Damon Knight - Orbit 15

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 be 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 any of 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-3 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 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. “About as much as you did when you first came to me early this 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.

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-1 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 Clarence’s 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 he 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 with something missing. Familiar and alien, known and unknowable. Behind H-3 the swinging door opened and W-l 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.