Van Vogel had the grace to look sheepish. “Excuse me. Doctor. Let’s forget it.
Ten years really is too long. How about the other possibility? You said you could make a picture-book Pegasus, as long as I did not insist on flight. Could I ride him? On the ground?”
“Oh, certainly. No good for polo, but you could ride him.”
“I’ll settle for that. Ask Benny creeth, or what ever his name is, how long it would take.”
The Martian had faded out of the screens. “I don’t need to ask him,” Cargrew asserted. “This is my job-purely manipulation. B’na’s collaboration is required only for rearrangement and transplanting of genes-true genetic work. I can let you have the beast in eighteen months.”
“Can’t you do better than that?”
“What do you expect, man? It takes eleven months to grow a new-born colt. I want one month of design and planning. The embryo will be removed on the fourth day and will be developed in an extra-uterine capsule. I’ll operate ten or twelve times during gestation, grafting and budding and other things you’ve heard of.
One year from now we’ll have a baby colt, with wings. Thereafter I’ll deliver to you a six-months-old Pegasus.”
“I’ll take it.”
Cargrew made some notes, then read, “One alate horse, not capable of flight and not to breed true. Basic breed your choice-I suggest a Palomino, or an Arabian.
Wings designed after a condor, in white. Simulated pin feathers with a grafted fringe of quill feathers, or reasonable facsimile.” He passed the sheet over.
“Initial that and we’ll start in advance of formal contract.”
“It’s a deal,” agreed van Vogel. “What is the fee?” He placed his monogram under Cargrew’s.
Cargrew made further notes and handed them to Blakesly-estimates of professional man-hours, technician man-hours, purchases, and overhead. He had padded the figures to subsidize his collateral research but even he raised his eyebrows at the dollars-and-cents interpretation Blakesly put on the data. “That will be an even two million dollars.”
Van Vogel hesitated; his wife had looked up at the mention of money. But she turned her attention back to the scholarly elephant.
Blakesly added hastily, “That is for an exclusive creation, of course.”
“Naturally,” Van Vogel agreed briskly, and added die figure to the memorandum.
Van Vogel was ready to return, but his wife insisted on seeing the “apes,” as she termed the anthropoid workers. The discovery that she owned a considerable share in these subhuman creatures had intrigued her. Blakesly eagerly suggested a trip through the laboratories in which the workers were developed from true apes.
They were arranged in seven buildings, the seven “Days of Creation.’ “First Day” was a large building occupied by Cargrew, his staff, his operating rooms, incubators, and laboratories. Martha van Vogel stared in horrified fascination at living organs and even complete embryos, living artificial lives sustained by clever glass and metal recirculating systems and exquisite automatic machinery.
She could not appreciate the techniques; it seemed depressing. She had about decided against plasto-biology when Napoleon, by tugging at her skirts, reminded her that it produced good things as well as horrors.
The building “Second Day” they did not enter; it was occupied by B’na Kreeth and his racial colleagues. “We could not stay alive in it, you understand,” Blakesly explained. Van Vogel nodded; his wife hurried on-she wanted no Martians, even behind plastiglass.
From there on the buildings were for development and production of commercial workers. “Third Day” was used for the development of variations in the anthropoids to meet constantly changing labor requirements. “Fourth Day” was a very large building devoted entirely to production-line incubators for commercial types of anthropoids. Blakesly explained that they had dispensed with normal birth. “The policy permits exact control of forced variations, such as for size, and saves hundreds of thousands of worker-hours on the part of the female anthropoids.”
Martha van Vogel was delighted with “Fifth Day,” the anthropoid kindergarten where the little tykes learned to talk and were conditioned to the social patterns necessary to their station in life. They worked at simple tasks such as sorting buttons and digging holes in sand piles, with pieces of candy given as incentives for fast and accurate work.