In the Barn Read online

  Hitch found himself with babe in arms.

  "All right, Esme," the owner said to the cow, his voice low and friendly. "Let's take care of that afterbirth. Here - I'll give you that shot I promised. It only stings for a second. Hold still - there. You'll feel much better soon. Just relax, and in a moment you'll be asleep. In a few days you'll be back with the herd where you belong, the finest milker of them all." He looked up and spied Hitch still standing there. "Get moving, man! Do you want her to see it?"

  Hitch got moving. He did not feel at all comfortable carrying the baby, for all his determination of a moment ago to help it in some way, but that was the least of it. Its cries, never very loud (did they breed for that, too?), had subsided almost immediately as it felt the supposed comfort of human arms, and probably that was fortunate because otherwise the mother would have been attracted to the sound. But this removal of the baby so quickly from its parent, so that it could never know a true family - how could that be tolerated? Yet he was cooperating, carrying it down the dusky passages to the nursery.

  The fact that he had witnessed its arrival did not make him responsible for it, technically - but the baby had, in more than a manner of speaking, been given into his charge. His prior mood returned, intensified; he did feel responsible.

  "I'll take care of you, little girl," he said inanely. "I'll keep you safe. I'll -"

  He was talking like a hypocrite. There was very little he could do for this baby except put it in the nursery. He didn't know the first thing about child care. And - he was no longer entirely certain that he should do anything specific if he had the opportunity.

  He had been ready to condemn this entire world out of hand, but in the face of this last development he wasn't sure, oddly. This breeding and milking of human beings was shocking - but was it actually evil? The preliminary report had remarked on the strange peacefulness of this alternate Earth: computer analysis suggested that there was no war here, and had not been for some time. That was another riddle of #772. Was it because those who ruled it were compassionate men, despite the barbarity of their regime?

  Which was better: to have a society peacefully unified by a true segregation of functions - men-men vs animal-men - or to have every person born to contend so selfishly for the privileges of humanity that all succeeded only in being worse than animals? Earth-Prime remained in serious jeopardy of self-extermination; was that the preferred system to impose on all the alternate Earths too?

  #772 did have its positive side. Economically it functioned well, and it would probably never have runaway inflation or population increase or class warfare. Could it be that with the breakup of the family system, the human rights and dignities system, the all-men-are-created-equal system - could it be that this was the true key to permanent worldwide peace?

  He had not seen a single discontented cow.

  By taking this baby from its mother and conveying it to the impersonal nursery, was he in fact doing it the greatest favor of its existence?

  He wondered.

  The nursery caught him by surprise. It was a cool quiet area more like a laboratory than the playroom he had anticipated. A series of opaque tanks lined the hall. As he passed between them he heard a faint noise, like that of an infant crying in a confined space, and the baby in his arms heard it and came alive loudly.

  Hitch felt suddenly uneasy, but he took the squalling bundle hastily up to the archaically garbed matron at a central desk. "This is Esmeralda's offspring," he said.

  "I don't recognize you," the woman said, glowering at him. Epitome of gradeschool disciplinarian. He almost flinched.

  "I'm a new man, just hired this morning. The boss is in with the mother now. He said to -"

  "Boss? What nonsense is this?"

  Hitch paused, nonplusseal, before he realized that he had run afoul of another slang expression. This one evidently hadn't carried over into #772. "The owner, the man who -"

  "Very well," she snapped. "Let me see it."

  She took the bundle, put it unceremoniously on the desk, and unwrapped it. She probed the genital area with a harsh finger, ignoring the baby's screams. This time Hitch did flinch. "Female. Good. No abnormalities. Males are such a waste."

  "A waste? Why?"

  She unrolled a strip of something like masking tape and tore it off. She grasped one of the baby's tiny hands. "Haven't you worked in a barn before? You can't get milk from a bull."

  Obviously not. But a good bull did have his function, as Iota's experience had shown. Hitch watched the woman tape the miniature thumb and fingers together, forming a bandage resembling a stiff mitten, and something unpleasant clicked. Hands so bound in infancy could not function normally in later life; certain essential muscles would atrophy and certain nerves would fail to develop. It was said by some that man owed his intelligence to the use of his opposable thumb . . .

  "I haven't been involved with this end of it," he explained somewhat lamely. "What happens to the males?"

  "We have to kill them, of course, except for the few we geld for manual labor." She had finished taping the hands; now she had a bright scalpel poised just above the little face.

  Hitch assumed she was going to cut the tape away or take a sample of hair. He wasn't really thinking about it, since he was still trying to digest what he had just learned. Slaughter of almost all males born here . . .

  She hooked thumb and forefinger into the baby's cheeks, forcing its mouth open uncomfortably. The knife came down, entered the mouth, probed beneath the tongue before Hitch could protest. Suddenly the screams were horrible.

  Hitch watched, paralyzed, as bubbling blood overflowed the tiny lip. "What -?"

  "Wouldn't want it to grow up talking," she said. "Amazing how much trouble one little cut can save. Now take this calf down to tank seven."

  "I don't -" There was too much to grapple with. They cut the tongues so that speech would be impossible? There went another bastion of intelligence, ruthlessly excised.

  With the best intentions, he had delivered his charge into this enormity. He felt ill.

  The matron sighed impatiently. "That's right, you're new here. Very well. I'll show you so you'll know next time. Make sure you get it straight. I'm too busy to tell you twice."

  Too busy mutilating innocent babies? But he did not speak. It was as though his own tongue had felt the blade.

  She took the baby down to tank seven, ignoring the red droplets that trailed behind, and lifted the lid. The container was about half full of liquid, and a harness dangled from one side. She pinned the baby in the crook of one elbow and fitted the little arms, legs and head into the loops and tightened the fastenings so that the head was firmly out of the fluid. Some of it splashed on Hitch when she immersed the infant, and he discovered that it was some kind of thin oil, luke-warm.

  The baby screamed and thrashed, afraid of the dark interior or perhaps bruised by the crude straps, but only succeeded in frothing redly and making a few small splashes with its bound hands. The harness held it secure and helpless.

  The matron lowered the lid, checking to make sure the breathing vents were clear, and the pitiful cries were muted.

  Hitch fumbled numbly for words. "You - what's that for? It -"

  "It is important that the environment be controlled," the woman explained curtly. "No unnecessary tactile, auditory or visual stimulation for the first six months. Then they get too big for the tanks, so we put them in the dark cells. The first three years are critical; after that it's fairly safe to exercise them, though we generally wait another year to be certain. And we keep the protein down until six; then we increase the dose because we want them to grow."

  "I - I don't understand." But he did, horribly. In his mind the incongruous but too-relevant picture of a beehive returned, the worker-bees growing in their tight hexagonal cells. His intuition, when he first saw the cows, had been sure.

  "Don't you how anything ? Protein is the chief brain food. Most of the brain develops in the first few years, so we
have to watch their diet closely. Too little, and they're too stupid to follow simple commands; too much, and they're too smart. We raise good cows here; we have excellent quality control."

  Hitch looked at the rows of isolation tanks: quality control. What could he say? He knew that severe dietary deficiencies in infancy and childhood could permanently warp a person's mental, physical and emotional development. Like the bees of the hive, the members of the human society could not achieve their full potential unless they had the proper care in infancy. Those bees scheduled to be workers were raised on specially deficient honey, and became sexless, blunted insects. The few selected to be queens were given royal jelly and extra attention, and developed into completely formed insects. Bees did not specialize in high intelligence, so the restriction was physical and sexual. With human beings, it would hit the human specialization: the brain. With proper guidance, the body might recover almost completely from early protein deprivation, but never the mind.

  EP had researched this in order to foster larger, brighter, healthier children and adults. #772 used the same information to deliberately convert women to cows. No drugs were required, or surgical lobotomy. And there was no hope that any individual could preserve or recover full intelligence, with such a lifelong regime. No wonder he had gotten nowhere with Iota! He heard the babies wailing. What price, peace?

  "And," he said as she turned away, "and any of these calves could grow up to be as intelligent and lively as we are, if raised properly?"

  "They could. But that's against the law, and of course such misfits wouldn't be successful as milkers. They're really quite well off here; we take good care of our own. We're very fortunate to have developed this system. Can you imagine using actual filthy beasts for farming?"

  And he had milked those placid cows and had his round with Iota . . .

  He left her, sick in body and spirit as he passed by the wailing tanks. In each was a human baby crying out its heritage in a mind-stifling environment, deprived of that stimulation and response essential to normal development, systematically matnourished. No health, no comfort, no future - because each had been born in the barn. In the barn.

  He could do nothing about it, short-range. If he ran amok amid the tanks, as he was momentarily inclined to, what would he accomplish except the execution of babies? And this was only one barn of perhaps millions. No - it would take generations to undo the damage wrought here.

  He paused as he passed tank #7, hearing a cry already poignant. The baby he had carried here, in his naivete. Esmeralda's child. The responsibility he had abrogated. The final and most terrible failure.

  A newborn personality, bound and bloody in the dark, never to know true freedom, doomed to a lifelong waking nightmare . . . until the contentment of idiocy took over.

  Suddenly Hitch understood what Iolanthe meant by integrity of purpose over and above the standards of any single world. There were limits beyond which personal ambition and duty became meaningless.

  He stepped up to the tank and lifted the lid. The cries became loud. He clapped his free hand to his ankle, feeling for the blade concealed there. He brought it up, plunged it into the tank, and slashed away the straps. "Hey!" the matron cried sharply.

  He dropped the knife and grabbed the floundering infant, lifting it out. He hugged it to his shirtfront with both arms and barged ahead. By the time the supervisor got there, Hitch was out of the nursery, leaving a trail of oil droplets from the empty tank.

  As soon as he was out of sight he balanced the baby awkwardly in one arm and reached up to touch the stud in his skull.

  It was risky. He had no guarantee there would be an open space at this location on Earth-Prime. But he was committed.

  Five seconds passed. Then he was wrenched into his own world by the unseen operator. Safely!

  There was no welcoming party. The operator had merely aligned interworld coordinates and opened the veil by remote control. Hitch would have to make his own way back to headquarters, where he would present his devastating report. Armies would mass at his behest, but he felt no exhilaration. Those tanks . . .

  He held the baby more carefully, looking for a place to put it down so that he could remove the remaining strap-fragments and wrap it protectively. He knew almost nothing about what to do for it, except to keep it warm. But the baby, blessedly, was already asleep again, trusting in him as it had before though there was blood on its cheek. The mutilated tongue . . .

  He was in a barn. Not really surprisingly; the alternate framework tended to run parallel in detail, so that a structure could occupy the same location in a dozen Earths. There were many more barns in #772 than in EP, but it still didn't stretch coincidence to have a perfect match. The one he trekked through now was an Earth-Prime barn, though, an old-fashioned red one. It had the same layout as the other, but it contained horses or sheep or - cows.

  He walked down the passage, cradling the sleeping baby - his baby! - and looking into the stalls. He passed the milkroom and entered the empty stable, noting how it had changed for animal accommodation. He couldn't resist entering the special wing again.

  The first stall contained an ill cow who munched on alfalfa hay. The second was occupied by a lively heifer who paused to look soulfully at him with large soft eyes and licked its teeth with a speech-mute tongue. Had she just been bred? The third -

  Then it struck him. He had been shocked that man could so ruthlessly exploit man, there on #772. It was not even slavery on the other world, but such thorough subjugation of the less fortunate members of society that no reprieve was even thinkable for the - cows. VVhen man was rendered truly into animal, revolt was literally inconceivable for the domesticants.

  Yet what of the animals of this world, Earth-Prime? Man had, perhaps, the right to be inhumane to man - but how could he justify the subjugation of a species not his own? Had the free-roving bovines of ten thousand years ago come voluntarily to man's barns, or had they been genocidally compelled? What irredeemable crime had been perpetrated against them?

  If Earth-Prime attempted to pass judgment on this counter-Earth system, what precedent would it be setting? For no one knew what the limits of the alternate-universe framework were. It was probable that somewhere within it were worlds more advanced, more powerful than EP. Worlds with the might to blast away all mammalian life including man himself from the Earth, leaving the birds and snakes and frogs to dominate instead. Had it been such intervention that set back #772?

  Worlds that could very well judge EP as EP judged counter-Earth #772. Worlds that might consider any domestication of any species to be an intolerable crime against nature . . .

  Iolanthe would take care of the baby; he was sure of that. She was that sort of person. Prompt remedial surgery should mitigate the injury to the tongue. But the rest of it - a world full of similar misery -

  He knew that in saving this one baby he had accomplished virtually nothing. His act might even give warning to #772 and thus precipitate far more cruelty than before. But that futility was only part of his growing horror.

  Could he be sure in his own mind that Earth-Prime had the right of it? Between it and #772 was a difference only in the actual species of mammal occupying the barn. The other world was, if anything, kinder to its stock than was EP.

  No - he was being foolishly anthropomorphic! It was folly to attempt to attribute human feelings or rights to cows. They had no larger potential, while the human domesticants of #772 did . Yet -

  Yet -

  Yet what sort of a report could he afford to make?

  Afterword:

  The name inscribed over the bullpen is HARLAN, though the description is not necessarily physical. I was one of those who supposed his intellectual scrotum contained two jellybeans, but I learned that there were, after all, nitties in his gritty. Thus I applauded the potency of the first DANG VIS and clamored for admission to the second.

  Why? Why:

  Our field of speculative fiction, like our nation, like our world, be
comes too complacent at times. Originality and candor are not always sought, not always appreciated, even when the need becomes critical. At such times there may be no gentle way to fertilize the willing medium; we have to call upon a bull-editor, a rampaging volume, and irate authors such as these you read here. Perhaps even so the mission will fail - but we must, must try. For it is in the expansion of our horizons, including especially these literary and moral ones, that our brightest future lies.

  "In the Barn" is intended to be a shocker, of course. It could have been told without the, if you'll pardon the expression, vulgar detail. But the real shock should not stem from the portrayal of acts every normal person practices. It should be this: this story is a true representation of a situation that exists widely in America, and in the world, and that has existed for millennia. Only one detail has been changed: one form of mammal has been substituted for another in the barn.

  Does human morality have to be defined in terms of humans? Is it impossible for us to recognize the inherent rights of nonhuman creatures? Surely, if we can show no more respect for cows, for chickens, for pigs, for any animal or color or philosophy - no more respect than this - surely we have defined our own morality unmistakably.