And Reichel ville would be no more.
“Have you seen the…creature?” the baron asked his sec chief.
The sec chief, a man named Ganley, simply nodded.
The baron turned to the healer. “What’s causing these mutie births? Is it rad sickness?”
The healer shook his head. “The site of Reichel ville was chosen because it was far enough away from the hot spots around Pittsville and Detroit.” He took the rad counter from his collar. “According to this and the others I’ve given to people in the ville, we’re clear.”
“What about our water? Food?” sec chief Ganley asked.
“If we were drinking Erie Lake water, we might be getting rad poisoned, but our water well is over a hundred feet deep. I’m almost certain it’s still clean.”
“Almost certain?” the sec chief commented.
“What about food?” the baron asked, ignoring the sec chiefs comment for the time being.
“We keep the best norm fish we catch for ourselves and process the muties we catch for trade. And we grow our own vegetables, so we’re not getting rad poisoning that way.”
“Then why was my son born a monster?” the baron bellowed, slamming his fist onto his knee.
The healer swallowed. “On our last trade convoy to the eastern villes, I visited one of the great libraries there. In one of the books I read about something called inbreeding.”
“What is that?” the baron asked, his anger gone for the moment, replaced by curiosity.
“Inbreeding has to do with the mating of closely related individuals.” The healer paused, choosing his words carefully so as to not incur the baron’s wrath. “It is considered undesirable because it increases the risk that an offspring will inherit copies of rare recessive genes from both parents and form disabilities because of it.”
“So what are you telling me—the Reichel family’s blood is tainted and impure?”
“No, not at all, sir. In the book, it said the same thing happened to predark royal families hundreds of years before skydark.
“Lady Gayle is the daughter of your father’s sister, isn’t she?” the healer asked. The baron nodded.
“Well, that means that whatever recessive genes you possess, she would likely have them, too.” The baron looked confused. The healer took a moment to rethink his explanation. If he couldn’t convince the baron that the problem was a real threat, there would be nothing done to correct it. “Think of your genes as being a length of steel chain. The chain has several weak links to it. When you have a child with Lady Gayle, her genes, or chain, has exactly the same weak links as yours, so there are parts of the newborn that are defective because her chain couldn’t strengthen the weak links of your chain, only weaken it again.”
The baron seemed to understand now. Reichel ville had prospered on the shores of Erie Lake for some seventy-five years. It was a small fishing ville, large enough to have a well-armed sec force, but small enough not to be worth the trouble of raiding, since the only real thing of value they possessed was their experience as fishermen. In seventy-five years no one had joined the ville from the outside, and the population had never risen over 150.
“The same weakening occurred before you were born, each generation weakening the chain again and again until…”
The baron placed his left hand over his right, hiding the fingers of his right hand, which were all half as long as the ones on his left. “How can we fix it?” the baron asked.
“Reichel ville needs new blood,” the healer explained. “If you don’t bring in some new people with new genes into the ville, you won’t have the birth of any new norms to celebrate. Not yours, not anyone’s.”
Sec chief Ganley cleared his throat. “I know a place where we can trade for men and women,” he said. “All of them norms. Good breeders.”
“Where?”
“A farm to the north. Across the lake.”
“But we’re just fishermen,” the baron stated. “What can we trade for slaves, fish?”
“Our fish would possibly make a decent trade for an old slave, but surely they’d want more for breeders.”