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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
     About this Title
     This eBook was created using ReaderWorks™Standard, produced by OverDrive, Inc.
    For more information on ReaderWorks, visit us on the Web at "www.readerworks.com"
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