Page 26 - Fables volume 3

are out rounding up one male and one female, and when they have
them both, they take them on board that leaky old tub.”
“And that’s it? We don’t pick our own mates? It’s completely
random? That’s crazy.” The giraffe shook his head.
“Maybe so,” said the skunk. “But completely in character for
people. Look how it all started: one pair of humans with virtually
identical DNA—heterogeminates, really—and an instantaneously
complete complement of everything else. Thousands or millions of
each type of plant and animal. You know what that means?”
“The first people didn’t get to pick mates, so this is payback?”
“No! Why do the big ones have tiny brains? Don’t you know
anything about genetics?”
The giraffe was embarrassed. “No more than the average
mammal.”
“It’s quite simple. They produced a race of inbred defectives, all
congenitally diseased, while we kept that problem to a minimum in
our gigantic gene pool. Diversity, my friend, is the key to a robust
species.”
“Then we are getting messed up, payback or not—if they are right
about a universal flood. And it looks like they have about a dozen
Homo sapiens involved in getting that ship ready: so they will have a
better shot at robustness than we will after it’s over.”
The skunk shook his head. “Not so simple. If each of is matched
with a random member of the opposite sex, the chances are we will
not match a lot of recessive genes, and our offspring will have a
chance to weed them out rapidly. At least faster than the idiots
pushing us into cramped quarters for who knows how long.”
The giraffe was puzzled. “But there are more of them than us.”
“Ah,” said the skunk. “I omitted the key piece of information: they
are all members of the same family! Their progeny will be a sad and
sorry lot of physical specimens. But still too smart, I fear.”
As the giraffe thought about that, he caught sight of another giraffe
being pulled and prodded toward the enclosure. She had the longest
eyelashes he had ever seen!

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