Parable of the Talents

they're not exactly animals. They're a little like Terrestrial slime molds. And, like slime molds, they go through inde­pendent single-celled stages during which they eat their way through the rocks, multiplying by dividing, resembling little antifreeze-filled amoeba. When they've exhausted the food supply in their immediate neighborhoods, they unite into sluglike multicellular masses to travel to new sites where the minerals they ingest are available. They don't reproduce in their slug form as Terrestrial slime molds do. They seem to need the slug form only to produce enough of their corrosive antifreeze solution to enable them to migrate through rock to a fresh supply of food. They make soil in two ways. They eat minerals, pass these through their bodies, and shed a dust so fine and so slippery that, like graphite, it can work as a kind of lubricant. And they ooze through the rocks in men-slug form, their corrosive slime dissolving trails, cracks, and making more dust.

These creatures are living Martians! So far, though, all the specimens captured and examined at Leal Station died soon after being taken from their cold, rocky home. For that reason and others, they are both a great discovery and a They are the last discoveries that will be made by scientists working for the U.S. Government.

President Donner has sold the last of our Mars installations to a Euro-Japanese company, in fulfillment of one of his earliest campaign promises. The idea is that all nonmilitary space travel, manned and unmanned, should be priva­tized. 'If it's worth doing at all,' Donner said, 'it should be done for profit, and not as a burden on the taxpayers.' As though profit could be counted only as immediate financial gain. I was born in 2009, and for as long as I can remember, I've heard people complaining about the space program as a waste of money, and even as one of the reasons for the coun­try's deterioration.

Ridiculous! There is so much to be learned from space it­self and from the nearby worlds! And now we've found liv­ing extraterrestrials, and we're going to quit. I suppose that if the Martian 'slime molds' can be used for something— mining, perhaps, or chemistry—then they'll be protected, cultivated, bred to be even more useful. But if they prove to be of no particular use, they'll be left to survive or not as best they can with whatever impediments the company sees fit to put in their paths. If they're unlucky enough to be bad for business in some way—say they develop a taste for some of the company's building materials—they'll be lucky to survive at all. I doubt that Terrestrial environmental laws will protect them. Those laws don't even really protect plant and animal species here on Earth. And who would enforce such laws on Mars?

And yet, somehow, I'm glad our installations have been sold and not just abandoned. Selling them was bad, but it was the lesser evil. Most people wouldn't have minded see­ing them abandoned. They say we have no business wasting time or money in space when there are so many people suf­fering here on Earth, here in America. I wonder, though, where the money received in exchange for the installations has gone. I haven't noticed any new government education or jobs programs. There's been no government help for the homeless, the sick, the hungry. Squatter settlements are as big and as nasty as ever. As a country, we've given up our birthright for even less than bread and pottage. We've given it up for nothing—although I'm sure some people some­where are richer now.

Consider, though: a brand-new form of life has been dis­covered on Mars, and it got less time on the news disk than the runaway Texas boy. We're becoming more and more iso­lated as a people. We're sliding into undirected negative change, and what's worse, we're getting used to it. All too often, we shape ourselves and our futures in such stupid ways.

More news. Scientists in Australia have managed to bring a human infant to term in an artificial womb. The child was conceived in a petri dish. Nine months later, it was taken, alive and healthy, from the last in a series of complex, computer­controlled containers. The child is the normal son of parents who could not have conceived or borne a child without a great deal of medical help.

Reporters are already calling the womb containers 'eggs,' and there's some foolish popular argument over whether a 'hatched' person is as human as a 'normally born' person. There are ministers and priests arguing that this tampering with human reproduction is wrong, of course. I doubt that they'll have much to worry about for a while. The whole process is still experimental and would be avail­able only to the very rich if it were being marketed to any­one—which it isn't, yet I wonder whether it will catch on at all in this world where so many poor women are willing to serve as surrogate mothers, carrying to term the child of wealthier people even when the wealthy people are able to have a child in the normal way. If you're rich, you can have a surrogate for not much more than the price of feeding and housing her for nine months. If she's smart and you're generous, you might also wind up agreeing to feed, house, and help educate her children. And you might give her husband a job. Channa Ryan's mother did this kind of work. Accord­ing to Channa, her mother bore 13 surrogate children, none of them genetically related to her. Her marriage didn't sur­vive, but her two genetic daughters were given a chance to learn to read and write, cook, garden, and sew. That isn't enough to know in this world, of course, but it's more than most poor people learn.

It will be a long while—years, decades perhaps—before human surrogates are replaced by computerized eggs. Con­sider, though: eggs combined with cloning technology (an­other toy of the rich) would give men the