“I can see why Larry calls the donor “Dim Dever”. He certainly is slow,” commented Ira.
“Slow with attendants,” said OLGA. “He is making pretty good progress with machines. My terminals have been eaves-dropping on him for so long that I think we already have a common language. All that needs to be done is to give him the human speech equivalents.”
Ira nodded. “Too bad we couldn’t have talked Larry into the transplant. Why didn’t we foresee his “father fixation” and avoid exposing the details to him until after the operation?”
OLGA flickered amber. “No. His autonomics told me how brittle he was. Deceit could have ruined his value as an Implant specimen. Unfortunately, if he had discovered that he had benefited from the death of his own bud child it might have wiped away his self-esteem. Without that he would be worthless for Implanting.”
Dim Dever climbed out of his teardrop nest and patted the goat on the head.
“Nice goat,” said the meck voice.
“Nice goat,” repeated Dim. It would be a long time before his vocabulary allowed for philosophizing, but he’d be ready to enter a sheltered society soon.
Ira shook his head. “I can see why Larry hesitated to kill this donor. He’s so bright-eyed and alert. Isn’t there some way to dull a donor’s mind so we won’t identify with them?”
“No, not really,” said OLGA. “A dull-witted donor would need more attendant time—more expense. Dim Dever was able to feed and care for himself pretty much as one of these goats. And you wouldn’t want a lot of drugs in your donor—foreign molecules that might damage or weaken the very organs you are after.”
“I suppose not,” mumbled Ira. Every method has its drawbacks.
Larry turned on his refresher and grasped a ceiling rung of his horizontal ladder. The mannequin walked away slowly, pulling flexible tubing out of his various surgical stoma. Sucking sounds. Drops of urine and faeces soiled the meck’s breast-plates with yellow and granular brown. Larry progressed across the monkey bars to the hot shower, where he emptied his visceral sacs down the drain. Hooking his arms through soft trapeze rings, he pulled on a pair of goggles and activated the strong ultra-violet lights. Scented lather softened his flaking trunk. Wearing a terrycloth body stocking, he climbed into his hammock. More UVs focused on him as he slept.
The mannequin stood beside his bed for a while, then strolled down the hall to make records of Dim Dever’s last few hours on Earth. The last shuttle would be leaving in the morning. OLGA had built the Implant Starship in one of her mile-wide bays among the planetoids. The last of the Earth biota was now being loaded—the Dever clan.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Ira. “You certainly gave me a start.
For a minute there I thought I was looking at a headless Larry.”
“I apologize, sir. But I thought I should store a few optics of Dim for Larry’s nostalgia file.”
Ira studied the headless and armless robot for a moment. “Pardon me for asking, but where are your eyes—er—optics?”
The mannequin blinked a variety of chalcogenide glasses—reverse photon. “My eyes are everywhere, from my toes to my shoulder spangles. But I suppose you would consider these large belt-buckle optics my true eyes.”
Ira walked around in front of the robot. He nodded. “Yes. But why didn’t you look at me when you spoke?”
“I was recording your presence with a variety of sensors, sufficient for our conversation. Your size, temperature, pulse, respiration and I suppose your emotional state. Why do you worry this night?”
Ira hesitated to answer, but remembering that this meck was Larry’s legs, he shrugged. “You might as well add this to your nostalgia file. I’m a little worried about the Implant. The information we have on Procyon is not too detailed. A planet exists near that sun, and it has some Earth features—size, temperature, atmosphere with oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water. But there are still many blanks in our knowledge about the place. Sure, we are taking a good cross-section of Earth life forms, from every conceivable area of our globe. If anything from here can survive there, we’ll have it with us. But there are so many things that could go wrong.”
“It is a gamble,” agreed the mannequin. “Any Implant is bound to be. But remaining on Earth is a gamble too—especially in Temporary Suspension. Larry has a future Earth Society to face, while Dim Dever has a distant unexplored ecosystem. OLGA will use knowledge from other Implants to design yours. There is a very good chance you will succeed.”
Ira grinned. “Mannequin, those are OLGA’s very words. You must be sharing again.”
“Your servant,” apologized the meck.
Ira and the headless robot strolled to the windows overlooking the feed-lot playground. Dim was standing out among his trees patting a goat on the head. Ira looked up at the stars. There, near Orion’s familiar outline, was Procyon, equal to Betelgeuse in brightness. “It looks so close.”
“Send us a message torpedo when you get there,” said the mannequin, leaving the human with his thoughts.
Morning found Larry standing in his mannequin with the crowd watching the shuttle lift off. He was well rested, but insecure about his future. He checked out of his quarters with the rest of the Procyon Implant Team. Ira and Jen had tried one last time to entice him along. He declined, more a reflex based on his previous decision than a new effort at thinking it out. After they departed he looked around at the sea of faces—strangers. He realized that he knew no one on the entire Earth.
“It’s going to be lonely without the Dever Clan,” he said.
The ship disappeared into a cloud layer.
“You still have me,” said his mannequin carefully, “…and OLGA’s priority rating, credits for travel, education, good food. We can make lots of new friends.”
Larry thought of this existence in a world where space travel was routine. He and Mannequin could learn many things. But education and travel seemed too much like spectating to Larry. He’d be observing, but not taking part. He would need a complete body in order to savour life to its fullest. He wanted to play an active role—complete with men his own age.
“No. Sorry. But I can’t just take a guided tour through life. How old am I?”
“Two hundred years on the calendar, but twenty on your RNA clock. You are a young adult.”
“I feel like a young adult, and I’d like to get back into TS quickly and stop my metabolic clock until there is a new breakthrough. I want to feel this young when I receive my new toes and gonads. Then I can really enjoy life. Your offer of travel and education would sound attractive then.”
Mannequin began to walk towards the suspension mausoleum. “Do you remember the warnings about the dangers of Suspension?”
“Organic damage in Suspension and social evolution to adjust to. Yes. You have my informed consent,” said Larry.
Strangers checked him into the oxygen squeeze. Tubes and wires were attached to the arterio-venous graft and monitor electrodes under his left rib cartilages. Other tubes were hooked into the mannequin’s appropriate tanks and sockets.
“As before,” said the meck. “I’ll watch your ions while you sleep.”
“Thanks. See you on a new tomorrow.”
Starship Dever’s Ark locked on to Altair for its dive past the sun before swinging out in the direction of Procyon.
Ira and Jen tucked Dim Dever into his Suspension chamber.
“Want me to tuck you in?” asked Jen.
Ira shook his head and settled down in a large, soft chair. “Plenty of time until the jump. I think I’ll just sit here and chart the Gum Nebula with our shipbrain.”
“Fine. I’ll be back after I’ve had a snack with the tecks.”
He watched the screen print PUPPIS and VELA. The radio-brightness contours of GUM were painted in.