The meld writhed on—pleasuring pudenda. Dee Pen’s enlarging uterus added another fraction of a soul to their collective soul—making it a warmer meldasm. Val knew the infant was the buckeye’s—a little five-toed heterozygote. He didn’t know if it would be born with a fifth toe or just the bud of one—but he knew it was unauthorized. Walter had applied for a birth permit, of course. Val made a mental note to check on it.
“Watcher called Val to report another flower cluster.
“Not another buckeye?”
“No,” said Watcher. “Just that renegade guitar. It doesn’t answer to tightbeam, and won’t self-destruct. It just travels from city to city luring citizens to their deaths.”
“Music?”
“Same as before—200 hertz, 160 decibels, 70 beats per minute. The boys from Audiopsych have narrowed it down to one of the TAR reactions—thoracic autonomic resonators—the Pied Piper mechanism. Do you remember all those unauthorized tightbeams just prior to the Big Hunt at 50:00?”
Val nodded. Tinker had been involved in several.
“Tightbeam probes of the Class One’s historical banks were made,” continued the Watcher. “Music sections were searched for the TAR items such as paeans, war drums and fertility rites. All have strong rolling bases that would resonate any thoracic autonomic plexus.”
“Pied Piper TAR?” mumbled Val. “Why so few from each city? I’d think the entire population could be piped buckeye.”
Watcher shook his head. “No. Psych reports that less than one in a thousand respond. Fortunately most citizens are locked into the rhythm of the hive.”
Val nodded. He knew the TAR effect depended on an intact neurohumoral axis. The Nebish was many microvolts lower in autonomic tone. His steroid level was only a tenth of a buckeye’s. Only those with the bad five-toed gene could be piped.
“Where is that damn guitar now?” asked Val.
“It commandeered a Huntercraft named Doberman,” said Watcher. “My circuits are watching, but my outside eyes are weak. I’ll contact you if it shows up again.”
Val was puzzled. He saw Gitar move under its own power. What motivated it to steal a big craft like Doberman? Odd.
Gravid Dee Pen endured the callous impersonal routine of the clinics. Little effort was made to comfort the victims of buckeye rape. Big ES was suspicious of anyone who mated to music unless it was during the meld. Naturally her birth permit was denied—one of the committee signatures was Val’s.
Dee Pen confronted Val in his private cubicle.
“Why you?” she asked sadly. “You are a friend.”
“I’m a Sagittarius,” he said. “I’ve been on the committee since Hunter Control was closed. The committee feels, and I agree, that the five-toed gene is bad for the Big ES. Your child carries that gene.”
“But the baby will have my genes too,” she sobbed. “Walter will help with the raising and conditioning. We’re both loyal four-toed citizens. The baby will be a Good Citizen too.”
His eyes narrowed. Any mother who would plead for her unborn child was always suspect. That kind of base animal instinct was bad for hive cohesion.
“Five-toeds just cannot live in the hive,” he explained. “The gene carries Immunoglobulin A. Inappropriate Activity is always a danger. We just can’t risk it.”
Dee Pen swallowed dry and snapped to attention. “Of course, you are absolutely right. We’ll chuck it down the chute immediately after it is born.”
Val waited for her to leave. Then he called Watcher.
“Better see that Security closes all the shaft caps in those cities with the buckeye rape pregnancies. We don’t want those heterozygotes going flower and crushing crops.”
“Right,” said Watcher. “Doors will ask for authorization prior to allowing anyone Outside.”
With a smug grin Val returned to his cot. He had eliminated the last buckeye Outside, now he’d see that none of the offspring survived… inside.
Labor for Dee Pen began in the meld. The family-5 felt the first pains together. Loosening the meldasm, they continued to soul-share—Dee Pen, Walter, Arthur, Bitter and Venus—while the infant, little Kaia, came into the light. The bright, new eyes blinked around at a circle of five pasty white faces. The infant’s own face was hairy with lanugo. Ten hands lifted and wrapped him. Ten arms hugged him.
After the heat of the meld had subsided, Bitter suggested that they dispose of little Kaia.
Dee Pen felt weak and hypotensive. Her flaccid uterus leaked blood. The generous vascular network which had nourished the placenta continued to pour maternal erythrocytes into the endometrial cavity—and now there was no syncytium to return the red cells to her. The fetal syncytium was gone. The myometrial smooth muscle fibers which surrounded the vascular spaces had been stretched by the pregnancy and fatigued by labor. They could not contract and close down the leak. They only twitched ineffectually against the escaping red flood.
The primordial fear of exsanguination triggered her ancient mammalian reflex—the reflex that had protected mothers up through the evolutionary tree. She put the infant to her breast. Sucking initiated her nipple-midbrain-uterine reflex arc. As the large collecting ducts were emptied of milk, sacral synapses jumped and the uterine fundus clamped down tight. Smooth muscle fibers closed off the vessels of the placental site. Her blood stream bypassed the endometrium. It was no longer needed there.
Dee Pen glanced suspiciously at her circle of Nebish friends. Her arm held little Kaia protectively. There was no rush in disposing of him. The circle of faces gave her no support—they were Good Citizens.
“We can’t divide calorie-basic,” reminded Bitter.
“Don’t take him yet,” pleaded Dee Pen. “My fundus will go lax and I’ll bleed again.”
Walter squeezed her uterus and nodded: “She’s right. Needs the infant to contract her fundus. We’ll keep it for a while. I’ll apply for piece work. Perhaps I can earn a few extra calories.”
Walter sat by the cot after the others left. Dee Pen smiled up at him in the pleasant delirium of postpartum fatigue.
“You know, Walter,” she said dreamily, “in my next life I’d like to come back as a bird. A talking bird. I’d just sit on your shoulder and talk—and talk.”
He put a protective hand on the sleeping form—a pale, slight female with a pink nose. Just like a philosopher to talk about coming back—and choosing an extinct animal—female logic.
Walter’s request for a part-time job went up through the hive hierarchy. He waited nervously—calorie-basic eroding his body stores of metalloproteins—iron, copper, cadmium and zinc enzyme complexes. He accepted the first assignment eagerly—companion/monitor for the Pathomeck dissecting Kaia’s remains. After two days of dissection he was again able to order the expensive flavored calories with higher MDRs of proteins containing the transition elements between atomic numbers 23 and 30—building up his catalase, myoglobin, hepatocuprein, leukocyte-Zn-protein, and metallothionein stores.
The job was interesting too. Walter had always been curious about the buckeye’s anatomic differences. He knew they carried more proteins and minerals in their bodies—less fat and water. The Pathomeck was programmed to accept the Good Citizen’s body as normal—and so the buckeye’s findings were listed as diseases. Walter smiled to himself at the designation of Pituitary Gigantism for the buckeye frame—a full foot and a half taller than the Nebish. Hemosiderosis—for the iron-rich tissues. Polycythemia—for a hemoglobin of 16 grams per cent—four times that of the Nebish. Dehydration—for the absence of edema fluids and the high plasma proteins. Six grams per cent of plasma protein seemed high to Walter, who knew he only carried half that himself. Osteopetrosis—or “iron bone disease’—for the buckeye bone—ten times stronger than “the Nebish disease’—reading 1.0 on the Grube-Hill densogram.