Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

that Bram and I ought to be able to have a child all our own if we want one. The way Original Man did in all the books and plays we have. Without having to get a license from the yell—from the Nar. You said yourself that the human race is large enough now so that we don’t have to worry about losing genes through genetic drift.”
    Bram was astonished. He had never thought that Kerthin was capable of being so sentimental. “Twenty-five percent would be fine, Keith,” he said. “And more than likely, it would be over fifty percent.” He appealed to the gene broker. “Isn’t that so?”
    The gene broker grew sober. “Gene sharing goes back a long way in the history of Original Man,” he assured Kerthin. “At least as far back as Shakespeare.”
    “I thought that was before their technological era,” Bram said.
    The gene broker smiled broadly and took out a well-thumbed book that had the look of a training manual. “They practiced some primitive form of genetic engineering even then,” he said. “There’s a reference here in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to a group of three couples contributing genes to a construct in order to edit out genetic defects. Let me just find the passage … hmm, here it is.”
    He spread the book flat on the console and recited aloud:
     
    To the best bride-bed will we,
    Which by us shall blessed be;

And the issue there create
    Ever shall be fortunate.
     
    So shall all the couples three
    Ever true in loving be;
    And the blots of Nature’s hand
    Shall not in their issue stand.
    Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,
    Nor mark prodigious, such as are
    Despised in nativity,
    Shall upon their children be.
     
    “So you see,” the broker said, triumphantly snapping the book shut, “the tradition of gene sharing is a very ancient one for humanity. Our prototypes invested it with special ceremonies: visiting the molecular engineering facility as a group rather than separately, swearing oaths of friendship, and conferring their ‘blessing’ on the compound nucleotide matrix—or ‘bed,’ as they termed it.”
    Bram nodded, impressed. “We were thinking of going through one of the reconstructed welding ceremonies ourselves,” he admitted.
    He turned to Kerthin for confirmation, but she was already rising to her feet.
    “Well, thank you very much,” she said. “Bram and I will discuss it and let you know.”
    The broker was taken by surprise, but recovered nicely. “Would you like to leave a tissue sample before you go, so that we can at least begin some of the preliminary classification work? It would save quite a bit of time later on. It’s quite painless, and it would only take a few minutes.”
    “We can see about that later,” she said. “Are you coming, Bram?”
    “Uh … yes,” Bram said. He smiled apologetically at the broker.
    “I quite understand,” the broker said. “One doesn’t want to hurry a decision like this.” He bestowed a firm handshake on both of them. “We’re available for counseling at any time.”
    Outside, Bram turned to Kerthin. “What’s the matter, Kerth? You haven’t changed your mind?”
    “I said I’d come,” she said. “And I did.”
    “When will you go back with me to give a specimen?” he said.
    “I don’t know. Let’s not talk about it right now.”
     
    Later they fed at a repast house that everybody had been raving about in the new extension of the Quarter. The architecture was human-style, designed with straight timbers and sheathing material plastered with a lime compound. Even the roof line was straight. The architects had cleverly braced the beams at right angles, avoiding the more familiar curved vault made of bowed poplar timbers that were planet-grown in great cradles that were progressively tilted as the tree developed.
    Everything had been lovingly researched by the proprietors, two young men whose previous enterprise had been a neoteric gallery. The item being served this evening was “steak”—a slab of pressed bacterial protein reinforced by fiber and molded into the shape of a four-legged, bilaterally symmetrical creature with curved antennae, copied from a line drawing in the Inglex dictionary. With it were served potato slices sauteed in sunflower seed oil, baked soyatash, and a tomato compote that Kerthin pronounced too sweet.
    “Unusual,” Bram said. He broke a leg off the sculptured steakbeast and bore it to his mouth with his eating tongs. Something inside, tasting suspiciously like