Lois McMaster Bujold - 06 Ethan of Athos

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Ethan Of Athos
Lois McMaster Bujold
For those who listened in the beginning: Dee, Dave, Laurie,
Barbara, R. J., Wes, and the patient ladies of the M A. W. A.
CHAPTER ONE
The birth was progressing normally. Ethan's long fingers carefully teased the tiny cannula from its clamp.
"Give me hormone solution C now," he ordered the medtech hovering beside him.
"Here, Dr. Urquhart."
Ethan pressed the hypospray against the circular end-membrane of the cannula, administering the measured dose. He checked
his instrumentation: placenta tightening nicely, shrinking from the nutritive bed that had supported it for the last nine months.
Now.
Quickly he broke the seals, undamped the lid from the top of the canister, and passed his vibrascalpel through the matted felt
of microscopic exchange tubing. He parted the spongy mass, and the medtech clamped it aside and closed the stopcock that fed it
with the oxy-nutrient solution. Only a few clear yellow droplets beaded and brushed off on Ethan's gloved hands. Sterility
obviously uncompromised, Ethan noted with satisfaction, and his touch with the scalpel had been so delicate that the silvery
amniotic sac beneath the tubing was unscored. A pink shape wriggled eagerly within. "Not much," he promised it cheerfully.
A second cut, and he lifted the wet and vernix-covered infant from its first home. "Suction!"
The medtech slapped the bulb into his hand, and he cleared the baby's nose and mouth of fluid before its first surprised
inhalation. The child gasped, squawked, blinked, and cooed in Ethan's secure and gentle grip. The medtech wheeled the bassinet
in close, and Ethan laid the infant under the warming light and clamped and cut the umbilical cord. "You're on your own now,
boy," he told it.
The waiting engineering technician pounced on the uterine replicator that had incubated the fetus so faithfully for three-
quarters of a year. The machine's multitude of little indicator lights were now all darkened; the tech began disconnecting it from
its bank of fellows, to take downstairs for cleaning and re-programming.
Ethan turned to the infant's waiting father. "Good weight, good color, good reflexes. I'd give your son an A-plus rating, sir."
The man grinned, and sniffed, and laughed, and brushed a surreptitious tear from the corner of one eye. "It's a miracle, Dr.
Urquhart."
"It's a miracle that happens about ten times a day here at Sevarin, " Ethan smiled.
"Do you ever get bored with it?"
Ethan gazed down with pleasure at the tiny boy, who was waving his fists and flexing in his bassinet. "No. Never."
Ethan was worried about the CJB-9. He quickened his pace down the quiet, clean corridors of the Sevarin District
Reproduction Center. He was ahead of the shift change, having come in early especially to attend the birth. The last half hour of
the night shift was the busiest, a crescendo of completing logs and signing off responsibilities to the yawning incomers. Ethan did
not yawn, but did pause to punch two cups of black coffee from the dispenser in the rear of the medtech's station before joining
the night shift team leader in his monitoring cubicle.
Georos waved greeting, his arm continuing in a smooth pounce on the proffered cup. "Thanks, sir. How was vacation?"
"Nice. My little brother got a week's leave from his army unit to coincide with it, so we were both home together for a change.
South Province. Pleased the old man no end. My brother's got a promotion - he's first piccolo now in his regimental band."
"Is he going to stay in, then, past the two years' mandatory?"
"I think so. At least another two years. He's developing his musicianship, which is what he really wants anyway, and that extra
slew of social duty credits in his bag won't hurt a bit."
"Mm," Georos agreed. "South Province, eh? I wondered why you weren't haunting us in your off-hours."
"It's the only way I can really vacate - get out of town," Ethan admitted wryly. He stared up at the rows of readouts lining the
cubicle. The night team leader fell silent, sipping his coffee, watching Ethan over the rim, disturbingly silent after exhausting the
small talk.
Uterine Replicator Bank 1 was on-line now. Ethan keyed directly to Bank 16, where the CJB-9 embryo dwelt.
"Ah, hell." The breath went out of him in a long sigh. "I was afraid of that."
"Yeah," agreed Georos, pursing his lips in sympathy. "Totally non-viable, no question. I took a sonic scan night before last -
it's just a wad of cells."
"Couldn't they tell last week? Why hasn't the replicator been recycled? There are others waiting, God the Father knows."
"Waiting on paternal permission to flush the embryo." Georos cleared his throat. "Roachie scheduled the father to come in for
a conference with you this morning."
"Aw..." Ethan ran his hand through his short dark hair, disarranging its trim professional neatness. "Remind me to thank our
dear chief. Have you saved any more wonderful dirty work for me?"
"Just some genetic repairs on 5-B - possible enzyme deficiency. But we figured you'd want to do that yourself."
"True."
The night team leader began the routine report.
Ethan was almost late for the conference with the father of the CJB. During morning inspection he walked into one replicator
chamber to find the tech in charge bopping happily through his duties to the loud and raucous strains of "Let's Stay Up All Night,"
a screechy dance tune currently popular among the undesignated set, blaring out of the stimu-speakers. The driving beat set
Ethan's teeth on edge; this could scarcely be the ideal pre-natal sonic stimulation for the growing fetuses. Ethan left with the
soothing strains of the classic hymn "God of Our Fathers, Light The Way" rendered by the United Brethren String Chamber
Orchestra swelling gently through the room, and the grumpy tech yawning pointedly.
In the next chamber he found one bank of uterine replicators running 75% saturated in the waste toxins carried off by the
exchange solution; the tech in charge explained he'd been waiting for it to hit the regulation 80% before doing the mandatory filter
changes. Ethan explained, clearly and forcefully, the difference between minimum and optimum, and oversaw the filter changes
and the subsequent drop back to a more reasonable 45% saturation.
The receptionist beeped him twice before penetrating his lecture to the tech on the exact shade of lemon-colored crystal
brightness to be expected in an oxygen and nutrient exchange solution operating at peak performance. He dashed up to the office
level and stood panting a moment outside his door, balancing the dignity of a spokesman for the Rep Center versus the
discourtesy of making a patron wait. He took a deep breath that had nothing to do with his gallop upstairs, fixed a pleasant smile
on his face, and pushed open the door with the DR. ETHAN URQUHART, CHIEF OF REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY raised in
gold letters on its ivory plastic surface.
"Brother Haas? I'm Dr. Urquhart. No, no - sit down, make yourself comfortable," Ethan added as the man popped nervously to
his feet, ducking his head in greeting. Ethan sidled around him to his own desk, feeling absurdly shielded.
The man was huge as a bear, red from long days in sun and wind; the hands that turned his cap around and around were thick
with muscle and callus. He stared at Ethan. "I was expecting an older man," he rumbled.
Ethan touched his shaved chin, then became self-conscious of the gesture and put his hand down hastily. If only he had a
beard, or even a mustache, people would not be constantly mistaking him for a 20-year-old despite his six-foot frame. Brother
Haas was sporting a beard, about a two-week growth, scrubby by comparison to the luxuriant mustache that proclaimed him a
long-standing designated alternate parent. Solid citizen. Ethan sighed. "Sit, sit," he gestured again.
The man sat on the edge of his chair, clutching his headgear in earnest supplication. His formal clothes were out of fashion and
fit, but painfully clean and tidy; Ethan wondered how long the fellow'd had to scrub this morning to get every speck of dirt from
under those horny nails.
Brother Haas slapped his cap absently against his thigh. "My boy, doctor - is - is there something the matter with my son?"
"Uh - didn't they tell you anything on the comlink?"
"No, sir. They just told me to come. So I signed out the ground car from my commune motor pool, and here I am."
Ethan glanced at the dossier on his desk. "You drove all the way up here from Crystal Springs this morning?"
The bear smiled. "I'm a farmer. I'm used to getting up early. Anyway, nothing's too much trouble for my boy. My first, y'know
-" he ran a hand over his chin, and laughed, "well, I expect that's obvious."
"How did you end up here at Sevarin, instead of your district Rep Center at Las Sands?" asked Ethan curiously.
"It was for the CJB. Las Sands said they didn't have a CJB."
"I see." Ethan cleared his throat. "Any particular reason you decided on CJB stock?"
The farmer nodded firmly. "It was the accident last harvest decided me. One of our fellows tangled wrong-end-to with a
thresher - lost an arm. Typical farm accident, but they said, if only he'd got to a doctor sooner, they mighta saved it. The
commune's growing. We're right on the edge of the terraforming. We need a doctor of our own. Everybody knows CJBs make the
best doctors. Who knows when I'll get enough social duty credits for a second son, or a third? I meant to get the best."
"Not all doctors are CJBs," said Ethan. "And most certainly not all CJBs are doctors."
Haas smiled polite disagreement. "What are you, Dr. Urquhart?"
Ethan cleared his throat again. "Well - in feet, I'm a CJB-8."
The former nodded confirmation to himself. "They said you were the best. " He stared hungrily at the Rep doctor, as if he
might trace the lineaments of his dream son in Ethan's face.
Ethan tented his hands together upon his desk, trying to look kindly and authoritative. "Well. I'm sorry they didn't tell you
more over the comlink - there was no reason to keep you in the dark. As you no doubt suspected, there is a problem with your, uh,
conceptus."
Haas looked up. "My son."
"Uh - no. I'm afraid not. Not this round." Ethan inclined his head in sympathy.
Haas's face fell, then he looked up again, lips compressed with hope. "Is it anything you can fix? I know you do genetic repairs
- if it's the cost, well, my commune brethren will back me - I can clear the debt, in time -"
Ethan shook his head. "There are only a couple dozen common disorders we can do something about - some types of diabetes,
for example, that can be repaired by one gene splice in a small group of cells, if you catch them at just the right stage of
development. Some can even be pulled from the sperm sample when we filter out the defective X-chromosome-bearing portion.
There are many more that can be detected in the early check, before the blastula is implanted in the replicator bed and starts
forming its placenta. We routinely pull one cell then, and put it through an automated check. But the automated check only finds
problems it's programmed to find - the hundred or so most common birth defects. It's not impossible for it to miss something
subtle or rare - it happens half-a-dozen times a year. So you're not alone. We usually pull it, and just fertilize another egg - it's the
most cost-effective solution, with only six days invested at that point."
Haas sighed. "So we start over." He rubbed his chin. "Dag said it was bad luck to start growing your father-beard before
birthday. Guess he was right."
"Only a set-back," Ethan reassured his stricken look. "Since the source of the difficulty was in the ovum and not the sperm, the
Center isn't even going to charge you for the month on the replicator." He made a hasty note to that effect in the dossier.
"Do you want me to go down to the paternity ward now, for a new sample?" asked Haas humbly.
"Ah - before you go, certainly. Save you another long drive. But there's one other little problem that needs to be ironed out
first." Ethan coughed. "I'm afraid we can't offer CJB stock any more."
"But I came all the way here just for CJB!" protested Haas. "Damn it - I have a right to choose!" His hands clenched
alarmingly. "Why not?"
"Well..." Ethan paused, careful of his phrasing. "Yours is not the first difficulty we've had with the CJB lately. The culture
seems to be - ah - deteriorating. In fact, we tried very hard - all the ova it produced for a week were devoted to your order." No
need to tell Haas how frighteningly scant that production was. "My best techs tried, I tried - part of the reason we took a chance
on the current conceptus was that it was the only fertilization we achieved that was viable past the fourth cell division. Since then
our CJB has stopped producing altogether, I'm afraid."
"Oh." Haas paused, deflated, then swelled with new resolve. "Who does, then? I don't care if I have to cross the continent. CJB
is what I mean to have."
Ethan wondered glumly why resolution was classed as a virtue. More of a damned nuisance. He took a breath, and said what
he'd hoped to avoid saying; "No one, I'm afraid, Brother Haas. Ours was the last working CJB culture on Athos."
Haas looked appalled. "No more CJBs? But where will we get our doctors, our medtechs -"
"The CJB genes are not lost," Ethan pointed out swiftly. "There are men all over the planet who carry them, and who will pass
them on to their sons."
"But what happened to the, the cultures? Why don't they work any more?" asked Haas in bewilderment. "They haven't - been
poisoned or anything, have they? Some damned Outlander vandalism -"
"No, no!" Ethan said. Ye gods, what a riot that fabulous rumor could start. "It's perfectly natural. The first CJB culture was
brought by the Founding Fathers when Athos was first settled - it's almost two hundred years old. Two hundred years of excellent
service. It's just - senescent. Old. Worn out. Used up. Reached the end of its life-cycle, already dozens of times longer than it
would have lived in a, ah," it wasn't an obscenity, he was a doctor and it was correct medical terminology, "woman." He hurried
on, before Haas could make the next logical connection. "Now, I'm going to offer a suggestion, Brother Haas. My best medtech -
does superb work, most conscientious - is a JJY-7. Now, we happen to have a very fine JJY-8 culture here at Savarin that we can
offer you. I wouldn't mind having a JJY myself, if only..." Ethan cut himself off, lest he tip into a personal bog and wallow in
front of this patron. "I think you'd be very satisfied."
Haas reluctantly allowed himself to be talked into this substitute, and was sent off to the sampling room he had first visited
with such high hopes a month before. Ethan sighed, sitting at his desk after the patron had departed, and rubbed the worry around
his temples. The action seemed to spread the tension rather than dissipate it. The next logical connection...
Every ovarian culture on Athos was a descendant of those brought by the Founding Fathers. It had been an open secret in the
Rep Centers for two years and more - how much longer could it be until the general public picked up on it? The CJB was not the
first culture to die out recently. Some sort of bell curve, Ethan supposed; they were on the up-slope, and rising dizzily. Sixty
percent of the infants growing cozily, placentas tucked in their soft nests of microscopic exchange tubing in the replicators
downstairs, came from just eight cultures. Next year, if his secret calculations were borne out, it would be even worse. How long
before there was not enough ovarian material to meet growth demand - or even population replacement? Ethan groaned, picturing
his future unemployment prospects - if he wasn't ripped apart by angry mobs of ursine non-fathers before then....
He shook himself from his depression. Something would be done before things came to that pass, surely. Something had to
break.
The worry made an ominous bass note under Ethan's pleasant routine for three months after his return from vacation. Another
ovarian culture, LMS-10, curled up and died altogether, and EEH-9's egg cell production declined by half. It would be the next to
go, Ethan calculated. The first break in the downward slide arrived unexpectedly.
"Ethan?" Chief of Staff Desroches' voice had an odd edge, even over the intercom. His face bore a peculiar suffused look; his
lips, framed by glossy black beard and mustache, kept twitching at the corners. Not at all the morose pout that had been
threatening over the past year to become permanent. Ethan, curious, laid his micropipette down carefully on the lab bench and
went to the screen.
"Yes, sir?"
"I'd like you to come up to my office right away."
"I just started a fertilization -"
"As soon as you're done, then," Desroches conceded with a wave of his hand.
"What's up?"
"The annual census ship docked yesterday." Desroches pointed upward, although in fact Athos's only space station rode in a
synchronous orbit above another quadrant of the planet. "Mail's here. Your magazines were approved by the Board of Censors -
you've got a year's back issues sitting on my desk. And one other thing."
"Another thing? But I just ordered the journal -"
"Not your personal property. Something for the Rep Center." Desroches' white teeth flashed. "Finish up and come see." The
screen blanked.
To be sure. A year's back issues of The Betan Journal of Reproductive Medicine imported at hideous expense, although of the
highest degree of interest, would scarcely make Desroches' black eyes dance with joy. Ethan scurried, albeit meticulously, through
the fertilization, placed the pod in the incubation chamber from which, in six or seven days' time if things went well, the blastula
would be transferred to a uterine replicator in one of the banks in the next room, and zipped upstairs.
A dozen brightly labeled data disks were indeed neatly stacked on the corner of the Chiefs comconsole desk. The other corner
was occupied by a holocube of two dark-haired young boys riding a spotted pony. Ethan scarcely glanced at either, his attention
instantly overwhelmed by the large white refrigeration container squarely in the center. Its control panel lights burned a steady,
reassuring green.
"L. Bharaputra & Sons Biological Supply House, Jackson's Whole", the shipping label read. "Contents: Frozen Tissue,
Human, Ovarian, 50 units. Stack with heat exchange unit clear of obstruction. This End Up."
"We got them!" Ethan cried in delight and instant recognition, clapping his hands.
"At last," grinned Desroches. "The Population Council's going to have one hell of a party tonight, I'll bet - what a relief! When
I think of the hunt for suppliers - the scramble for foreign exchange - for a while I thought we were going to have to send some
poor son out there personally to get them."
Ethan shuddered, and laughed. "Whew! Thank the Father nobody had to go through that." He ran a hand over the big plastic
box, eagerly, reverently. "Going to be some new faces around here."
Desroches smiled, reflective and content. "Indeed. Well - they're all yours, Dr. Urquhart. Turn your routine lab work over to
your techs and get them settled in their new homes. Priority."
"I should say so!"
Ethan set the carton tenderly on a bench in the Culture Lab, and adjusted the controls to bring the internal temperature up
somewhat. There would be a wait. He would only thaw twelve today, to fill the culture support units waiting, cold and empty, for
new life. Soberly, he touched the darkened panel behind which the CJB-9 had dwelt so long and fruitfully. It made him feel sad,
and strangely adrift.
The rest of the tissue must wait for thawing until Engineering installed the bank of new units along the other wall. He grinned,
thinking of the frantic activity that must now be disrupting that department's placid routine of cleaning and repairs. Some exercise
would be good for them.
While he waited, he carried his new journals to the comconsole for a scan. He hesitated. Since his promotion to department
head last year, his censorship status had been raised to Clearance Level A. This was the first occasion he'd had to take advantage
of it; the first chance to test the maturity and judgement supposed necessary to handle totally uncut, uncensored galactic
publications. He moistened his lips, and nerved himself to prove that trust not misplaced.
He chose a disk at random, stuck it into the read-slot, and called up the table of contents. Most of the two dozen or so articles
dwelt, predictably but disappointingly, on problems of reproduction in vivo in the human female, hardly apropos. Virtuously, he
fought down an impulse to peek at them. But there was one article on early diagnosis of an obscure cancer of the vas deferens,
and better still one encouragingly titled, "On An Improvement In Permeability Of Exchange Membrances In The Uterine
Replicator." The uterine replicator had originally been invented on Beta Colony - long famous for its leading-edge technologies -
for use in medical emergencies. Most of its refinements still seemed to come from there, even at this late date, a fact not widely
appreciated on Athos.
Ethan called up the entry and read it eagerly. It mostly seemed to involve some fiendishly clever molecular meshing of
lipoproteins and polymers that delighted Ethan's geometric reason, at least on the second reading when he finally grasped it. He
lost himself for a while in calculations about what it would take to duplicate the work here at Sevarin. He would have to talk to the
head of Engineering....
Idly, as he mentally inventoried resources, he called up the author's page. "On An Improvement..." came from a university
hospital at some city named Silica - Ethan knew little of off-planet geography, but it sounded appropriately Betan. What ordered
minds and clever hands must have come up with that idea....
"Kara Burton, M. D., Ph. D., and Elizabeth Naismith, M. S. Bioengineering..." He found himself looking suddenly, on screen,
at two of the strangest faces he had ever seen.
Beardless, like men without sons, or boys, but devoid of a boy's bloom of youth. Pale soft faces, thin-boned, yet lined and
time-scored; the engineer's hair was nearly white. The other was thick-bodied, lumpy in a pale blue lab smock.
Ethan trembled, waiting for the insanity to strike him from their level, medusan gazes. Nothing happened. After a moment, he
unclutched the desk edge. Perhaps then the madness that possessed galactic men, slaves to these creatures, was something only
transmitted in the flesh. Some incalculable telepathic aura? Bravely, he raised his eyes again to the figures in the screen.
So. That was a woman - two women, in fact. He sought his own reaction; to his immense relief, he seemed to be profoundly
unaffected. Indifference, even mild revulsion. The Sink of Sin did not appear to be draining his soul to perdition on sight, always
presuming he had a soul. He switched off the screen with no more emotion than frustrated curiosity. As a test of his resolution, he
would not indulge it further today. He put the data disk carefully away with the others.
The freezer box was nearly up to temperature. He readied the fresh buffer solution baths, set them super-cooling to match the
current temperature of the box's contents. He donned insulated gloves, broke the seals, lifted the lid.
Shrink wrap? Shrink wrap?
He peered down into the box in astonishment. Each tissue sample should have been individually containerized in its own
nitrogen bath, surely. These strange grey lumps were wrapped like so many packets of lunch meat. His heart sank in terror and
bewilderment.
Wait, wait, don't panic - maybe it was some new galactic technology he hadn't heard of yet. Gingerly, he searched the box for
instructions, even rooting down among the packets themselves. Nothing. Look and guess time.
He stared at the little lumps, realizing at last that these were not cultured tissue at all, but the raw material itself. He was going
to have to do the growth culturing personally. He swallowed. Not impossible, he reassured himself.
He found a pair of scissors, cut open the top packet, and dropped its contents, plop, into a waiting buffer bath. He
contemplated it in some dismay. Perhaps it ought to be segmented, for maximum penetration of the nutrient solution - no, not yet,
that would shatter the cellular structure in its frozen state. Thaw first.
He poked through the others, driven by growing unease. Strange, strange. Here was one six times the size of the other little
ovoids, glassy and round. Here was one that looked revoltingly like a lump of cottage cheese. Suddenly suspicious, he counted
packets. Thirty-eight. And those great big ones on the bottom - once, during his youthful army service, he had volunteered for K.
P. in the butcher's department, fascinated by comparative anatomy even then. Recognition dawned like a raging sun.
"That," he hissed through clenched teeth, "is a cow's ovary!"
The examination was intense, and thorough, and took all afternoon. When he was done, his laboratory looked like a first-year
zoology class had been doing dissections all over it, but he was quite, quite sure.
He practically kicked open the door to Desroches' office, and stood hands clenched, trying to control his ragged breathing.
Desroches was just donning his coat, the light of home in his eye; he never turned off the holocube until he was done for the
day. He stared at Ethan's wild, disheveled face. "My God, Ethan, what is it?"
"Trash from hysterectomies. Leavings from autopsies, for all I know. A quarter of them are clearly cancerous, half are
atrophied, five aren't even human for God's sake! And every single one of them is dead."
"What?" Desroches gasped, his face draining. "You didn't botch the thawing, did you? Not you - I"
"You come look. Just come look," Ethan sputtered. He spun on his heel, and shot over his shoulder, "I don't know what the
Population Council paid for this crud, but we've been screwed."
CHAPTER TWO
"Maybe," the senior Population Council delegate from Las Sands said hopefully, "it was an honest error. Maybe they thought
the material was intended for medical students or something."
Ethan wondered why Roachie had dragged him along to this emergency session. Expert witness? Another time, he might have
been awed by his august surroundings; the deep carpeting, the fine view of the capital, the long polished ripple-wood table and the
grave, bearded faces of the elders reflected in it. Now he was so angry he barely noticed them. "That doesn't explain why there
were 38 in a box marked 50," he snapped. "Or those damned cow ovaries - do they imagine we breed minotaurs here?"
The junior representative from Deleara remarked wistfully, "Our box was totally empty."
"Faugh!" said Ethan. "Nothing so completely screwed up could be either honest or an error - ' Desroches, looking exasperated,
motioned him down, and Ethan subsided. "Gotta be deliberate sabotage," Ethan continued to him in a whisper.
"Later," Desroches promised. "We'll get to that later."
The chairman finished recording the official inventory reports from all nine Rep Centers, filed them in his comconsole, and
sighed. "How the hell did we pick this supplier, anyway?" he asked, semi-rhetorically.
The head of the procurement subcommittee dropped two tablets of medication into a glass of water, and laid his head on his
arms to watch them fizz. "They were the lowest bidder," he said morosely.
"You put the future of Athos in the hands of the lowest bidder?" snarled another member.
"You all approved it, remember?" replied the procurement head, stung into animation. "You insisted on it, in fact, when you
found the next bidder would only send thirty for the same price. Fifty different cultures promised for each Rep Center - you
practically peed yourself with glee, as I recall -"
"Let us keep these proceedings official, please," the chairman warned. 'We have no time to waste either apportioning or
evading blame. The galactic census ship breaks orbit in four days, and is the only vector for our decisions until next year."
"We should have our own jump ships," remarked a member. "Then we wouldn't be treed like this, at the mercy of their
schedule."
"Military's been begging for some for years," said another.
"So which Rep Centers do you want to trade in to pay for them?" asked a third sarcastically. "We and they are the two biggest
items in the budget, next to the terraforming that grows the food for our children to eat while they're growing up - do you want to
stand up and tell the people that their child-allotment is to be halved to give those clowns a pile of toys that produce nothing for
the economy in return?"
"Nothing until now," muttered the second speaker cogently.
"Not to mention the technology we'd have to import - and what, pray tell, are we going to export to pay for it? It took all our
surplus just to - "
"So make the jump ships pay for themselves. If we had them, we could export something and obtain enough galactic currency
to -"
"It would directly contravene the purposes of the Founding Fathers to seek contact with that contaminated culture," interjected
a fourth man. "They put us at the end of this long pipeline in the first place precisely to protect us from -"
The chairman tapped the table sharply. "Debates on larger issues belong in the General Council, gentlemen. We are met today
to address a specific problem, and quickly." His flat, irritated tone did not invite contradiction. There was a general stirring and
shuffling of notes and straightening of spines.
The junior member from Barca, poked by his senior, cleared his throat. "There is one possible solution, without going off-
planet. We could grow our own."
"It's exactly because our cultures won't grow any more that we -" began another man.
"No, no, I understand that - none better," said the Barca man, a Chief of Staff like Deroches, hastily. "I meant, ah..." he cleared
his throat again. "Grow some female fetuses of our own. They need not even be brought to term, quite. Then raid them for ovarian
material and, er, begin again."
There was a revolted silence around the table. The chairman looked like a man sucking on a lemon. The member from Barca
shrank in his seat.
The chairman spoke at last. "We're not that desperate yet. Although it may be well to have spoken what others will surely
think of eventually."
"It needn't be public knowledge," the Barca man offered.
"I should hope not," agreed the chairman dryly. 'The possibility is noted. Members will mark this section of the record
classified. But I point out, for all, that this proposal does not address the other, perennial problem faced by this Council, and
Athos: maintaining genetic variety. It had not pressed on our generation - until now - but we all knew it had to be faced in the
future." His tones grew more mellow. "We would be shirking our responsibilities to ignore it now and let it be dumped on our
grandsons in the form of a crisis."
There was a murmur of relief around the table, as logic safely propped emotional conviction. Even the junior member from
Barca looked happier. "Quite." "Exactly." "Just so -" "Better to kill two chickens with one stone, if we can -"
"Immigration would help," put in another member, who doubled, one week a year, as Athos's Department of Immigration and
Naturalization. "If we could get some."
"How many immigrants came on this year's ship?" asked the man across from him.
"Three."
"Hell. Is that an all-time low?"
"No, year before last there were only two. And two years before that there weren't any." The Immigration man sighed. "By
rights we ought to be flooded with refugees. Maybe the Founding Fathers were just too thorough about picking a planet away
from it all. I sometimes wonder if anyone out there has heard of us."
"Maybe the knowledge is suppressed, by, you know - them."
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EthanOfAthosLoisMcMasterBujoldForthosewholistenedinthebeginning:Dee,Dave,Laurie,Barbara,R.J.,Wes,andthepatientladiesoftheMA.W.A.CHAPTERONEThebirthwasprogressingnormally.Ethan'slongfingerscarefullyteasedthetinycannulafromitsclamp."GivemehormonesolutionCnow,"heorderedthemedtechhoveringbesidehim."Here,...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：59 页 大小：492.89KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-01

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