Robert Sawyer - Hybrids

Did she want to deny their daughter the comfort that went with that belief? Did she want to prevent her from ever knowing the religious rapture that had eluded Mary outside of that lab but had apparently touched so many others?

She thought about this world she was in, and rhetoric from the newscasts of her youth welled up in her mind. Words she’d avoided until now.

Godless people.

Communists.

But, damn it all, the Neanderthal system worked. It worked better than the corrupt, morally bankrupt capitalism of her world-the world of Big Tobacco and Enron and WorldCom and all the others that had been exposed since, people driven by nothing but greed, taking obscene amounts for themselves while others ended up without even enough food to eat.

And it worked better than the religious institutions of her world-her own Church sheltering child abusers for decades, her religion and so many others oppressing women, religious fanatics flying planes into skyscrapers…

Ponter was making progress with the fire. Wisps of smoke were rising from the logs he’d placed atop the stones within the fireplace.

At last, when he’d fanned the flames to vigorous life, Mary got up from the chair and walked over to her man, still crouching by the hearth.

He looked up at her, and although the light from the fire threw his browridge and massive nose into sharp relief, he still looked loving and gentle. “I will accept whatever choice you make,” he said, rising to his feet.

Mary put her arms around his shoulders. “I–I wish I could think about this for a good long time.”

“There is some time,” said Ponter. “But a finite amount. If our child is to be part of generation 149, she must be conceived on schedule.”

Mary knew her voice sounded petulant. “Maybe she won’t be part of 149. Maybe we’ll have her the following year. Or the year after that.”

Ponter’s tone was soft. “I know that your people give birth every year. If our child will be principally raised in your world, then it does not matter when she is conceived. But if we wish her to be raised in whole or in part in this world, or ever really to have the option of fitting in to this society, then it really must be done on schedule.”

“It,” said Mary, pulling back, looking at Ponter.

Ponter’s eyebrow went up.

“ It, ” Mary repeated. “‘It must be done on schedule.’ Hardly sounds romantic.”

Ponter drew her close again. “We face a few…special challenges. But what could be more romantic than the child of people who are in love?”

Mary forced a smile. “You’re right, of course. Sorry.” She paused. “And you’re right that we should do it at the correct time.” Mary’s own birthday was late in the year; she knew what it was like to be even six months younger than some of the other kids on the school playground. She couldn’t imagine how devastating it would feel to be a year or two younger than everyone else. Yes, their daughter would be raised principally in Mary’s world, but when she was all grown up, she might choose to make her home in the Neanderthal universe-and she would never fit in here if she wasn’t part of a specific generation.

Ponter was quiet for a time. “Are you prepared to decide?”

Mary looked over Ponter’s shoulder, into the flames.

“My brother Bill married a Protestant,” she said at last. “Ho boy, was my mom upset about that! Bill and Dianne-that’s his wife-had to work out which religious traditions they were going to raise their children in. I only heard bits and pieces, and of course only from Bill’s point of view, but it was apparently a big battle. And now you’re asking me if I’m ready to decide whether or not my child should be pre-disposed to believing in God?”

Ponter said nothing; he just held her, and stroked her hair. If Ponter was dying to know what Mary’s decision was going to be, he gave no sign of it-and Mary was grateful to him for that. If he’d seemed anxious, she’d have known that he had a preferred choice, and that would have made it harder for her to sort through her feelings. As to what his preferred choice, if any, might be, still Mary couldn’t say. Her first thought was that he’d want his child to be like him, devoid of the…

She hated the term, but it had already percolated into the popular press, even before the bridge to the Neanderthal world had opened.

…devoid of the “God organ.”

Then again, Ponter was bright enough to know, despite everything they’d done here today, that you couldn’t order up a person the way you ordered a pizza: “Give me a number two, hold the onions.” Everything blended, making the whole. Perhaps he wanted his new daughter to have his mother’s faith? Indeed, perhaps this was the test he’d been waiting for of the personality sculptor’s hypothesis? Would his feelings toward a daughter who believed in an afterlife be different than his feelings toward Jasmel and Mega?

Mary would never ask him about it, not after the decision had been made. Once the appropriate genes were coded into the chromosomes of their child, there would be no point having regrets or reopening an old debate.

There was a scene in Star Trek V — the one William Shatner directed, the one in which Spock’s half brother Sybok went off on a search for God-that portrayed Spock’s own birth, in a cave, of all places, his human mother Amanda attended by a Vulcan midwife. When the infant Spock was presented to Sarek, his Vulcan father, Sarek said only two words, each filled with infinite disappointment: “ So human… ”

Mary shook her head at the memory. What the hell had Sarek expected to see? Why did he set out to have a hybrid child, and then act disappointed that it had characteristics of its mother’s species? Mary and Ponter were truly seeking the best of both worlds-and that meant including things.

“It’s not a defect,” said Mary, at last, not bothering to define “it.” “It’s not something wrong with the Gliksin brain. Being able to believe in God-if we want to, if we so choose-is part of who my people are.” She took Ponter’s hand. “I know what religion has caused-what organized religion has caused. And I even am starting to agree with you about the harm the mere belief in an afterlife has done in my world, too. So much of our inhumanity does seem related to believing that all injustices will eventually be righted in an existence yet to come. But, nonetheless, I want my daughter- our daughter-to at least potentially believe in those things.”

“Mare…” began Ponter.

She pulled away from him. “No. No, let me finish. Your people sterilize criminals, and say it’s just to maintain the health of the gene pool. But it’s more than that, isn’t it, at least when the criminals are male? You don’t just sterilize them by, for instance, performing a vasectomy. No, you castrate them-you remove that part of their anatomy that is responsible not just for aggression, but also for sexual desire, too.”

Ponter looked quite uncomfortable, Mary thought, but, then again, she supposed no man liked thinking about castration. She pressed on. “I stand here as one who has been raped, who has been a victim of the very worst that testosterone makes possible. But I also stand here as someone who has known all the joy of sex with a passionate male lover. Perhaps, maybe, in some circumstances, removing the testosterone-producing glands is appropriate. And perhaps even in some cases removing the God organ would be appropriate, too. But not at the beginning, not at the outset.”

Mary again looked at Ponter. “My Church has this notion of original sin: that all people are born tainted, carrying guilt and evil because of the actions of their ancestors. But I reject that. Veronica Shannon talked to us about behaviorism, Ponter-about the idea that you can inculcate any behavior, any response, into a human being. The mechanism-intermittent reinforcement versus consistent reinforcement-may differ slightly between Gliksins and Barasts, but the underlying concept is the same. Anew child, a new life, is nothing but potentials to be developed one way or another-and I want our child, our daughter, to have all the potentials she can and, through your love and mine as her parents, to become the best possible human being she can be.”