«Anyway, I repeat that all such attempts would be useless. All Earth is infected with mutation. It will be for a long time. The purest human stock will still produce mutants.»
«Y—yes, that’s true. Our best bet seems to be to find all such stock and withdraw it into the few safe areas left. It’ll mean a small human population, but a human one.»
«I tell you, that’s impossible,» clipped Drummond. «There is no safe place. Not one.»
Robinson stopped pacing and looked at him as at a physical antagonist. «That so?» he almost growled. «Why?»
Drummond told him, adding incredulously, «Surely you knew that. Your physicists must have measured the amount of it. Your doctors, your engineers, that geneticist I dug up for you. You obviously got a lot of this biological information you’ve been slinging at me from him. They must all have told you the same thing.»
Robinson shook his head stubbornly. «It can’t be. It’s not reasonable. The concentration wouldn’t be great enough.»
«Why, you poor fool, you need only look around you. The plants, the animals—Haven’t there been any births in Taylor?»
«No. This is still a man’s town, though women are trickling in and several babies are on the way—» Robinson’s face was suddenly twisted with desperation. «Elaine’s is due any time now. She’s in the hospital here. Don’t you see, our other kid died of the plague. This one’s all we have. We want him to grow up in a world free of want and fear, a world of peace and sanity where he can play and laugh and become a man, not a beast starving in a cave. You and I are on our way out. We’re the old generation, the one that wrecked the world. It’s up to us to build it again, and then retire from it to let our children have it. The future’s theirs. We’ve got to make it ready for them.»
Sudden insight held Drummond motionless for long seconds. Understanding came, and pity, and an odd gentleness that changed his sunken bony face. «Yes,» he murmured, «yes, I see. That’s why you’re working with all that’s in you to build a normal, healthy world. That’s why you nearly went crazy when this threat appeared. That… that’s why you can’t, just can’t comprehend—»
He took the other man’s arm and guided him toward the door. «Come on,» he said. «Let’s go see how your wife’s making out. Maybe we can get her some flowers on the way.»
The silent cold bit at them as they went down the street. Snow crackled underfoot. It was already grimy with town smoke and dust, but overhead the sky was incredibly clean and blue. Breath smoked whitely from their mouths and nostrils. The sound of men at work rebuilding drifted faintly between the bulking mountains.
«We couldn’t emigrate to another planet, could we?» asked Robinson, and answered himself: «No, we lack the organization and resources to settle them right now. We’ll have to make out on Earth. A few safe spots—there must be others besides this one—to house the true humans till the mutation period is over. Yes, we can do it.»
«There are no safe places,» insisted Drummond. «Even if there were, the mutants would still outnumber us. Does your geneticist have any idea how this’ll come out, biologically speaking?»
«He doesn’t know. His specialty is still largely unknown. He can make an intelligent guess, and that’s all.»
«Yeah. Anyway, our problem is to learn to live with the mutants, to accept anyone as—Earthling—no matter how he looks, to quit thinking anything was ever settled by violence or connivance, to build a culture of individual sanity. Funny,» mused Drummond, «how the impractical virtues, tolerance and sympathy and generosity, have become the fundamental necessities of simple survival. I guess it was always true, but it took the death of half the world and the end of a biological era to make us see that simple little fact. The job’s terrific. We’ve got half a million years of brutality and greed, superstition and prejudice, to lick in a few generations. If we fail, mankind is done. But we’ve got to try.»
They found some flowers, potted in a house, and Robinson bought them with the last of his tobacco. By the time he reached the hospital, he was sweating. The sweat froze on his face as he walked.
The hospital was the town’s biggest building, and fairly well equipped. A nurse met them as they entered.
«I was just going to send for you, General Robinson,» she said. «The baby’s on the way.»
«How… is she?»
«Fine, so far. Just wait here, please.»
Drummond sank into a chair and with haggard eyes watched Robinson’s jerky pacing. The poor guy. Why is it expectant fathers are supposed to be so funny? It’s like laughing at a man on the rack. I know, Barbara, I know.
«They have some anesthetics,» muttered the general. «They… Elaine never was very strong.»
«She’ll be all right.» It’s afterward that worries me.
«Yeah—Yeah—How long, though, how long?»
«Depends. Take it easy.» With a wrench, Drummond made a sacrifice to a man he liked. He filled his pipe and handed it over. «Here, you need a smoke.»
«Thanks.» Robinson puffed raggedly.
The slow minutes passed, and Drummond wondered vaguely what he’d do when—it—happened. It didn’t have to happen. But the chances were all against such an easy solution. He was no psychologist. Best just to let things happen as they would.
The waiting broke at last. A doctor came out, seeming an inscrutable high priest in his white garments. Robinson stood before him, motionless.
«You’re a brave man,» said the doctor. His face, as he removed the mask, was stern and set. «You’ll need your courage.»
«She—» It was hardly a human sound that croak.
«Your wife is doing well. But the baby—»
A nurse brought out the little wailing form. It was a boy. But his limbs were rubbery tentacles terminating in boneless digits.
Robinson looked, and something went out of him as he stood there. When he turned, his face was dead.
«You’re lucky,» said Drummond, and meant it. He’d seen too many other mutants. «After all, if he can use those hands he’ll get along all right. He’ll even have an advantage in certain types of work. It isn’t a deformity, really. If there’s nothing else, you’ve got a good kid.»
«If? You can’t tell with mutants.»
«I know. But you’ve got guts, you and Elaine. You’ll see this through, together.» Briefly, Drummond felt an utter personal desolation. He went on, perhaps to cover that emptiness:
«I see why you didn’t understand the problem. You wouldn’t. It was a psychological block, suppressing a fact you didn’t dare face. That boy is really the center of your life. You couldn’t think the truth about him, so your subconscious just refused to let you think rationally on that subject at all.
«Now you know. Now you realize there’s no safe place, not on all the planet. The tremendous incidence of mutant births in the first generation could have told you that alone. Most such new characteristics are recessive, which means both parents have to have it for it to show in the zygote. But genetic changes are random, except for a tendency to fall into roughly similar patterns. Four-leaved clovers, for instance. Think how vast the total number of such changes must be, to produce so many corresponding changes in a couple of years. Think how many, many recessives there must be, existing only in gene patterns till their mates show up. We’ll just have to take our chances of something really deadly accumulating. We’d never know till too late.»
«The dust—»
«Yeah. The radiodust. It’s colloidal, and uncountable other radiocolloids were formed when the bombs went off, and ordinary dirt gets into unstable isotopic forms near the craters. And there are radiogases too, probably. The poison is all over the world by now, spread by wind and air currents. Colloids can be suspended indefinitely in the atmosphere.