“We don’t let them go near the water until they’re well trained. And if you must drown yourself, this is the place for it-with some of the best medical facilities in the world. We’ve had only one permanent death in the last fifteen years. Revival would have been possible even then, but after an hour underwater, brain damage is irreversible.”
“But what about sharks and all the other big fish?”
“We’ve never had an attack inside the reef, and only one outside it. That’s a small price to pay for admission to Fairyland. We’re taking out the big trimaran tomorrow-why don’t you come along?” “I’ll think
about it, “Duncan answered evasively. 205 “Oh-I suppose you’ve never been underwater before.”
“I’ve never been on it—except in a swimming Pool.”
“Well, you’ve nothing to lose. Though we won’t complete the tests for another forty-eight hours, I’m sure we’ll be able to clone successfully from the genotypes you’ve given. So your immortality insurance is taken care of.”
“Thank you very much,” said Duncan dryly. “That makes all the difference.”
He remembered Commander Innes’ invitation to the Caribbean reefs, and his instant though unexpressed refusal. But those mere children were obviously enjoying themselves, and their confidence was a reproach to his manhood.
The pride of the Makenzies was at stake; he looked glumly at that appalling mass of water, and realized that he would have to do something about it before he left the island.
He had never felt less enthusiastic about any project in his life.
The night was beautiful, blazing with more stars than any man could ever see from the surface of Titan, however long he lived. Though it was only nineteen hundred hours-too early for dinner, let alone sleep-the sun might never have existed, so total was the darkness away from the illumination of the main buildings, and of the little lights strung along the paths of crushed coral.
From somewhere in that darkness came the sound of music-a rhythmical throbbing of drums, played with more enthusiasm than skill. Rising above this steady beat were occasional bursts of song, and women’s voices calling to one another. Those voices made Duncan suddenly lonely and homesick. He started to walk along the narrow path in the general direction of the revelry.
After wandering down several blind alleys—ending up once in a charming sunken garden, which he left with profuse apologies to the couple busily occupying it-he came to the clearing where the party was in 206
progress. At its center, a large bonfire was lofting a column of smoke and flames toward the stars, and a score of figures was dancing around it, like the priestesses of some primitive religion.
They were not dancing with much grace or vigor; in fact, it would be more truthful to say that most of them were circulating in a dignified waddle.
But despite their obvious advanced state of pregnancy, they were clearly enjoying themselves, and were being as active as was advisable in the circumstances.
It was a grotesque yet strangely moving spectacle, arousing in Duncan a mixture of pity and tenderness -even an impersonal and wholly un erotic love. The tenderness was that which all men feel in the imminent presence of birth and the wonder of their own existence; the pity had a different cause.
Ugliness and deformity were rare on Titan-and rarer still on Earth, since both could almost always be corrected. Almost-but not always. Here was proof of that.
Most of these women were extremely plain; some were ugly; a few were frankly hideous. And though Duncan noticed two or three who might even pass as beautiful, it needed only a glance to show that they were mentally subnormal. Had his long-dead sis tee Anitra survived into adult life, she would have been at home in this strange assembly.
If the dancers-and those others merely sitting around, banging away at drums and sawing on fiddles.-had not been so obviously happy it would have been a disturbing, perhaps even a sickening spectacle. It did not upset
Duncan. Though he was startled, he was prepared for it.
He knew how the foster mothers were chosen. The first requirement, of course, was that they should have no gynecological defects. That demand was easy to satisfy. It was not so simple to cope with the psychological factors, and it might have been a virtually impossible task in the days before the world’s population was computer-profiled.
There would always be women who desperately yearned to bear children, but who for one reason or another could not fulfill their destiny. In
earlier ages, most of them would have been doomed to spinsterly frustration; indeed, even in this world of 2276, many of them still were. There were more would-be mothers than the controlled birth rate could satisfy, but those who were especially disadvantaged could find some compensation here. The losers in the lottery of Fate could yet win a consolation prize, and know for a few months the happiness that would otherwise be denied them.
