Only Begotten Daughter Read Online Free Page A

retrieve a sterilized herring jar from the clutter. “Do you mind? As long as you’re here, Karnstein would like another donation.”
    “The cell cluster.” Murray accepted the herring jar. “What sex?”
    “Huh?”
    “Is it a boy or a girl?”
    “I don’t remember. Female, I think.”
    As Murray entered the donation room, a reverie enveloped him, a soft maelstrom of cribs, stuffed animals, and strange nonexistent children’s books by his favorite authors. What the hell kind of children’s book would Kafka have written? (“Gregor Samsa was having a really yucky morning …”) He stared at Miss October for 1968. Meiosis was obviously the last thing on her mind.
    Sacrifice. They were going to kill his embryo. Kill? No, too harsh a word. At the Preservation Institute they did science, that was all.
    He looked at his watch. Five-seventeen.
    They were going to butcher his only baby girl with a scalpel. They were going to tear her cell from cell.
    Dr. Frostig’s staff had probably left. The decision was actually quite simple: if the lab were locked, he’d go home. If not, he wouldn’t.
    He crossed the hall, twisted the knob. The door swung open. What was he going to do with a baby? Twilight leaked through the lab’s high, solitary window. The liquid thumpings of the glass womb synchronized with Murray’s heartbeats. He flipped on the light, picked up the wooden platform and its contents, and staggered back into the hall. A baby. He was holding a damn baby in his arms.
    Slipping into the donation room, he set the machine beneath the furry crotch of Miss June for 1972. Best to wait until the Revelationists were gone. If mere artificial insemination were sinful by their standards, inverse parthenogenesis would give them cat fits.
    He checked the plastic tubes for kinks, just as Frostig had done. What made him think he could get away with this? Wasn’t he the first person they’d come looking for? A good thing his cell cluster was too young to see the dozens of naked women surrounding her. All those breasts, they’d put her in a tizzy.
    The door squealed open. Murray shuddered and jumped. His heart seemed to rotate on its axis.
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” said a tall black donor with a rakish mustache. Sauntering forward, he pulled a herring jar from his sports coat “Thought the place was empty.”
    “That’s all right.” Feebly Murray attempted to cover his crime, sidling toward the stolen womb and standing before it in a posture he hoped was at once protective and nonchalant. “I’m finished.”
    “With all those grants they keep getting”—the donor grinned slyly—“you’d think they could put some black chicks in here.” He pointed to the womb. “Are the fancy ones just for white folks? All I ever get is a herring jar.”
    “It’s an ectogenesis …”
    “One Forty-seven.”
    “Huh?”
    “I’m Donor One Forty-seven.” The black man clasped Murray’s hand and shook vigorously. “Actually I wear several hats around here. Up on the third floor I’m Marcus Bass.”
    One Forty-seven. Murray had heard that name before. “You’re a marine biologist, aren’t you?”
    “Western civilization’s top man in mollusks, I’m told.”
    “I met one of your recipients today. She decided on you after—”
    “No, buddy, no—don’t tell me anything about her.” Dr. Bass gestured as if shooing a fly. “A man can’t trust himself with that sort of knowledge. You start trying to find your kid—just to see what he looks like, right?—and you end up doing everybody harm.”
    Murray sighed sharply, exhaling a mixture of disappointment and relief. So: his caper was over; he might have smuggled his embryo past an ordinary donor but not past a clam expert. It was all right, really. Fatherhood was nothing but work. “Then you know this is really an—?”
    “Ectogenesis machine, prototype stage.” Dr. Bass offered an ambiguous wink. “Frostig would be awfully upset if it disappeared.”
    “I just