“Have you planned an itinerary for them yet?”
“It’s coming along. Luna Tivoli, Titan, the whole interplanetary circuit. Though we’ll start them in the Antarctic. Accommodations, details—everything’s under control.”
“Good. A cosmic honeymoon. Maybe even a small bundle of joy to brighten the tale. That would be something, if he turned out fertile! We know she is, by God!”
D’Amore said worriedly, “Concerning that: the Prolisse woman is undergoing tests even now.”
“So you’ve got her. Splendid, splendid! Did she resist?”
“She was given a valid cover story. She thinks she’s being checked for alien viruses. By the time she wakes up, we’ll have the semen analysis and our answer.”
Chalk nodded brusquely. D’Amore left him, and the large man scooped the tape of Elise’s visit to Burris from its socket and fitted it into the viewer for another scanning. Chalk had been against the idea of letting her see him, at first, despite Aoudad’s strong recommendation. But in short order Chalk had come to understand some advantages of it. Burris had not had a woman since his return to Earth. Signora Prolisse, according to Aoudad (who was in a position to know!) had a peppery hunger for the distorted body of her late husband’s shipmate. Let them get together, then; see Burris’s response. A prize bull should not be nudged into a highly publicized mating without some preliminary tests.
The tape was graphic and explicit. Three hidden cameras, only a few molecules in lens diameter, had recorded everything. Chalk had viewed the sequence three times, but there were always new subtleties to derive. Watching unsuspecting couples in the act of love gave him no particular thrill; he obtained his pleasures in more refined manners, and the sight of the beast with two backs was interesting only to adolescents. But it was useful to know something of Burris’s performance.
He sped the tape past the preliminary conversation. How bored she seems while he tells of his adventures! How frightened he seems when she exposes her body! What terrifies him? He is no stranger to women. Of course, that was in his old life. Perhaps he fears that she will find his new body hideous and turn away from him at the crucial instant. The moment of truth. Chalk pondered it. The cameras could not reveal Burris’s thoughts, nor even his emotional constellation, and Chalk himself had not taken steps to detect his inner feelings. So all had to be by inference.
Certainly Burris was reluctant. Certainly the lady was determined. Chalk studied the naked tigress as she staked out her claim. It seemed for a while as though Burris would spurn her—not interested in sex, or in any event not interested in Elise. Too noble to top his friend’s widow? Or still afraid to open himself to her, even in the face of her unquestioned yearning? Well, he was naked now. Elise still undeterred. The doctors who had examined Burris upon his return said that he was still capable of the act—so far as they could tell—and now it was quite clear that they had been right.
Elise’s arms and legs waved aloft. Chalk tugged at his dewlaps as the tiny figures on the screen acted out the rite. Yes, Burris could make love even now. Chalk lost interest as the coupling ran to its climax. The tape petered out after a final shot of limp, depleted figures side by side on the rumpled bed. He could make love, but what about babies? Chalk’s men had intercepted Elise soon after she had left Burris’s room. A few hours ago the lusty wench had lain unconscious on a doctor’s table, the heavy legs apart. But Chalk sensed that this time he was bound to be disappointed. Many things were within his control; not all.
D’Amore was back. “The report’s in.”
“And?”
“No fertile sperm. They can’t quite figure out what they’ve got, but they swear it won’t reproduce. The aliens must have done a switch there, too.”
“Too bad,” Chalk sighed. “That’s one line of approach we’ll have to scratch. The future Mrs. Burris won’t have any children by him.”
D’Amore laughed. “She’s got enough babies already, hasn’t she?”
FIFTEEN: THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS
To Burris, the girl had little sensual appeal coming along as she did in the wake of Elise Prolisse. But he liked her. She was a kindly, pathetic, fragile child. She meant well. The potted cactus touched him. It seemed too humble a gesture to be anything but friendliness.
And she was unappalled by his appearance. Moved, yes. A bit queasy, yes. But she looked him right in the eye, concealing any dismay she might feel.
He said, “Are you from around here?”
“No. I’m from back East. Please sit down. Don’t stand up on my account”
“It’s all right. I’m really quite strong, you know.”
“Are they going to do anything for you here in the hospital?”
“Just tests. They have an idea they can take me out of this body and put me into a normal human one.”
“How wonderful!”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I suspect it isn’t going to work. The whole thing’s a million miles up right now, and before they bring it down to Earth—” He spun the cactus on the bedside table. “But why are you in the hospital, Lona?”
“They had to fix my lungs some. Also my nose and throat.”
“Hayfever?” he asked.
“I put my head in a disposal sac,” she said simply.
A crater yawned briefly beneath Burris’s feet. He clung to his equilibrium. What rocked him, as much as what she had said, was the toneless way she had said it. As though it were nothing at all to let acid eat your bronchi.
“You tried to kill yourself?” he blurted.
“Yes. They found me fast, though.”
“But—why? At your age!” Patronizingly, hating himself for the tone. “You have everything to live for!”
The eyes grew big. Yet they lacked depth; he could not help contrasting them with the smoldering coals in Elise’s sockets. “You don’t know about me?” she asked, voice still small.
Burris grinned. “I’m afraid not.”
“Lona Kelvin. Maybe you didn’t catch the name. Or maybe you forgot. I know. You were still out in space when it all happened.”
“You’ve lost me two turns back.”
“I was in an experiment. Multiple-embryo ovatransplantation, they called it. They took a few hundred eggs out of me and fertilized them and grew them. Some in the bodies of other women, some in incubator things. About a hundred of the babies were born. It took six months. They experimented on me last year just about this time.”
The last ledge of false assumptions crumbled beneath him. Burris had seen a high-school girl, polite, empty-headed, concerned to some mild extent about the strange creature in the room across the hall, but mainly involved with the tastes and fashions, whatever they were, of her chronological peer group. Perhaps she was here to have her appendix dissolved, or for a nose bob. Who could tell? But suddenly the ground had shifted and he started to view her in a more cosmic light. A victim of the universe.
“A hundred babies? I never heard a thing about it, Lona!”
“You must have been away. They made a big fuss.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen now.”
“You didn’t bear any of the babies yourself, then?”
“No. No. That’s the whole thing. They took the eggs away from me, and that was where it all stopped, for me. Of course, I got a lot of publicity. Too much.” She peered at him shyly. “I’m boring you, all this talk about myself.”
“But I want to know.”
“It isn’t very interesting. I was on the vid a lot. And in the tapes. They wouldn’t leave me alone. I had nothing much to say, because I hadn’t done anything, you know. Just a donor. But when my name got out, they came around to me. Reporters all the time. Never alone, and yet always alone, do you know? So I couldn’t take it any more. All I wanted—a couple of babies out of my own body, not a hundred babies out of machines. So I tried to kill myself.”