“What’s that to me?” Hamilton demanded. “Oh, I don’t doubt that you can do it. You can wind ’em up and make ’em run. You can probably eliminate my misgivings and produce a line that will go on happily breeding for the next ten million years. That still doesn’t make it make sense. Survival! What for? Until you can give me some convincing explanation why the human race should go on at all, my answer is ‘no.'” He stood up.
“Leaving?” asked Mordan.
“If you will excuse me.”
“Aren’t you interested in knowing something about the woman whom we believe is suitable for your line?”
“Not particularly.”
“I choose to interpret that as permission,” Mordan answered affably. “Look over there.” He touched a control on his desk; Hamilton looked where he had been directed to. A section of the wall faded away and gave place to a stereo scene. It was as if they were looking out through an open window. Before them lay a garden swimming pool, its surface freshly agitated…by diving, apparently, for a head broke the surface of the water. The swimmer took three easy strokes toward the pick-up, and climbed out on the bank with effortless graceful strength. She rolled to her knees, stood up bare and lovely. She stretched and laughed, apparently from sheer animal spirits, and glided out of the picture. “Well?” asked Mordan.
“She’s comely, but I’ve seen others.”
“It’s not necessary that you ever lay eyes on her,” the Moderator added hastily. “She’s your fifth cousin, by the way. The combination of your charts will be simple.” He snapped off the scene, replaced it with a static picture. “Your chart is on the right; hers is on the left.” Two additional diagrams then appeared, one under his, one under hers. “Those are the optimum haploid charts for your respective gametes. They combine so — ” He touched another control; a fifth chart formed itself in the center of the square formed by the four others.
The charts were not pictures of chromosomes, but were made up of the shorthand used by genetic technicians to represent the extremely microscopic bits of living matter which are the arbiters of human make-up. Each chromosome was represented by a pattern which more nearly resembled a spectogram than any other familiar structure. But the language was a language of experts; to a layman the charts were meaningless.
Even Mordan could not read the charts unassisted. He depended on his technicians to explain them to him when necessary. Thereafter his unfailing memory enabled him to recall the significance of the details.
One thing alone was evident to the uninstructed eye: the two upper charts, Hamilton’s and the girl’s, contained twice as many chromosome patterns-forty-eight to be exact-as the charts of the gametes underneath them. But the chart of the proposed offspring contained forty-eight representations of chromosomes-twenty-four from each of its parents.
Hamilton ran his eye over the charts with interest, an interest he carefully repressed. “Intriguing, I’m sure,” he said indifferently. “Of course I don’t understand it.”
“I’d be glad to explain it to you.”
“Don’t bother. It’s hardly worth while, is it?”
“I suppose not.” Mordan cleared the controls; the pictures snapped off. “I must ask you to excuse me, Felix. Perhaps we can talk another day.”
“Certainly, if you wish.” He glanced at his host in surprise, but Mordan was as friendly and as smilingly urbane as ever. Hamilton found himself in the outer office a few moments later. They had exchanged goodbyes with all the appropriate intimate formality of name-friends; nevertheless Hamilton felt a vague dissatisfaction, a feeling of incompleteness, as if the interview had terminated before it was over. To be sure, he had said no, but he had not said it in all the detail he had wished to.
Mordan went back to his desk and switched the charts on again. He studied them, recalling all that he had been taught about them and dwelling with interest on the middle one.
A chime played the phrase announcing his chief technical assistant. “Come in, Martha,” he invited without looking around.
“I’m in, Chief,” she replied almost at once.
“Ah-so you are,” he answered, turning to her.