"Dr. Allison found I was tetraploid, while Phyllis and I were still married. He and I have been searching for a tetraploid woman, without success. Meanwhile, I try and still hope for fertile matings with a normal diploid woman, for the tetraploid has been fertile with the diploid sometimes in plants.
"No, Donald can't be my son, whatever Phyllis says. There's more involved than the time of his birth—two years after our divorce. Dr. Allison has tested him, and Donald has the normal 48 chromosomes."
"Can't you accept the verdict of nature, Forsythe?" demanded Truggles. "If you were born a eunuch, you could never reproduce."
"While there's hope, I have the responsibility," said Forsythe slowly. "If the stream of life is to progress, something greater than man must arise from him. I know, Truggles—I know—I am that superior thing. And I think back in history to the geniuses, the superior men, who died without progeny and I wonder how many of them were tetraploid, as I am, but could not pass on their new abilities to the world."
Truggles shook his head angrily and arose.
"You can't succeed by flouting the social conventions man has built up," he said stiffly. "I'm afraid you'll find that out to your sorrow, Forsythe."
His mind caressed the gun inside his coat pocket. Such a direct solution appealed to him. But he resisted it. There was a better, safer way. He turned his back on Forsythe and left.
As he walked past the Allison home, and covered half a block toward town, seething inwardly at Forsythe's stubbornness; a woman arose from a sidewalk bench to accost him. It was Lois, Forsythe's dark-haired wife to whom he had talked while she wept half an hour earlier.
"Why, Mrs. For—Miss Lois!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Did you escape?"
"Escape?" she repeated. Her eyes were shadowed from weeping. "Blan doesn't keep us prisoners. We come and go as we please. It's just that most of us prefer not to go out into town."