But at the same time, everything was different. Her every thought now was on the newchild she had met only once, had held for a moment, whose light eyes she had gazed into briefly, whose curly hair had touched her chin for too short a time. Number Thirty-six.
“Have they chosen the name yet?” she had asked the young woman attendant, who was re-propping the bottle for the female one she had changed and returned to her crib.
“For this one? I don’t think so. They don’t tell us, anyway. We never know their names until they’re assigned.”
Each newchild was given to his assigned parents at the Ceremony that would take place in December. Their names, chosen by a committee, were announced then.
“I meant this one,” Claire explained. She had taken an empty rocking chair, and moved back and forth now with Thirty-six, whose loud crying had subsided. He was looking up at Claire.
“Oh, that one. He might not even get a name at the next Ceremony. They’re already talking about keeping him here another year. He’s not doing well. They call it failure to thrive.” The young woman shrugged.
“Actually, he does have a name lined up.” The man returned the infant he’d been burping to the crib, re-propped her bottle, came to where Claire was, and looked down at Thirty-six. “Hey there, little guy,” he said, in a singsong voice.
“He does? How do you know?” The young woman looked surprised.
The man took Thirty-six from Claire, who relinquished him reluctantly. “I’ve been concerned about him,” he explained. He looked down and made a funny face, as if encouraging the unhappy infant to laugh. “I thought it might make him more responsive if I started using his name. So I sneaked into the office and took a look at the list.”
“And?” his assistant asked.
“And what?”
“His name is—?”
The man laughed. “Not telling. I only use it in secret. If it’s overheard? Big trouble. So I’m being careful.” He jiggled the infant in his lap. “It’s a good name, though. Suits him.”
The woman sighed. “Well, it had better perk him up before December,” she said, “if he wants to get a family. And right now,” she added, looking at the wall clock, “it’s going to be naptime soon, and we haven’t even finished the feeds.”
They had forgotten Claire was there. She rose from the rocker. It was true; the time had passed quickly. “I have to get back,” she told them. “I wonder: Would it be all right if I visit again?”
They were both silent for a moment. She realized why. It was an odd request. Children volunteered at many different places; it was required. But after the Assignments, after childhood, people worked at their assigned jobs. They didn’t visit around, or try out other things. She tried to come up, quickly, with an explanation that seemed logical.
“I have a lot of free time,” Claire said. “It’s a slow time of year at the Hatchery. So I wandered over today to visit Sophia. You know Sophia; she works down the hall, with the next older newchildren?”
They nodded. “Twenty-one to Thirty,” the man said. “That’s Sophia’s group.”
“Yes. Anyway, she showed me around a bit. And I can see that you can use an extra pair of hands from time to time. So I’m just offering to help out. If you’d like me to, of course.” Claire was aware that she was talking very fast. She was nervous. But the pair didn’t seem to notice.
“You know,” the man said, “if you wanted to do it on a regular basis, make it official, I think you’d have to fill out some forms.”
The young woman agreed. “Get permission,” she added.
Claire’s heart sank. She could never do that, never fill out official forms. They would identify her immediately as the Birthmother who had been reassigned.
Thirty-six wiggled and wailed. The man carried him to his crib and propped his bottle, but the wailing continued. The man patted the thrashing legs in a vain attempt to soothe him. He looked over at Claire with a wry smile.
“But come on over when you have free time,” he said. “Just on a casual basis.”
“Maybe I will,” Claire said, keeping her voice light, as his had been, “if I have a few moments sometime.”
She turned and fled. Thirty-six continued to cry. She could still hear him as she left the building.
Now she thought of nothing else, of no one else.
Six
It felt very strange, to have this feeling—whatever this feeling was. Claire had never experienced it before, the yearning she had to be with the newchild, remembering his face—how the solemn light eyes had stared at her, the way his hair curved around at the top of his head and lifted into a curl there, the wrinkling of his forehead, and his quivering chin before he began to cry.
Each family unit was allotted two children, one of each gender, and she had been the younger. They had waited several years after receiving Peter before they had applied for their girl. So Claire had never known an infant or a small child well.
She asked her coworkers, trying to make it a casual question, at the evening meal. “Do any of you remember getting your sibling?”
“Sure,” Rolf said. “I was eight when we got my sister.”
“I was older,” Edith said. “My parents waited quite a long time before they applied for my brother. I think I was eleven.”
“I was the second child in my family,” Eric said. “Anyone want that last piece of bread?”
They all shook their heads, and Eric took the last slice from the serving plate. “My sister was only three when they got me. I think my mother actually liked little children.” He made a face, as if the idea mystified him.
“That’s what I was wondering about, actually,” Claire explained. “Is it, well, usual for people to become really fond of newchildren?”
“Depends what you mean by ‘fond,’” Dimitri said. The head of the entire Hatchery operation, Dimitri was an upper-level worker; he was older, and had studied science intensively. “But you know, of course, that infants of any species—”
He stopped and looked at the rest of them, at their blank expressions. “Didn’t you study this in evolutionary biology?” he asked.
Finally, at the silence, he chuckled. “All right, so you don’t know. I’ll explain. Infants are born with big wide-spaced eyes, generally, and large heads, because that makes them look appealing to the adults of the species. So it ensures that they will be fed and cared for. Because they look—”
“Cute?” Edith interrupted.
“Right. Cute. If they were born ugly, no one would want to pick them up, or smile at them, or talk to them. They wouldn’t get fed. They wouldn’t learn to smile or talk. They might not survive, if they didn’t appeal to the adults.”
“What do you mean by ‘any species’?” Eric asked.
“Well, we don’t have mammals anymore, because a healthy diet didn’t include mammal, and they detracted from the efficiency of the community. But in other areas there are wild creatures of all sorts. And even here, people once had things they called pets. Usually small things: dogs, or cats. It was the same in those species. The newborns were—well, cute. Big eyes, usually. Animals don’t smile, though. That’s a skill unique to humans.”