testing begins today, Signora. Three days will be needed. You may take up residence here in the Center’s dormitories, or you may choose a pensione outside the Center at our expense. They will all be mental tests in the first series—they are termed ‘multiphasic’—so the only preparation you will need is a proper night’s sleep.”
Gianna now felt even more lost than before. The word “mental” was a frightening word, and she managed only a nod.
She scored higher than 2,998 women. She received no report-card as in school—with grades from one to ten, or satisfazione to moltissimo—but the doctor did make a special appointment to see her.
“You did very well, Gianna,” he said. “I shall quote from the evaluation report passed on to me. ‘Gianna Rigoli Sarnoli integrates a maternal drive of 9.99; her ratio of protective-aggressive impulse to proadaptive-passive inflection is 544:539; her self-symbol of maternality poses less than a .003 continuity friction with her projected progeny types, which are 95% correlative with Standard Progeny Symbols. She has been allotted a pro-success set-probability of 2999:1. Her inclusion in the PC-000 plan is imperative.”
And then Gianna went into the operating room.
She had asked herself, “Who should I give the trattoria to—so the government won’t be able to take it?” To Penna? After all, Penna had been the one to give Gianna the ship-mother idea in the first place. No, not Penna. She didn’t like, didn’t need trattoria. Besides, there was a bigger debt Gianna owed—one she had forgotten easily in past months.
So Gianna had decided to give her trattoria to Franco Nardi, and she did so by telephone and lawyer, without telling Franco how sorry she was for slapping him that sad day. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to have a trattoria, just like yours,” Franco had often said, smiling, his way of compliment.
And for Penna, instead, Gianna made a promise—and gave it to Penna in person.
“When we arrive at the world I finally choose for my four thousand people,” Gianna said, “I will have many of them name their daughters ‘Penna.’ “
This seemed to please Penna, even though she suddenly began to weep, a weeping that would continue off and on for a week.
“Please,” Gianna said, trying to comfort her. “After all, a body is not a soul—and my body has certainly been getting fat and uncomfortable in these last years. To give it up will not even be as hard as losing one’s teeth to old age, I am sure.”
But Penna must have liked Gianna’s body more than Gianna had ever imagined, because Penna began to hug Gianna, and hugged her so hard that Gianna’s arms and ribs were later black and blue.
Gianna was looking at one of the black and blue marks on her fat left arm when the anesthesia put her to sleep in the surgery room.
She had looked around at the immense room in the immense strange building, and said to herself: “This does not resemble an ordinary hospital.” And in the next moment the doctor had said: “This building itself is the body you will have—the ship itself—everything built into it properly.”
“Yes,” Gianna remembered as she fell asleep, “from the outside this building does not really look like a building. More like a smooth tower, metal...smooth...a big...hip....”
When Gianna awoke, and I was born, and she became part of Me, and I was the building, the ship, Gianna’s mind, the Brainy Brain, with weapons, EENT feelers, rooms for four thousand people, and an engine called a Harmson Chain—which would let me jump through one kind of space to another place in our land of space—I had no time to sit back and think about things.
It was nearly time to leave.
The other two ships—one in North America, one in the U.A.D.—were ready.
All we needed now was to be made full of four thousand bambini each. And they had already been selected by the Corporganization.
Over a special kind of radio—one that made voices sound odd—a man I did not know spoke to me with a professional enthusiasm in his voice.
“The time has come. You must turn your motherly mind to the future, your future, the future of the four thousand men and women inside you, the future of the human species! Look to the future, and you will see it. You will leave Earth. You will leave Man’s stellar boundaries. You will jump through nilspace to the ends of Man’s system of space-lock generators. Then you will begin your Harmson Chain crawl, still jumping through nilspace, to the Cromanth lines, past them, killing a million Cromanths if you have to in your escape.
“You will travel for as many centuries as you need—your people in drysleep, your complex mind computing and guarding them—until you find a planet that can be a wonderful place for your people, who will start civilization and the human seed anew!”
Yes, and after I put my bambini down in their new cradle I would put myself in orbit, and watch over them, until my metal hip became crippled with age.
And I did everything the stranger’s voice said I would. I do not know how the other two ships did, but I do know that one was hurt when she reached the territory of the boogiemen. I was very lucky, and maybe that means that Mamma was the only one of the three who made a safe voyage.
My trip was a smooth one. I am a very patient mamma. My duty was to take my bambini to school even if the walk was four hundred years long. So I did, and I did it well. After all, I am Mamma.
And they slept well while we walked.
I never slept, and Brainy Brain has criticized me for not sleeping. Even if I’d wanted to, I could not have slept. I was three mothers all in one, and sleep would only have been a day-dream.
Oh, I chose their cradle well! A perfect Eden—
Correction:—
Brainy Brain! You dare interrupt the saga of Mamma?
A correction of premise is imperative—
Premiss, remiss! If you wish to play a part in the song of Mamma, let it be a helpful one. Give me a view of Prime—in your own silly words. And no forked-tongue-in-cheek!
Yes, Gianna. Primus: mass 0.40, radius 0.78 (i.e. 3090 miles), surface g 0.68, mild equator inclination, moderate orbit eccentricity re close binary (res: grade 3 complication of sunrise-sunset pattern: res: grade 3 light intensity differential in media inter-eclipse).
You are lazy. More!
Gen-criterion: thinner atmosphere and weaker magnetic field (c.f. Terra): normal background radiation level higher than at sea level Terra; rationale: less intense gravitational fractionation of rocky material in body Primi intra formation period: proportion of heavy minerals (inclus: radioactive) in crust higher; rationale: less shielding contra flare protons and galactic cosmic particles: influx of energetic particles-
Yes, but that didn’t mar Prime’s face of Eden. More! Talk about the cradle, Brainy Brain!
Focus: less oceanic water than Terra: four non-interconnecting seas, cum isolated marine flora-fauna forms per independent evolutionary paths; rationale: absence of worldwide oceanic circulation: less moderation of temperature cycles: continental climate; conclus: high fraction of terran surface nom. “desert”; anterior conclus: main habitable regions would be near landlocked
