Read Online Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm - Free Book Online

signaled the waiter for more stim.
    “Mostly your population statistic. While the information people are crowing about our population being stable yet self-supporting even if under mean size, others of us are seeing it as a very real danger signal.” Deckenson had been staring past John’s ear as he spoke, his eyes unfocused. Now he suddenly seemed to come back to himself with a start. “Pardon me if I review things you already know,” he said vaguely. “It helps me organize my thoughts.”
    John nodded as the stim arrived. The waiter left a carafe of it this time. John kept sawing at the brown rectangle of food with the small knife as Deckenson talked.
    “Consider this. Human reproduction used to be a simple matter of two people mating. A child was born from the female ten lunar months later. It was easy, it was efficient. No planning was necessary or artificial assistance of any kind. Unplanned reproduction was what the race worried about back then. Well, now it’s the opposite. By the time a female is ready to release a mature egg cell, the cell is actually too old to be viable. The average woman has no possibility ofconceiving. So oogonial cells are harvested from females of twenty years or so and carefully pushed into oogenesis. The resulting ovum is fertilized with sperm that has likewise been harvested from young males and pushed into maturity. The zygote is transferred to an artificial womb and nurtured there for six weeks, before it is then implanted in a Mother. The Mother carries it in her Human womb for perhaps another six months. At least, if the embryo is lucky, its mother can carry it that long. At that point, the developing child is usually too large for our ‘improved design’ women to carry or to bear. Our reduced size comes from growth inhibitors, not a true evolution. So our embryos are disproportionately large to the Mother. So the embryo is again surgically harvested and placed in an artificial womb where it is tended until its caretakers decide the baby is mature enough to be born. It is then removed from the artificial womb and introduced to independent life by being placed in a creche with other infants of its generation. There has always been talk of finding a way to produce a child totally outside of a Human womb, but our research in that area is, as they put it, ‘economically unfeasible for the paltry success rate.’”
    John had a piece of the brown rectangle in his mouth and was chewing it slowly as his mind worked through what Deckenson was saying. He swallowed it; slightly bitter flavor, and he still couldn’t identify what it was. But it was good. He started sawing off another piece. “You’re saying women can’t bear living children anymore. That the Human race can no longer reproduce without artificial aids.”
    Deckenson closed his eyes dramatically and sighed. He opened them again. “Exactly. I am saying that the sexual act has become recreational only, totally unrelated to reproduction. I am saying that pregnancy is no longer related to mothering. That may be an even more serious breakdown than the separation of sex from reproduction. There are studies, quite ancient; I am almost afraid to ask if you know of them. The information dates back to Earth life, and was gathered when scientists still had access to other primates. Do you know what is meant by the phrase ‘together-together monkeys’?”
    John shrugged. “Some subspecies of primate, I suppose. What am I eating?”
    “Pseudo-meat. A reconstruction based on chemical analysis. We assemble the vegetable nutrients to resemble the original components, and add fiber to simulate the texture of flesh. Those orange cubes approximate an Earth vegetable called carrots. The noodles are a simulated wheat pasta with artificial sea-life meat, and the salad is a salad. But, to get back to the monkeys, they were deprived of their natural mother, and offered only the companionship of other infants. They developed an unnatural