THE GREAT MUTATION, by Talmage Powell

Originally published in Science Fiction Stories, November 1959.

Dr. Hans Hofstetter later compared the event to the moment the first man was born without a tail.

The doctor’s day had been routine, consumed mainly with financially-responsible ladies who whiled away their idle time with the hobby hypochondria. The last patient before the doctor knocked off for lunch was a man.

The doctor looked at the newcomer with some surprise. The man was almost a physical giant, with a face that looked as if it had been trimmed by meat-choppers. He exuded brute force and vitality; his eyes were black, alert little marbles tucked under craggy brows of scar tissue.

Dr. Hofstetter had never had a more rugged physical specimen walk into his office.

“Doc,” the new patient said in guttural tones out of the side of his mouth, “I got a pain.”

“I see,” said the doctor. He was a big, square Germanic specimen himself, but he was dwarfed by the newcomer as be stood up and offered the patient a chair. “And where is the pain located?”

“Right here,” the patient said, patting the lower part of his stomach.

“Has it been bothering you long?”

“Couple, three weeks. There’s a swelling, too.”

“Well, we’ll certainly have a look. Now, your name, please.”

“Gino Alberghetti.”

“Occupation?”

“Prize fighter.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-seven.”

The Doctor noted the information on a card. “Just step in the next room and strip to your shorts, and well get the examination underway.”

While the patient readied himself, Dr. Hofstetter washed his hands. He walked into the examination room and in his comforting fashion smiled at Mr. Alberghetti as he picked up his stethoscope.

The patient’s pulse, blood pressure, and heartbeat were perfect. The muscle tone was excellent. Superficially, the man seemed in the best of health.

The doctor’s square, blunt fingers expertly explored the area where the alleged pain was located. Alberghetti grunted. “That’s it, doc. Right there. Ain’t a natural sort of pain. I mean—it don’t hurt like pain ought to hurt. Get what I mean?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, like a little pressure. A feeling that something is there.”

“I see. An awareness.”

“Yeah, you got it, doc.”

The Doctor let his face become a mask as his fingers detected the slight growth back of the abdomen Vail. Rather unusual spot for a tumor in a man. Still and all…

“Well, doc?” Mr. Alberghetti said as the doctor stepped back from him.

“Oh, I think we have everything under control, but there’s nothing like being thorough.”

“You mean I got something bad?” Mr. Alberghetti, for all his courage when facing an opponent he could sock back, expressed a quick terror that something might be haywire inside of him.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Dr. Hofstetter said. “This way please.”

He stood the man behind the fluoroscope, adjusted the instrument, and stared dumbfounded.

It is impossible, of course, the doctor thought. I’ve been working too hard.

He closed his eyes.

Opened them.

The faintly-outlined, but unmistakable shadows were still there in the man’s innards.

“Am I gonna die, doc?”

The forlorn wail brought Dr. Hofstetter out of his trance. “I think not,” he assured the patient. “Excuse me a moment. You can step out from there now, if you please.”

The doctor darted into the next office, closed the door to give him privacy, wiped his face with a handkerchief, and reached for a phone.

* * * *

In less than an hour, four of Dr. Hofstetter’s colleagues descended on the office. Mr. Alberghetti blanched at the sight of them. He grabbed Dr. Hofstetter’s hand. “Doc,” he graveled, “tell me the worst. I can take it.”

“Everything’s going to be fine,” was the best Hofstetter could offer him.

Mr. Alberghetti sat as if stricken with paralysis as the quintet of doctors probed and peered at him for over an hour. They took a blood sample, which they rushed out; they took x-rays which were treated with equal dispatch.

Mr. Alberghetti sat and shivered, with a couple of juicy tears in his eyes.

The ordeal continued until the day was gone. Nobody had eaten lunch. Time after time, the five doctors huddled to whisper. Alternate heads would pop out of the huddle to survey Mr. Alberghetti.

Finally the four doctors left the office, reeling like men drunk with excitement and consternation.

Mr. Alberghetti took a deep, wavering breath and said, “Tell my dear old mom I took it like a man, will you, doc? Tell her before I died I thought about her.”

“I don’t think you’re going to die,” Dr. Hofstetter said.

“Honest?”

“I wouldn’t delude you.”

“Then what’s the matter with me?”

“A most unusual thing.”

“Yeah, doc?”

“You’re going to have a baby.”

“Me? I ain’t even married—unless that Mamie…”

“I didn’t say Mamie, Mr. Alberghetti. I said you. It seems you are pregnant.”

“Damn you, doc, take them glasses off and I’ll…”

“Just relax, Mr. Alberghetti. Striking me would in no wise alter the facts. Anyway, I don’t think you want to strike me. I think that you, like many men, are much more tender in your emotional recesses that you’d like to have show on the surface.”

Mr. Alberghetti squinted. He struggled with thought. He made a decision. “You’re nuts.”

“I thought so, too. But the unalterable fact remains that in the lower portions of your body a sac-like growth has come into being. At its apex is a canal connecting with an equally strange growth that must be some form of egg-producing mechanism. Means of fertilization are already present in your anatomy, and with the set-up ready, a perfectly natural and logical event has taken place. The sac now contains the fetus that will prove to be your first son or daughter.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mr. Alberghetti said, gingerly touching his lower stomach. “What’ll the boys around Stillman’s gym have to say about this?” He sat appalled. Then he leaped to his feet. “I don’t wanna have no baby, doc!” he wailed in a bullfrog basso.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “I suspect it is going to be most trying. While a capricious mutation has enabled you to conceive, no provision has been made for the actual event. In the dumb animal kingdom, this would be one of those limitless and endless evolutionary trials that ends in error. However, I think we can see you through. It will be no trouble to have the finest experts on earth take part in the Caesarian.”

“I don’t care about that,” Mr. Alberghetti moaned. “I just don’t want to have no baby.”

“So don’t a lot of women,” Dr. Hofstetter sighed. “But it’s the one task they haven’t been able to figure their way out of completely. See me next Friday at 2 p.m.”

Mr. Alberghetti wept his way out of the office and Dr. Hofstetter realized, with a start, that he was late for a dinner engagement with his closest friend, Dr. David Stein.

* * * *

The Steins and Hofstetters were attractive, congenial, cultured people. Mrs. Stein was blonde, Mrs. Hofstetter brunette. Both were beautiful, well-groomed, and possessed charm. Dr. Stein was dark and handsome, keen-eyed, quick of movement. He and Dr. Hofstetter had graduated in the same class from Duke University Medical School and interned in the same New York hospital.

Dinner over, Dr. Hofstetter drew Dr. Stein into his study. “Something’s troubling you, Dave,” he said, offering cigars.

Dr. Stein’s glance flashed to his friend. “You know me too well,” he smiled.

“Perhaps I could be of help.”

“I don’t know. I had a most unusual patient today. A man. He…” Dr. Stein hailed. He clipped the end of his cigar, lighted it.

“Wasn’t pregnant, was he?” Dr. Hofstetter smiled.

Dr. Stein choked on cigar smoke. “How did you know?”

“Was he really?”

“He most certainly was. I could hardly believe my senses.”

“Neither could I.”

The two men stared at each other.

Dr. Stein said, “I thought mine was an isolated phenomenon!”

“So did I.”

“Great shades of Darwin,” Dr. Stein said, sinking toward a chair. “Two in the same day.”

“The condition may not be general,” Dr. Hofstetter said. “Remember that it’s a big, big city with millions of men.”

“How do you explain it?”

“I don’t, yet,” Dr. Hofstetter said. “How do you?”

“I’m equally in the dark. But one thing is certain: We have to keep this thing quiet until we’ve looked into it further.”

“Yes, I’ve thought of that.”

“Not only for the sake of these two men,” Dr. Stein said, “but for the sake of the structure of society itself. If we break the news prematurely that men are subject to pregnancy, if we can offer no explanation, come forth with no assurances, I hate to think of the psychological chaos.”

“I’m shuddering with you, Dave.”

Dr. Stein looked up at his friend. “Hans, you’re an officer of the association. I think a quiet meeting of our directorship is in order.”

“I quite agree.”

“Meanwhile we caution our patients that not a word of this leaks out.”

“I think the men involved will agree to that quickly enough.”

* * * *

Dr. Hofstetter spent the remainder of the night making phone calls. The next day, the directors began quietly filtering into the city, and Dr. Hofstetter convened the meeting in a suite in the Waldorf.

The best medical brains in the country took up the questions posed by Dr. Hofstetter.

How general was the condition?

What was its cause?

Was it confined to the United States?

What will the Russians have to say about it?

How are we going to break it to the public?

And how in the hell are we going to tell our wives?

Under Dr. Hofstetter’s guidance, committees were set up in every field of medicine to study and explain the new turn in human events. Dr. David Stein headed up the committee on public relations. It would be his difficult task to break the news in the best couched terms when an explanation was forthcoming.

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Hofstetter concluded the first meeting, “there is no need for my pointing out the direness of this emergency. We have little time, at best. An event of this nature cannot be hidden long, and we cannot afford to let the tabloids in their fashion make the first public announcement. I shall be available twenty four hours a day to all members of the committees appointed here today.”

Dr. Hofstetter retired to his office and informed his wife by phone that he would not be home for a few days. He awaited reports.

* * * *

The first came at four a.m. the next day. It was from Rudeen, an Alabama surgeon.

Dr. Hofstetter’s eyes burned over the report. The condition was general: No less than fourteen cases had turned up the very day the directors of the association were in session. One more case in New York. Two in Chicago, one in Indio, California, one in Augusta, Georgia—where the gentleman threatened to shoot the doctor as a tool of a Red front organization—one in Mexico City, two in Montreal, and six in Paris, France.

Dr. Hofstetter laid the report aside. Fourteen. There probably were hundreds of cases. All over the world. Rudeen had simply made a rapid spot check to get an indicator of the generality of the condition.

Within thirty six hours Colmeyer’s report was ready.

* * * *

Hofstetter gave himself an injection of vitamins and gulped black coffee. Then he concentrated on the report.

“All evolutionary history,” Colmeyer had written, “plainly indicates the effort of nature to maintain a balance, to try new methods and processes with the aim of achieving greater efficiency and harmony of creatures to their environment, and to eliminate or modify creatures which have decreased in efficiency.

“The present phenomenon can best be understood by pointing out that diverse methods of reproduction have been in use on this planet for untold ages. We need only to mention the pollination of flowers, the sexual habits and attributes of the oyster, the practice among certain species for the female to leave the setting of eggs to the male, to understand that the mammalian mode of reproduction represents only a small part of the picture. It was only with the appearance of mammals—in recent times, historically speaking—that the method was introduced where the young were carried, born helpless, and suckled and guarded for a comparatively inordinately long span of time.

“The mammalian mode represented a great improvement in that it enabled the conception and development of the young with a potential lacking in the lower forms.

“From all available knowledge, this committee goes on record with the theory that this latest development in the method of reproduction is an attempt by nature to experiment further and improve the method.

“We feel that the attempt has been hastened, perhaps even brought into being, by the human race itself. The process has been centuries upon centuries in the working, from the dawn of civilization. When the first man built the first house to shelter his female while he went forth to conquer the rigors of his world, he began the process. During the last few hundred years the process of taking away the usefulness of women has been going forward at an ever-accelerating pace. Now we have reached the time of crisis. Men have attempted to do everything, from the purchasing of professional laundering to the baking of cakes, which they whip up from a bake shop over the hot coin earned on a competitive job. Every conceivable device for saving labor and entertaining the female of the species has become a major end product of a seething, rushing, competitive civilization.

“Thus the female has been reduced to the point where she need only possess the strength to push a vacuum cleaner on ball-bearing casters. Physiologically, her mode of living and gradual mis-use have resulted, over the centuries, in modifications of body structure that make her once “natural” method of giving birth a thing now almost unheard of except among the so-called primitive peoples.

“What we are witnessing today is not a sudden nor spontaneous thing. It is the result of the accumulation of forces an alert nature always brings to bear when anything in her domain reveals a threat to get out of balance.

“What the future holds, we can only guess. If the disuse of the female continues at its present pace, the new reproductive mode might well become permanent. On the other hand, the new mode might prove to be an abortive attempt by nature to correct a balance.”

Hofstetter laid the report down and paced his office. He needed a conference with Dave Stein, but it would simply have to wait. He had been thirty six hours without sleep. He all but fell on the leather couch in his office, but sleep didn’t come immediately. He was unable to get the gist of the report from his mind, and he was haunted by thoughts of his wife who faced only the task of devising ways to fill her time, once the prepackaged food was prepared with devices that did the cooking at a flick of the switch.

Hofstetter was awakened by Dave Stein’s hand shaking his shoulder.

He knew by Dave’s action and attitude that something important had come up.

“There’s coffee and sandwiches on your desk, Hans,” Dave said. “The Russians announced this morning they were making a public announcement concerning the future of the race.”

Dr. Hofstetter rose from the couch groggily as Dr. Stein turned on the small television set in the corner of the office.

The face of a network news announcer filled the screen. He intoned in a weighty voice:

“As promised, the Russians have come forth with their announcement. For once, their words, if true, should reach the hearing of every man, woman, and child in the free world.”

Dr. Hofstetter munched on ham and cheese and sipped coffee and felt a dread of what was coming.

“I’ll read you the communiqué as it came from Moscow,” the announcer said.

He picked up a paper, donned heavy black-rimmed glasses, glanced once up into the very eyes of his listeners, and returned his attention to the paper.

“The Russian institute of advanced medicine today announced the most amazing discovery of all time. Russian science has found a method whereby the glorious women of the world will be spared the rigors of childbirth. While the western warmongers were pouring millions of their blood-stained dollars into the science of war-making, the dedicated doctors of the USSR fought for and achieved another great victory in their battle to make life better for all people. As another example of the blessings of the only true ideology.”

Dr. Hofstetter choked on his ham and cheese. “They’re making the whole thing out to their credit!”

“We could have expected nothing else,” Dr. Stein said.

“So they’ve beaten us to the punch. But the truth will come out.”

“Still, they’ve made an impression. Some of it’s bound to linger in certain places in the world.”

* * * *

Dr. Hofstetter headed a delegation to Washington, explained the scientific facts of the matter at the White House, and saw a sane and honest American announcement made.

Before he left Washington, a second Russian announcement shattered the world.

Straslinski, survivor of the last cloak-and-dagger bit in Russian and hence the top man, was with child. The great and noble father and protector of followers of the true ideology everywhere was himself setting an example to all men. Here was proof of his benevolence and the manner in which he cherished the future of the race.

Dr. Hofstetter received a note from high echelon requesting him to remain in Washington until it was determined what the Russians would do next.

His frantic wife phoned him, “Hans, are you…”

“No, not yet.”

“New York is a madhouse. The jokes that are going the rounds!”

“It’s the same down here.”

“And yet there’s something else, Hans…a feeling…in the face of this great change, people are not as hostile as before.”

“I know. Take care of yourself.”

“I will—and Hans, if you should…I mean…”

“I’ll call you,” he said gently. He was touched by her concern and desire to be useful if he should join the ranks of pregnant men.

He chaffed at the delay in Washington. He called his office daily. Dave Stein was taking care of his patients, but the parade of women with the hobby hypochondria seemed to have thinned considerably.

* * * *

To fill his time, Dr. Hofstetter read all the news he could absorb. A quickly thrown-together play, “Virginal Papa”, had opened in New York and sold out for two years. In Baltimore’s night court a cab driver was given ninety days for slugging a pregnant man. The usual sentence was a fine and court costs, all circumstances—except that one—being the same.

In Sing-Sing’s death row, a stay of execution was granted when doctors pronounced an occupant with child.

In South Carolina, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan announced that he was dissolving his organization to retire to his farm and await his child.

A Paraguayan rebel leader’s efforts came to naught when three of his key men returned to their homes to have babies.

In Santa Fe a man walked into police headquarters and confessed to a murder three years past. “I couldn’t kill anybody now,” the man told reporters. “You never heard of pregnant women going around murdering people, did you? Well, I guess I can understand why now. I ain’t just a big lug, you know.”

The Russian foreign minister announced that his doctor had predicted twins for him. He suggested that people in the satellite countries might keep a little more of their grain and milk this harvest. Washington held its breath, but the man’s head remained on his shoulders and Straslinski said he backed his foreign minister to the hilt. In fact, Straslinski said, we’d like to see all children of the world well-fed, even if their beliefs are in error, and perhaps we could open our grain stores a bit.

Dr. Hofstetter finally realized he’d got lost in the shuffle. Nobody would miss him. So he took a train and went back to New York.

Dr. Stein met his train. “How’s Washington?”

“Thing’s are changing. We might even look forward to an honest and genuine disarmament conference this spring. The world has never been so close to a real and lasting peace.”

The two started through the throngs toward the street.

“The latest reports here,” Dr. Stein said, “show a leveling off in pregnancies. The mutation might have been a side door, a blind alley, after all. But the people of the world will be a long time knowing that. The existing nature of things has nearly cracked wide open and it’ll remake the psychological outlook of the entire race. Women will seek usefulness. Men will find a new consideration for themselves and others, I think we can look forward to a new era in human relations, to say the least.”

Suddenly Dr. Hofstetter stopped.

“What is it?” Dr. Stein asked with quick concern.

“I,” said Dr. Hofstetter, blanching and touching his stomach, “just had the most avid desire for a plate of dill pickles—with a side dish of chocolate cream pie…”