and he described to Penna a plan in progress....
“To drink?” Gianna stared her sister in the eye, too tired to remember the number of times she and Penna “had not gotten along well,” or the fact that Penna did not drink except at big parties in Pisa.
“Thank you, no,” Penna said, slipping onto a stool at the trattoria counter. Her thin hands rested on the counter’s top like two pale leaves, two emblems of the aristocrat’s life. And her dark airy dress-suit, with its transparent pleats and top—which made everyone in the trattoria stare like dogs—was some emblem of childless womanhood.
“Certainly I do not wish to seem pushy,” Penna added. Her fingers lifted from the counter’s top, and came down again like a symphony’s finale. “But I have heard of a thing that may interest you.”
“You heard it in Pisa? It would interest me?”
Penna thought nothing of these two questions from Gianna; they could not possibly be meant as sarcasm, since Gianna was not smart enough to be sarcastic.
“You have heard of the war?” Penna continued.
“Of course. People against lizards—”
“Cromanths. Against the Cromanths. Yes, that is the war I mean.”
Yes, Gianna had heard of the big war with the big smart lizards who would kill human beings unless human beings killed them first. Out beyond the world named Pluto, far out nearby a sun called a neutrona, soldiers in big quick ships had met the smart vicious lizards—those Cromanths. All of a sudden the lizards destroyed a station full of human beings near the neutrona, and the war began.
Men and man-size lizards were dying out there. And some people, Gianna knew, predicted that someday soon the Cromanths would try to bring the war to Earth.
But other people, like Gianna, believed that the world of Earth, the world completely of human beings, should have one’s full attention—exclusively. Let the ships and soldiers and lizards fight each other out there, so far away! Earth had enough worries.
“And you have heard of the Procolonial Corporganization?” Penna asked now.
Was Penna trying to be cruel? She knew that Gianna’s eight bambini had been in the Procolonial training programme....But no, Gianna did not really believe that Penna was trying to be cruel. Penna was not smart enough to be cruel with subtle questions.
“Of course,” Gianna said.
“Well, the Corporganization is making plans. It is afraid the Cromanths will win the war. That is not to say that the Corporganization is certain, that all men will eventually be killed by the Cromanths, but only that there is a chance it will happen—and the Corporganization wishes to take steps.”
To take steps.... Gianna’s eight bambini had taken a step—and then another step....
“They are building three big ships,” Penna went on, “which will carry four thousand colonists each. Those three ships will take their people as far away as possible—from men and Cromanths alike—to three planets that will be just as fine as Earth. The Corporganization believes that this is the proper step to take—”
Yes, this sounded like a fine plan. But what was Penna suggesting? That Gianna become a colonist?
“In each ship there will be four thousand colonists, and also one other person.”
“The captain?”
“No. It will be the ‘mother’ of the ship, the ‘mother’ of the colonists.”
Gianna considered the vision immediately. She saw herself walking through long halls inside a ship, among thousands of “doves,” her cotton dress and broad bosom waving like flags, she giving advice on how to have many children, how to be a good mother, a good wife, a fertile woman like Gianna Sarnoli, and how to raise children on the new Earth they were traveling to. All of this vision pleased Gianna, and she nodded with enthusiasm to her sister.
“Yes,” Gianna said, wanting to thank her sister for this truly fine idea she had brought from Pisa.
“Yes what?”
“What you said. The Corporganization, it has a good plan. I would like to take that step.”
“What do you mean?”
“That each ship will need a mother to tell the colonists how to behave.”
“No. you have misunderstood me. I have not finished explaining.”
So Penna told her. About how the mother of each ship would not walk among her colonists—would not be able to walk at all, since she would no longer possess human legs, hips, thighs or arms. Each mother would give up her personal body, even most of her head—in order that her mind be attached to the ship itself. Her heart, of course, would be placed in proper liquids on the ship, and would continue beating; when it stopped beating, another heart in storage would appear of its own accord and take the first heart’s place. There would be one thousand hearts in storage for her; and also many livers and kidneys and lungs—though many of these would not be from human bodies. Her new body would be the ship, and inside her giant womb would rest four thousand doves....
This new vision was unexpected, and it made Gianna’s knees wobble. She leaned against the counter to hide her wobbling knees from Penna’s view.
After a silence of five minutes, Gianna said “yes” and the wobbling stopped, and Penna went back to Pisa, thinking that for once in her life she had done something truly wonderful for her sister.
“You are at least certain of your attitude?” asked the doctor at the Procolonial Center near Milano.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Gianna answered. “All I know is that I desire to be one of the three mothers in your three ships.”
“I see. Well, what I meant by ‘conscious’ as opposed to ‘unconscious decision’ was— No, please forget that. The fact is you wish to apply for ‘maternality’ in one of the PC-000 ships.”
“Yes. I just told you that.”
“Are you aware that three thousand women have applied for those three positions?”
“Three thousand colonists?”
“No, three thousand women like yourself wish to be ‘mothers’ of the three ships. And only three ‘mothers’ are needed.”
“I did not know that....”
Gianna was angry. She was already 2,997 women too late in her application. Why had no one informed her long ago that the three mothers had already been chosen?
“I am sorry to have bothered you,” she said.
“It appears you misunderstand. Three thousand have applied, but all of them have yet to be tested before the final three are chosen. Do you object to taking a long series of tests?”
No, she did not object to taking tests. But she knew she had lost already. She had taken only three tests in her life—two in grade school, and one administered by a doctor—and the only one she had passed was the doctor’s
