Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

You could get an ovum by running a Wellman hose into a Fallopian tube and irritating the ovary. Polly Fraser spent a few days screaming the house down, then she showed up at the clinic and demanded to be examined by all four of us. Fraser threw her out but she was back the next day. Fluently profane, she let it be known that there was something wrong with her factory, not her morals, and that she was ready to shell out a hundred eggs to prove it. Fraser threw her out again so she went to the experimental lab at the University on the other side of town and offered to sell them two dozen ova at the going rate. The staff collected the ova, after which Polly stole the receptacles and brought them back to the clinic. She dumped them in Fraser’s lap and told him he would either examine them or she would get all her friends and boycott the place.

I don’t think she expected anything to come of what she did. She was scared and disoriented and acted on impulse. What she knew about anatomy would have fit inside a thimble, but desperation had made her grab at straws. No doubt she remembered Fraser’s favorite saying, that a woman was a pawn of her cycle and everything she did was inspired by it.

“I don’t know what this is going to prove,” Fraser snarled at us as he prepared to run tests. “Why doesn’t she just tell me and get it over with? She knows I wouldn’t divorce her if she banged a dozen guys. I might kill her but I wouldn’t divorce her. Now she says if I don’t tell her how a woman can get pregnant without a man she’ll find six doctors who will. That’s all I need, her opening her big yap and telling everyone she cuckolded me.”

“No offense,” said Thorne, “but why don’t you abort her?”

“Dammit, because she says any woman who knocks herself up would be a damned fool to get rid of it.”

Then was when I thought of the girl who had come to me a year ago. Rose Willis had said almost exactly the same thing.

How could Polly’s baby girl look so little like her?

We thought we knew so much about sex cells. The crossing of genes in an ovum fertilized by a sperm resulted in a child who possessed characteristics of both parents. This was supposed to be all there was to it.

Polly’s child developed from an ovum that had a full set of chromosomes. Of the two dozen ova, three had proved to be mutated. The genes in these three were strung out on the chromosomes in tiers or layers, huge numbers of them, and crossing seemed to take place spontaneously. This crossing was not confined within a single tier. All layers appeared to be involved, which indicated that nature was tapping an almost infinite supply of human traits. This was why Polly’s child did not resemble her except in a most superficial way. Gene crossing normally took place within a single layer, and this layer represented traits of the mother and father. Crossing in a mutated cell involved traits that conceivably represented the mother’s entire lineage. Polly’s child was, literally, a haphazard (so it seemed to us) product of an unknown number of parents.

Despite what the experts said about the minute statistical chance of a mutation turning out well, Polly’s daughter was big and alert and in perfect health. Her cells were complete and they carried the mutation.

There was something else. A sperm couldn’t fertilize a mutated ovum. Polly continued producing ordinary ova, in fact most were normal, but the others remained aloof to sperm and, indeed, defied detailed explanation. We hadn’t discovered, for instance, why one mutated ovum began to develop embryonically while others didn’t.

A pack of the Libs marched in the street.

Fraser was frightened. His deep voice left him that day as he pulled back the curtain window to look down at the women, and it never returned. Always after that he spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“Say that again,” he said, and Thorne repeated himself.

“Suppose there’s a trigger that has been in them since the beginning? Call it a defense mechanism. It activates when the species is threatened, or when they finally raise their heads and gaze over the stack of diapers, or when some part of their brains develops, or when we’ve done enough conquering and we aren’t essential anymore, or maybe their marching is doing it, or it could be nothing more than an emotion which has been pretty alien to them—united rage.”

Fraser seemed to grow weaker. Leaning against the sill, he stared at the street as if a monster were there, searching for a sign of life.

“Why not?” said Thorne.

“It sounds unscientific,” I said, and for a moment I thought Fraser was going to come over and hit me.

“You have to admit that this is the first time in history they’ve ever been united in anything,” said Thorne.

“We’ve kept them quiet,” Wally said. “Isn’t that what we’ve done? Barefoot and pregnant? I mean, never before have so many of them been enraged at the same time.”

“United in rage?” Fraser’s eyes were wide open and staring, but he saw nothing in his line of vision. I knew he was looking at specters.

Pregnant virgins had to be showing up in other parts of the world. We had waited to see what would happen. Weeks went by but there wasn’t a whisper of it in the newspapers. The medical journals poured in and we learned that the abortion rate was rapidly increasing. The answer was plain. Medics were keeping the lid down tight and women were taking the fastest available solution.

Was I ever afraid of women? Had I always been afraid of them? There were so many who made me laugh, or who annoyed me, or who disgusted me. I remember boarding a bus behind one, and we stood on the steps for a moment, waiting for those ahead to get inside, and I was shocked at the size of her can. I had forgotten all about the Conspiracy and simply stood on the step staring at the awesome human rear at my eye level. My first sensation was, as I said, shock, and then came amusement, and then I told myself that their rears were bigger than ours because they had that all-important function, and then the sickness of remembering made me nearly lose my balance.

I met women who impressed me. The old ones seldom failed to do that. They looked at me and their eyes said, “But for the grace, you would be my son.”

The young women looked at me and their eyes said, “Whence and whither?”

I remember Wally saying to me once, “I envy the lion. He has an easy life. She does all the work and he sleeps and makes love.”

It was a few weeks after the Conspiracy had been organized that Jim Thorne said to me, “I keep thinking of fleas. The dog keeps them safe and warm and fed while they torment him. Then one day the fleas jump off his back and go away to build themselves a house. He watches them go and all of a sudden he drops dead. They were the only reason he was alive.”

Later I met Wally at JoJo’s and we had a beer. “I’m hearing things these days,” he said. “Sometimes out of a clear blue silence I hear swords clashing, bugles blowing, horses snorting. Not loudly, just echoes, as if they’re coming from the other side of the world. Sometimes I hear other sounds, but mostly it’s war. We were so good at that. I’m terrified when I hear those echoes, but I feel something else at the same time. My heart begins to pop and my legs twitch as if they’re eager to mount up and ride.”

People like Fraser were apprehensive by nature. They invented fear when they had nothing to be afraid of. Let something really frightening come along and Fraser’s kind went off half-cocked but with a lengthy, logical-sounding argument to justify their behavior.

The committee was made up of fifty medical men, all from our area. Our intent was to maintain the status quo of silence at least until we could find out what was causing the mutation. Of course Fraser wasn’t the only one who was insane those days. What we should have done was publicize the situation, but none of us thought of that.