anything we can localize that way.”
“Still, it makes more sense than a drug,” Amanda conceded. “I wouldn’t say it’s not worth trying.”
They watched in silence as the primary partition began to fracture, cracking into plates of shiny brittle tissue that stuck to one side or the other. The male approached and started pawing at the structure, trying to hasten the separation.
Carlo glanced over at his colleague, wondering what her reaction would be if he dared to ask her: On a scale of one to twelve, how much comfort does it give you to know that this is the fate of your flesh?
When the blastula had split completely, the male took hold of one of the halves and carried it across the cage, backing away awkwardly with its two hind-paws gripping the scaffolding of twigs before extruding another pair to make the task easier. Carlo wasn’t sure why the animals were so emphatic about the separation. So far as he knew co always recognized co, whatever the first sights and smells they encountered, and in any case when a crossed mating was contrived it appeared to cause no problems. Maybe it was simply advantageous for the male vole to have the strongest possible instinct to aid the process of fission—rather than standing by uselessly if the blastula became stuck—and it did no harm to take this sentiment further than was strictly necessary.
The secondary partitions were still intact, but one pair of young voles were already beginning to twitch and squirm, limbless balls of conjoined flesh struggling to wake into their own separate identities.
Amanda said, “They all look healthy so far.”
“Yes.” Now the other pair were wriggling too, and Carlo couldn’t help feeling a visceral sense of relief. The experiment had told him nothing—except that the new suppressant hadn’t been crude enough to do as much damage as the old one when delivered in the same spot. He should have been disappointed. But the sight of the four live infants was impossible to receive with anything but joy.
The father approached the tardier of the pairs, stroking his children’s skin with his paws and tugging at the partition that still glued them together.
Carlo turned to Amanda. “We’d better move on. We can check the whole brood for deformities tomorrow, but we need to set a pace of six matings a day or this map’s going to take forever to complete.”
8
“T he nozzle’s fixed,” Marzio told Tamara. “We’re ready to launch, just name the time.”
Tamara did the calculations on her forearm. The rotational period of the Peerless was close to seven lapses, but apparently no one had thought it was worth the fuel to tweak it to an exact multiple, just to simplify the arithmetic whenever the cycle needed to be converted into clock time. When she’d finished she pressed her arm against Marzio’s, letting him feel the numbers so he could check them himself.
“That looks right,” he said. “Can you get notice to your people in time?”
Tamara glanced across the workshop at the clock again. “Yes.” She hurried over to the signal ropes and sent a message to each of the observatories; unless the relay clerks were dozing this would be warning enough. Roberto would just be starting his shift at the summit; she wasn’t sure who’d be on duty at the antipodal dome, but every observer had been prepared for this for days. She’d wanted to help track the first beacon herself, but it would have been an absurd vanity to delay the launch any further for the sake of that privilege. Besides, this way she’d be able to watch the event itself, with all of the excitement and none of the hard work.
Marzio’s children, Viviana and Viviano, maneuvered the beacon onto a trolley and began wheeling it toward the airlock. The device was built into a cubical frame of hardstone beams about two strides wide. Cylindrical tanks of powdered sunstone, liberator and compressed air were arranged around an open flare chamber, while all the pipes
“Still, it makes more sense than a drug,” Amanda conceded. “I wouldn’t say it’s not worth trying.”
They watched in silence as the primary partition began to fracture, cracking into plates of shiny brittle tissue that stuck to one side or the other. The male approached and started pawing at the structure, trying to hasten the separation.
Carlo glanced over at his colleague, wondering what her reaction would be if he dared to ask her: On a scale of one to twelve, how much comfort does it give you to know that this is the fate of your flesh?
When the blastula had split completely, the male took hold of one of the halves and carried it across the cage, backing away awkwardly with its two hind-paws gripping the scaffolding of twigs before extruding another pair to make the task easier. Carlo wasn’t sure why the animals were so emphatic about the separation. So far as he knew co always recognized co, whatever the first sights and smells they encountered, and in any case when a crossed mating was contrived it appeared to cause no problems. Maybe it was simply advantageous for the male vole to have the strongest possible instinct to aid the process of fission—rather than standing by uselessly if the blastula became stuck—and it did no harm to take this sentiment further than was strictly necessary.
The secondary partitions were still intact, but one pair of young voles were already beginning to twitch and squirm, limbless balls of conjoined flesh struggling to wake into their own separate identities.
Amanda said, “They all look healthy so far.”
“Yes.” Now the other pair were wriggling too, and Carlo couldn’t help feeling a visceral sense of relief. The experiment had told him nothing—except that the new suppressant hadn’t been crude enough to do as much damage as the old one when delivered in the same spot. He should have been disappointed. But the sight of the four live infants was impossible to receive with anything but joy.
The father approached the tardier of the pairs, stroking his children’s skin with his paws and tugging at the partition that still glued them together.
Carlo turned to Amanda. “We’d better move on. We can check the whole brood for deformities tomorrow, but we need to set a pace of six matings a day or this map’s going to take forever to complete.”
8
“T he nozzle’s fixed,” Marzio told Tamara. “We’re ready to launch, just name the time.”
Tamara did the calculations on her forearm. The rotational period of the Peerless was close to seven lapses, but apparently no one had thought it was worth the fuel to tweak it to an exact multiple, just to simplify the arithmetic whenever the cycle needed to be converted into clock time. When she’d finished she pressed her arm against Marzio’s, letting him feel the numbers so he could check them himself.
“That looks right,” he said. “Can you get notice to your people in time?”
Tamara glanced across the workshop at the clock again. “Yes.” She hurried over to the signal ropes and sent a message to each of the observatories; unless the relay clerks were dozing this would be warning enough. Roberto would just be starting his shift at the summit; she wasn’t sure who’d be on duty at the antipodal dome, but every observer had been prepared for this for days. She’d wanted to help track the first beacon herself, but it would have been an absurd vanity to delay the launch any further for the sake of that privilege. Besides, this way she’d be able to watch the event itself, with all of the excitement and none of the hard work.
Marzio’s children, Viviana and Viviano, maneuvered the beacon onto a trolley and began wheeling it toward the airlock. The device was built into a cubical frame of hardstone beams about two strides wide. Cylindrical tanks of powdered sunstone, liberator and compressed air were arranged around an open flare chamber, while all the pipes
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