"I think you tend to overdramatize," Catherine Ruffin said stolidly.
"Not in the slightest. Genes are not bricks. We can't build the desired structure to order. We just aim for optimum, then see what we have and try again. No directives can lay down the details of every choice or control every random combination. Every technician is a small god, making real decisions of life and death. And some of these decisions are questionable in the long run."
"Impossible," Sturtevant said, and Catherine Ruffin nodded agreement.
"No, just expensive. We must find a closer examination of every change made and get some predictions of where we are going."
"You are out of order, Dr. Livermore," Catherine Ruffin said. "Your proposal has been made in the past, a budget forecast was estimated, and the entire matter turned down because of cost. This was not our decision you will recall, but came down from genguidecoun-chief. We accomplish nothing by raking over these well-raked coals another time. There is new business we must consider that I wish to place before this council."
Livermore had the beginnings of a headache, and he fumbled a pill from the carrier in his pocket. The other two were talking, and he paid them no attention at all.
When Leatha Crabb hung up the phone after talking with Dr. Livermore, she felt as though she wanted to cry. She had been working long hours for weeks and not getting enough sleep. Her eyes stung, and she was a little ashamed of this unaccustomed weakness: she was the sort of person who simply did not cry, woman or no. But seventeen bottle failures, seventeen deaths. Seventeen tiny lives snuffed out before they had barely begun to live. It hurt, almost as though they had been real children. .
"So small you can't hardly see it," Veazy said. The laboratory assistant held one of the disconnected bottles up to the light and gave it a shake to swish the liquid about inside of it. "You sure it's dead?"
"Stop that!" Leatha snapped, then curbed her temper: she had always prided herself on the way she treated those who worked beneath her. "Yes, they are all dead, I've checked that. Decant, freeze, and label them. I'll want to do examinations later."
Veazy nodded and took the bottle away. She wondered what had possessed her, thinking of them as lives, children. She must be tired. They were groups of growing cells with no more personality than the cells grouped in the wart on the back of her hand. She rubbed at it, reminding herself again that she ought to have it taken care of. A handsome, well-formed girl in her early thirties, with her hair the color of honey and tanned skin to match. But her hair was cropped short, close to her head, and she wore not the slightest trace of makeup, while the richness of her figure was lost in the heavy folds of her white laboratory smock. She was too young for it, but a line of worry was already beginning to form between her eyes. When she bent over her microscope, peering at the stained slide, the furrow deepened.
The bottle failures troubled her, deeply, more than she liked to admit. The program had gone so well the past few years that she was beginning to take it for granted, already looking ahead to the genetic possibilities of the second generation. It took a decided effort to forget all this and turn back to the simple mechanical problems of ectogenesis. . Strong arms wrapped about her from behind; the hands pressed firmly against the roundness of her body below her waist; hard lips kissed the nape of her neck.
"Don't!" she said, surprised, pulling away. She look around. Her husband. Gust dropped his arms at once, stepping back from her.
"You don't have to get angry.” he said. "We're married you know, and no one is watching."
"It's not your pawing me I don't like. But I'm working can't you see that?"
Leatha turned to face him, angry at his physical touch despite her words. He stood dumbly before her, a stolid black-haired and dark-complexioned man with slightly protruding lower lip that made him look, now, as though he were pouting.
"You needn't look so put out. It's worktime, not playtime."
"Damn little playtime anymore." He looked quickly around to see if anyone was within.earshot. "Not the way it was when we first married. You were pretty affectionate then." He reached out a slow finger and pressed it to her midriff.
"Don't do that." She drew away, raising her hands to cover herself. "It's been absolute hell here today. A defective valve in one of the hormone feed lines, discovered too late. We lost seventeen bottles. In an early stage, luckily."
"So what's the loss? There must be a couple of billion sperm and ova in the freezers. They'll pair some more and put you back in business."
"Think of the work and labor in gene-matching, wasted."
"That's what technicians are paid for. It will give them something to do. Look, can we forget for awhile and take off an evening? Go to Old Town. There's a place there I heard about, Sharm's, real cult cooking and entertainment."
"Can't we talk about it later? This really isn't the time…"
"By Christ, it never is. I'll be back here at 1730. See if you can't possibly make your mind up by then."
He pushed angrily out of the door, but the automatic closing mechanism prevented him from slamming it behind him. Something had gone out of life — he wasn't sure just what. He loved Leatha and she loved him — he knew that — but something was missing. They both had their work to do, but it had never caused trouble before. They were used to it, even staying up all night sometimes, working in the same room in quiet companionship. Then coffee, perhaps as dawn was breaking, a drowsy pleasant fatigue, falling into bed, making love. It just wasn't that way anymore and he couldn't think why. At the elevators he entered the nearest and called out, "Fifty." The doors closed, and the car fell smoothly away. They would go out tonight: he was resolved that this evening would be different.
Only after he had emerged from the elevator did he realize that it had stopped at the wrong floor. Fifteen, not fifty; the number analyzer in the elevator computer always seemed to have trouble with those two. Before he could turn, the doors shut behind him, and he noticed the two old men frowning in his direction. He was on one of the eldster floors. Instead of waiting for another car, he turned away from their angry looks and hurried down the hall. There were other old people about, some shuffling along, others riding powered chairs, and he looked straight ahead so he wouldn't catch their eyes. They resented youngsters coming here.
Well, he resented them occupying his brand-new building. That wasn't a nice thought, and he was sorry at once for even thinking a thing like that. This wasn't his building; he was just one of the men on the design team who had stayed on for construction. The eldsters had as much right here as he did — more so, since this was their home. And a pleasant compromise it had been, too. This building, New Town, was designed for the future, but the future was rather slow coming, since you could accelerate almost everything in the world except fetal growth. Nine months from conception to birth, in either bottle or womb. Then the slow years of childhood, the quick years of puberty. It would be wasteful for the city to stay vacant all those years.
That was where the eldsters came in — the leftover debris of an overpopulated world. Geriatrics propped them up and kept them going. They were growing older together, the last survivors of the greedy generations. They were the parents who had fewer children and even fewer grandchildren as the realities of famine, disease, and the general unwholesomeness of life were driven home to them. Not that they had done this voluntarily. Left alone, they would have responded as every other generation of mankind had done: selfishly. If the world is going to be overpopulated, it is going to be overpopulated with my kids. But the breakthrough in geriatric treatment and drugs came along at that moment and provided a far better carrot than had ever been held in front of the human donkey before. The fewer children you had the more treatment you received. The birth rate dived to zero almost overnight. The indifferent overpopulaters had decided to overpopulate with themselves instead of their children. If life was being granted, they preferred to have it granted to them.