Only Begotten Daughter (3 page)

“You really think so?”

“Marine biology’s a fine career,” he called after the mother-to-be and stepped into the elevator.

“I’ll bring the baby around,” she called back.

The door thumped closed. The elevator ascended, gravity grabbing at the Big Mac in Murray’s stomach.

“What we’ve essentially got here,” said Gabriel Frostig, medical director of the Preservation Institute, “is an egg identification problem.”

“Chicken egg?” said Murray. A bell rang. Second floor.

“Human egg. Ovum.” Dr. Frostig guided Murray into a cramped and dingy lab packed with technological bric-a-brac. “We’re hoping you’ll tell us where it came from.”

Dominating the dissection table, chortling merrily like a machine for making some particularly loose and messy variety of candy, was the most peculiar contraption Murray had ever seen. At its heart lay a bell jar, the glass so pure and gleaming that tapping it would, Murray imagined, produce not a simple bong but a fugue. A battery-powered pump, a rubber bellows, and three glass bottles sat on a wooden platform, encircling the jar like gifts spread around some gentile’s Christmas tree. “What’s
that?
”

“Your most recent donation.”

One bottle was empty, the second contained what looked like blood, the third a fluid suggesting milk. “And you’re keeping it in a, er …?”

“An ectogenesis machine.”

Murray peered through the glass. A large wet slab of protoplasm—it looked like a flounder wearing a silk scarf—filled the jar. Clear plastic tubes flowed into the soft flesh from all directions. “A what?”

“Artificial uterus,” Frostig explained, “prototype stage. We weren’t planning to gestate any
human
embryos for at least five years. It’s been strictly a mouse and frog operation around here. But when Karnstein spotted your blastocyte, we said to ourselves, all right …” The doctor squinted and grimaced, as if examining an ominous biopsy drawn from his own body. “Besides, we thought maybe you
expected
us to let it die, so you could go running to the newspapers—am I right?—telling ’em how we like to butcher embryos.” He jabbed his index finger contemptuously toward the front lawn. “You one of those Revelationists, Mr. Katz?”

“No. Jewish.” Murray cocked an ear to the protesters’ chants, a sound like enraged surf. “And I’ve never run to a newspaper in my life.”

“Damn lunatics—they should go back to the Middle Ages where they belong.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, are you saying there’s a
baby
growing in that thing?”

Frostig nodded. “Inside that uterine tissue.”

Murray pressed closer. The glass widened his face, making his already considerable jaw look like a sugar bowl.

“No, don’t go looking,” said the doctor. “We’re talking about a cell cluster no bigger than a pinhead.”

“
My
cell cluster?”

“Yours and somebody else’s. You didn’t by any chance introduce an ovum into your sample?”

“How could I do that? I’m no biologist. I don’t even know very many women.”

“A dead end. We figured as much.” Frostig opened the top drawer of his filing cabinet, grabbing a stack of printed forms, carbon paper sandwiched between them like slices of black cheese. “In any event, we need your signature on this embryo release. We weren’t born yesterday—we know people form weird attachments in this world. Last weekend I spent about twenty hours convincing a surrogate mother to hand a newborn over to its parents.”

A baby, thought Murray as he took the embryo release. Someone had given him a baby. He’d feared it was cancer, and instead it was a baby. “If I sign, does that mean I—?”

“Forfeit all claims to the cluster. Not that you
have
any. Far as the law’s concerned, it’s just another sperm donation.” Frostig pulled a fountain pen from his coat as if unsheathing a dagger. “But that egg’s a real wild card—inverse parthenogenesis, we’re calling it at the moment. On the whole it never happens. So for the protection of all concerned …”

“Inverse partheno … what?” An unprecedented situation, Murray thought, and what accompanied it seemed equally unprecedented, a strange amalgam of confusion, fear, and the treacly warmth he reflexively felt around puppies.

“In conventional parthenogenesis, an ovum undergoes meiosis without fertilization. Aberrant, but well documented. Here we’re talking sperm development without an ovum.” Frostig ran his fingers along the tube connecting blood to womb, checking for kinks. “Frankly, it’s got us spooked.”

“Isn’t there some scientific explanation?”

“We’re certainly looking for one.”

Murray examined the embryo release, dense with meaningless print. Did he in fact want a baby? Wouldn’t a baby pull his books off the shelves? Where did you get their clothes?

He signed. Georgina Sparks’s lover had called it right. Babies were grotesque.

“What will happen to the cell cluster?”

“We usually carry frogs to the second trimester,” said Frostig, snatching up the embryo release and depositing it on his desk, “a bit longer with the mice. The really key data doesn’t come till we sacrifice them.”

“Sacrifice them?”

“Ectogenesis machines are still very crude. Next year we might, just might, bring a cat to term.” Frostig guided Murray toward the door, pausing to retrieve a sterilized herring jar from the clutter. “Do you mind? As long as you’re here, Karnstein would like another donation.”

“The cell cluster.” Murray accepted the herring jar. “What sex?”

“Huh?”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t remember. Female, I think.”

As Murray entered the donation room, a reverie enveloped him, a soft maelstrom of cribs, stuffed animals, and strange nonexistent children’s books by his favorite authors. What the hell kind of children’s book would Kafka have written? (“Gregor Samsa was having a really yucky morning …”) He stared at Miss October for 1968. Meiosis was obviously the last thing on her mind.

Sacrifice. They were going to kill his embryo. Kill? No, too harsh a word. At the Preservation Institute they did science, that was all.

He looked at his watch. Five-seventeen.

They were going to butcher his only baby girl with a scalpel. They were going to tear her cell from cell.

Dr. Frostig’s staff had probably left. The decision was actually quite simple: if the lab were locked, he’d go home. If not, he wouldn’t.

He crossed the hall, twisted the knob. The door swung open. What was he going to do with a baby? Twilight leaked through the lab’s high, solitary window. The liquid thumpings of the glass womb synchronized with Murray’s heartbeats. He flipped on the light, picked up the wooden platform and its contents, and staggered back into the hall. A baby. He was holding a damn baby in his arms.

Slipping into the donation room, he set the machine beneath the furry crotch of Miss June for 1972. Best to wait until the Revelationists were gone. If mere artificial insemination were sinful by their standards, inverse parthenogenesis would give them cat fits.

He checked the plastic tubes for kinks, just as Frostig had done. What made him think he could get away with this? Wasn’t he the first person they’d come looking for? A good thing his cell cluster was too young to see the dozens of naked women surrounding her. All those breasts, they’d put her in a tizzy.

The door squealed open. Murray shuddered and jumped. His heart seemed to rotate on its axis.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said a tall black donor with a rakish mustache. Sauntering forward, he pulled a herring jar from his sports coat “Thought the place was empty.”

“That’s all right.” Feebly Murray attempted to cover his crime, sidling toward the stolen womb and standing before it in a posture he hoped was at once protective and nonchalant. “I’m finished.”

“With all those grants they keep getting”—the donor grinned slyly—“you’d think they could put some
black
chicks in here.” He pointed to the womb. “Are the fancy ones just for white folks? All I ever get is a herring jar.”

“It’s an ectogenesis …”

“One Forty-seven.”

“Huh?”

“I’m Donor One Forty-seven.” The black man clasped Murray’s hand and shook vigorously. “Actually I wear several hats around here. Up on the third floor I’m Marcus Bass.”

One Forty-seven. Murray had heard that name before. “You’re a marine biologist, aren’t you?”

“Western civilization’s top man in mollusks, I’m told.”

“I met one of your recipients today. She decided on you after—”

“No, buddy, no—don’t tell me anything about her.” Dr. Bass gestured as if shooing a fly. “A man can’t trust himself with that sort of knowledge. You start trying to find your kid—just to see what he looks like, right?—and you end up doing everybody harm.”

Murray sighed sharply, exhaling a mixture of disappointment and relief. So: his caper was over; he might have smuggled his embryo past an ordinary donor but not past a clam expert. It was all right, really. Fatherhood was nothing but work. “Then you know this is really an—?”

“Ectogenesis machine, prototype stage.” Dr. Bass offered an ambiguous wink. “Frostig would be awfully upset if it disappeared.”

“I just wanted to
be
with it for a while. This time they’ve got a human embryo inside. The egg’s a mystery, but the seed came from me. Inverse partheno … you know.”

“You’re Katz, aren’t you?” That wink again, mischievous, subversive, followed by a friendly squeeze on the shoulder. “Quite a dilemma, huh? Know what I’d do in your socks, Mr. Katz? I’d pick up this womb and walk out the front door.”

“You mean—take it home?”

“It’s not
their
inverse parthenogenesis, buddy. It’s
yours.
”

Murray shook his head dolefully. “They’d guess right away who stole it.”

“Stole it? Let’s work on our vocabulary, man. You’re
borrowing
it. For nine months, period. Don’t worry, nobody’ll take it away from you.” Marcus Bass gesticulated as if setting up his words on a movie marquee. “‘Sperm Bank Seizes Dad’s Embryo.’ Frostig would kill to avoid that kind of publicity. He’d
kill.
”

Heartburn seared Murray’s chest cavity. Sperm bank seizes dad’s embryo: he could actually get away with it.

Assuming he wanted to …

“Thing is, Dr. Bass, I’m not sure I—”

“Not sure you want to be a pop?”

Had Marcus Bass used a different word—
father
or
dad
—Murray would not have been moved. “With inverse parthenogenesis, there’s no mother,” said Murray. Till the day he died, Phil Katz was Pop. “I’d have to do everything myself.”

“I’ll tell you my personal experience. Before it actually happens, you never realize being a pop is what you always wanted.” Marcus Bass pulled out his wallet and unsnapped the fanfold photographs. Four small grinning faces tumbled into view. “A little boy is the greatest thing in the world. Alex, Henry, Ray, and Marcus Junior. They can all swim.”

“These ectogenesis machines, are they hard to operate?”

Dropping to his knees, Marcus Bass caressed the pump. “See this cardiovascular device here? Make sure it stays connected to the battery. Ordinary room air oxygenates the blood, so keep the entire unit in a warm, well-ventilated place, and don’t let anything block this intake valve.”

“Right. Lots of air.”

“Every thirty days these liquids should be replenished. This bottle takes regular infant formula, but for this one you need whole blood.”

“Blood? Where do I get
that?
”

“Where do you think?” Gently Marcus Bass punched Murray’s arm. “From the father, that’s where. Just hang around your local fire station—make friends with the paramedics, okay? When the time comes, slip ’em a twenty and they’ll gladly stick their transfusion needle in you.”

“Fire station. Right. Transfusion needle.”

“This third bottle receives waste products and should be flushed clean when full. Baby’s first dirty diaper, kind of …”

“Regular infant formula—that something I get from a hospital?”

“Hospital? No man, the supermarket. I prefer Similac.” Marcus Bass tickled the glass womb with a kitchy-koo finger. “You mix it with water.”

Murray joined Marcus Bass on the floor. “Similac … how
much
water?”

“Just read the can.”

“It comes in a can?” How convenient.

“Uh-huh. A girl, isn’t she?”

“So they tell me.”

“Congratulations. I imagine girls are the greatest thing in the world too.”

When Dr. Bass smiled, Murray had a sudden flash of a two-year-old sitting astride her pop, the horse.

The Reverend Billy Milk, chief pastor of the First Ocean City Church of Saint John’s Vision, reached inside his sheepskin coat and caressed his steel detonator. God’s wrath was sticky and cold, like an ice-cube tray just removed from the freezer.

Dusk washed across the Institute grounds, bleeding the colors from his flock’s protest signs, turning them from angry shouts into moans of discontent. A soft rain fell. Billy looked at his watch. Five o’clock: the demonstration permit had expired. He nodded to his acolyte, Wayne Ackerman the insurance wizard, who in turn signaled the others, and the righteous host disintegrated into a hundred separate suburbanites drifting through the December mist.

Ever since gouging out his right eye, Billy Milk had been burdened with the ocular equivalent of a phantom limb. Just as amputees endured pain and itch in their missing legs, so did Billy endure visions in his missing eye. For six months straight the phantom organ had been showing him God’s wishes concerning the Preservation Institute. The jagged flames and billowing smoke. The cracked rafters and broken bricks. The rivers of boiling semen rushing from the shattered foundation.

Ambling past their leader, Billy’s flock acknowledged him with discouraged nods and exhausted smiles. A lonely enterprise, this business of being against evil. To see the moral shape of things, to say this is right but that is wrong, was a habit long out of fashion in the United States of America, land of terminal relativism. But wait, brothers and sisters. Have patience. In the next morning’s
Atlantic City Press,
Billy’s congregation would finally be reading some good news.