Lizbeth’s nod came slower. She knew what their chief concern here had to be, but that was still her son in the vat.
“Are you sure,” she asked, deliberately baiting Svengaard, “that there’s no pain?”
The extent of the Folk nonsense which bred in the necessary atmosphere of popular ignorance filled Dr. Svengaard with resentment. He knew he’d have to end this interview quickly. The things he might be saying to these people kept intruding on his awareness, interfering with what he had to say.
“That fertilized ovum has no nerve trains,” he said. “It’s physically less than three hours old, its growth retarded by controlled nitrate respiration. Pain? The concept doesn’t apply.”
The technical terms would have little meaning to them, Dr. Svengaard knew, other than to emphasize the distance between mere parents and a submolecular engineer.
“I guess that was rather foolish of me,” Lizbeth said. “The… it’s so simple, not really like a human yet.” And she signaled to Harvey through their hands, “What a simpleton he is! As easy to read as a child.”
Rain beat a tarantella against the skylight. Dr. Svengaard waited it out, then: “Ah, now, let us make no mistakes.” And he thought what an excellent moment it was to give these fools a catechism refresher. “Your embryo may be less than three hours old, but it already contains every basic enzyme it’ll need when fully developed. An enormously complicated organism.”
Harvey stared at him in assumed awe at the greatness which could understand such mysteries as the shaping and moulding of life.
Lizbeth glanced at the vat.
Two days ago, selected gametes from Harvey and herself had been united there, gripped in stasis, allowed to go through limited mitosis. The process had produced a viable embryo—not too common a thing in their world where only a select few were freed of the contraceptive gas and allowed to breed, and only a rare number of those produced viables. She wasn’t supposed to understand the intricacies of the process, and the fact that she did understand had to be hidden at all times. They—the genetic Optimen of Central—stamped savagely on the slightest threat to their supremacy. And they considered knowledge in the wrong hands to be the most terrible threat.
“How… big is… he now?” she asked.
“Diameter less than a tenth of a millimeter,” Dr. Svengaard said. He relaxed his face into a smile. “It’s a morula and back in the primitive days it wouldn’t yet have completed its journey to the uterus. This is the stage when it’s most susceptible to us. We must do our work now before the formation of the trophoblast.”
The Durants nodded in awe.
Dr. Svengaard basked in their respect. He sensed their minds fumbling over poorly remembered definitions from the limited schooling they’d been permitted. Their records said she was a creche librarian and he an instructor of the young—not much education required for either.
Harvey touched the vat, jerked his hand away. The crystal surface felt warm, filled with subtle vibrations. And there was that constant thrap-thrap-thrap of the pump. He sensed the deliberateness of that annoying sound, reading the way he’d been trained in the Underground the subtle betrayals in Svengaard’s manner. He glanced around the laboratory—glass pipes, square gray cabinets, shiny angles and curves of plasmeld, omnipresent gauges like staring eyes. The place smelled of disinfectants and exotic chemicals. Everything about the lab carried that calculated double purpose—functional yet designed to awe the uninitiated.
Lizbeth focused on the one mundane feature of the place she could really recognize for certain—a tile sink with gleaming faucets. The sink sat squeezed between two mysterious constructions of convoluted glass and dull gray plasmeld.
The sink bothered Lizbeth. It represented a place of disposal. You flushed garbage into a sink for grinding before it was washed into the sewage reclamation system. Anything small could be dumped into a sink and lost.
Forever.
Anything.
“I’m not going to be talked out of watching,” she said.
Damn! Dr. Svengaard thought. There was a catch in her voice. That little catch, that hesitation was betrayal. It didn’t fit with her bold appearance. Overemphasis on maternal drive in her cutting… no matter how successful the surgeon had been with the rest of her.
“Our concern is for you as much as for your child,” Dr. Svengaard said. “The trauma…”
“The law gives us the right,” Harvey said. And he signaled to Lizbeth, “The whole pattern’s more or less what we anticipated.”
Trust this clod to know the law, Dr. Svengaard thought. He sighed. Statistical prediction said one in one hundred thousand parents would insist, despite all the subtle and not so subtle pressures against it. Statistics and visible fact, however, were two distinct matters. Svengaard had noted how Harvey glared at him. The man’s cutting had been strong on male protectiveness—too strong, obviously. He couldn’t stand to see his mate thwarted. Doubtless he was an excellent provider, model husband, never participated in Sterrie orgies—a leader.
A clod.
“The law,” Dr. Svengaard said, and his voice dripped rebuke, “also requires that I point out the dangers of psychological trauma to the parents. I was not suggesting I’d try to prevent you from watching.”
“We’re going to watch,” Lizbeth said.
Harvey felt a surge of admiration for her then. She played her role so beautifully, even to that catch in her voice.
“I couldn’t stand the waiting otherwise,” Lizbeth said. “Not knowing…”
Dr. Svengaard wondered if he dared press the matter—perhaps an appeal to their obvious awe, a show of Authority. One look at Harvey’s squared shoulders and Lizbeth’s pleading eyes dissuaded him. They were going to watch.
“Very well,” Dr. Svengaard sighed.
“Will we watch from here?” Harvey asked.
Dr. Svengaard was shocked. “Of course not!” What primitives, these clods. But he tempered the thought with realization that such ignorance resulted from the carefully fostered mystery that surrounded gene shaping. In a calmer tone, he said, “You’ll have a private room with a closed-circuit connection to this lab. My nurse will escort you.”
Nurse Washington proved her competence then by appearing in the doorway. She’d been listening, of course. A good nurse never left such matters to chance.
“Is this all we get to see here?” Lizbeth asked.
Dr. Svengaard heard the pleading tone, noted the way she avoided looking directly at the vat. All his pent-up scorn came out in his voice as he said, “What else is there to see, Mrs. Durant? Surely you didn’t expect to see the morula.”
Harvey tugged at his wife’s arm, said, “Thank you, Doctor.”
Once more, Lizbeth’s eyes scanned the room, avoiding the vat. “Yes, thank you for showing us… this room. It helps to see how… prepared you are for… every emergency.” Her eyes focused on the sink.
“You’re quite welcome, I’m sure,” Dr. Svengaard said. “Nurse Washington will provide you with the list of permissible names. You might occupy part of your time choosing a name for your son if you’ve not already done so.” He nodded to the nurse. “See the Durants to Lounge Five, please.”
Nurse Washington said, “If you’ll follow me, please?” She turned with that air of overworked impatience which Svengaard suspected all nurses acquired with their diplomas. The Durants were sucked up in her wake.