Theobald seemed to be working out, with the busy and wholehearted collaboration of his rabbits, an interesting but entirely erroneous neo-Mendelian concept of inherited characteristics. Why, he wanted to know, did white bunnies sometimes have brown babies? Felix pointed out that a brown buck had figured in the matter, but soon bogged down, and turned the matter over to Mordan-accepting as inevitable the loss of face involved. Theobald, he knew, was quite capable now of being interested in the get of a flop-eared buck.
The boy had formulated an interesting, but decidedly specialized, arithmetic to keep his records of rabbits, based on the proposition that one plus one equals at least five. Hamilton had discovered it by finding symbols in the boy’s rabbit note book with which he was unfamiliar. Theobald boredly interpreted them for him.
Hamilton showed the records to Monroe-Alpha the next time Monroe-Alpha and Marion showed up at his home. He had regarded it as an amusing and insignificant joke, but Clifford took it with his usual dead seriousness. “Isn’t it about time you started him on arithmetic?”
“Why, I don’t think so. He is a little young for it-he’s hardly well into mathematical analysis.” Theobald had been led into mathematical symbology by the conventional route of generalized geometry, analysis, and the calculi. Naturally, he had not been confronted with the tedious, inane, and specialized mnemonics of practical arithmetic-he was hardly more than a baby.
“I don’t think he is too young for it. I had devised a substitute for positional notation when I was about his age. I imagine he can take it, if you don’t ask him to memorize operation tables.” Monroe-Alpha was unaware that the child had an eidetic memory and Hamilton passed the matter by. He had no intention of telling Monroe-Alpha anything about Theobald’s genetic background. While custom did not actually forbid such discussion, good taste, he felt, did. Let the boy alone, let him keep his private life private. He and Phyllis knew, the geneticists involved had to know, the Planners had had to know since this was a star line. Even that he regretted, for it had brought such intrusions as the visit of that old hag Carvala.
Theobald himself would know nothing, or very little, of his ancestral background until he was a grown man. He might not inquire into it, or have it brought to his attention, until he reached something around the age Felix had been when Mordan called Felix’s attention to his own racial significance.
It was better so. The pattern of a man’s inherited characteristics was racially important and inescapable anyhow, but too much knowledge of it, too much thinking about it, could be suffocating to the individual. Look at Cliff-damned near went off the beam entirely just from thinking about his great-grandparents. Well, Marion had fixed that.
No, it was not good to talk too much about such things. He himself had talked too much a short time before, and had been sorry ever since. He had been telling Mordan his own point of view about Phyllis having any more children-after the baby girl to come, of course. Phyllis and he had not yet come to agreement about it; Mordan had backed up Phyllis. “I would like for you two to have at least four children, preferably six. More would be better but we probably would not have time enough to select properly for that many.”
Hamilton almost exploded. “It seems to me that you make plans awfully easy-for other people. I haven’t noticed you doing your bit. You are pretty much of a star line yourself — how come? Is this a one-way proposition?”
Mordan had kept his serenity. “I have not refrained. My plasm is on deposit, and available if wanted. Every moderator in the country saw my chart, in the usual course of routine.”
“The fact remains that you haven’t done much personally about children.”
“No. No, that is true. Martha and I have so many, many children in our district, and so many yet to come, that we hardly have time to concentrate on one.”
From the peculiar phraseology Hamilton gained a sudden bit of insight. “Say, you and Martha are married-aren’t you?”