Eugenica

---

We donned the integs,
airtight, skintight,
feeling as always
unsuited for the job.

The cryos, human vectors
frozen with all their maladies,
all their microbes from E. coli to caries,
rank on rank and tier on tier

of old, forgotten families
antedating Eugenica,
were fodder now for the engines'
bright inferno. Like ancient forebears

stripping out asbestos,
we wheeled them on their gurneys
to a brighter future in space,
cracking wise to pass the time away.

"Corpsicles, that's what Niven
calls them. Some red, some white.
Well below the glass transition
temperature. Dropped from a height,
they'd shatter like the finest china dolls
your grandmother's granny collected."

A pretty ugly one shivered nicely
when we dropped her accidentally,
a neoplastic mosaic
of lilac and cerise follicles.

"Perfect conchoidal fracture.
Yeah, you could break someone's heart
doing this kind of work."

"And catch a disease 
while you're at it. As arms — and legs —
for biological warfare,
these things could make us trillions!"

"There hasn't been a war
on this deck for generations,
numbnuts. But there will be
if the wicked witch of the west
starts melting all over the place."

Decon lasted a week, the toughest
part of a tough job.
Getting laid's even tougher.

Eugenica originally appeared in Figment #12 (Winter 1992).

Go to the next page or return to the Table of Contents.