll come now,” he said, and the small group opened for him. He didn’t look at David after dismissing him with one glance.

David followed him to the emergency room and watched his deft hands as he felt Clarence’s body, tested for reflexes, probed confidently along the spinal column. “I’ll operate,” he said, and that same confidence came through with the words. He motioned for S-l and W-2 to bring Clarence, and left once more.

Sarah had moved back out of the way, and now she slowly turned and stripped off the gloves that she had put on in preparing to stitch up the leg wound. Warren watched the two young people cover Clarence, strap him securely, then wheel him out the door. No one spoke. Sarah methodically started to clean up the emergency-room equipment. Sarah finished her tasks and looked uncertainly about for something else to do.

“Will you take Margaret home and put her to bed?” David asked, and she looked at him gratefully and nodded. When she was gone David turned to Warren. “Someone has to see to the bodies, clean them up, prepare them for burial.”

“Sure, David,” Warren said in a heavy voice. “I’ll get Avery and Sam. We’ll take care of it. I’ll just go get them now and we’ll take care of it. I’ll… David, what have we done?” And his voice that had been too heavy, too dead, became almost shrill. “What are they?”

“What do you mean?”

“When the accident happened, I was down to the mill. Having a bite with Avery. He was just finishing up down there. Section of the floor caved in, you know that old part where we should have put in a new floor last year, or year before. It gave way somehow. And suddenly there they were, the kids. Out of nowhere. No one had time to go get them, to yell for them. Nothing, but there they were. They got their own two out of there and up to the hospital like their tails was on fire, David. Out of nowhere.”

Several of the elders were still in the waiting room when David went there. Lucy and Vernon were sitting near the window, staring out at the black night. Since Clarence’s wife had died, he and Lucy had lived together, not as man and wife, but for companionship, because as children they had been as close as brother and sister, and now each needed someone to cling to. Sometimes sister, sometimes mother, sometimes daughter, Lucy had fussed over him, sewed for him, fetched and carried for him, and now, if he died, what would she do? David went to her and took her cold hand. She was very thin, with dark hair that hadn’t started to gray, and deep blue eyes that had twinkled with merriment once, a long, long time ago.

“Go on home, Lucy. I’ll wait, and as soon as there is anything to tell you, I promise I’ll come.”

She continued to stare at him. David turned toward Vernon helplessly. Vernon’s brother had been killed in the accident, but there was nothing to say to him.

“Let her be,” Vernon said. “She has to wait.”

David sat down, still holding Lucy’s hand. After a moment or so she gently pulled it free and clutched it herself until both of her hands were white-knuckled. None of the young people came near the waiting room. David wondered where they were waiting to hear about the condition of their own. Or maybe they didn’t have to wait anywhere, maybe they would just know. He pushed the thought aside angrily, not believing it, not able to be rid of it. A long time later W-1 entered and said to no one in particular, “He’s resting. He’ll sleep until tomorrow afternoon. Go on home now.”

Lucy stood up. “Let me stay with him. In case he needs something, or there’s a change.”

“He won’t be left alone,” W-l said. He turned toward the door, paused and glanced back, and said to Vernon, “I’m sorry about your brother.” Then he left.

Lucy stood undecided until Vernon took her arm. “I’ll see you home,” he said, and she nodded. David watched them leave together. He turned off the light in the waiting room and walked slowly down the hall, not planning anything, not thinking about going home, or anywhere else. He found himself outside the office that W-l used, and he knocked softly. W-1 opened the door. He looked tired, David thought, and wasn’t sure that his surprise was warranted. Of course, he should be tired. Three operations. He looked like a young, tired Walt, too keyed up to go to sleep immediately, too fatigued to walk off the tension.

“Can I come in?” David asked hesitantly. W-l nodded and moved aside, and David entered. He never had been inside this office.

“Clarence will not live,” W-l said suddenly, and his voice, behind David, because he had not yet moved from the door, was so like Walt’s that David felt a thrill of something that might have been fear or more likely, he told himself, just surprise again. “I did what I could,” W-l said. He walked around his desk and sat down.

W-l sat quietly, with none of the nervous mannerisms that Walt exhibited, none of the finger tapping that was as much a part of Walt’s conversation as his words. No pulling his ears or rubbing his nose. A Walt with something missing, David thought. They all had something missing, a dead area. Now, with fatigue drawing his face, W-1 sat unmoving, waiting patiently for David to begin, much the same way an adult might wait for a hesitant child to initiate a conversation.