Departures

Still cameras flashed and stereovision cameras whirred, but there were, after all, only so many pictures to be taken of a pig. After a while, Delahanty took the tub away from Lionel and put it on a table by the lectern.

Following it with his eyes, Lionel let out a grunt of piggy indignation. “Sorry, pal,” Delahanty told him. “Maybe later.” As if he understood, Lionel settled back-he really was a good-natured beast. His throat and jaws began to work.

More flashes went off. “That’s what you came to see, ladies and gentlemen,” Delahanty said. “Lionel’s one of Genetic Enterprises’ new R strain of pigs-R for ruminant, of course. In other words, unlike ordinary, unimproved swine, he chews his cud.”

“Just why is that an improvement?” asked a lady reporter in the second row.

“It makes him and his brothers and sisters more efficient food processors. Ruminant animals-cattle, sheep, goats, deer, antelope are some of the ones occurring in nature-partially digest food, then store and regurgitate it for rechewing and more complete digestion. They get more out of a given amount of food than non-ruminants. Lionel will gain weight on less feed or lower-quality feed than an unimproved pig.”

“Which means lower cost to the farmer?” someone asked.

“Exactly.”

“But of course buying your R strain is going to be more expensive for the farmer. What’s the net savings?”

Delahanty turned to a chart behind him.”Here you have costs for the R strain compared to those for ordinary swine. As you can see, the break-even point is at three and a half months if the farmer buys piglets; it’s even sooner if he chooses to have fertilized ova implanted in his own sows. And the extra expense is all in the first generation; the R strain breeds true.”

“Will they interbreed with unmodified pigs?” a man with a gray mustache wondered.

“No,” Delahanty said. “There may be matings, but no offspring from them. The genetic changes are too great for inter-fertility.”

Another woman had a question: “How hardy are your new pigs? Can they survive the poor treatment they may get, say, in a Third World country?”

“At least as well as any other pigs,” Delahanty said firmly. “Probably better, since they’ll thrive on less food. One of the reasons Genetic Enterprises developed the R strain was to provide more protein for overpopulated developing nations.”

He fielded more queries about costs, and several on the genetic engineering techniques that had gone into Lionel and his ilk. After half an hour or so, the reporters’ ingenuity flagged. Finally, though, someone asked the question Delahanty had been hoping for: “What do these beasts of yours taste like?”

He smiled. “I’ll let you all be the judges of that. The chops and hams on the buffet to my left here come from the R strain. If there aren’t any more questions-”

The surge forward was so sudden and urgent that Lionel snorted in alarm. But somebody was still waving a hand-not a reporter but a cameraman, a fellow with curly brown hair and a big nose. “Yes? You want to ask me something?” Delahanty called.

“Yeah, if I could,” the man said. “My name’s Stan Jacoby. Here’s what I want to know…”

Delahanty had been ready for every question the reporters, and a good many they hadn’t. Now, though, he felt his jaw drop. “Mr. Jacoby,” he said in the most spontaneous answer of the press conference, “I’ll be goddamned if I know.”

The phone rang three times before Ruth picked it up. “It’s for you, dear,” she shouted.

Rabbi Aaron Kaplan muttered something unrabbinic that his wet beard mercifully swallowed. “Unless it’s an emergency, get a number and say I’ll call back,” he called over the hiss of the shower. He expected to be dragged out dripping-when did anyone calling a rabbi not think it was an emergency?-but he got to finish bathing in peace.

Somewhat mollified, he surveyed himself in the steamy bathroom mirror as he dried off. There were gray threads in the beard and a bald spot at his crown, but his stocky frame had not changed too badly since his days as a high school linebacker twenty-five years before.

Ruth came in with a scrap of paper. He smiled at her, thinking how lucky he was; if she had not been a rabbi’s daughter, she would have been a rebbitzin decorative enough to make half his congregation nervous.

At the moment, she was giggling. “What’s so funny?” he asked. She gave him the paper. He recognized Peter Delahanty’s name; they had worked together on a couple of fund-raising committees. Underneath were a phone number and a one-sentence message: “Wants to know if pigs can be kosher.”

He laughed. “A practical joke?”

“I don’t think so. He seemed very sincere.”

“Well, all right, I’ll call him. He’s got chutzpah, if nothing else.” Kaplan went into the bedroom, put on a T-shirt and pair of shorts. Not for the first time, he was glad he hadn’t added video to his phone system.