He and Chuck bowled their way past while Esther and I rear-guarded Cecily and Pat, my arm linked into Peter's.
"Please, now, this has been a trying experience for my clients. Later, fellas, later."
"Aw, come on, Mr. Johnson!" Several of the more aggressive were keeping pace with us, the others swarming in behind.
We were only to the cross-corridors when someone stepped on Wizard's paw, and he let out a hurt yipe, effectively halting our getaway.
"Esther, you take the babies to the car," said Pat, handing over Anne. "Let's get this over with, and they'll leave us alone."
"I didn't mean to step on the dog," the offender said earnestly, but he ruined the apology by getting a full-face shot of Pat in a very angry pose.
"Yes, let's," said Cecily, and handed Carla over to Esther, who hurried away, unhindered.
"No, I don't think my brother and sister-in-law would allow me to help them again," said Pat, "Once is enough. No, the next child I have will be my own. It's a lot easier socially to be the mother of the child you bear." She was grimly humorous.
"Do you think other women will consent to being host-mothers?"
"I wouldn't presume to say. But if people can be bought to take life, I expect there are some who can be paid to give life - She was making a terrific impression on the reporters.
"How did you feel about having these babies?"
"It's not the most comfortable way to spend nine months," Pat said dryly.
"I mean," said the reporter insistently, "how you feel? Psychologically."
"My psychological reactions are my own."
"Oh, c'mon, Miss Kellogg, be a sport. There are millions of people waiting for the personal story behind this exogenesis."
"You forget," she reminded the reporter acidly, her eye-brows raising, "I have been a sport"- one of the group laughed at her double entendre -"and the personal story is much too personal. The facts are all I'll give. My brother's wife couldn't carry a child to term. There was no reason to suppose I couldn't. There was only one way in which that end could be achieved. I did it - with the medical help of Dr. Craft and Dr. Henderson. That's all."
She turned purposefully away, but one of the women reporters grabbed her arm.
"Do you support Women's Lib?"
Pat let out a forbearing sigh. "My philosophy is also private," and she broke through the group and went down the corridor as fast as she could. We tried to follow, with some success, but we were still being bombarded with questions.
"Will you set up in practice as an exogenic specialist. Dr. Craft?"
"I haven't had time to think about it."
"Had any offers from clinics and laboratories?"
"No comment," Chuck said grimly, and pushed Cecily and me on, while Jasper helped Peter.
"Do you plan to have children by exogenesis, Dr. Craft?"
"She won't have to," said Chuck, gripping my arm firmly as he hurried Cecily and me down the steps to my station wagon.
That was as much of a proposal as I ever did get from Charles Irving Henderson, but later, in private, he made his intentions so abundantly clear that I finally realized that his faithfulness had been prompted by an attachment to me, not to Pat or the Kelloggs.
Wizard made an excellent rear guard. He turned, darted, and snapped, and everyone fell back so that we got into the car without further harassment. Then Wizard daintily jumped into the open back window, his tongue hanging on one side of his mouth in a canine laugh.
"Home, 0 noble Ali," Chuck said to me, settling his arm around my shoulders as I turned the ignition key.
As we pulled away from the curb, Pat took young Anne from Esther, at which point the baby let out a squall of protest.
"Good heavens," exclaimed Patricia Kellogg with mock pique, "is that gratitude to the woman who gave you birth?"
A Quiet One
"Have you never ridden a live horse?"
"I achieved the maximum level…"
"Have you ever ridden a live horse?" the Interviewing Representative had repeated.
Remembering her hours on the mechanical surrogate where she'd learned the basic equitational skills. Peri said, "I haven't had the opportunity…"
"Yes, quite. Well, I suppose that can't be helped.
"There will be a trial period, you realize?" He kept scrolling through her file on the recessed screen, which she could not see.
"Yes, I do."
"Well, then, that's all now, young Peri. You'll receive notification of the decision in two weeks." The Interviewer stood, gave her one of those formal little rictus smiles that Interviewers seemed to cultivate, and she had left with the sense that she had not quite won the last argument. But Peri felt that she had won another major battle in her long, private, quiet struggle to have the career of her choice. Modern parents as well as modern educational systems had, as their aim, fitted young people to rewarding, fulfilling careers in the widest variety of professions in a space-traveling society.
Class trips constantly introduced students to possible career opportunities, taking them to aquaculture farms, space stations, laboratories, hydroponic installations. From the day that ten-year-old Peri had visited the Working Farm, her ambition had been to work with horses, whose very existence had recently been under threat. The others on the class trip had fussed and complained about the "smells," the "stinks," the "stenches," but Peri had rapturously inhaled them… especially the lovely odor of the horses. She'd always liked watching them move in the training films or the oldie movies. They were so proud, so regal, so wild.
Alone of her class, she had asked to touch a horse, which had responded to her tentative caresses with a soft nicker that had somehow thrilled her. The feel of the warm muscles under the skin, the bright and intelligent eye of the animal on her, its response to her tentative caress when it snuffled in her hand, its velvet nose nuzzling her palm: that had been the single most enthralling experience in her life.
Through the ensuing years that sudden fascination did not fade. Indeed, she accessed all the information about the equine species that the data banks in her Linear Residence Complex possessed. She even found ancient books about horses, read all available disks by the currently acknowledged experts, like T. King-Sangster-Mahmood III, and, with avid eyes, watched every tape of equestrian sports available.
When Peri discovered that their Residential exercise facility included simulated horseback riding, she had asked permission from her mother to attend regularly. Peri, in her quiet way, simply hadn't mentioned that she had concentrated on one activity. The construct was subtly disappointing - like all things mechanical - although it performed as a living horse would. On it she had learned the basic equitational skills, had gone on to show jump on an advanced model. At least her instructor had recognized her enthusiasm and encouraged her to achieve the maximum skills available on the surrogate. But the simulations were just that, and she was constantly frustrated by the sense that she was ineluctably missing the most important facet.
So, with her goal in mind, she had tailored all her courses, even her special assignments, toward the end of qualifying for the Idaho Preserve. In zoology she had done an extensive survey into the propagation of breed animals. She had studied the stresses now attacking both equines and bovines, and was fully cognizant of the perilous future that needed no probability curve to trace. She had joined the lobby that wished to send specimens of the endangered species out to new worlds where they could flourish and regain the strengths and numbers they had once enjoyed.
When her acceptance to the Idaho Preserve had arrived, complete with hotel travel voucher, Peri was ecstatic. Her mother was horrified that her daughter had applied for a career in such a bizarre occupation.