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 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 unerotic 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 “sister” 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 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 hat 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.
And so the World Computer had been programmed as an instrument of compassion. This act of humanity had done more than anything else to silence those who objected to cloning.
Of course, there were still problems. All these Mothers must know, however dimly, that soon after birth they would be separated forever from the child they were to bring into the world. That was not a sorrow that any man could understand; but women were stronger than men, and they would get over it—more often than not by taking part again in the creation of another life.
Duncan remained in the shadows, not wishing to be seen and certainly not wishing to get involved. Some of those incipient Mothers could crush him to a pulp if they grabbed him and whirled him into the dance. He had now noticed that a handful of men—presumably medical orderlies or staff from the clinic—were circulating light-heartedly with the Mothers and entering into the spirit of the festivities.
He could not help wondering if there had also been some deliberate psychological selection here. Several of the men looked very effeminate, and were treating their partners with what could only be called sisterly affection. They were obviously dear friends; and that was all they would ever be.
No one could have seen, in the darkness, Duncan’s smile of amused recollection. He had just remembered—for the first time in years—a boy who had fallen in love with him in his late teens. It is hard to reject anyone who is devoted to you, but although Duncan had good-naturedly succumbed a few times to Nikki’s blandishments, he had eventually managed to discourage his admirer, despite torrents of tears. Pity is not a good basis for any relationship, and Duncan could never feel quite happy with someone whose affections were exclusively polarized toward one sex. What a contrast to the aggressive normality of Karl, who did not give a damn whether he had more affairs with boys or girls, or vice versa. At least, until the Calindy episode...
These memories, so unexpectedly dredged up from the past, made Duncan aware of the complicated emotional crosscurrents that must be sweeping through this place. And he suddenly recalled that disturbing conversation—or, rather, monologue—with Sir Mortimer Keynes...
That he would follow in the steps of Colin, and of Malcolm before, was something that Duncan had always taken for granted, without any discussion. But now he realized, rather late in the day, that there was a price for everything, and that it should be considered very carefully before the contract was finally signed.
Cloning was neither good nor bad; only its purpose was important. And that purpose should not be one that was trivial or selfish.
32. Golden Reef
The vivid green band of palms and the brilliant white crescent of the perfect beach were now more than a kilometer away, on the far side of the barrier reef. Even through the dark glasses which he dared not remove for a moment, the scene was almost painfully bright; when he looked in the direction of the sun, and caught its sparkle off the ocean swell, Duncan was completely blinded. Though this was a trifling matter, it enhanced his feeling of separation from all his companions. True, most of them also wore dark glasses—but in their case it was a convenience, not a necessity. Despite his wholly terrestrial genes, it seemed that he had adapted irrevocably to the light of a world ten times farther from the sun.
Beneath the smoothly sliding flanks of the triple hull, the water was so clear that it added to Duncan’s feeling of insecurity. The boat seemed to be hanging in midair, with no apparent means of support, over a dappled sea bed five or ten meters below. It seemed strange that this should worry him, when he had looked down on Earth from orbit, hundreds of kilometers above the atmosphere.
He was startled by a sudden, distant crash, altogether out of place on this idyllically peaceful morning. It came from somewhere out at sea, and Duncan spun around just in time to see a column of spray slowly falling back into the water. Surely no one would be allowed to set off submarine explosions in this area...