The Godwhale (S.F. Masterworks) Read Online Free PDF Page B

equivalents.’
    Ira nodded. ‘Too bad we couldn’t have talked Larry into the transplant. Why didn’t we foresee his “father fixation” and avoid exposing the details to him until after the operation?’
    OLGA flickered amber. ‘No. His autonomics told me how brittle he was. Deceit could have ruined his value as an Implant specimen. Unfortunately, if he had discovered that he had benefited from the death of his own bud child it might have wiped away his self-esteem. Without that he would be worthless for Implanting.’
    Dim Dever climbed out of his teardrop nest and patted the goat on the head.
    ‘Nice goat,’ said the meck voice.
    ‘Nice goat,’ repeated Dim. It would be a long time before his vocabulary allowed for philosophizing, but he’d be ready to enter a sheltered society soon.
    Ira shook his head. ‘I can see why Larry hesitated to kill this donor. He’s so bright-eyed and alert. Isn’t there some way to dull a donor’s mind so we won’t identify with them?’
    ‘No, not really,’ said OLGA. ‘A dull-witted donor would need more attendant time – more expense. Dim Dever was able to feed and care for himself pretty much as one of these goats. And you wouldn’t want a lot of drugs in your donor – foreign molecules that might damage or weaken the very organs you are after.’
    ‘I suppose not,’ mumbled Ira. Every method has its drawbacks.
    Larry turned on his refresher and grasped a ceiling rung of his horizontal ladder. The mannequin walked away slowly, pulling flexible tubing out of his various surgical stoma. Sucking sounds. Drops of urine and faeces soiled the meck’s breast-plates with yellow and granular brown. Larry progressed across the monkey bars to the hot shower, where he emptied his visceral sacs down the drain. Hooking his arms through soft trapeze rings, he pulled on a pair of goggles and activated the strong ultra-violet lights. Scented lather softened his flaking trunk. Wearing a terrycloth body stocking, he climbed into his hammock. More UVs focused on him as he slept.
    The mannequin stood beside his bed for a while, then strolled down the hall to make records of Dim Dever’s last few hours on Earth. The last shuttle would be leaving in the morning. OLGA had built the Implant Starship in one of her mile-wide bays among the planetoids. The last of the Earth biota was now being loaded – the Dever clan.
    ‘My goodness!’ exclaimed Ira. ‘You certainly gave me a start.
    For a minute there I thought I was looking at a headless Larry.’
    ‘I apologize, sir. But I thought I should store a few optics of Dim for Larry’s nostalgia file.’
    Ira studied the headless and armless robot for a moment. ‘Pardon me for asking, but where are your eyes – er – optics?’
    The mannequin blinked a variety of chalcogenide glasses – reverse photon. ‘My eyes are everywhere, from my toes to my shoulder spangles. But I suppose you would consider these large belt-buckle optics my true eyes.’
    Ira walked around in front of the robot. He nodded. ‘Yes. But why didn’t you look at me when you spoke?’
    ‘I was recording your presence with a variety of sensors, sufficient for our conversation. Your size, temperature, pulse, respiration and I suppose your emotional state. Why do you worry this night?’
    Ira hesitated to answer, but remembering that this meck was Larry’s legs, he shrugged. ‘You might as well add this to your nostalgia file. I’m a little worried about the Implant. The information we have on Procyon is not too detailed. A planet exists near that sun, and it has some Earth features – size, temperature, atmosphere with oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water. But there are still many blanks in our knowledge about the place. Sure, we are taking a good cross-section of Earth life forms, from every conceivable area of our globe. If anything from here can survive there, we’ll have it with us. But there are so many things that could go wrong.’
    ‘It is a gamble,’