A body without a rib cage, lungs exposed. A smooth head with blank depressions for eyes. A trunk with four legs, two where the arms should have been. A head and torso narrowing down to a bifurcated stump. A child with liver, pancreas, kidneys, and bowels growing externally. Another child (he couldn't be sure) with two tiny hands sprouting from its neck. A hairless woman with a vaginalike slit up to her navel. A skeletal figure with transparent flesh, the organs visible inside (like a medical student's anatomy model). A gargantuan head, all the features squashed into the lower left side. Hands with no thumbs and seven, eight, nine fingers. Arms and legs jointed the wrong way. Feet attached heel to heel and joined in a single limb. Bodies with both sets of sexual organs. A man (he assumed it was male) with membranes of pink translucent flesh attaching elbows to chest. A fishlike creature with bulbous eyes and what appeared to be gills on its neck. A baby without a face, with apertures in its chest and stomach for breathing and eating.
Rolsom braced his hands on the backs of two chairs, leaning forward. "What we're seeing is natural selection at work. The human species adapting genetically to changes in the environment. Their parents have been exposed to conditions that have affected the chromosomal structure of their offspring--such things as solar and cosmic radiation, pollutants in the air and water, nuclear fallout, herbicidal and pesticidal contamination, carcinogenic agents in food, tobacco, vehicle exhaust, industrial waste, so on and so on.
"In recent years the declining 02 levels have contributed significantly to the numbers and varying types of genetic mutation. What you see here represents the tip of the iceberg. Nature has many ways of dealing with aberrations from the norm, of course. Infertility, abortions, stillbirths." Rolsom gestured at the screens. "In fact these--the ones who survive--probably account for less than fifteen percent of the total."
"It must be one hell of an operation just keeping them alive," Major Jones marveled. He seemed awestruck.
"This control room is manned round the clock," Rolsom said. "We keep an audio-visual check on them and they're wired up to alert us of any primary malfunction. We do lose some," he admitted, "but not many."
"What do you think?"
Madden's question caught Skrote off-guard. He had to clear his throat before he could find his voice. "I've never in my life seen anything like it," he managed to say, which was the gospel truth.
"I'm damn sure of that," Madden replied crisply. "This is the only research facility of its kind in the world." He turned to Rolsom. "How are the breeding experiments coming along?"
"It's too soon to know, Colonel. We've taken sperm and ovum samples and at the moment we're trying--hoping--to induce conception in the laboratory. You'll appreciate that the patients here in Section M aren't capable of normal sexual activity, and in any case the females lack the equipment for childbearing. That's why we're trying for mechanical conception. But if that doesn't work out we'll go for insemination of mutant sperm using normal healthy women as incubators."
"That's where Lieutenant Skrote should be useful," said Madden. "He was trained in genetics at the Front Royal Military Hospital in Virgina. He's been seconded to ASP as scientific-medical liaison oEcer, and I know he'll be happy to give what assistance he can."
Skrote nodded rapidly in the flickering room. He was obviously expected to be agreeable. "Yes, of course. Though I should point out, Dr. Rolsom, that I was concerned mainly with the theoretical aspects of genetic engineering. This side of the coin, so to speak, is new to me. Completely. Absolutely."
"That's what we need," Rolsom was quick to assure him. "We're light on theory. I'll be glad of any contribution you feel you can make, Lieutenant. Don't hesitate to pitch right in."
"Thank you, sir. I'll do that."
He turned his head jerkily to the bank of screens. A myriad of tiny rectangles of Frankensteinian horror reflected in his slightly bulging eyes. Over the headsets he could hear a faint mad gabble of discordant noises, like the tape of a creature in pain played backward.
Waiting for the boat to take them back across the lagoon, Skrote was convinced he must be living in a dream. The swaying palm trees and the white sandy beaches and the little dancing waves gilded with sunlight seemed unreal, like a movie set. The reality, strangely enough, had been left behind in those innocuous white buildings with the rows of tiny barred windows behind the electrified fences.
He didn't seem to be here; not on Starbuck Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He didn't seem to be anywhere at all.
"If we can develop new mutant strains . . ."
Skrote listened numbly to Colonel Madden's voice.
". . . it will be a real achievement. . . ."
Which only compounded the unreality.
