Robert Heinlein - Beyond This Horizon

"What's that to me?" Hamilton demanded. "Oh, I don't doubt that you can do it. You can wind 'em up and make 'em run. You can probably eliminate my misgivings and produce a line that will go on happily breeding for the next ten million years. That still doesn't make it make sense. Survival! What for? Until you can give me some convincing explanation why the human race should go on at all, my answer is 'no.'" He stood up.

"Leaving?" asked Mordan.

"If you will excuse me."

"Aren't you interested in knowing something about the woman whom we believe is suitable for your line?"

"Not particularly."

"I choose to interpret that as permission," Mordan answered affably. "Look over there." He touched a control on his desk; Hamilton looked where he had been directed to. A section of the wall faded away and gave place to a stereo scene. It was as if they were looking out through an open window. Before them lay a garden swimming pool, its surface freshly agitated... by diving, apparently, for a head broke the surface of the water. The swimmer took three easy strokes toward the pick-up, and climbed out on the bank with effortless graceful strength. She rolled to her knees, stood up bare and lovely. She stretched and laughed, apparently from sheer animal spirits, and glided out of the picture. "Well?" asked Mordan.

"She's comely, but I've seen others."

"It's not necessary that you ever lay eyes on her," the Moderator added hastily. "She's your fifth cousin, by the way. The combination of your charts will be simple." He snapped off the scene, replaced it with a static picture. "Your chart is on the right; hers is on the left." Two additional diagrams then appeared, one under his, one under hers. "Those are the optimum haploid charts for your respective gametes. They combine so-" He touched another control; a fifth chart formed itself in the center of the square formed by the four others.

The charts were not pictures of chromosomes, but were made up of the shorthand used by genetic technicians to represent the extremely microscopic bits of living matter which are the arbiters of human make-up. Each chromosome was represented by a pattern which more nearly resembled a spectogram than any other familiar structure. But the language was a language of experts; to a layman the charts were meaningless.

Even Mordan could not read the charts unassisted. He depended on his technicians to explain them to him when necessary. Thereafter his unfailing memory enabled him to recall the significance of the details.

One thing alone was evident to the uninstructed eye: the two upper charts, Hamilton's and the girl's, contained twice as many chromosome patterns-forty-eight to be exact-as the charts of the gametes underneath them. But the chart of the proposed offspring contained forty-eight representations of chromosomes-twenty-four from each of its parents.

Hamilton ran his eye over the charts with interest, an interest he carefully repressed. "Intriguing, I'm sure," he said indifferently. "Of course I don't understand it."

"I'd be glad to explain it to you."

"Don't bother. It's hardly worth while, is it?"

"I suppose not." Mordan cleared the controls; the pictures snapped off. "I must ask you to excuse me, Felix. Perhaps we can talk another day."

"Certainly, if you wish." He glanced at his host in surprise, but Mordan was as friendly and as smilingly urbane as ever. Hamilton found himself in the outer office a few moments later. They had exchanged goodbyes with all the appropriate intimate formality of name-friends; nevertheless Hamilton felt a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling of incompleteness, as if the interview had terminated before it was over. To be sure, he had said no, but he had not said it in all the detail he had wished to.

Mordan went back to his desk and switched the charts on again. He studied them, recalling all that he had been taught about them and dwelling with interest on the middle one.

A chime played the phrase announcing his chief technical assistant. "Come in, Martha," he invited without looking around.

"I'm in, Chief," she replied almost at once.

"Ah-so you are," he answered, turning to her.

"Got a cigaret?"

"Help yourself." She did so from the jeweled container on his desk, inhaled it into life, and settled down comfortably. She was older than he, iron grey, and looked as competent as she was. Her somber laboratory coveralls were in marked contrast to the dignified dandyism of his costume, but they fitted her character.

"Hamilton just left, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"When do we start?"

"Mmmm... How would the second Tuesday of next week do?"

She raised her brows. "As bad as that?"

"I'm afraid so. He said so. I kicked him out-gently-before he had time to rationalize himself into a position from which he would not care to back down later."

"Why did he refuse? Is he in love?"

"No."

"Then what's the catch?" She got up, went to the screen and stared at Hamilton's chart, as if she might detect the answer there.

"Mmmm... He posed me a question which I must answer correctly-else he will not co-operate."

"Huh? What was the question?"

"I'll ask you. Martha, what is the meaning of life?"

"What! Why, what a stupid question!"

"He did not ask it stupidly."

"It's a psychopathic question, unlimited, unanswerable, and, in all probability, sense free."

"I'm not so sure, Martha."

"But-well, I won't attempt to argue with you outside my own field. But it seems to me that 'meaning' is a purely anthropomorphic conception. Life simply is. It exists."

"He used the idea anthropomorphically. What does life mean to men, and why should he, Hamilton, assist in its continuance? Of course I couldn't answer him. He had me. And he proposed to play Sphinx and not let us proceed until I solve his riddle."

"Fiddlesticks!" She snapped the cigaret away savagely. "What does he think this clinic is-a place to play word games? A man should not be allowed to stand in the way of racial progress. He doesn't own the life in his body. It belongs to all of us-to the race. He's a fool."

"You know he's not, Martha." He pointed to the chart.

"No," she admitted, "he's not a fool. Nevertheless, he should be required to co-operate. It's not as if it would hurt him or inconvenience him in any way."

"Tut, tut, Martha. There's a little matter of constitutional law."

"I know. I know. I abide by it, but I don't have to worship it. Granted, it's a wise law, but this is a special case."

"They are all special cases."

She did not answer him but turned back to the charts. "My oh my," she said half to herself, "what a chart! What a beautiful chart, chief."

"This we covenant in the Name of Life Immortal

To THIS we pledge our lives and sacred honor:

"To destroy no fertile life,

"To hold as solemn secret that which may be divulged to us, directly, or indirectly through the techniques of our art, concerning the private matters of our clients,

"To practice our art only with the full and uninfluenced consent of our client zygotes,

"To hold ourselves, moreover, guardian in full trust for the future welfare of infant zygotes and to do only that which we soberly and earnestly believe to be in their best interests,

"To respect meticulously the laws and customs of the group social in which we practice,

"This we covenant in the Name of Life Immortal."

Extract from the Mendelian Oath Circa 2075 A. D. (Old Style)

Sweet peas, the evening primrose, the ugly little fruit fly Drosophila-back in the XIXth and XXth centuries the Monk Gregor Mendel and Doctor Morgan of the ancient University of Columbia used these humble tools to establish the basic laws of genetics. Simple laws, but subtle.