She lay on her side, legs pulled up, whimpering as her body strained. There was something funny about her tongue too, as it projected between her teeth. Was there a physical reason these animals never spoke? The head of the calf had already emerged, its hair brown like that of the mother. Hitch had thought all babies were bald. All human babies...
Should he summon help? He was no obstetrician!
But then he would have to explain why he hadn't notified anyone earlier, and he had no excuse apart from carelessness and personal concupiscence. Better to stick with it himself.
Odd, he thought, how one could become committed against his intention. This laboring cow was not really his problem, and she belonged literally to another world, yet he had to do what he could for her. The activities of this brutal barn were as important to him at this moment as anything he could remember. Even its most repulsive aspects fascinated him. It represented a direct personal challenge as well as an intellectual one. Iota—
As the cow struggled to force out the massive bundle, Hitch skimmed nervously through the manual. Good—the stock was generally hardy, and seldom required more than nominal supervision during parturition. Signs of trouble? No, none of the alarm signals itemized were evident. This was a normal delivery.
But the text stressed the importance of removing the new-birthed calf immediately and taking it to the nursery for proper processing. The mother was not supposed to have any opportunity to lick it down, suckle it or develop any attachment.
And how about the father? How about any observer with a trace of human feeling? It was as though he had impregnated a cow, and now his offspring was being manifested. He had failed with Iolanthe, he had failed with Iota, but he still had something to prove. Something to salvage from this disaster of a world.
The cow heaved again, and more of the balled-up calf emerged. There was blood soaking into the pallet, but the manual assured him callously that this was normal. He wanted to do something, but he knew that his best bet was noninterference. He was sure now that a human woman could not have given birth so readily without anesthetic or medication. In some ways the animals were fortunate, not that it justified any part of this. That large, loose vagina—
"What's going on here?"
Hitch jumped again. The voice behind him was that of the owner! For an experienced investigator, he had been inexcusably careless about his observations. Twice now, men had come upon him by surprise.
"She's birthing," he said. "Routine, so I didn't—"
"In the nightstall?" the man demanded angrily, his white hair seeming to stand on end. It was the way he combed it, Hitch decided irrelevantly. "On a bare pallet?"
Oops—he must have missed a paragraph. "I told you it's been a while since I—the other farm didn't have separate places to—"
"That farm was in violation of the law, not to mention the policies of compassionate procedure." The owner was already inside the stall and squatting down beside the laboring cow. "It was a mistake, Esmeralda," he said soothingly. "I never meant to put you through this here. I had a special delivery-booth for you, with fresh clean straw and padded walls..." He stroked her hair and patted her shoulder, and the animal relaxed a little. Obviously she recognized the gentle master. Probably he came by the stables periodically to encourage the beasts and grant them lumps of sugar. "In just a moment I'll give you a shot to ease the pain, but not just yet. It will make you sleepy, and we have to finish this job first. You've been very good. You're one of my best. It's all right now, dear."
Hitch realized with a peculiar mixture of emotions that it wasn't all acting. The farmer really did care about the comfort and welfare of his animals. Hitch had somehow assumed that brutality was the inevitable concomitant of the degradation of human beings. But actually he had seen no harshness; this entire barn was set up for the maximum creature comfort compatible with efficiency, with this backward technology. Had he misjudged the situation?
Under the owner's sure guidance the calving was quickly completed. The man lifted the infant—a female—and spanked her into awareness before cutting and tying off the umbilical cord. He wrapped her in a towel that materialized from somewhere and stood up. "Here," he said to Hitch, "take it to the nursery."
Hitch found himself with babe in arms.
"All right, Esme," the owner said to the cow, his voice low and friendly. "Let's take care of that afterbirth. Here—I'll give you that shot I promised. It only stings for a second. Hold still—there. You'll feel much better soon. Just relax, and in a moment you'll be asleep. In a few days you'll be back with the herd where you belong, the finest milker of them all." He looked up and spied Hitch still standing there. "Get moving, man! Do you want her to see it?"
Hitch got moving. He did not feel at all comfortable carrying the baby, for all his determination of a moment ago to help it in some way, but that was the least of it. Its cries, never very loud (did they breed for that, too?), had subsided almost immediately as it felt the supposed comfort of human arms, and probably that was fortunate because otherwise the mother would have been attracted to the sound. But this removal of the baby so quickly from its parent, so that it could never know a true family—how could that be tolerated? Yet he was cooperating, carrying it down the dusky passages to the nursery.
The fact that he had witnessed its arrival did not make him responsible for it, technically—but the baby had, in more than a manner of speaking, been given into his charge. His prior mood returned, intensified; he did feel responsible.
"I'll take care of you, little girl," he said inanely. "I'll keep you safe. I'll—"
He was talking like a hypocrite. There was very little he could do for this baby except put it in the nursery. He didn't know the first thing about child care. And—he was no longer entirely certain that he should do anything specific if he had the opportunity.
He had been ready to condemn this entire world out of hand, but in the face of this last development he wasn't sure, oddly. This breeding and milking of human beings was shocking—but was it actually evil? The preliminary report had remarked on the strange peacefulness of this alternate Earth: computer analysis suggested that there was no war here, and had not been for some time. That was another riddle of #772. Was it because those who ruled it were compassionate men, despite the barbarity of their regime?
Which was better: to have a society peacefully unified by a true segregation of functions—men-men vs animal-men—or to have every person born to contend so selfishly for the privileges of humanity that all succeeded only in being worse than animals? Earth-Prime remained in serious jeopardy of self-extermination; was that the preferred system to impose on all the alternate Earths too?
#772 did have its positive side. Economically it functioned well, and it would probably never have runaway inflation or population increase or class warfare. Could it be that with the breakup of the family system, the human rights and dignities system, the all-men-are-created-equal system—could it be that this was the true key to permanent worldwide peace?
He had not seen a single discontented cow.
By taking this baby from its mother and conveying it to the impersonal nursery, was he in fact doing it the greatest favor of its existence?
He wondered.
The nursery caught him by surprise. It was a cool quiet area more like a laboratory than the playroom he had anticipated. A series of opaque tanks lined the hall. As he passed between them he heard a faint noise, like that of an infant crying in a confined space, and the baby in his arms heard it and came alive loudly.