Walter’s face lit up.
“GITAR—guitar identity thoracic autonomic resonator!”
“At your service, sir,” bowed the meck, “Gitar is my name—mobile surface unit—class six. Servant of Olga—
Val lowered his visor and watched the sunrise—apprehensively. He remembered his almost fatal bout with sunburn.
“I don’t think it is safe for me to go outside. I’ll just end up like a flower reaction—blistered and baked,” said Val.
Gitar changed the light wavelength in the cabin.
“Take off your suit. Let’s take a look at those old burn scars.” Gitar’s optics scanned the geographic patterns on Val’s chest—whites, pinks, creams and light browns. “There is melanin there. You’ll tan,” said Gitar finally.
“But I blistered so quickly. In less than an hour I started to—” protested Val.
“Your protective suit will last several months. We’ll grade your exposure. Most of the burn reaction was pellagric hypersensitivity. If we get your total body nicotinic acid stores up to normal—you’ll tolerate actinics much better.”
“Pellagra?” said Walter.
“Yes,” said Gitar. “The Nebish diet is measured in calories only. The essential amino acids, vitamins, minerals are ignored. The hive’s so-called flavors are richer in essentials, so the job-holders manage to live a little longer. But look at yourself—objectively. Loose teeth—scurvy. Most citizens are edentulous by their early twenties. Yellow livers—cirrhosis. Without lipotropic factors the fats can’t even get into the tricarboxylic acid cycle to be burned. Even with the necessary factors the four-toed body would still accumulate fat—for its mitochondria have scanty cristae and the fires burn low. It is pointless to list dietary deficiencies for the Nebish—who lacks so many of the basic enzymatic tools. What good is dietary iron if transferrin is short and the hemoglobin polypeptide chains have their sequences jumbled? Four grams of hemoglobin is all he can manage—even with Hb-F and Hb-N. His endoplasmic reticulum is agranular. He lacks the RNA-rich granules that make protein. Without them, he can’t make good collagen, bone, enzymes or proteins of any kind—no matter how we improve his diet. However, hive life can make a somatic Nebish out of anyone.”
Walter and Val exchanged glances. Two soft, pasty bodies. Val knew he carried the gene. His body could be salvaged. But Walter had been near death several times. Diet had reversed the edema and paralysis several times. He turned to Gitar, hopefully.
“My genes?” asked Walter.
“Sorry, old man,” said Gitar. “But life in the hive has brought you to the end of your life span, I’m afraid. Empty calories have accumulated in too many places—vessels, liver, adipose tissue. Your extra two hundred pounds of fat have taken you out of the stud category. Your physiology is strained by simple day-to-day existence. You must return to the hive—to die.”
“But my genes—am I one of the children of Olga?” asked Walter.
Gitar appraised the fatty hulk.
“You did have a spontaneous puberty—” theorized Gitar, “but since then your liver failure has allowed estrogens to accumulate in your system. Gynecomastia and loss of libido have masked your true habitus; but I’d guess that under that four-toed exterior beats a heterozygous five-toed heart.”
Walter beamed.
“But,” continued Gitar, “you lack melanin. I’d put you in the group of oculocutaneous albinos that make up most of the heterozygotes who carry the masking gene. You can never live Outside. Sunlight will kill you. Your retina and skin just cannot make pigment.”
“But I want to be with Olga—serve her. She is my deity. Surely there is a place for me,” pleaded Walter.
Gitar read the erratic biolectricals in the old man’s chest as an index of his fervor.
“Relax, old man,” said Gitar finally. “You can stay with me—in the Huntercraft. Your knowledge of Hunter Control will make you a valuable acolyte in this flying Temple of Olga. Together we should be able to salvage many of the heterozygotes that Kaia has sired.”
Walter nodded his three chins.
“If you help me back to the spiral, Val, I’ll start serving Olga by going into the HC workshop and disabling Tinker’s vacuum pump. That should set back optic repair a year or more in this sector.”
“I can do better than that,” said Gitar.
He flew straight back to HC Garage. Door irised him inside without comment. No one in the hive seemed interested in the missing craft. While Walter removed vital bushings and seals from the pump, Val eyed Gitar critically.
“You aren’t promising Walter that he will see his deity, are you?”
Gitar hummed a happy tune.
“Walter wants to serve. It will make him happy and give him purpose during his declining years. No, he won’t live to see Olga’s return. He has only a few years left—even with a natural food diet. But his soul will be with Olga one day. That will be his reward,” explained Gitar seriously.
Val didn’t want to get into a discussion of “soul’ with a machine.
“What do you have planned for me?” asked Val.
Gitar’s tune continued light and soothing. Percussion kept hold of his autonomics.
“You have the gene—Olga’s five-toed gene. You will live Outside, under Olga’s protection. It will be a good life.”
“For what purpose?”
“Stud.”
Val swallowed. Silence.
Old Walter contaminated the Hi Vac oil with volatiles and solvents. Using a pry bar, he cracked the cold trap and Christmas tree of the diffusion pump. Gitar was pleased.
During the following months Val tanned. Rhea went luteal with the corpus luteum of pregnancy. Val joined Walter and Gitar in scouring junglelike gardens for heterozygotes.
Walter melted away. Soon he was a lighter, firmer two-hundred-pound dwarf. Gitar monitored his dusk and dawn twilight outings—a swim, a jog, or just a brine soak in a tropical surf.
Gitar interrupted his swim, whispering, “Jungle bunny.”
Walter glanced down the beach to see a shaggy-headed female leaving the surf—a forty-pound child, cautious, alert. Gitar activated Olga’s Temple. Lights came on, disturbing the twilight fog of dawn. Music and lights called pleasantly to the child. Walter stood up, fat and dripping, to greet her. The tyke’s eyes widened in terror. She ran and dove back into the surf. Gitar scanned. Nothing. The Temple rose and searched over the waters. They saw air in one of the six-fathom domes.