In the course of a routine physical before her fourth jump to 61 Cygni A, it was discovered that Dr. Kovaly was several weeks pregnant. There was a slight scandal, since her husband earthside was sterile by vasectomy: he sued for and was granted a divorce when Dr. Kovaly declared her intention to go ahead and have the baby (never revealing the father’s identity).
She also decided to give birth on 61 Cygni A, partly because her work there was in a crucial stage, partly because the idea of being the mother of the first human born off-planet appealed to her.
The baby, a boy, was born without any complications. A few weeks later Dr. Kovaly’s time was up for that jump. She gathered together the three others who had jumped with her, the “black box,” and her new son, and they returned to Earth.
At slingshot time, the child disappeared.
It was an alien artifact.
Besides being a terrible shock to Dr. Kovaly-she had been nursing the child at the time-the disappearance was scientifically and philosophically mystifying. Careful of the embryo’s health, Dr. Kovaly had not eaten any native food while pregnant, nor drunk any native water. So the molecules that passed into the embryo through her placenta were all Earth-molecules. The baby, made completely of Earth-stuff, should have stayed on Earth.
Dr. Kovaly went back to 61 Cygni A and deliberately got pregnant again. She gave birth on schedule. But this time-in an action some people condemned as heartless-she left the baby outside the black-box radius when she returned to Earth.
And the infant stayed on 61 Cygni A, permanently. The first human to be a bona fide citizen of another planet.
So there was an easy alternative to the generation ship. The AED began recruiting large numbers of women . . . a policy the AED first characterized with the motto “Carry the Seed.” A combination of ribald backlash and sarcastic comment made them drop the motto immediately.
But the policy still stands. The AED recruits three times as many female Tamers as male, and requires that they bear a minimum of two children on two different planets (and two more, if they want to extend their enlistment to “full career” status).
Genetic analysis is one of the most hard-to-pass tests that a potential Tamer must face. Any genetic predisposition toward diseases on the AED blacklist will fail a candidate, no matter how well-qualified he or she may be otherwise. And careful genealogies are kept on all geoformed planets: theoretically, no pairings are allowed between people more closely related than third cousin. This has not yet become a problem, since first-generation citizens of the Worlds are de facto employees of AED, intensely loyal, and dependent on the Agency from cradle to grave.
At this writing, there are 7,498 Worlds citizens, mostly first generation (the number is expected to double every decade or so for some time). The oldest is, of course, Primus Kovaly, who at the age of thirty-one has fathered five children. Reportedly he has resisted the temptation to name any of them Secundus.
26 – Autobiography 2051
(From Peacemaker: The Diaries of Jacque Lefavre, copyright © St. Martin’s TFX 2131.)
15 Sept 2051.
No entries for two weeks, been busy. Will try to get it all down.
61 Cygni B is an interesting place, more temperate than Earth, mostly forest and ocean. Gus and I made the jump in shirtsleeves with a two-man floater, Gus holding the black box. Considering how peaceful the planet is, we could hardly have landed in a worse situation.
We appeared about a meter over the surface of an ocean, and were immediately dashed by a huge wave. A storm was in progress. Both of us managed to hang on to the floater while it bobbed around in the foam, but it seemed to take forever to get aboard it. Like trying to reboard a capsized canoe.
I did finally get aboard and strapped in. Then I helped Gus up; once he was in the saddle I raised the windshield and we were off. Wanted to get above the storm before locking in on the homing beam. Took a long time because the winds were powerful and unpredictable, but eventually we were in the sunshine and locked in, about 800 kilometers (it turned out) from Starbase.