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Anne McCaffrey - Horse From A Different SeaARE WE BABES IN THE WOODS? OR I
SHOULD say, babes in space. I don't mean beating the Russians to a manned
moonbase or setting up a space hospital or making Mars adaptable to our
survival there to ease the population explosion here. Our problem is more
basic than that: can man survive as Homo sapiens or a reasonable facsimile
thereof. In that department, are we wetting our spacesuits!I know what I'm
talking about. Only I can't talk. Not yet, since my evidence hasn't come to
light, so to speak. It's due soon and, as an ambulance chaser from way back,
I've got to be there. I'd rather know right off what the competition makes out
as.We—that is, mankind, Earthtype—are in for one helluva jolt and this is
one therapeutic pill that has no sugar coating—unless it's an LSD cube. I'm
not the only one in the medical fraternity to realize that there's something
queer in the conversion chamber. Some of us tumbled to it six months ago. The
research is not the stuff of which AMA citations are made, but it will be
handy when Itoldyouso time comes.For me it started when my perennial
maternity case phoned up and asked for an appointment."Buzzyboy says I must
be pregnant again," Liz Lattimore said with understandable grimness in her
voice. She has six under six—well, one set of twins.Buzz is a guy on a
single track, business and monkey business. As a kind of moral justice, he has
sympathetic reactions to each of Liz's pregnancies in the form of violent
morning nausea. Oh yes, it hap '166 pens. Liz may develop varicose veins,
hemorrhoids, boils, hot flashes, heartburn, and high blood pressure during her
gestations. Buzz gets the morning sickness. "How long since you missed a
period, Liz?" I asked her."That's just it, Ted. This time he must be
sympathetic to someone else because I came regular as clockwork last
week.""On a possible sixth pregnancy, you'd better see me."She did. She
wasn't pregnant."We had a fight a while ago," she told me after she'd
dressed. "Buzz flounced out of the house like an injured Cub Scout. When he
came home, he wore that merchandisebetterthanthou expression. Sometimes, Ted,
it's a pure relief to me when Buzz cats around so I don't whinge."She
paused, about to add something more but hesitated. Even if she had voiced her
suspicion then, I doubt it would've made much difference."Anything I can do,
Liz?""Outside of helping to suppress a paternity suit if the case arises, I
don't think so. We made up our differences." She rolled her eyes with droll
expressiveness."Seriously, Liz, I'm glad you're not freshening again. You're
run ragged now. Send Buzz in for a checkup. He may need it."Buzz came in the
next day at noon, which proved that he was now worried about himself."How
come you said Liz wasn't pregnant?""Because she isn't. Praise be!""Then
how come I got this damned morning nausea? I only get it when she's got buns
in the oven.""Nausea is a symptom not necessarily exclusive to pregnancy.
Especially in the male of the species."As I mentioned, we're such
babesinspace."Off the record, Buzz, could you be sympathetic to someone
else?"Buzz flushed."Ted, I'm nuts about Liz no matter what I do or say. I
only go catting when we've had a fight or she's too pregnant to screw. Hell,
Ted, if I didn't love her so much, d'you think I'd go home every night to a
house full of squalling brats?""Well, that was quite an imagination you
projected the other afternoon at Casey's.""At Casey's?" Buzz swallowed. "I
didn't know you were there.""Buzz, your voice'd carry to your funeral. Was
it the girl at Lady Linda's?"A strange look crossed Buzz's face and I could
see him about to evade the question with some Lattimorian verbal embroidery.
"She was the damnedest woman I ever screwed, Ted. Once was, by God, enough.
But that once..." Buzz whistled slowly, shaking his head.Something in his
attitude inhibited further questions, so I changed the subject by getting him
to strip. After a thorough physical I found only a little hard lump near the
large intestine, but not situated where it could cause pressure that might
result in nausea. I sent him to the hospital for a gastrointestinal series but
the results were inconclusive. I saw no cause for alarm, so I told him that
the nausea was caused by overwork—with a wink—and to give up smoking.In the
next few weeks I examined four more seriously nauseated males with small
intestinal lumps. I also heard of seventeen more around town. Then I had a
visit from the leading local Boy Scout and our little unprepared Explorer gave
me my first definite lead."Doc, can I see you for a minute? I mean, you're
not too tired or anything?"When six feet two inches and 185 pounds of
Explorer Boy Scout Horace Baker comes sneaking around after my nurse has left,
I'd better not be too tired to see him."Now, what's wrong with you, Hoke?
You look mighty pale for Glen Cove's answer to a maiden's prayer?"The boy
literally cringed away from my buddytype arm."Hey, feller, did I strike too
close to home?" I led him to the surgery table."Aw, Doc, I'm in awful
trouble." He groaned and averted his head."You mean," and I put on my best
Ben Gazzara pose, "you've got some girl in trouble?""Naw," and he was
momentarily indignant, "I wear my pants too tight. No, Doc, it's me. Ever
since I went... to... Mrs. Linda's..." His voice failed him.A kaleidoscope
of impressions overwhelmed me for a moment at this confession. Kids grow up so
fast. A few flashes of the red squally baby I'd delivered from Mrs. Baker
merged into Explorer Hoke complete with merit badge sash, approaching in best
Indian fashion Lady Linda's modestly situated house of seven delights. I
wasn't sure whether I was glad or sorry that Hoke had taken his lustiness to
Linda's. I was relieved that his experiments hadn't taken root, as it were, in
any of his peers. Hoke needn't worry about VD: Linda's girls were clean. I had
no remedy for his conscience, however."Well, now, Hoke, I don't think you
have anything more to worry about than overactive sex glands. Linda's girls
are—""Oh, it's not that. Doc. It's just that I can't eat. Nothing stays
down. It's worse in the mornings, and Mom notices that I don't pack it
away—hey!"Past the first sentence I had dropped the TV medic pose and
stretched him out flat. My fingers dug into his big gut and, sure enough, the
precocious Explorer had joined the Group.I gave him some dramamine and told
him it was indigestion caused by a guilty conscience and to eat spaghetti for
breakfast. He fortunately didn't argue because I had no more quick answers. I
hurried him out, locked up, and went on a professional call.Linda herself
opened the door."Dr. Martin! You're psychic," she said by way of greeting.
"I hate to mix pleasure with business and I'll expect your bill...""You
won't get one because I am here on business, Linda," I said, trying not to be
too brusque. "I'd appreciate seeing you? new girl for a brief professional
inquiry."Linda looked stunned, an expression I never thought to see on her
face."She's who I was calling you for." And Linda gestured me to follow her
up the stairs. "She's been losing weight steadily. She's skin and bones and
you know that doesn't bed easy.""Nausea?""Doesn't mention it. Until three
days ago she had the appetite of an elephant, but you'd never guess it to look
at her." Linda was slightly jealous."How long's she been with you?""About
five weeks. A friend sent her to me from Chicago. She's got a sister in the
business there. She's good but funny, no one wants her steady. She's educated,
too: speaks very good English.""She's foreign?""Must be, but I can't place
her accent and I never ask too many personal questions."The room Linda
gestured me to enter was dark and rank with a heavy, musty, unairedattic odor.
A dim light shone on the gaunt face of the dying girl. She was dying. It's an
indescribable but recognizable look which I've seen too often in my years of
practice. The pulse in her spiderthin wrist was barely discernible; her
heartbeat mumed and erratic. She opened her eyes at my touch, then smiled
wanly at Linda standing behind me."Too much at once. Now too little, too
late. But thanks, Linda. I won't be much trouble, I promise." She spoke in a
raspy voice, but her phrases were oddly inflected. "You see, Doctor, I'm dying
and there's no cure for my ailment.""No, you just rest easy," I began, but
her knowing eyes mocked me for the specious words. "A cigarette, please?"I
offered my case, tacitly admitting my helplessness. She was sinking so visibly
that it would have been heartless to bother her. An autopsy would give me more
specifics anyhow."Thanks. Now, would you please go? Both of you." This one
was different all right. No lastminute confessions of inadequacy, no wailing
for repentance and salvation, and no real bravura. She just wanted to be left
alone. I guided Linda out."Hell, Doc. Someone should stay with the poor
kid," Linda said."You see too much TV.""So does she," Linda replied with
an irritated snort. "She's never smoked before."The hall was suddenly
flooded with a very bright light and an acrid formic acid stench like burning
ants. I threw the door open but it was too late. The bed was a blazing funeral
pyre.I know now why, but at the moment I was aghast with remorse at this
mystifying incineration. I couldn't understand how a cigarette, no matter how
carelessly held by a novice smoker, could have caused as violent a combustion
as this. I didn't have much time to think about it because it was all we could
do to keep the blaze from spreading until the fire department got there.
Neither Linda nor I mentioned that we'd only been out of the room three
seconds when the fire started. No one would have believed us.So my primary
clue went up spectacularly in smoke. A little judicious inquiry uncovered a
veritable epidemic of smokinginbed fire deaths in fifteen cities. One incident
got a lot of publicity because the victim was a call girl. She was to have
appeared before a board of inquiry the next day so her death was considered a
grisly form of suicide. Seventeen such incidents on the East Coast scared me
sufficiently not to want to know the odds against us in the rest of the
world.Linda gave me the names of all the men who had patronized the girl. If
the others of her ilk had got around as much as she had... wow! Five of the
men were patients of mine. Buzz was the furthest along—as far as I could
tell—but then, it had been his tale in Casey's that had prompted others to
visit the girl. The chief of police shouldn't have accepted payola in trade
but that's his lookout. I almost wish I could morally allow the old fool to
carry to "term." Jerry Striker's a 'poor enough character, but it'd serve his
wife right. Martin Tippers? I hadn't guessed 172 him for the type. Must have
been drunk. And our precocious Explorer.What a queer collection of males to
be chosen to propagate an unknown race on a new world. That's what I mean
about adapting to survive. Those gals, if females they were, used equipment to
hand, not fancy lifesupport systems.Now that I know the game, I can't just
ingenuously suggest to any one of my equally puzzled colleagues that their
patients got invited into a lady spider's nest. Or maybe they had a hurry call
from a passing sea mare? The least bizarre examples of male incubation on this
planet are spiders and sea horses, and those comparisons are quite enough to
inhibit further speculation. Give the imagination full rein and there are
endless possibilities. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Of
course, if I let one of the men carry to term, I'd find out more. But, hell,
neither my conscience nor my professional integrity will permit me.The most
I can do is spread out the curious unorthodox operations on my five pregnant
males so that I'll have some interesting embryos for my babesinspace theory.
Even then I might goof. I don't know how long gestation takes, what would
serve as a birth canal or, if you know what spiders do... well, you can see my
problem. What form will the progency ultimately assume? That of their hosts?
The two foeti I've removed show different stages of freakout evolution. I'm
letting Hoke Baker go longest because he's adjusted best to the changes in his
physiology. But I've got to arrange for his abortion soon—before he becomes
eligible for an Explorer's Maternity Badge.THE END
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