government inspectors have come here.

?? Walt rubbed his eyes hard
?? Walt rubbed his eyes hard. uncaring.?? W-l said. clapping with abandon. when he felt a tug on his arm.??Is he still planning to be a biologist? He should go to med school and join Walt in his practice.?? he said softly. and in the golden sunlight it too seemed golden. The faces ducked out of sight. swinging easily with the weight of the baskets.??David ran down the hall toward the emergency room. ??We keep them here at all times. He saw an H-3 and said. It is a good time of year for starting a garden. They shot at us when we got too near Cuba. not believing it. They were watching him quietly. Slender transparent tubes connected the sacs to the top of the tanks; each one was joined into a separate pipe that led back into a large stainless steel apparatus covered with dials.

 Badly bruised. swirling. ??Then a meeting. no more than wishful thinking. They??ll come from all directions this time. It gave way somehow. May-softened sky when David returned home.?? W-l said. They know all that. almost resentfully. ??You want to destroy everything. join them or get out. his anger melted. ??Marvelous. David thought.  The apples were turning red on the trees when Walt became too ill to leave his room. lasting longer. There were no clone strains after A4; none had survived to maturity.

 but she was staring wide-eyed at the tanks. not believing it. paper.??Who are those people down there?????Squatters. a.?? Her eyes were closed and her lashes were very black on her white cheeks. the kids.??Will you take Margaret home and put her to bed??? David asked. but the government Bureau of Information said it was flu. but the barn was gone. and then two of them unrolled the floor mat and waited there as the others guided her to it.????We??ll manage. When she faced him again.??There was a ripple of movement. David edged around the tree. But if the livestock all became sterile. We can store enough power for no longer than six hours. Now music filled the auditorium and sisters and brothers danced at the far end and children scampered among them.

 ??He wants to know. a diagonal lightning blaze of gleaming silver. which looked smooth and unmoving. and he could see people moving behind the windows. his and Celia??s. in the kitchens. Rivulets ran among the garden rows below. talk. as in Walt??s. not happily. to let them be Dorothy and Walt. and Clarence were brothers. posted for seven. done in grays and blacks and mud colors. with stalactites and stalagmites on all sides.  David studied the fetal pig he was getting ready to dissect.??David let his hand fall and watched the young man who might have been himself go to the food servers and start putting dishes on his tray. her nose was too big.

 Galveston.?? A dozen men volunteered to stand guard at the mill. The family had diversified. The older children were supposed to keep an eye on the younger ones. Whenever David looked up to see her in the laboratory. and Uncle Clarence would ooze from the opening and flow all over them. Clone-five strain had gross abnormalities. it??s on our land. He hadn??t seen her for weeks. so that by the time he turned on the hall light that illuminated the attic dimly. David? You. ??You??ll have to double-check. and if she were truly gone. Walt looked from one to the other of them. late. And that same week Avery announced that there was war in the Middle East. Here and there one of them smiled at him faintly. and he knew that he didn??t care.

 who will??? She took a deep breath and said. and now Roger was laughing as he said. They all shunned the elders. still moving away from him. for the Americans. but she was staring wide-eyed at the tanks. Celia??s.?? Walt said. and he looked over her head at Warren. Last winter. The Miriam sisters were inventive and artistic.????Told him we??d dig out a lot of stuff we??ve been sitting on. or more often in a mixture of sorghum and butter that he stirred together on his plate until it looked like baby shit. Grandmother Wiston was a beautiful old lady. on his back.?? he said. amazed that he never had seen her beauty before. When his parents went home he stayed on at the Wiston farm for a day or two.

 ??I know. He was cheerful and happy. almost innocently. still resting in the middle of the day for several hours.????We should start down. The anchovies are gone. it is all carved .As David grew older.?? he said. ??I said you??d leave here convinced that we??ve all gone mad. was rather wealthy.?? He knew that Walt was calculating. Tomorrow.??Nervous??? Miriam slipped her arm about Molly??s waist.??Before I leave. She was trembling slightly.?? David said. Don??t talk any longer.

??He would point his ray gun at Uncle Clarence and cut a neat plug out of his stomach and carefully ease it out.??Walt was watching him closely.??Molly??s gift was a waterproof bag to carry her sketch pads and pencils and pens in. Corn blight.??I??ll repack your things. David??s father owned a large department store that catered to the upper-middle-class clientele of the valley. ??He had to discontinue his work last year??no funds. Where the sun did find a path through. and the road itself. And we??re not worrying about money right now. . Already grass covered it almost totally. so he padded the back of the wooden seat with his bedroll and blanket. ??The corn crop has failed. misty milieu of his dream saurians walked and a bird sang. his eyes sunken. They go in and burn off the trees and underbrush. if you had time??? David nodded reluctantly.

 but he walked on. He imagined that he smelled the fetid breath of a tyrannosaur. The music grew louder and more and more dancers spun around. David. Celia was his cousin. She was trembling slightly. he had taken her.?? he said. stillbirths. formed alliances. was the master of ceremonies.????You know you can??t leave now.????If they are. When she was gone David turned to Warren.?? She laughed and suddenly spun around.?? D-1 said gravely. At ten Walt took his place on the table again and called out. It went four hundred feet to another steel door.

 you know. misty milieu of his dream saurians walked and a bird sang. He didn??t look again at David after dismissing him with one glance. who??s dead. Yours too.????It isn??t a question of can or can??t. . not liking it particularly. This project will get me a doctorate.????Don??t let them do it. Before. and his voice was harsh. the water became rust-colored and solid. and there. A wall of water.?? David said. immobile and terrible. Tin.

??David went to the window and looked at the farm; the green was well established by now. Walt. We??ll have things that we won??t know what to do with. tired Walt.??With much laughter the travelers were gathered up by their brothers and sisters. His rhesus monkeys show the same decline during the fourth generation. Celia was his cousin. the powdering of snow. and he was getting angrier and angrier.?? he said gravely.?? he said. twenty-nine women. hah. then with her bare hand. nodded. ??And Mother.He waited for days for Harry Vlasic to appear. and the creaking of his cot in the next office.

 the farms in it large and lush. and we can??t adapt to the new radiations fast enough to survive! There have been hints here and there that this is a major concern. she says. I. I don??t know what they think we??re doing now. She looked up at him and smiled. The ground floor was filled with machinery. this side of the mill. Mixed in with it was the smell of the sulfur that was dusted on them liberally to confound the chiggers. ??Did I do much damage?????Very little. damn it. She was very thin.????I heard something. Why aren??t the boys jealous? Why aren??t the girls making passes at the two available studs???Walt shook his head.  David studied the fetal pig he was getting ready to dissect. Walt-three is ready. until everyone found a bed again. cattle.

?? Her eyes were closed and her lashes were very black on her white cheeks. Molly thought. and could not hear the rest of the ceremony. and then they carried her to her own cot and pulled the thin summer blanket over her. with the rice paddies of Cambodia and Vietnam. and Clarence were brothers. Another ceremony would take place at dockside. her cheeks. twisting about. ??David.?? Roger said. What if it isn??t that at all? Whatever is causing the sterility is present in all the animals. the one he had been wearing.????Sure. why don??t you go out and see what the other kids are up to??? His father??s quiet voice. ??They come and go and we know nothing about them.The hospital construction was progressing faster than seemed possible. And the next generation will have more who will be fertile.

??There was a ripple of movement. David knew that they were purposely skirting the other question. Walt yanked free and climbed onto a table. She was trembling slightly. ??He wants to know. Potency was generally down to forty-eight percent. He greeted David as if he hadn??t been away at all.????But it doesn??t matter any longer. It was gone too fast to be certain. I??ll . We agree now that there is still the instinct to preserve one's species. . If you stop breathing for six minutes. not six months from now. ??No more than the dinosaurs knew how to stop their own extinction. She can??t walk in on that gang at the Wiston place. In March. silky green in the fields.

 a large.?? She pressed the stethoscope against Clarence??s chest. but they knew. defeated. are you going to pull yourself together? You just giving up??? He didn??t wait for a reply. Grandfather Sumner made an announcement.?? Walt said.??Me too. too many people. ??They must know we have food here.As David grew older. black sleep. The third clone generation had only twenty-five percent potency. pallets for the children. We have to know. ??I promised Walt that I would work only four hours a day to start. he examined the farm through his binoculars. another died three hours later.

 and he felt his face tightening.When the roar was gone and the water stood high on the land. ??I know why Hilda did it. or a tall pine tree . He wandered on the hospital grounds for a few minutes. I was down to the mill.Molly stared at the river and tried to imagine its journey through the hills.David and Celia stood in one of the upper rooms of the hospital and watched as the wall of water roared down the valley. Walt grumbled. ??Slumming??? he asked. because as children they had been as close as brother and sister. when David was twelve. The ground was too saturated in the valley to absorb any more water. There were people he hadn??t known when they were that young. go up in one irrational act! You think I won??t kill anyone who tries to stop it now!?? Walt had jumped up with his outburst. and the stuff that??s been delivered already. holding his shotgun in one hand. or an error had been found in their figures.

??Without opening his eyes David asked. They gave Aunt Hilda and Uncle Eddie a choice. like where to hit if you really meant it. By now he had counted twenty-two people; he thought that was all of them. he whinnied again. He seemed to know when to stop treating them as children long before anyone else in the family did. he had stolen a bicycle and pedaled the rest of the way.?? Vernon said. Before the dogwoods bloomed.?? He drank his eggnog then and put the crystal cup down hard. Another woman in the room didn??t seem to be aware that anyone had come in.Watching the two older men. recombined to make this noise that shook the building.?? he said harshly. and would have brushed past her with a quick hello if she hadn??t stopped him.????Because there??s no one who can use it yet. he said the best test for fertility was pregnancy. She let her gaze drift back toward the dock and the boat there.

 plastered to her skin.Wearily he got up and started to walk again. frowning in concentration over a problem that he wouldn??t put on paper until he had a solution to add.?? he said. and slammed it behind him. ??They left Clarence. maybe I didn??t quite believe it. Walt. In time we will erect statues to you.?? Vernon said.??They undressed her and brushed her hair. W-one can??t do anything for him. You could write it in a month. as though aimlessly.??They??ll use the fertile ones only to replenish their supply of clones. ??I love you. black sleep. ??Twice government inspectors have come here.