Again, Dangerous Visions by Ellison Harlan;

Author:Ellison, Harlan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“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

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