Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein
Let them talk. Young Felix knew what he wanted to do. He would be an encyclopedic synthesist. All the really great men were synthesists. The whole world was their oyster. Who stood a chance of being elected to the Board of Policy but a synthesist? What specialist was there who did not, in the long run, take his orders from a synthesist? They were the leaders, the men who knew everything, the philosopher-kings of whom the ancients had dreamed.
He kept his dream to himself. He appeared to be pulling out of his pre-adolescent narcissist period and to be undergoing the social integration of adolescence with no marked trouble. His developers were unaware that he was headed for an insuperable obstacle. Youths seldom plan to generalize their talents; it takes more subtle imagination than they usually possess to see romance in being a policy former.
Hamilton looked at Mordan. The man’s face invited confidence. “You’re a synthesist, aren’t you? You aren’t a geneticist.”
“Naturally. I couldn’t specialize in the actual techniques. That takes a lifetime.”
“The best geneticist on your staff can’t hope to sit where you are sitting.”
“Of course not. They wouldn’t wish to.”
“Could I become your successor? Go ahead—answer me. You know my chart.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. You have an excellent memory, more than adequate for any other purpose, but it’s not an eidetic memory. A synthesist must have complete memory in order to be able to cover the ground he must cover.”
“And without it,” Hamilton added, “a man can never be recognized as a synthesist. He just isn’t one, any more than a man can claim to be an engineer who can’t solve fourth degree equations in his head. I wanted to be a synthesist and I wasn’t equipped for it. When it was finally pounded into my head that I couldn’t take first prize, I wasn’t interested in second prize.”
“Your son could be a synthesist.”
Hamilton shook his head. “It doesn’t matter any more. I still have the encyclopedic viewpoint, but I wouldn’t want to trade places with you. You asked me when and how it was that I first came to the conclusion that life doesn’t mean anything. I’ve told you how I first began to have my doubts, but the point is: I still have ’em.”
“Wait,” Mordan put in. “You still have not heard the whole story. It was planned that eidetic memory would be incorporated in your line either in your generation, or in your father’s. Your children will have it, if you co-operate. There is still something lacking which needs to be added and will be added. I said you were a survival type. You are—except for one thing. You don’t want children. From a biological standpoint that is as contra-survival as a compulsion to suicide. You got that tendency from your dexter great-grandfather. The tendency had to be accepted at the time as he was dead before his germ plasm was used and we hadn’t much supply in the bank to choose from. But it will be corrected at this linkage. Your children will be anxious to have children—I can assure you of that.”
“What’s that to me?” Hamilton demanded. “Oh, I don’t doubt that you can do it. You can wind ’em up and make ’em run. You can probably eliminate my misgivings and produce a line that will go on happily breeding for the next ten million years. That still doesn’t make it make sense. Survival! What for? Until you can give me some convincing explanation why the human race should go on at all, my answer is ‘no’.” He stood up.
“Leaving?” asked Mordan.
“If you will excuse me.”
“Aren’t you interested in knowing something about the woman whom we believe is suitable for your line?”
“Not particularly.”
“I choose to interpret that as permission,” Mordan answered affably. “Look over there.” He touched a control on his desk; Hamilton looked where he had been directed to. A section of the wall faded away and gave place to a stereo scene. It was as if they were looking out through an open window. Before them lay a garden swimming pool, its surface freshly agitated…by diving, apparently, for a head broke the surface of the water. The swimmer took three easy strokes toward the pick-up, and climbed out on the bank with effortless graceful strength. She rolled to her knees, stood up bare and lovely. She stretched and laughed, apparently from sheer animal spirits, and glided out of the picture. “Well?” asked Mordan.
“She’s comely, but I’ve seen others.”
“It’s not necessary that you ever lay eyes on her,” the Moderator added hastily. “She’s your fifth cousin, by the way. The combination of your charts will be simple.” He snapped off the scene, replaced it with a static picture. “Your chart is on the right; hers is on the left.” Two additional diagrams then appeared, one under his, one under hers. “Those are the optimum haploid charts for your respective gametes. They combine so—” He touched another control; a fifth chart formed itself in the center of the square formed by the four others.
The charts were not pictures of chromosomes, but were made up of the shorthand used by genetic technicians to represent the extremely microscopic bits of living matter which are the arbiters of human make-up. Each chromosome was represented by a pattern which more nearly resembled a spectrogram than any other familiar structure. But the language was a language of experts; to a layman the charts were meaningless.
Even Mordan could not read the charts unassisted. He depended on his technicians to explain them to him when necessary. Thereafter his unfailing memory enabled him to recall the significance of the details.
One thing alone was evident to the uninstructed eye: the two upper charts, Hamilton’s and the girl’s, contained twice as many chromosome patterns—forty-eight to be exact—as the charts of the gametes underneath them. But the chart of the proposed offspring contained forty-eight representations of chromosomes—twenty-four from each of its parents.
Hamilton ran his eye over the charts with interest, an interest he carefully repressed. “Intriguing, I’m sure,” he said indifferently. “Of course I don’t understand it.”
“I’d be glad to explain it to you.”
“Don’t bother. It’s hardly worth while, is it?”
“I suppose not.” Mordan cleared the controls; the pictures snapped off. “I must ask you to excuse me, Felix. Perhaps we can talk another day.”
“Certainly, if you wish.” He glanced at his host in surprise, but Mordan was as friendly and as smilingly urbane as ever. Hamilton found himself in the outer office a few moments later. They had exchanged goodbyes with all the appropriate intimate formality of name-friends; nevertheless Hamilton felt a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling of incompleteness, as if the interview had terminated before it was over. To be sure, he had said no, but he had not said it in all the detail he had wished to.
Mordan went back to his desk and switched the charts on again. He studied them, recalling all that he had been taught about them and dwelling with interest on the middle one.
A chime played the phrase announcing his chief technical assistant. “Come in, Martha,” he invited without looking around.
“I’m in, Chief,” she replied almost at once.
“Ah—so you are,” he answered, turning to her.
“Got a cigaret?”
“Help yourself.” She did so from the jeweled container on his desk, inhaled it into life, and settled down comfortably… She was older than he, iron grey, and looked as competent as she was. Her somber laboratory coveralls were in marked contrast to the dignified dandyism of his costume, but they fitted her character.
“Hamilton just left, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“When do we start?”
“Mmmm… How would the second Tuesday of next week do?”
She raised her brows. “As bad as that?”
“I’m afraid so. He said so. I kicked him out—gently—before he had time to rationalize himself into a position from which he would not care to back down later.”
“Why did he refuse? Is he in love?”
&
“Then what’s the catch?” She got up, went to the screen and stared at Hamilton’s chart, as if she might detect the answer there.
“Mmmm… He posed me a question which I must answer correctly—else he will not co-operate.”
“Huh? What was the question?”
“I’ll ask you. Martha, what is the meaning of life?”
“What! Why, what a stupid question!”
“He did not ask it stupidly.”
“It’s a psychopathic question, unlimited, unanswerable, and, in all probability, sense free.”
“I’m not so sure, Martha.”
“But—Well, I won’t attempt to argue with you outside my own field. But it seems to me that ‘meaning’ is a purely anthropomorphic conception. Life simply is. It exists.”
“He used the idea anthropomorphically. What does life mean to men, and why should he, Hamilton, assist in its continuance? Of course I couldn’t answer him. He had me. And he proposed to play Sphinx and not let us proceed until I solve his riddle.”
“Fiddlesticks!” She snapped the cigaret away savagely. “What does he think this clinic is—a place to play word games? A man should not be allowed to stand in the way of racial progress. He doesn’t own the life in his body. It belongs to all of us—to the race. He’s a fool.”
“You know he’s not, Martha.” He pointed to the chart.
“No,” she admitted, “he’s not a fool. Nevertheless, he should be required to co-operate. It’s not as if it would hurt him or inconvenience him in any way.”
“Tut, tut, Martha. There’s a little matter of constitutional law.”
“I know. I know. I abide by it, but I don’t have to worship it. Granted, it’s a wise law, but this is a special case.”
“They are all special cases.”
She did not answer him but turned back to the charts. “My oh my,” she said half to herself, “what a chart! What a beautiful chart, chief.”
CHAPTER THREE
“This we covenant in the Name of Life Immortal”
“TO THIS we pledge our lives and sacred honor:
“To destroy no fertile life,
“To hold as solemn secret that which may be divulged to us, directly, or indirectly through the techniques of our art, concerning the private matters of our clients,
“To practice our art only with the full and uninfluenced consent of our client zygotes,
“To hold ourselves, moreover, guardian in full trust for the future welfare of infant zygotes and to do only that which we soberly and earnestly believe to be in their best interests,
“To respect meticulously the laws and customs of the group social in which we practice,
“This we covenant in the Name of Life Immortal.”
Extract from the Mendelian Oath
Circa 2075 A.D. (Old Style)
Sweet peas, the evening primrose, the ugly little fruit fly Drosophila—back in the XIXth and XXth centuries the Monk Gregor Mendel and Doctor Morgan of the ancient University of Columbia used these humble tools to establish the basic laws of genetics. Simple laws, but subtle.
In the nucleus of every cell of every zygote, whether man or fruit fly, sweet pea or race horse, is a group of threadlike bodies—chromosomes. Along the threads are incredibly tiny somethings, on the order of ten times the size of the largest protein molecules. They are the genes, each one of which controls some aspect of the entire structure, man, animal, or plant, in which the cell is lodged. Every living cell contains within it the plan for the entire organism.
Each man’s cells contain forty-eight chromosomes—twenty-four pairs. Half of them he derived from his mother, half from his father. In each one of a pair of chromosomes, there are genes, thousands of them, in one-to-one correspondence with the genes from the chromosomes of the other parent. Thus each parent “casts a vote” on each characteristic. But some “votes” carry more weight than others. Such “votes” are called dominant, the weaker, recessive. If one parent supplies the gene for brown eyes, while the other parent supplies the gene for blue eyes, the child will have brown eyes—brown is “dominant.” If both parents supply the gene for brown eyes, the vote is unanimous, but the result is the same—for that generation. But it always requires “unanimous vote” to produce blue eyes.
Nevertheless, the gene for blue eyes may be passed on from generation to generation, unnoticed but unchanged. The potentialities of a race are passed on unchanged—except for mutation—from parent to child. They may be shuffled and dealt and shuffled again, producing an inconceivable number of unique individuals, but the genes are unchanged.
Chess men may be arranged on the board in many combinations, but the unit men do not vary. Fifty-two playing cards may be dealt to produce an enormous number of different hands, but the cards are the original fifty-two. One hand may be full of high cards; another may be worthless—pure chance.
But suppose you were permitted to make up the best hand of five cards possible out of the first ten cards dealt? The chance of getting the best possible hand has been increased two hundred and fifty-two times! (Check it.)
Such is the method of racial improvement by gene selection.
A life-producing cell in the gonads of a male is ready to divide to form gametes. The forty-eight chromosomes intertwine frantically, each with its opposite number. So close is this conjugation that genes or groups of genes may even trade places with their opposites from the other chromosomes. Presently this dance ceases. Each member of a pair of chromosomes withdraws from its partner as far as possible, until there is a cluster of twenty-four chromosomes at each end of the cell. The cell splits, forming two new cells, each with only twenty-four chromosomes, each containing exactly half of the potentialities of the parent cell and parent zygote.
One of these cells contains a chromosome—the X-chromosome—which declares that any zygote formed with its help will be female.
The two cells divide again. But in this fission the chromosomes themselves divide, endwise, thereby conserving every gene and every one of the twenty-four chromosomes. The end product is four wigglers—male gametes, spermatozoa—half of whom can produce females; half, males. The male producers are exactly alike in their gene assortments and are exact complements of the female producers. This is the key point in the technique of gene selection.
The heads of the male producers average four microns in length; the heads of the female producers average five microns in length—another key point.
In the female gonad the evolution of the gamete, or ovum, is like that described for the male gametes, with two exceptions. After the reduction-division in which the number of chromosomes per cell is reduced from forty-eight to twenty-four the result is not two ova, but one ovum and one “polar body.” The polar body is a pseudo egg, containing a chromosome pattern complementary to that of the true gamete, but it is sterile. It’s a nobody that never will be anybody.
The ovum divides again, throwing off another polar body which has the same pattern as the ovum. The original polar body divides again, producing two more polar bodies of complementary pattern. Thus the polar bodies of pattern complementary to the ovum always exceed in number those of identical pattern. This is a key fact.
All ova may become either male or female. Sex of the infant zygote is determined by the cell provided by the father; the mother has no part in it.
The above is a very rough picture. It is necessary to compress, to exaggerate, to omit detail, to use over-simplified analogy. For example, the terms “dominant” and “recessive” are relative terms; and characteristics are rarely determined by one gene alone. Furthermore, mutations—spontaneous changes in the genes themselves—occur with greater frequency than this account has emphasized. But, the picture is reasonably correct in its broad outlines.
How can these facts be used to produce the sort of man or woman one wishes to produce? Offhand, the question appears simple. An adult male produces hundreds of billions of gametes. Ova are produced on no
But it is necessary to recognize the combination wanted when it shows up. And that can be done only by examining the gene patterns in the chromosomes.
Well? We can keep gametes alive outside the body…and genes, while infinitesimally small, are large enough to be recognized under our ultramicroscopes. Go ahead. Take a look. Is it the gamete we want, or is it one of its lesser brothers? If the latter, then reject it, and look again.
Wait a moment! Genes are such tiny things that to examine one is to disturb it. The radiations used to see a gamete closely enough to tell anything about its chromosomes will produce a storm of mutations. Sorry…the thing you were looking for isn’t there any more. You’ve changed it—more probably killed it.
So we fall back on the most subtle and powerful tool of research…inference. You will remember that a single male gonad cell produces two groups of gametes, complementary in their chromosome patterns. The female producers have the larger heads; the males are more agile. We can separate them.
If, in a given small constellation of male gametes, enough members are examined to determine that they all stem from the same parent cell, then we may examine in minute detail the group producing the sex we do not want. From the chromosome-gene pattern of the group examined we can infer the complementary pattern of the group kept free of the perils of examination.
With female gametes the problem is similar. The ovum need not leave its natural environment in the body of the female. The polar bodies, worthless and non-viable in themselves, are examined. Their patterns are either identical with that of their sister cell, or complementary. Those that are complementary are more numerous than those identical. The pattern of the ovum may be inferred with exactness.
Half the cards are face up. Therefore we know the value of the cards face down. We can bet—or wait for a better hand.
Romantic writers of the first days of genetics dreamed of many fantastic possibilities—test-tube babies, monsters formed by artificial mutation, fatherless babies, babies assembled piece by bit from a hundred different parents. All these horrors are possible, as the geneticists of the Great Khans proved, but we citizens of this Republic have rejected such tampering with our life stream. Infants born with the assistance of the neo-Ortega-Martin gene selection technique are normal babies, stemming from normal germ plasm, born of normal women, in the usual fashion.