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 child, identified by the chromosome chart herewith attached, and will to the best of my ability..." etc., etc., etc.
Perhaps the world would have been a better place if the garden of normally conceived children had been forced to sign such a contract. This thought, however, was some hundred billion births too late.
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. As his gaze roamed along the spokes of the twisted
ladder, contemplating its all-but-infinite possibilities, he could not help thinking again of the pentominoes that Grandma Ellen had set out before him years ago. There were only twelve of those shapes — yet it
would take the lifetime of the universe to exhaust their possibilities. And here was no mere dozen, but billions upon billions of locations to be filled by the letters of the genetic code. The total number of combinations was not one to stagger the mind — because there was no way whatsoever in which the mind
could grasp even the faintest conception of it. The number of electrons required to pack the entire cosmos solid from end to end was virtually zero in comparison.
"Duncan stepped out into the blazing sunlight, waited for his dark glasses to adjust themselves, and set of in search of Dr. Todd, guide and friend of his previous visit. He would not be leaving for another four hours, and there was one major item of business to be settled.
Luckily, as Sweeney Todd explained, there was no need to go out to the Reef.
"I can't imagine why you're interested in those ugly beasts. But you'll find some on a patch of dead coral at the end of that groin; not much else will live there. The water's only a meter deep — you won't even need flippers, just a strong pair of shoes. If you do step on a stonefish, your screams will bring us in time to save your life — though you may wish we hadn't."
That was not very encouraging, but ten minutes later Duncan was cautiously walking out into the
shallows, bent double as he peered through his borrowed face mask.
There was none of the beauty here that he had seen on the approach to Golden Reef. The water was
crystal clear, but the sea bed was a submarine desert. It was mostly white sand, mingled with broken
pieces of coral, like the bleached bones of tiny animals. A few small, drably colored fish were swimming around, and others stared at him with anxious, unfriendly eyes for little burrows in the sand. Once, a brilliantly blue creature like a flattened eel came darting at him and, to his great surprise, gave him a painful nip before he chased it away. It was every bit of three centimeters long, and Duncan, who had
never heard of cleaning symbiosis, worried about poison for a few minutes. However, he felt no pangs of imminent dissolution, so pushed his way onward through the tepid water.
The concrete groin — part of the island's defense against the ceaseless erosion of the waves —
stretched out for a hundred meters from the shore and then disappeared beneath the surface. Near its