The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [269]
He watched for a few moments more, exclaiming under his breath, then straightened up, shaking his head in amazement.
“I’ve never seen such a thing, Sassenach. Ye’d told me about the germs, aye, but I never in life imagined them so! I thought they might have wee teeth, and they don’t—but I never kent they would have such handsome, lashing wee tails, or swim about in such numbers.”
“Well, some microorganisms do,” I said, moving to peer into the eyepiece again myself. “These particular little beasts aren’t germs, though—they’re sperms.”
“They’re what?”
He looked quite blank.
“Sperms,” I said patiently. “Male reproductive cells. You know, what makes babies?”
I thought he might just possibly choke. His mouth opened, and a very pretty shade of rose suffused his countenance.
“Ye mean seed?” he croaked. “Spunk?”
“Well . . . yes.” Watching him narrowly, I poured steaming tea into a clean beaker and handed it to him as a restorative. He ignored it, though, his eyes fixed on the microscope as though something might spring out of the eyepiece at any moment and go writhing across the floor at our feet.
“Sperms,” he muttered to himself. “Sperms.” He shook his head vigorously, then turned to me, a frightful thought having just occurred to him.
“Whose are they?” he asked, his tone one of darkest suspicion.
“Er . . . well, yours, of course.” I cleared my throat, mildly embarrassed. “Who else’s would they be?”
His hand darted reflexively between his legs, and he clutched himself protectively.
“How the hell did ye get them?”
“How do you think?” I said, rather coldly. “I woke up in custody of them this morning.”
His hand relaxed, but a deep blush of mortification stained his cheeks dark crimson. He picked up the beaker of tea and drained it at a gulp, temperature notwithstanding.
“I see,” he said, and coughed.
There was a moment of deep silence.
“I . . . um . . . didna ken they could stay alive,” he said at last. “Errrrm . . . outside, I mean.”
“Well, if you leave them in a splotch on the sheet to dry out, they don’t,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Keep them from drying out, though”—I gestured at the small, covered beaker, with its small puddle of whitish fluid—“and they’ll do for a few hours. In their proper habitat, though, they can live for up to a week after . . . er . . . release.”
“Proper habitat,” he repeated, looking pensive. He darted a quick glance at me. “Ye do mean—”
“I do,” I said, with some asperity.
“Mmphm.” At this point, he recalled the piece of toast he still held, and took a bite, chewing meditatively.
“Do folk know about this? Now, I mean?”
“Know what? What sperm look like? Almost certainly. Microscopes have been around for well over a hundred years, and the first thing anyone with a working microscope does is to look at everything within reach. Given that the inventor of the microscope was a man, I should certainly think that . . . Don’t you?”
He gave me a look, and took another bite of toast, chewing in a marked manner.
“I shouldna quite like to refer to it as ‘within reach,’ Sassenach,” he said, through a mouthful of crumbs, and swallowed. “But I do take your meaning.”
As though compelled by some irresistible force, he drifted toward the microscope, bending to peer into it once more.
“They seem verra fierce,” he ventured, after a few moments’ inspection.
“Well, they do need to be,” I said, suppressing a smile at his faintly abashed air of pride in his gametes’ prowess. “It’s a long slog, after all, and a terrific fight at the end of it. Only one gets the honor, you know.”
He looked up, blank-faced. It dawned on me that he didn’t know. He’d studied languages, mathematics, and Greek and Latin philosophy in Paris, not medicine. And even if natural scientists of the time were aware of sperm as separate entities, rather than a homogenous substance, it occurred to me that they probably didn’t have any idea what sperm actually did.
“Wherever did you think babies came from?” I demanded,