Ethan of Athos Read Free

unemployment prospects -- if he wasn't ripped apart by angry mobs of ursine non-fathers before then....
    He shook himself from his depression. Something would be done before things came to that pass, surely. Something had to break.
    The worry made an ominous bass note under Ethan's pleasant routine for three months after his return from vacation. Another ovarian culture, LMS-10, curled up and died altogether, and EEH-9's egg cell production declined by half. It would be the next to go, Ethan calculated. The first break in the downward slide arrived unexpectedly.
    “Ethan?” Chief of Staff Desroches' voice had an odd edge, even over the intercom. His face bore a peculiar suffused look; his lips, framed by glossy black beard and mustache, kept twitching at the corners. Not at all the morose pout that had been threatening over the past year to become permanent. Ethan, curious, laid his micropipette down carefully on the lab bench and went to the screen.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “I'd like you to come up to my office right away.”
    “I just started a fertilization --”
    “As soon as you're done, then,” Desroches conceded with a wave of his hand.
    “What's up?”
    “The annual census ship docked yesterday.” Desroches pointed upward, although in fact Athos's only space station rode in a synchronous orbit above another quadrant of the planet. “Mail's here. Your magazines were approved by the Board of Censors -- you've got a year's back issues sitting on my desk. And one other thing.”
    “Another thing? But I just ordered the journal --”
    “Not your personal property. Something for the Rep Center.” Desroches' white teeth flashed. “Finish up and come see.” The screen blanked.
    To be sure. A year's back issues of The Betan Journal of Reproductive Medicine imported at hideous expense, although of the highest degree of interest, would scarcely make Desroches' black eyes dance with joy. Ethan scurried, albeit meticulously, through the fertilization, placed the pod in the incubation chamber from which, in six or seven days' time if things went well, the blastula would be transferred to a uterine replicator in one of the banks in the next room, and zipped upstairs.
    A dozen brightly labeled data disks were indeed neatly stacked on the corner of the Chiefs comconsole desk. The other corner was occupied by a holocube of two dark-haired young boys riding a spotted pony. Ethan scarcely glanced at either, his attention instantly overwhelmed by the large white refrigeration container squarely in the center. Its control panel lights burned a steady, reassuring green.
    “L. Bharaputra & Sons Biological Supply House, Jackson's Whole”, the shipping label read. “Contents: Frozen Tissue, Human, Ovarian, 50 units. Stack with heat exchange unit clear of obstruction. This End Up.”
    “We got them!” Ethan cried in delight and instant recognition, clapping his hands.
    “At last,” grinned Desroches. “The Population Council's going to have one hell of a party tonight, I'll bet -- what a relief! When I think of the hunt for suppliers -- the scramble for foreign exchange -- for a while I thought we were going to have to send some poor son out there personally to get them.”
    Ethan shuddered, and laughed. “Whew! Thank the Father nobody had to go through that.” He ran a hand over the big plastic box, eagerly, reverently. “Going to be some new faces around here.”
    Desroches smiled, reflective and content. “Indeed. Well -- they're all yours, Dr. Urquhart. Turn your routine lab work over to your techs and get them settled in their new homes. Priority.”
    “I should say so!”
    Ethan set the carton tenderly on a bench in the Culture Lab, and adjusted the controls to bring the internal temperature up somewhat. There would be a wait. He would only thaw twelve today, to fill the culture support units waiting, cold and empty, for new life. Soberly, he touched the darkened panel behind which the CJB-9 had dwelt so long and