Stung by this, Scarfe said, “We have plenty of other backers, you know, if you feel like that. People come here from all over the world. We’ve been able to synthesize life for twenty-odd years, but this is the first time the methods have been applied to this sort of environment. I’m surprised you take the attitude you do. In these enlightened days, you know. I suppose you understand how we create those Magdalenian men and women, and the iguanodons and little compsognathi and the allosaurs?”
As he began to answer, Swanwick started to pace toward the line of elevators, one of which had carried them up to the observation platform. Scarfe was forced to follow.
“After the Russo-American gamete-separation experiments in the 2070’s,” Swanwick said remotely, “it was only a short while before individual chromosomes and then individual genes and then the import of the lineal order of the genes were tagged and understood. Successful synthetic life was created a couple of decades earlier. It was possible to use these crude ‘synthlifes’ to extract the desired genetic information. It then became possible to apply this information and form ‘synthlifes’ of any required combination of genes. You see, I have read the literature.”
“That I never doubted,” Scarfe said humbly. As they stepped into the elevator, he added, “But it was Elroy’s discovery that geneanalyses of defunct species could be made from their bones—even fossil bones—that set the tridiorama project into action. It was the gene formula of an iguanodon he got first. Within a year, he was selling real live iguanodons to the world’s zoos. Do you find that unethical, Dr. Swanwick? I suppose you do.”
“No, I don’t. It was only when Elroy brought back ancient men and women by the same method that the religious bodies became interested in the question.”
They had now traveled down the outside of the chamber that housed the tridiorama. When the elevator gates opened, they stepped out, both aware and glad in their different ways that they were about to part for good.
They had started unhappily, with Swanwick teetotal, and none too good a lunch served in the canteen in his honor, and an antipathy between them that neither had quite the will to overcome.
Standing, anxious to make a final pleasantry, Scarfe said, “Well, if an offense was committed, at least we lessened it here by insisting on a smaller scale. It solves so many problems, you know!”
He chuckled again, the winning chuckle to which he knew few men failed to respond. He had learned his chuckle by heart. It was rich and fairly deep, intended to express appreciation of his own oddity as well as the wonder of the world. It never failed to disarm, but the theologian was not disarmed.
“You see what I mean—size is controlled by genes like every other physical factor,” Scarfe said, his sallow cheeks coloring slightly. “So we cut our specimens down to size. It solves a lot of problems and keeps things simple.”
“I wonder if the Magdalenian men see it quite like that?” Swanwick said. He put out a cold hand and thanked Scarfe for his hospitality. He turned and walked briskly out of the door toward the wingport where the St. Benedict trimjet lay awaiting him. With a puzzled expression on his face, Graham Scarfe stood watching him. A cold, unlovable man, he thought.
Tropez, his Chief Assistant, came up, and scanned his chief sympathetically.
“Dr. Swanwick was a tough nut,” he said.
Shaking his head, Scarfe came slowly out of his trance. “We must not speak ill of a man of God, Tropez,” he said. “And I can see that we have yet to master some little details that may upset purists like Dr. Swanwick.”
“You know we add something new every year, sir,” Tropez said. “You can’t do more than you are doing. I’ve got the attendance figures for the Open Gallery for last month and they’re up twelve point three per cent on the previous month. Though I still think we were perhaps mistaken to put in normal-size cicadas. It does spoil the illusion for some people.”
“We may have to think again about the cicadas,” Scarfe said vaguely.
“I’m sure whatever you choose will be best,” Tropez said. Saying things like that, he imagined, kept him his job.
Scarfe was not listening.
They had come to the door of the Open Gallery and pushed in. The Gallery was packed with paying customers to the tridiorama, staring from their darkness through the polaroid glass at the brightly lit scene within. Though they had a more restricted view than the specialists who, for higher prices, looked down through adjustable lenses from the observation platform above, there was a certain unique fascination at viewing that mocked-up world from ground level.
“We’ve got too few species in there for it to be a credible reproduction of a past earth,” Scarfe complained. “Only five species—the Magdalenians, the three sorts of dinosaur, the iguanodons, the compsognathi, and the allosaurs—and the mice. I don’t count those cicadas.”
“Elroy Laboratories charge too much for their synthlifes,” Tropez said. “We are building up as fast as we can. Besides, the Magdalenian people are the real attraction— that’s what the crowds come to see. We’ve got ten of them now; they cost money.”
“Eight,” Scarfe said firmly. “Two went today. One got eaten by the allosaur, the other disintegrated. You should keep in touch, Tropez. You spend too much time in the box office.”
Having thus squashed his assistant, he nodded, turned and went slowly back to the elevator.
It was the disintegration of the little figures that worried him; he could not resist a suspicion that Elroy Laboratories limited their life span deliberately to improve their turnover. Of course, the method had to be perfected as yet. The synthlifes were created full-grown and unable to age; they simply wore out suddenly, and fell into their original salts. That would no doubt be improved with time. But the Elroy people were not very cooperative about the matter, and slow to answer the letters he flashed them.
The Elroy monopoly would have to be broken before real progress was made.
Still shaking his gray head, Scarfe rode the elevator back to the peace of the observation platform. He liked to watch the scientific men at work over the scanners, taking notes or recording. They treated him with respect. All the same, life was complex, full of all sorts of knotty, nasty little problems that could never be discussed . . . like how one should really handle a man like Swanwick, the prickly idiot.
Scarfe reflected, as he had so often done in the past, how much more simple it would be to be one of the synthetic Magdalenians imprisoned in the tridiorama. Why, they hadn’t even got any sex problems! Not that he had, he hurried to reassure himself, at his age. But there had been a time . . .
Whereas the Magdalenians—
With the complex modern processes, it was possible to create life, but not life that could perpetuate itself. One day, maybe. But not yet. So down in the chamber the little Magdalenians could never know anything about reproduction, would never have to worry at all about sex.
“I suppose we’ve really created something like the garden of Eden here,” Scarfe muttered to himself, peering into the nearest vacant scanner. In his crafty old mind, he began to devise a new and more alluring advertisement for his establishment, one that would not offend his scientific customers, but would rope in the sensation-loving public. “Lost Tribes in the Pocket-Size Garden of Eden . . . They’re All Together in the Altogether . . .”
He adjusted the binocular vision, checking to see where the little girl was that he particularly fancied. Watching her through the lenses, picking up her tiny voice in the headphones, you would almost imagine . . .
III