Alien Earth. Megan Lindholm
‘guided evolution,’ I score a seventeen point six-three. We’re not supposed to be able to get casual access to that data, but one can, if one is determined enough. And the interesting thing is that most of us who attain those high scores are determined enough. Perhaps because we, trapped inside these ‘improved’ bodies, sense, more than anyone else, that something is going wrong. Very wrong.”
“Looks fine to me.” John gave an offhand wave at the restaurant around them. “Things are going better than ever; or at least that’s what the update reports on the Wakeup line told me as we were coming in. Dirty technology is getting cleaner. Use of plastics is almost down to zero, what with the new cell-meld techniques and bacterial information storage system. Waste from harvested asteroids is down to less than six percent, and the on-rock mining techniques do even better than that. The interpopulation of the space stations by the Rabby is obviously a successful venture. The populations on both Castor and Pollux are stabilized at a constant that is ten percent under what was considered the population safety mean for human habitation thirty years ago, and …”
“Stop there,” Deckenson suggested quietly. “And think about what you just said for a minute.”
John had more than a minute, as the food arrived just then. John recognized none of it, but it didn’t bother him. Styles in serving food changed just as styles of wearing clothes. There were twenty-two native plants on Castor and seventeen on Pollux that Humans could safely eat. Thirty-nine plants that met all nutritional needs of a Human when eaten in a judicious mix. John had eaten them all, and expected to continue eating them all for his entire life. They could make them look different, and they could vary the flavor somewhat, but what it came down to was that tapa lily was tapa lily, and it was the basis of your diet, whether your gourmet chef prepared it or you ate standard rations from the ship’s dispenser.
There was a brown rectangle in a brown sauce, a salad, small orange cubes of something, and a tangle of white noodles with pinkish flakes of something in it. The waiter refilled Deckenson’s water glass, and set a small steaming mug in front of John, then departed. John picked up the mug immediately and sipped at it. Stim. Sort of. A little too bitter. He sweetened it with taro syrup from the dispenser on the table and tried it again. Better. But already almost gone. He was beginning to see Deckenson’s point about a world scaled down to smaller people. He set the mug down, but Deckenson had already noticed his wry expression.
“I’ll order more. For both of us. I think I’d like to try it.”
“What did you mean, think about what I had just said?” John asked. He found he was hungry, and tried to fork loose some of the brown rectangle, but it clung together stubbornly. Fibrous. Probably tubers from Pollux barber cane, then. He found a small knife by his plate and used it to free a chunk while Deckenson signaled the waiter for more stim.
“Mostly your population statistic. While the information people are crowing about our population being stable yet self-supporting even if under mean size, others of us are seeing it as a very real danger signal.” Deckenson had been staring past John’s ear as he spoke, his eyes unfocused. Now he suddenly seemed to come back to himself with a start. “Pardon me if I review things you already know,” he said vaguely. “It helps me organize my thoughts.”
John nodded as the stim arrived. The waiter left a carafe of it this time. John kept sawing at the brown rectangle of food with the small knife as Deckenson talked.
“Consider this. Human reproduction used to be a simple matter of two people mating. A child was born from the female ten lunar months later. It was easy, it was efficient. No planning was necessary or artificial assistance of any kind. Unplanned reproduction was what the race worried about back then. Well, now it’s the opposite. By the time a female is ready to release a mature egg cell, the cell is actually too old to be viable. The average woman has no possibility of conceiving. So oogonial cells are harvested from females of twenty years or so and carefully pushed into oogenesis. The resulting ovum is fertilized with sperm that has likewise been harvested from young males and pushed into maturity. The zygote is transferred to an artificial womb and nurtured there for six weeks, before it is then implanted in a Mother. The Mother carries it in her Human womb for perhaps another six months. At least, if the embryo is lucky, its mother can carry it that long. At that point, the developing child is usually too large for our ‘improved design’ women to carry or to bear. Our reduced size comes from growth inhibitors, not a true evolution. So our embryos are disproportionately large to the Mother. So the embryo is again surgically harvested and placed in an artificial womb where it is tended until its caretakers decide the baby is mature enough to be born. It is then removed from the artificial womb and introduced to independent life by being placed in a creche with other infants of its generation. There has always been talk of finding a way to produce a child totally outside of a Human womb, but our research in that area is, as they put it, ‘economically unfeasible for the paltry success rate.’”
John had a piece of the brown rectangle in his mouth and was chewing it slowly as his mind worked through what Deckenson was saying. He swallowed it; slightly bitter flavor, and he still couldn’t identify what it was. But it was good. He started sawing off another piece. “You’re saying women can’t bear living children anymore. That the Human race can no longer reproduce without artificial aids.”
Deckenson closed his eyes dramatically and sighed. He opened them again. “Exactly. I am saying that the sexual act has become recreational only, totally unrelated to reproduction. I am saying that pregnancy is no longer related to mothering. That may be an even more serious breakdown than the separation of sex from reproduction. There are studies, quite ancient; I am almost afraid to ask if you know of them. The information dates back to Earth life, and was gathered when scientists still had access to other primates. Do you know what is meant by the phrase ‘together-together monkeys’?”
John shrugged. “Some subspecies of primate, I suppose. What am I eating?”
“Pseudo-meat. A reconstruction based on chemical analysis. We assemble the vegetable nutrients to resemble the original components, and add fiber to simulate the texture of flesh. Those orange cubes approximate an Earth vegetable called carrots. The noodles are a simulated wheat pasta with artificial sea-life meat, and the salad is a salad. But, to get back to the monkeys, they were deprived of their natural mother, and offered only the companionship of other infants. They developed an unnatural pattern of clinging to one another in groups. Adults from those experiments were incapable of the behavior necessary to successful mating. When they did reproduce, say by artificial insemination, they either neglected or abused their children—I mean offspring, of course.”
“Of course.” John had managed to swallow what had been in his mouth. He looked at what was left on his plate in distaste. He could eat it. Intellectually, he knew it was only vegetable protein, no matter how they had prepared it. His training in following local customs was good. He could eat it. But. “Isn’t this sort of thing illegal?” He waved his fork at his plate.
“Not anymore. First, when I was very young, there was a legal decision that one would have to prove intent to stimulate carnivorous interest rather than mere culinary experimentation. And, more recently, there was a legal decision that substance was more important than appearance. As we’re the only animals on Castor or Pollux, any attempt at becoming a true carnivore would have to involve cannibalism of some sort. There are separate and totally adequate laws to prevent that sort of thing. No one’s trying to encourage cannibalism; this is just satisfying a historical curiosity for most of us.”
“Still.” John poked at the pseudo-meat with his fork, then took a bite of the salad instead. Even it tasted strange. He sampled the noodles, trying to miss the pink flakes of pseudo-meat. It was good, very good. He looked up to find Deckenson pouring himself some stim. John cleared his throat. “There’s a point to all this, I take it. I mean, making me feel like an outmoded, brutish sort, and then feeding me pseudo-meat and telling me that the Human race has improved itself to the brink of extinction.”
“Of course. I just don’t know that you’re ready to hear it yet.”
“That sounds familiar. In fact, the last time I dealt with anyone from Earth Affirmed, I recall our