Page 3 of Whoops-A-Mate From Outer Space
I accepted the results warily. “Do you really expect some scans to change my mind?”
“I have the feeling you’ll find them quite compelling,” General Block responded.
I glanced at the top scan. It showed a profile view of an abdomen. I started naming the organs in my head, then something caught my eye.
I shifted and leaned in to study the scan more closely.
At first glance, the subject was biologically male—his penis clear in the scan—but there was something unexpected branching off from his anal canal.
“What is that?” I mumbled, completely absorbed. “It can’t be what it looks like.”
“It is,” General Block responded.
I jumped, having already forgotten that they were there. I shook my head. “Not possible. I haven’t studied intersex conditions as much as some, but I don’t think anybody’s seen a presentation like this.”
“Keep going,” he urged.
I glanced up and met his gaze. He was serious.
I set the first scan aside, and the world went sideways as I got a good look at the second one.
“He’s fertile?” I cried, unable to tear my gaze from a fetus developing in a womb that shouldn’t be there.
Then something caught my eye, I picked back up the first scan and studied the differences between them. “Wait… there aretwoof them?”
“There are more than two,” General Block replied. “There are billions.”
I shook my head. “Impossible. I could see one…maybetwo… Life is weird, and these poor people will be studied for the rest of their lives. But there’s no way we’d miss it if a significant portion of the population was like this.”
“Their entire population is like this.”
I shook my head again. “We’d have seen it before now.”
I set the scans down and met the general’s eye. “Look. I can buy a birth defect or even a genetic abnormality leading to one or two isolated cases. We tend to think of evolution in terms of tiny changes building over millennia, but major changes do occur from time to time. However, it takes time to propagate those changes in a society. There’s no way we’d have missed this at any sort of scale.”
“Would approximately twenty-five hundred years be enough?” General Block asked with a smirk.
I snorted. “Did you find Atlantis or something? There’s no way you’d have a population isolated enough for the numbers you’re claiming. All the known uncontacted people in the world combined aren’t enough.”
He leaned in, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Not Atlantis, Doctor. And this isn’t natural evolution. These peoplegenetically engineered themselves to give men the ability to become pregnant and carry to term.”
I set the scans down with a sigh. “I don’t know who decided to play a joke on you, General, but it’s not funny. We couldn’t make these modifications today, let alone around the time the last pyramids were being built in Egypt.”
“No joke, Doctor,” Colonel Smith stated. “I was present for these scans. And this is only the beginning.”
I studied him for several seconds, trying to find any hint of deception. Finally, I sighed.
“I’m not saying I believe this,” I started. “But—assuming this is true—what do you want from me?”
General Block grunted. “We need your expertise. I’m authorized to tell you that it’s a matter of when, not if, these people start reproducing with the population at large. We need to know what to expect as their genetics spread.”
I frowned. “There are better people than me for that. My specialty is reproductive changes over time due to environmental factors. You want somebody who studies genetic migration.”
They exchanged a glance.
“There are… other… concerns,” Colonel Smith stated.
“Oh?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
