We arrive at an extremely high level of technology—but with nothing under it to hold it up. If we crash, we crash all the way down.
"Look at this," said Afraima.
Dutifully, Sel stood up from his microscope and walked over to hers. "Yes, what am I looking at here?"
"What do you see?" she asked.
"Don't play games with me."
"I'm asking for independent verification. I can't tell you anything."
So this was something that mattered. He looked closely. "This is a section of maize leaf. From the sterile section, so it's completely clean."
"But it's not," she said. "It's from D-4."
Sel was so relieved he almost wept; yet at the same moment, he was angry. Anger won, in the moment. "No it's not," he said sharply. "You've mixed up the samples."
"That's what I thought," she said. "So I went back and got a new selection from D-4. And then again. You're looking at my triple check."
"And D-4 is easy to make out of local materials. Afraima, we did it!"
"I haven't even checked to see if it works on the amaranth."
"That would be too lucky."
"Or blessed. Did you ever think God might want us to succeed here?"
"He could have killed this mold before we got here," said Sel.
"That's right, sound impatient with his gift and piss God off."
It was banter, but there was truth behind it. Afraima was a serious Jew—she had renamed herself in Hebrew to a word meaning "fertile" when they held the vote on mating, in hopes that it would somehow induce God to let her have a Jewish husband. Instead, the governor simply assigned her to work for the only orthodox Jew among the colonists. Governor Kolmogorov had respect for religion. So did Sel.
He just wasn't sure that God knew this place. What if the Bible was exactly right about the creation of that particular sun, moon, and earth—only that was the whole of God's creation, and worlds like this one were the creation of alien gods with six limbs, or trilateral symmetry or something, like some of the life forms here—the ones that seemed to Sel to be the native species.
Soon they were back in the lab, with the amaranth samples that had been treated the same way. "So that's it—good enough for starters, anyway."
"But it takes so long to make it," said Afraima.
"Not our problem. The chems can figure out how to make it faster and in larger quantities, now that we know which one works. It doesn't seem to have damaged either plant, does it?"
"You are a genius, Dr. Menach."
"No Ph.D."
"I define the word 'doctor' as 'person who knows enough to make species-saving discoveries.' "
"I'll put it on my resume."
"No," she said.
"No?"
Her hand touched his arm. "I'm just coming into my fertile period, doctor. I want your seed in this field."
He tried to make a joke of it. "Next thing you'll be quoting from the Song of Solomon."
"I'm not proposing romance, Dr. Menach. We have to work together, after all. And I'm married to Evenezer. He won't have to know the baby isn't his."
This sounded like she had really thought things through. Now he was genuinely embarrassed. And chagrined. "We have to work together, Afraima."
"I want the best possible genes for my baby."
"All right," he said. "You stay here and head up the adaptation studies. I'll go work in the fields."
"What do you mean? There are plenty of people who can do that."
"It's either fire you or fire me. We're not working together anymore after this."
"But no one had to know!"
"Thou shalt not commit adultery," said Sel. "You're supposed to be the believer."
"But the daughters of Midian—"
"Slept with their own father because it was more important to have babies than to practice exogamy." Sel sighed. "It's also important to respect the rules of monogamy absolutely, so we don't see the colony torn up with conflict over women."
"All right, forget I said anything," said Afraima.
"I can't forget it," said Sel.
"Then why don't you—"
"I lost the lottery, Afraima. It's now illegal for me to have offspring. Especially by poaching another man's mate. But I also can't take the libido suppressants because I need to be sharp and energetic in order to conduct my study of the life forms on this world. I can't have you in here, now that you've offered yourself to me."
"It was just an idea," she said. "You need me to work with you."
"I need someone," said Sel. "Doesn't have to be you."
"But people will wonder why you fired me. Evenezer will guess that there was something between us."
"That's your problem."
"What if I tell them that you got me pregnant?"
"You're definitely fired. Right now. Irrevocably."
"I was kidding!"
"Get your brain back inside your head. There'll be a paternity test. DNA. Meanwhile, your husband will be made a figure of ridicule, and every other man will look at his wife, wondering if she's offering herself to someone else to put a cuckoo in the nest. So you're out. For the sake of everyone."
"If you make it that obvious, then it'll do the same damage to people's trust in marriage as if we'd actually done it!"
Sel sat down on the greenhouse floor and buried his face in his hands.
"I'm sorry," said Afraima. "I only half meant it."
"You mean that if I had said yes, you'd have told me you were just kidding and left me humiliated for having agreed to adultery?"
"No," she said. "I'd do it. Sel, you're the smartest, everyone knows it. And you shouldn't be cut off without having children. It's not right. We need your genes in the pool."
"That's the genetic argument," said Sel. "Then there's the social argument. Monogamy has been proven, over and over, to be the optimum social arrangement. It's not about genes, it's about children—they have to grow up into the society we want them to maintain. We voted on this."
"And I vote to carry one baby of yours. Just one."
"Please leave," said Sel.
"I'm the logical one, since I'm Jewish and so are you."
"Please go. Close the door behind you. I have work to do."
"You can't turn me away," she said. "It would hurt the colony."
"So would killing you," said Sel, "but you're making that more and more tempting the longer you stay here to torture me."
"It's only torture because you want me."
"My body is human and male," said Sel, "and so of course I want to engage in mating behavior regardless of consequences. My logical functions are being suppressed already so it's a good thing I made the decision irrevocably. Don't make me turn my decision into a painful reality by cutting the little suckers off."
"So that's it? You castrate yourself, one way or the other. Well, I'm a human female, and I hunger for the mate that will give me the best offspring."
"Then look for somebody big and strong and healthy if you want to commit adultery, and don't let me catch you because I'll turn you in."