“I’ve brought Will Farnaby,” said Vijaya as he bent down to kiss her.
Shanta held out her free hand to the stranger.
“I hope Mr. Farnaby doesn’t object to nature in the raw,” she said. As though to give point to her words, the baby withdrew his mouth from the brown nipple, and belched. A white bubble of milk appeared between his lips, swelled up and burst. He belched again, then resumed his sucking. “Even at eight months,” she added, “Rama’s table manners are still rather primitive.”
“A fine specimen,” said Will politely. He was not much interested in babies and had always been thankful for those repeated miscarriages which had frustrated all Molly’s hopes and longings for a child. “Who’s he going to look like—you or Vijaya?”
Shanta laughed and Vijaya joined in, enormously, an octave lower.
“He certainly won’t look like Vijaya,” she answered.
“Why not?”
“For the sufficient reason,” said Vijaya, “that I’m not genetically responsible.”
“In other words, the baby isn’t Vijaya’s son.”
Will looked from one laughing face to the other, then shrugged his shoulders. “I give up.”
“Four years ago,” Shanta explained, “we produced a pair of twins who are the living image of Vijaya. This time we thought it would be fun to have a complete change. We decided to enrich the family with an entirely new physique and temperament. Did you ever hear of Gobind Singh?”
“Vijaya has just been showing me his painting in your meditation room.”
“Well, that’s the man we chose for Rama’s father.”
“But I understood he was dead.”
Shanta nodded. “But his soul goes marching along.”
“What do you mean?”
“DF and AI.”
“DF and AI?”
“Deep Freeze and Artificial Insemination.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Actually,” said Vijaya, “we developed the techniques of AI about twenty years before you did. But of course we couldn’t do much with it until we had electric power and reliable refrigerators. We got those in the late twenties. Since then we’ve been using AI in a big way.”
“So you see,” Shanta chimed in, “my baby might grow up to be a painter—that is, if that kind of talent is inherited. And even if it isn’t he’ll be a lot more endomorphic and viscerotonic than his brothers or either of his parents. Which is going to be very interesting and educative for everybody concerned.”
“Do many people go in for this kind of thing?” Will asked.
“More and more. In fact I’d say that practically all the couples who decide to have a third child now go in for AI. So do quite a lot of those who mean to stop at number two. Take my family, for example. There’s been some diabetes among my father’s people; so they thought it best—he and my mother—to have both their children by AI. My brother’s descended from three generations of dancers and, genetically, I’m the daughter of Dr. Robert’s first cousin, Malcolm Chakravarti-MacPhail, who was the Old Raja’s private secretary.”
“And the author,” Vijaya added, “of the best history of Pala. Chakravarti-MacPhail was one of the ablest men of his generation.”
Will looked at Shanta, then back again at Vijaya.
“And has the ability been inherited?” he asked.
“So much so,” Vijaya answered, “that I have the greatest difficulty in maintaining my position of masculine superiority. Shanta has more brains than I have; but fortunately she can’t compete with my brawn.”
“Brawn,” Shanta repeated sarcastically, “brawn… I seem to remember a story about a young lady called Delilah.”
“Incidentally,” Vijaya went on, “Shanta has thirty-two half brothers and twenty-nine half sisters. And more than a third of them are exceptionally bright.”
“So you’re improving the race.”
“Very definitely. Give us another century, and our average IQ will be up to a hundred and fifteen.”
“Whereas ours, at the present rate of progress, will be down to about eighty-five. Better medicine—more congenital deficiencies preserved and passed on. It’ll make things a lot easier for future dictators.” At the thought of this cosmic joke he laughed aloud. Then, after a silence, “What about the ethical and religious aspects of AI?” he asked.
“In the early days,” said Vijaya, “there were a good many conscientious objectors. But now the advantages of AI have been so clearly demonstrated, most married couples feel that it’s more moral to take a shot at having a child of superior quality than to run the risk of slavishly reproducing whatever quirks and defects may happen to run in the husband’s family. Meanwhile the theologians have got busy. AI has been justified in terms of reincarnation and the theory of karma. Pious fathers now feel happy at the thought that they’re giving their wife’s children a chance of creating a better destiny for themselves and their posterity.”
“A better destiny?”
“Because they carry the germ plasm of a better stock. And the stock is better because it’s the manifestation of a better karma. We have a central bank of superior stocks. Superior stocks of every variety of physique and temperament. In your kind of environment, most people’s heredity never gets a fair chance. In ours, it does. And incidentally we have excellent genealogical and anthropometric records going back as far as the eighteen-seventies. So you see we’re not working entirely in the dark. For example, we know that Gobind Singh’s maternal grandmother was a gifted medium and lived to ninety-six.”
“So you see,” said Shanta, “we may even have a centenarian clairvoyant in the family.” The baby belched again. She laughed. “The oracle has spoken—as usual, very enigmatically.” Turning to Vijaya, “If you want lunch to be ready on time,” she added, “you’d better go and do something about it. Rama’s going to keep me busy for at least another ten minutes.”
Vijaya rose, laid one hand on his wife’s shoulder and with the other gently rubbed the baby’s brown back.
Shanta bent down and passed her cheek across the top of the child’s downy head. “It’s father,” she whispered. “Good father, good, good….”
Vijaya administered a final pat, then straightened himself up. “You were wondering,” he said to Will, “how it is that we get on so well with the local fauna. I’ll show you.” He raised his hand. “Polly. Polly.” Cautiously, the big bird stepped from his shoulder to the extended forefinger. “Polly’s a good bird,” he chanted. “Polly’s a very good bird.” He lowered his hand to the point where a contact was made between the bird’s body and the child’s, then moved it slowly, feathers against brown skin, back and forth, back and forth. “Polly’s a good bird,” he repeated, “a good bird.”
The parrot uttered a succession of low chuckles, then leaned forward from its perch on Vijaya’s finger and very gently nibbled at the child’s tiny ear.
“Such a good bird,” Shanta whispered, taking up the refrain. “Such a good bird.”
“Dr. Andrew picked up the idea,” said Vijaya, “while he was serving as a naturalist on the Melampus. From a tribe in northern New Guinea. Neolithic people; but like you Christians and us Buddhists, they believed in love. And unlike us and you, they’d invented some very practical ways of making their belief come true. This technique was one of their happiest discoveries. Stroke the baby while you’re feeding him; it doubles his pleasure. Then, while he’s sucking and being caressed, introduce him to the animal or person you want him to love. Rub his body against theirs; let there be a warm physical contact between child and love object. At the same time repeat some word like ‘good.’ At first he’ll understand only your tone of voice. Later on, when he learns to speak, he’ll get the full meaning. Food plus caress plus contact plus ‘good’ equals love. And love equals pleasure, love equals satisfaction.”
“Pure Pavlov.”
“But Pavlov purely for a good purpose. Pavlov for friendliness and trust and compassion. Whereas you prefer to use Pavlov for brainwashing, Pavlov for selling cigarettes and vodka and patriotism. Pavlov for the benefit of dictators, generals and tycoons.”
Refusing any longer to be left out in the cold, the yellow mongrel had joined the group and was impartially licking every piece of sentient matter within its reach—Shanta’s arm, Vijaya’s hand, the parrot’s feet, the baby’s backside. Shanta drew the dog closer and rubbed the child against its furry flank.
“And this is a good good dog,” she said. “Dog Toby, good good dog Toby.”
Will laughed. “Oughtn’t I to get into the act?”
“I was going to suggest it,” Shanta answered, “only I was afraid you’d think it was beneath your dignity.”
“You can take my place,” said Vijaya. “I must go and see about our lunch.”
Still carrying the parrot, he walked out through the door that led into the kitchen. Will pulled up his chair and, leaning forward, began to stroke the child’s tiny body.
“This is another man,” Shanta whispered. “A good man, baby. A good man.”
“How I wish it were true!” he said with a rueful little laugh.
“Here and now it is true.” And bending down again over the child, “He’s a good man,” she repeated. “A good good man.”
He looked at her blissful, secretly smiling face, he felt the smoothness and warmth of the child’s tiny body against his fingertips. Good, good, good…He too might have known this goodness—but only if his life had been completely different from what in fact, in senseless and disgusting fact, it was. So never take yes for an answer, even when, as now, yes is self-evident. He looked again with eyes deliberately attuned to another wavelength of value, and saw the caricature of a Memling altarpiece. “Madonna with Child, Dog, Pavlov and Casual Acquaintance.” And suddenly he could almost understand, from the inside, why Mr. Bahu so hated these people. Why he was so bent—in the name, as usual and needless to say, of
