The Makenzies hated waste and extravagance. Tt would be pleasant to have the book on the voyage home, but excess baggage to Titan was a hundred so lars a kilo…. It would have to go back by slow boat, on one of the empty tankerS-UNACCOMPANIED FREIGHT, MAY BE STOWED IN
VACUUM….
THE MIRROR OF THE SEA
Dr. Yehudi ben Mohammed did not look as if he belonged in a modern hospital, surrounded by flickering life-function displays, Comsole read-outs, whispering voices from hidden speakers, and all the aseptic technology of life and death. In his spotless white robes, with the double circlet of gold cord around his headdress, he should have been holding court in a desert tent, or scanning the horizon from the back of his camel for the first glimpse of an oasis.
Duncan remembered how one of the younger doctors had com men ed, during his first visit: “Sometimes I think El Hadj believes he’s a reincarnation of
Saladin and Lawrence of Arabia.” Although Duncan did not understand the full flavor of the references, this was obviously said more in affectionate jest than in criticism. Did the surgeon, he wondered, wear those robes in the operating theater? They would not be inappropriate there; and certainly they did not interfere with the feline grace of his movements.
“I’m glad,” said Dr. Yehudi, toying with the jeweled dagger on his elaborately inlaid desk-the two touches of antiquity in an otherwise late-twenty-third century environment– ~‘that you’ve finally made up your mind. The—ah-delay has caused certain problems but we’ve overcome them. We now have four perfectly viable embryos, and the first will be trans planted in a week. The others will be kept as backups, in case of a rejection-though that is now very rare.”
And what will happen to the unwanted three? Duncan asked himself, and shied away from the answer. One human being had been created who would
never otherwise have existed. That was the positive side; 291 better to forget the three ghosts who for a brief while had hovered on the borders of reality. Yet it was hard to be coldly logical in matters like this. As he stared across the intricate arabesques, Duncan wondered at the psychology of the calm and elegant figure whose skillful hands had controlled so many destinies. In their own small way, on their own little world, the Makenzies had played at God; but this was something beyond his understanding.
Of course, one could always take refuge in the cold mathematics of reproduction. Old Mother Nature had not the slightest regard for human ethics or feelings. In the course of a lifetime, every man generated enough spermatozoa to populate the entire Solar System, many times over-and all but two or three of that potential multitude were doomed. Had anyone ever gone mad by visualizing each ejaculation as a hundred million murders?
Quite possibly; no wonder that the adherents of some old religions had refused to look through the microscope…. There were moral obligations and uncertainties behind every act. In the long run, a man could only obey the promptings of that mysterious entity called Conscience and hope that the outcome would not be too disastrous.
Not, of course, that one could ever know the final results of any actions.
Strange, thought Duncan, how he had resolved the doubts that had assailed him when he first came to the island. He had learned to take the broader view, and to place the hopes and aspirations of the Makenzies in a wider context. Above all, he had seen the dangers of overreaching ambition; but the lesson of Karl’s fate was still ambiguous and would give him cause to wonder all his life.
With a mild sense of shock, Duncan realized that he had already signed the legal documents and was returning them to Dr. Yehudi. No matter; he had read them carefully and knew his responsibilities. “I, Duncan Makenzie, resident of the satellite Titan presently in orbit around the planet
Saturn” (when did the lawyers think it was going to run away?) “do
hereby accept guardianship of one cloned male 292 child, identified by the chromosome chart herewith attached, and will to the best of my ability .. …. etc.” etc.”
The surgeon flowed upward to his full commanding two meters in a gesture of dismissal which, from anyone else, would have seemed slightly discourteous.
But not here, for El Hadj had much on his mind. All the while they had been talking, his eyes had seldom strayed from the pulsing lines of life and death on the read-outs that covered almost one whole wall of his office.
In the main hall of the Administration Building, Duncan paused for a moment before the giant, slowly rotating DNA helix which dominated the entrance.
