“I’m looking for a spare infant. Do you have one?” asked Bo.
The attendant’s hands and eyes continued with the wrapping and packing while he answered: “Nothing here. Try the reject belt.”
“Rejects? Aren’t they the premature ones?”
“Some are,” said the attendant. “But there is an occasional gargoyle or simian. It’s your best bet.”
Bohart strode off, following the discard belt. It moved slowly and contained an occasional twitching form on its way to the Chute. Most did look simply premature—with a tendency toward lethal hyaline membranes in the lungs. Psych was in a hurry for their therapeutic infant. A hairy simian wouldn’t satisfy them, but a gargoyle might. All it had wrong with it was a bad case of the “uglies”—bulging eyes, ocular muscles overdeveloped from being embryonated with a defective light screen. The eye buds were stimulated into early and redundant growth.
The Psychteck focused his battery of desk sensors on the waiting patient to monitor her Fine Body Movements. She sat up straight, rigid, on the edge of her chair, wringing her hands. Her eyes were darting around the waiting room, fixing on this object, then that. Her hair was stringy and black, frequently finger-combed and pushed back. Fine Body Movements increased steadily. The Psychokinetoscope gave a clear warning.
“FBMs are increasing,” said the teck, leaning towards his Com Screen and whispering, “Where is that therapeutic infant? We’d better make a mother of this one quickly or it’ll be drugs for her.”
The screen flickered from terminal to terminal as it searched for Bo. It finally focused on him at the Chute, where he was sorting through a variety of limp infants.
“Find one?”
Bo shook his head. “Just some weak premies. None that looks strong enough to live out the week.”
“Well, bring one up anyway. Even if it only survives for a couple of days it’ll get us over this crisis.”
Bo picked one up at random. It died. He set it back on the moving belt and fingered others. All were cooling. None would fool even a muddled hebephrenic. The high belts around him carried hazy bottle-jars that had just been emptied. A cleanup crew stood at their stations with brushes and steam nozzles. At their feet lay a heap of debris—placental and fetal—just so much surplus protein for the robot sweeper.
Something moved in the debris!
Bo rushed over to see the welcome face of a gargoyle—ugly—trying to push its way out of the cold wetness. He picked up the muscular form, already hunchbacked from trying to hide its embryonic eyes from the excessive light in its bottle-jar. He rinsed and wrapped it, glancing around for the department supervisor to make his explanations. No one focused on him.
Bohart found the female patient speaking into a Com Screen, punctuating her loud, rapid speech with giggles and hand gestures. He composed his face for the occasion and called her over to see the bundle asleep on his shoulder.
“Clover?”
She toggled off and turned towards him. “Yes?”
“I have your little ward—baby Harlan.”
Her mood sobered. Trauma-anxiety lines melted from her haggard face.
“He needs you,” said Bo.
She took the bundle and clutched it to her breast with firm tenderness—unconsciously increasing the force—trying to squeeze a little security out of the reality of the tiny life. As the pressure increased the gargoyle’s eyes opened silently—stoically—the behaviour pattern that would typify his life. At least this mother-figure was warm.
Bohart mumbled routine instructions, using his best teck monotone—lulling her into the routine of the therapeutic pseudoadoption. She left with a smile, the bug-eyed infant staring back over her shoulder.
“How did it go?” asked Bo, glancing at the scope.
“Fine.” The tech smiled. “FBMs decreased the moment you came into the room. I guess we saved her from the shaft floor. How long can she keep Harlan?”
Bo shrugged. “He came from the slush pile, so he was not pitted or trimmed.”
“Not certified for life?”
“No,” said Bo. “They just aren’t letting anyone through with five toes or an intact pituitary anymore. The Chucker Team will be looking for him someday.”
“Baby Harlan has about a year,” speculated the Psychteck. “Well, that’s an improvement over the slush pile, I guess.”
“I guess.” Bo shrugged.
Clover enjoyed her role as surrogate mother. She took her lactogenic agents faithfully and kept baby Harlan on her breast most of the time. He lived off his stored fat until colostrum came in on the third day. He grew rapidly. With his visual cortex already functioning, it set the pace for the rest of his neuromuscular development. He crawled about the cubicle, probing with his hands those dark recesses where his eyes could not reach. The black, granular soot tasted acrid. The soft furry things scurried away. He collected loose items around himself and sat in his corner watching the other members of the household go about their daily routines. Occasionally he was tossed a word or a food item, but mostly he was ignored. Had he been older, he might have thought his ugliness accounted for his isolation. Or that his untrimmed feet, with their five toes, indicated his bestiality, earning him this low neglected station in life. But this reasoning would be wrong, for the adults were just too dim-minded to relate.
Clover’s feeble grasp on reality was shaken loose by the Chucker Team. They stood in her doorway—three of them wearing gaudy smocks and carrying toys—and asked for Little Har. She pointed numbly at the toddler in the centre of the cubicle.
“But he’s so small…” she stammered.
“If he walks or talks he needs a permit,” said the Team Leader. “Here, Har, see the toy.”
Clover’s mind retreated into the dark furrows of her brain. Her face went slack, expressionless. “Harlan,” she said blandly, “go with these men. Return to the protein pool.”
He tilted his head up quizzically. The words meant nothing, but the blank expression on her face frightened him. Her eyes did not focus on his anymore. He ran to her, grasping her knees. “Ma!” Rough hands pried him away and set him in the Chuck Wagon. He scrambled out. The net fell on him.
When he saw the ominous, dark Chute he quieted. Its foul vapours chilled his heart. “Ma!” His tiny fingers clung to the net, to the sleeve of a Chucker, and to the crusted rim of the Chute. The struggle was brief. His cries faded down the Chute.
Clover sat quietly in her darkened cubicle—her FBMs returning.
Little Har’s fall was brief, interrupted by a pillowy catcher’s mitt attachment. The White Meck operating the mitt was counting “lives saved’. When the daily quota was achieved, the mitt was removed and the Chute panel replaced. Subsequent objects completed their trip to the blades.
Har sat in the musty darkness quietly. He had started to crawl, but found that he was on a narrow beam. Echoes told him that he was surrounded by vast space—dangerously long drops if he slipped. A small heap of puzzled and confused infants surrounded him. One did wander off and drop. Its scream was interrupted by the strum of a tight cable far below. One adult had been rescued—a weak, old derelict who promptly died.
The White Meck flashed its light around, picked up the infants and placed them in its dorsal stretcher cradle. One of the more vigorous, a wily simian, crept away into the darkness. Har liked the gentle way he was handled. He trusted the meck and gripped the cradle straps as it rolled down a spiral air vent. The darkness was broken by scant light sources, weak reds and blues on control panels, jagged whites where seams opened to living quarters—enough to teach him the three-dimensional aspect of their journey to City-base. They were going down; his mother was up.