"The Summer Of The Seven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Melko Paul)

We didn’t bother to “um.” Embarrassment coursed among us. I expected a well-deserved lecture, but instead Mother Redd said, “Come on. There’s someone in the house I want you to meet.”
We climbed down from the loft and followed Mother Redd across the yard to the house. I tried to force down the I-told-you-so deep inside.
Strom and Bola both threw me guilty looks.
Some scientist we were.
Candace and another pod were in the great room. The other pod was a quintet, in his thirties. One of him was examining one of Candace with a stethoscope; another tapped another of her on the chest.
“Doctor Thomasin. This is Apollo.”
Four pods in the great room, large though it was, made the place pretty crowded, especially when one of us was a seven. We hung against the wall, and let Meda shake hands with Doctor Thomasin’s interface.
“Ah, Apollo Papadopulos! A pleasure to meet someone with your strong lineage.”
“Um, thanks, I guess.”
Who cares what our lineage is? We had been designed and built, then raised in Mingo Creche. As far as we knew, our lineage was just the result of some scientists somewhere mixing eggs and sperm together.
“I’m Candace’s doctor. I built her,” he said.
Several of Candace blushed.
He was young to be a human gengineer. But he must have been good to have succeeded at a septet.
Compare his and Candace’s face, Bola sent.
I saw it the way Bola saw it: Thomasin was a genetic donor for Candace. He could have been her biological father if she’d been born that way.
Weird. We had no father or mother, though we understood the concept. Mother Redd took the title, but she was more a mentor than an actual mother to us.
“Congratulations,” Meda said, though it seemed odd even as she said it.
“Thank you.”
He turned and started discussing something regarding nanosplicing with Mother Redd, so we snuck out with Candace on our heels.
“Isn’t he great?” she said.
“You have a nice father,” Meda said, before I could cut her off.
“He’s not my dad! He’s my doctor.”
“You look—”
Meda!
“How’re your ducks doing?” she asked.
“I think they’re gonna hatch soon!” she said. Bola pointed out that it was a different one talking than before; she’d changed faces when we changed topics. Meda was always our face; she did all our interfacing with other pods. “I’ve been varying the heating and light to simulate a real mother sitting on the eggs.”
“Great,” Meda said.
Another of Candace spoke up. How many faces did she use? “Did you know we had our first period? That’s why Doctor Thomasin was here.”
“Um.” It was our turn to flush. I felt Strom’s shock. He turned away from Candace and looked across the yard at the barn. Meda, Quant, and I had all had our first menses. We’d all had to deal with it, as well as wet dreams and all the other drawbacks of male and female puberty. But some things were best left within the pod.
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Meda. “We’re half female, you know.”
“No. That isn’t what I mean. Doctor Thomasin made me so I can breed true.”
“What?”
“You know why all pods are gengineered.”
“Yes!”
“If I breed with another of my type of pod, I can birth six members of a septet.”
“If you breed with a six male, one female septet?”
“Yes!”
“Why do you need a septet? You just need one male to inseminate all of you and one more female to carry the seventh.”
They have a male, Manuel sent.
That is so gross.
“Biological diversity, of course!”
We all felt foggy, the smell of confusion circling among us.
“But—”
“If you breed,” she went on, “you’ll just have normal human singletons who will still have to be coalesced into a pod. It won’t happen naturally. With me, my children will be born as a pod!”
“But—”
“It’s so much more stable biologically, don’t you see?”
“But—”
“Until pods can reproduce more pods, we’re just a genetic dead-end. This is all part of Doctor Thomasin’s work.”
“But—”