The Inheritors - A. Bertram Chandler [54]
"With the very few survivors a colony of sorts could have been started, might possibly have survived. There were ten men—nine of them, including Morrow, passengers, one of them a junior engineer. There were six women, four of them young. Morrow persuaded his companions that they would have a far better chance if they had underpeople to work for them. The only ova that had survived the trouble were those of cats—but Morrow was expert in his profession. With the aid of the engineer he was able to set up incubators and then—all that was required was in the ship's cargo—a fully equipped laboratory.
"He wrote again in his journal, The first batch is progressing nicely, in spite of the acceleration. I feel . . . paternal. I ask myself, why should these, my children, be underpeople! I can make them more truly human than the hairless apes that may, one day, infest this new world . . . .'
"Regarding the deaths of his fellow Lode Cougar survivors he says very little. One suspects that he knew more than he wrote about the food poisoning that killed Mary Little, Sarah Grant and Delia James. One wonders if Douglass Carrick fell off that cliff, or was pushed. And how did Susan Pettifer and William Hume come to get drowned in the river? It is interesting to note, too, that Mary, Sarah, Delia and Susan were the potential child bearers. And, as well as working in his laboratory, Morrow set up a still and soon had it in operation, turning out a very potent liquor from a fermented mash of berries and wild grain. The surviving men and the two remaining women didn't care much then what happened, and as Morrow had succeeded in activating a team of robots from the cargo he was independent of them.
He didn't bother to kill them as his first batch of 'children' was growing to forced maturity. He just let them die—or be killed by wild animals when they went out hunting for meat."
"Yes," said Kane. "I know all that. The Morrowvians are non-citizens."
"I haven't finished yet, Captain Kane. There was something of the Pygmalion in Morrow—as there must have been in quite a few of those genetic engineers. He fell in love with one of his own creations—his Galatea. He even named her Galatea."
"Touching . . . " commented Kane.
"Yes, wasn't it? And he married her; he'd decided that his people couldn't live in a state of complete anarchy, and must have a few, necessary laws. So he made the union legal."
"Uncommonly decent of him," sneered Kane.
"But that didn't stop him from having quite a few concubines on the side . . . ."
"So the Morrowvian idol had his feet of clay."
"Don't we all, Captain, don't we all?"
"So the records prove that true humans can have sexual relations with these underpeople. I'd found that out long before I saw the precious records. Judging by the stink in here, Commander Grimes has found it out too."
"John! What have you been doing? Don't tell me that you and Maya . . . "
"I won't tell you if you tell me not to."
"So you did. I hope you enjoyed it, that's all."
Kane laughed patronizingly. "So I'll leave you people to your family squabbles, and get back to my ship and send my report off to Lindisfarne. A very good day to you all."
"Wait!" Maggie snapped sharply. "I haven't finished yet."
"I don't think that anything further you can say will change my mind. Underpeople are underpeople. Underpeople are property. Period."
"There is a ruling," said Maggie slowly, "that any people capable of fertile union with true people must, themselves, be considered true people."
"And so, to coin a phrase, what?"
"Morrow's unions were fertile."
"So he says. How many glorified tomcats were sneaking into his wife's or his popsies' beds while he was elsewhere?"
"The Morrow strain is strongest in North Australia, among the people who bear his name."
"What evidence is there?"
"The Morrows are a little more 'human' than the other Morrowvians. Very few of their women have supplementary nipples. Their general outlook is more 'human'—as you know yourself. That show you put on