almost restful, nothing to see, everything distant and muffled and muted--
'Watch out!'
Chase wrenched the wheel and the jeep skidded, missing the tailgate of a truck by less than a foot. They hit the curb with a bouncing jolt that threw them forward, Ruth striking her forehead above the goggles on the windshield's metal upright, blood spattering the glass like teardrops.
They had stopped with their headlights blazing into a shop window. The world was indeed going crazy. Illuminated like a stage set, the window was filled with inflatable rubber dolls with jutting red nipples and silky vaginas.
Ruth was holding her head in both hands and moaning softly, blood seeping through her fingers and running down her wrists.
If there was one part of the procedure that Cy Skrote abhorred, it was this. Bad enough to theorize about it in the sterile atmosphere of the labs, or engage in dispassionate debate over coffee with his colleagues, but the surgical blood and guts of it made him physically ill. There was no escape, however--he had to be present in the operating room, gowned and masked, custodian of the refrigerated vacuum flask containing the culture.
Standing three feet away from the operating table he had a ringside view of the surgeon at work. The column of mirror-directed light from above made every last detail clear and sharp. On a stretcher nearby the round gray flask with the chrome handle.and the recessed red stirrup release mechanism waited ominously: on its side in stenciled black letters, sterile cell culture, and underneath in scrawled graphics,
The last two digits indicated that this was the ninety-second strain to be tested. Incubation would take anything from fourteen weeks to the usual nine months, always supposing the fetus didn't self-abort. The success rate wasn't high. Of the previous ninety-one, forty-eight had been rejected within six weeks, some in under two weeks.
What had come as a surprise was the fourteen-week pregnancy. Not a termination, as had been supposed, but the full-term delivery of a perfect specimen: blind, dumb, deaf and mentally retarded, but with lungs three times the normal capacity. Dr. Rolsom had congratulated the team, calling it 'an important and encouraging breakthrough.'
Skrote tried not to look as the surgeon's scalpel sliced through the epidermis and the fatty layer of the abdomen. The surgeon made another incision at right angles to the first and a nurse folded back the flap of tissue and swabbed the V-shaped area underneath, already saturated with blood.
'Tie off,' the surgeon instructed. The nurse clamped the pumping arteries and applied ligatures to stanch the flow.
'Young, healthy, good pelvic cavity,' the surgeon said, pleased. 'She should give us a fine bouncing mute or my name's not Sweeney Todd.'
Everyone around the table laughed. It was one of his standard jokes, but it helped break the monotony.
Before going in, the surgeon glanced toward the anesthesiologist, who was looking down at the woman's face, obscured by a sterile green sheet. 'How is she?'
'Everything okay. She's dreaming of fluffy white lambs in a spring meadow.' The eyes of the anesthesiologist curved as he grinned behind his gauze mask.
'I'm fond of lambs myself,' the surgeon quipped. 'Especially with mint sauce.'
Everyone laughed again, and one of the younger nurses got the giggles.
'Right, boys and girls, in we go.' The surgeon began cutting in earnest, the three assisting nurses standing by with sponges, clamps, plastic tubes and ligatures. It was a perfectly choreographed ballet of gloved hands and shiny steel instruments. As the layers were stripped back and the cords of muscles pushed out of the way, the surgeon became more intent as his work became more intricate. In the center of the raw gaping hole the narrow end of the Fallopian tube, at the point where it entered the uterus, was now exposed. A tiny snick of an incision in the wall of the Fallopian, high up at the site of fertilization, and he was ready for the cell culture.
Grasping the red stirrup, Skrote unscrewed the heavy lid from its brass seating and lifted it out. A puff of dry ice floated away. Very carefully he withdrew the stainless-steel core and set it down on the stand alongside the operating table. Now the surgical team would take over; ensuring that the correct culture was delivered safely from lab to operating room was Skrote's task and responsibility, implantation was theirs.
Batch ninety-two was rather special. It comprised the splicing of genes from two patients with different characteristics. Both were severely deformed, yet each possessed certain physical peculiarities that, combined in the right proportions, might produce the ideal specimen. Skrote wasn't too optimistic, however. It was a wild gamble and he had the nagging fear that the 'ideal' specimen might well resemble a monster.
Part of its genetic heritage would enable it to survive in conditions normally hostile to human beings--the lungs would be rudimentary, their function taken over by gill-like growths on either side of the neck and chest. These would give it an appearance not unlike that of a humanoid water-dwelling lizard.
The other fundamental difference was in cranial capacity. Breathing deoxygenated air would render a normal-size brain comatose, followed quickly by death. So this brain had to be smaller and less complex and yet capable of the basic modes of comprehension and communication. After all, there wasn't much point in breeding a new species that was incapable of understanding commands and carrying them out.
Something between a cretin and an educationally subnormal person was what they were aiming for, with an IQ, say, in the low sixties.
Skrote closed his mind to picturing such a hybrid. Equally distasteful to him was that this creature would receive its sustenance from the body of a normal healthy woman, growing and forming inside her womb like an alien reptile. Suitable female incubators were shipped in from the mainland. Like the woman on the table, they were poor, ignorant, and sadly misinformed. Told that a minor form of pollution sickness they were suffering from (usually a rash that proper treatment could have cured) was a terminal condition, they were invited to participate in an experimental drug program that, while risky, would give them an excellent chance of survival.
'Right, kiddies. Let's sew the lady up and make everything shipshape!'
With the culture in place, fertilization would now begin. The newly formed zygote would start to divide into a cluster of 64 cells, taking about a week to travel down the Fallopian tube to the uterus. There the young embryo-- the blastocyst--would attach itself to the lining of the uterus and--if there were no complications--pregnancy would proceed in the usual way.
Using an interrupted suture, the surgeon was sewing up the subcutaneous tissue. One by one the layers were folded back, the wall of the abdomen sealed up, and finally the outer flap of skin and fatty tissue replaced and stitched, leaving a puckered V-shape edged with red against the alabaster white.
Skrote felt relieved that it was over. He thought longingly of a cup of coffee. Even more longingly he thought of his rendezvous with Natassya after dinner that evening. Her note said that she couldn't make it to the bar, their usual meeting place, but that he was to go directly to her room where she would be waiting.
The surgeon called out jovially, 'Next, please!' and the operating-room staff dutifully laughed, if a little wearily this time.
As he turned to leave, Skrote noticed a group of people watching from the observation room, high up in one corner behind the angled glass panel. Dr. Rolsom was there--he sometimes liked to look in--but it wasn't usual to see General Madden among them. Madden was gazing down with a rare smile; in fact, he seemed to be actually laughing.
For one dreadful moment Skrote imagined that Madden knew about him and Natassya. But it was impossible. He was being stupid.
'Excuse me, sir.'
'Sorry.' Skrote stepped aside as the nurse wheeled the trolley to the door, the rubber tires squealing on the linoleum floor. He looked down at the bleached face above the white sheet, the eyebrows like black brush marks on a flawless porcelain vase.
Skrote stood rooted to the spot, his heart small and hard as though the blood had been squeezed from it by an angry fist. He watched as Natassya was wheeled out and the doors swung silently shut behind her.
Sierraville. Loyalton. Vinton. Doyle. Milford. Janesville. Standish. Ravendale. Termo. Madeline. Likely.
The small towns on highway 395 rolled by, the cozy suburbanity of their names in stark contrast to what they
