Dark Benediction

A Noah’s Ark Chorus greeted him as he passed through the animal room, to be replaced by the mindless chatter of the doll-like neutroids as soon as he entered the air conditioned neutroidsection. Dozens of blazing blond heads began dancing about their cages. Their bodies thwacked against the wire mesh as they leaped about their compartments with monkey-grace, in recognition of their feeder and keeper.

Their human appearance was broken only by two distinct features: short beaverlike tails decorated with fluffy curls of fur and an erect thatch of scalp hair that grew up into a bright candle-flame. Otherwise, they appeared completely human, with baby-pink skin, quick little smiles, and cherubic faces. They were sexually neuter and never grew beyond a predetermined age-set which varied for each series. Age-sets were available from one to ten years, human equivalent. Once a neutroid reached its age-set, it remained at this stage of retarded development until death.

“They must be getting to know you pretty well,” Anne said as she came from behind a section of cages. “A big loud welcome for Pappa, huh?”

He frowned slightly as he glanced around the gloomy room and sniffed the animal odors. “That’s funny. They don’t usually get this excited.”

She grinned. “Big confession: it started when I came in.”

He shot her a quick suspicious glance, then walked slowly along a row of cages, peering inside. He stopped suddenly be-side a three year old K-76 to stare.

“Apple cores!”

He turned slowly to face his wife, trying to swallow a sudden spurt of anger.

“Well?” he demanded.

Anne reddened. “I felt sorry for them, eating that goo from the mechanical feeders. So I drove down to Sherman III and bought six dozen cooking apples.”

“That was a mistake.”

She frowned irritably. “We can afford it.”

“That’s not the point. There’s a reason for mechanical feedings.”

“Oh? What is it?”

He hesitated, knowing she wouldn’t like the answer. But she was already stiffening.

“Let me guess,” she said coldly. “If you feed them yourself they get to love you. Right?”

“Uh, yeah. They even attach some affection to me because they know that right after I come in, the feeders get turned on.”

“I see. And if they love you, you might get queasy about running them through Room 3’s production line, eh?”

“That’s about the size of it,” he admitted.

“Okay, Terry, I feed them apples, you run your production line,” she announced firmly. “I can’t see anything contradictory about that, can you?”

Her eyes told him that he had damn well better see something contradictory about it, whether he admitted it or not.

“Planning to get real chummy with them, are you?” he inquired stiffly.

“Planning to dispose of any soon?” she countered.

“Honeymoon’s off again, eh?”

She shook her head slowly, came toward him a little. “I hope not, Terry—I hope not.” She stopped again. They watched each other doubtfully amid the chatter of the neutroids.

After a time, he turned and walked to the truck, pulled out the snare-pole and began fishing for the squealing, squeaking doll-things that bounded about like frightened monkeys in the truck’s wire mesh cage. They were one-family pets, always frightened of strangers, and these in the truck remembered him only as the villain who had dragged them away from Mamma into a terrifying world of whirling scenery and roaring traffic.

They worked for a time without talking; then Anne asked casually: “What’s the Delmont case, Terry?”

“Huh? What makes you ask?”

“I heard you mention it on the phone. Anything to do with a black eye and a scratched face?”

He nodded sourly. “Indirectly. It’s a long story. Well—you know about the evolvotron.”

“Only that Anthropos Incorporated uses it to induce mutations.”

“It’s sort of a sub-atomic surgical instrument—for doing ‘plastic surgery’ to reproductive cells—Here! Grab this chimp! Got him by the leg.”

“Oop! Got him…. Go ahead, Terry.”

“Using an evolvotron on the gene-structure of an ovum is likeplaying microscopic billiards—with protons and deuterons and alpha particles for cue-balls. The operator takes the living ovum, mounts it in the device, gets a tremendously magnified image of it with the slow-neutrino shadowscope, compares the image with a gene-map, starts gouging out submolecular tidbits with single-particle shots. He juggles them around, hammers chunks in where nothing was before, plugs up gaps, makes new gaps. Catch?”

She looked thoughtful, nodded. “Catch. And the Lord Man made neutroid from the slime of an ape,” she murmured.

“Heh? Here, catch this critter! Snare’s choking him!”

“Okay—come to Mamma… Well, go on—tell me about Delmont.”

“Delmont was a green evolvotron operator. Takes years of training, months of practice.”

“Practice?”

“It’s an art more than a science. Speed’s the thing. You’ve got to perform the whole operation from start to finish in a few seconds. Ovum dies if you take too long.”

“About Delmont—”