“Dammit, I’ve got a luncheon appointment.”
“Dr. Emory, I honestly don’t want to send this to committee. I’m trying to be cooperative. But I feel this is going through much too fast. I have other concerns that I don’t think you want me to mention here.”
Someone’s talked. He’s gotten to someone.
But aloud, to Florian: “Tell Yanni I’m caught in a crisis. Tell him to sit in for me. I’ll get there when I can.” She looked at the admiral, calmer, reckoning that it sounded like bargaining, not a torpedo from the flank. “Your place or mine?”
“Thank you,” Ariane said, taking the coffee from Florian, who knew how she liked it. It was her office, her conference room, and her bodyguards present, the military aides staying outside, the admiral’s own offer.
Conciliation, perhaps.
The admiral took his coffee black. Most did, who got a taste of it on special occasions. It was rare and real, imported all the way from Sol, Earth’s southern hemisphere. It was one of Ariane’s cultivated vices. And she took hers white. Real milk. A second extravagance.
“AG is still working on this,” she said. “Someday.” Cyteen had been a silicate-polluted hell when they started agriculture in the low-lying valleys, where domes and the precipitators could create mini-climate.
Another small flash: so much brown, so much blue-green on the hills. The lines spun above the valley like a webfly’s work. The big mirrors caught light from space and flung power down from the hills. And the weathermakers in orbit raked the land with storms, terrible storms—We’re safe, Ari, maman would say. It’s only noise. It’s weather, that’s all—
Leonid Gorodin sipped his coffee with a tranquil look. And smiled. And said: “The rumor inside the Bureau is that this Rubin project is yours. Personally. There’s nothing you do that doesn’t change the balance between us and Alliance, us and Sol. I’ve talked to Lu. We have a lot of anxiety about this.”
“We manage our own security. We’ve always managed it.”
“Tell me this, Dr. Emory. Is the project you’re undertaking…going to have any strategic significance?”
Trap. “Admiral, I suspect the development of a new toilet seat has strategic significance with some of your advisers.”
Gorodin chuckled politely, and waited.
“That’s fine,” she said calmly. “We’ll appreciate a vote of support from your Bureau. You want us to move the facility, we’ll move it, even to Cyteen Station. We’re very accommodating. We just don’t want to lose Rubin.”
“That important?”
“That important.”
“I’ll make a proposition to you, Dr. Emory. You’ve got an agenda. You want it passed. You want these things to go through, you want them to go through with a clean bill from Finance, you certainly don’t want any long delays. You want to get back to Reseune. I want to get back to my command. I’ve got business out there, and between you and me, I’m allergic as hell to something around here and I hate the socializing.”
“I’m also anxious to get home,” she said. It was a dance. It would get where it was going in Gorodin’s own time.
“You level with me,” Gorodin said, “about the Fargone project.”
“Say it’s genetics. It’s experimental.”
“Are you going to have advanced labs out there?”
“No. Medical wing. Analysis. Administrative work. None of the classified equipment.”
“Meaning you’re following-up, not creating.”
“In practical terms, yes. No birth-lab.”
Gorodin looked at the empty cup, and at the two azi, and held his out.
“Florian,” Ariane said, and the azi, with a quiet nod, took the pot from the sideboard and filled it. Gorodin followed Florian’s moves with his eyes, thoughts proceeding.
“You can rely on their discretion,” Ariane said. “It’s quite all right. They’re not sensitive to discussion. Reseune’s best work. Aren’t you, Florian?”
“Yes, sera,” Florian said, preparing her second cup. He offered it.
“Beauty and brains,” Ariane said, and smiled with the mouth, not the eyes. “Alliance won’t develop birth-labs. They have no worlds to fill.”
“Yet. We have to think about that.—Who’s going to manage that facility at Fargone?”
“Yanni Schwartz.”
Gorodin frowned, and sipped slowly at the incongruously tiny cup.
Ah, Ariane thought. Now, now, we get closer to it.
“I’ll tell you, Dr. Emory. A lot of my people rely on the psych hospital at Viking. For reasons which are only politics—I’d like to have a facility a lot closer to that Hope Station route you’re promoting. I’d like to have a place to send some of my worse cases—where Cyteen won’t take them through the station facility.”
“Any particular reason for that?”
“We’re talking about special operations. People whose IDs change. People whose faces—you understand—I don’t want seen. These are people who live anxious lives. They feel exposed at the big stations. They’d feel a hell of a lot better if there were a way to get to a Reseune facility—not on Cyteen.”
Ariane frowned, not bothering to hide her perplexity. It sounded halfway sane.
“What I want,” Gorodin said, “is access. A facility where my people feel—safe. Where I know they are. I want to throw some of the covert budget in there. Some of my staff.”
“No military.”
“We’re talking about unanimous support for that facility. I can deliver that.”
“No military. Reseune staff. And it better be a damn large contribution. You’ll force a redesign. I’m not having my project compromised by your people strolling through Reseune boundaries. There’ll be a total separation between any military hospital and our offices.”
“We can go with that. But we want a liaison between our side and yours that we have confidence in. Someone we’ve worked with.”
The thought hit like ice water. It was hard not to react, to keep the fingers relaxed on the fragile handle of the cup. “Who did you have in mind?”
“Dr. Warrick. He designed the training tapes. We want him, Dr. Emory.”
“Does he want you?” Calmly. Very calmly.
“We can ask him.”
“I think I know your source, admiral. I’m damned sure I know your source. What else did he tell you?”
“I think you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“No, I’m not. I was afraid of something like this. You want him, do you? You want a man in charge of your highest security operations, who quite readily betrayed my interests.”
“I’ve told you my sources.”
“Of course you have. You’re quite willing to have some Hayes employee’s head on the block, some poor sod of an engineer, no doubt, that they’ll find a way to blame if I come down on them. You want Jordan Warrick. Did he tell you why?”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Admiral, you’re a damn good poker player, but remember how I make my living. Remember how he makes his. What’s he done? Offered to go public with his opinions? Is that how you’ll guarantee me Corain?”
“Dr. Emory, you know I can deliver what I promise.”
“Of course you can. And Jordan Warrick promises you my head on a platter. He promises you he can swing votes in Science. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You can have him. I’ll transfer him and his whole damned staff. If you want to put him over a top-secret facility, go right ahead. If he wants to make speeches and write papers against my policies, fine.” She set the cup down. “Do we have a deal, admiral? We can get out of this damned city days early, if that’s the case. You support me in a request to let us leave sealed ballots on the Hope bill, and if you can guarantee they’ll be unanimous, none of us will have to show up here to call a question. Deal?”
“I think we can go with that.”
She smiled. “Excellent. If you want Warrick’s wing at Fargone, that’ll have to be written up. I’ll trust
your staff for that. Mine’s busy. But it’ll wait on the establishment of a secure facility. And I do trust you know how to lay your hands on Warrick to get his signature on the request.”
Gorodin swallowed his coffee in some haste and set his cup down. “Thank you, Dr. Emory. I’m sure this will work to everyone’s good.” He rose and offered his hand.
Ariane rose and reciprocated a strong handshake. And smiled at him all the way to the door.
The azi Catlin closed it then, her face as blank as any soldier at attention.
Florian picked up the cups, trying not to look at her either.
They knew when to be afraid.
Verbal Text from:
PATTERNS OF GROWTH
A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1
“A Reseune Calendar: 2396”
Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1
approved for 80+
BATCH AL-5766: FOUR UNITS:
The technician begins a routine procedure at Reseune, the transfer of genetic material already replicated. Ten units of AL-5766 remain unused in the genebank, standard operating procedure for commercial and experimental materials.
AL-5766 is female, Alpha class. Alpha, the highest intelligence in the A-Z non-citizen classifications, ranges upward from 150 on the Rezner scale, to a current known high of 215. AL-5766 is 190, which verges on genius. Alphas are generated only rarely except for specific executive assignments, experimental studies or colonial operations in which there is minimum population density and considerable latitude for independent judgment. Alphas without early socialization are prone to personality disorders: the best successes in non-social Alphas have been achieved with positive feedback in early training and an accelerated early tapestudy consisting of world awareness, reading, and mathematics skills, with minimal intervention except for reward. The most reliably successful Alphas are those given to human parentage from the moment of birth: in such cases the behavioral and social statistics follow the same profile as citizen-born individuals of equal Rezner values. It should always be remembered that an azi geneset’s traits and to some extent, classification, are determined by the tape designed specifically for that geneset; and that the primary failing with Alphas seems to be in tape design.
AL-5766 has shown developmental patterns in human parentage situations which are within acceptable ranges, but which indicate a propensity toward aggression. Within azi communities the AL-5766 statistics are wholly unacceptable, involving violent behaviors, moodiness, and abnormal and irrational anxieties. AL-5766 disorders once manifested find no amelioration through tape, and only rarely find relief through interventive counseling, although some salvage has been effected on two occasions by transfer to military situations where hardship and physical challenge is extreme.
Neither case, however, has utilized the high potential of the AL-5766s in mathematics, and not even experimental use has been made of the AL-5766 geneset since 2353. Now, however, Reseune believes it has a tape-fix for the problem, of interest since AL-5767 proved out as Beta-class, lacking the traits which made 5766 both brilliant and troublesome.
There are four sets in this group because a tape-design team has come up with two fixes, subtly different. Two each will provide adequate comparisons for a first run. There is no need of a control using the original tape: AL-5766s have forty-six years of data behind them, and no one needs to prove that the old tapes were faulty.
The eggs lack a code of their own until they receive the full diploid set of AL-5766. This is standard, for azi and citizen replications.
The womb into which each egg goes is bioplasmed and contractile, the whole environment closely duplicating a specific natural pregnancy which has served Reseune for forty-nine years: it replicates all the movements, the sounds, the chemical states, and the interactive cycles of a living womb.
BATCH EU-4651: TEN UNITS:
The AL-5766 units are a day along, four motes of life with identical genetic codes busily dividing and growing in the dark of the wombs. The EU-4651s, male, have an identical start; and there are the usual ten units left in the genebank.
EU-4651 is an old type, Eta-class, between 90 and 95 on the Rezner scale and outstandingly stable, one of the most successful Etas in industrial and military fields, and not restricted to Cyteen, but patented in all its sets and derivative sets. Ordinarily Reseune would have simply sold the requisite eggs in whatever number the purchasing lab requested, but this is a new application for the EU-4651s, most of whom are in military service. An EU-4651 has shown an uncommon and late-developing aptitude under an emergency situation which might mean reclassification and upgrading of the type if a tape program could take advantage of it either in existing individuals or in future EU-4651s.
BATCH RYX-20: TWENTY UNITS:
This set is Rho-class, Rezner 45 and below. Rho is the last of the azi classes which Reseune deliberately engineers on a commercial basis. Rho-class azi perform very well with positive feedback and minimal intervention, having little inclination to deviate from program. Their ability to rebound from mishandling and so-called bad tape makes them valuable initial test subjects in any new tape structure, which, along with general labor, will be the usefulness of these twenty azi in Reseune. Because they are prone to physical strain during their lives they are, like classes N through Ps, generally not given rejuv, which of course does little to alleviate skeletal damage; but they are given a value structure which provides great satisfaction in continuance of the genotype.
BATCH CIT-*-**-**-**-****: ONE UNIT:
CIT-*-**-**-**-**** goes directly from processing to cryogenics, flown via company jet to a courier service in Novgorod, to make the scheduled shuttle lift on the weekend, weather permitting.
Reseune maintains a special service to the general public, whereby it receives certain tax exemptions and utilizes equipment during its slack hours.
CIT-*-**-**-**-**** is from a tissue sample of a seven-year-old child from ***, who suffered a fatal fall. The release form has advised the mother there will be no identity transference: the replicate by law must have special counseling, but at the will of the parent, the clone may bear the name and must bear the citizen number of the deceased, being a posthumous replicate of the child, beloved daughter of Susan X. (Actual name and numbers withheld.) The embryo will develop in ***’s lab, indebted only with the minimal freight charge so tiny a canister requires on a scheduled military transport. In due course she will be delivered from the womb-tank into her genetic mother’s arms.
BATCH CIT-*-**-**-****PR: ONE UNIT:
Cloning individuals who want a personal twin instead of a genetically mixed offspring has become a lucrative business for the ordinary lab, since the cost runs upward of 500,000 credits; but Reseune, as a research and development laboratory, has no interest in this practice, sometimes called vanity cloning, except for the rare genotype Reseune finds of commercial or experimental interest. This is such a case, a fetus near term. In fact, Reseune has absorbed all cost on this replication, whose designation is CIT-*-**-***-****PR: the parent-subject is uniquely talented, willing to trade genetic uniqueness for one replicate, and willing to sign a release opening all informational records of applicable interest to Reseune: Reseune will store that data for future development of the geneset, but will not release the geneset for commercial use until fifty years after the decease of parent and replicate.
Reseune puts ten genesets in storage as A**-1.
BATCH AGCULT-789X: ONE UNIT:
A day along, in a womb-tank in a large building somewhat downhill from the last facility, is AGCULT-789X. AGCULT-789X, experimental as the X-designation indicates, closely resembles the RYX-20s or the EU-4651s, except that the genetic codes of the RYX-20s and the EU-4651s indicate two feet while that of AGCULT-789X indicates four, and the RYX-20’s and the EU-4651’s codes indicate smooth skin, while AGCULT-789X’s indicates a sleek bay hide and a superlative ability to run.
AGCULT-789X is exceedingly rare material, Terran in origin, another a
ttempt at a species with which Cyteen has had limited success. The AGCULT programs, involving not only animal species, but also botanical studies, have had far more success with the algae and with the lower end of a food-chain which may one day support the descendants of Terran species. In a much-heralded gesture toward peace, Earth has provided Cyteen with genesets and data on the whole range of Terran species, with particular emphasis on the endangered or extinct, along with human genesets which may contain genetic information missing from Union and Alliance genepools.
Reciprocally, Union has released representative genesets of Union populations to Terran genetic archives, in an exchange program designed to provide a valuable comparison between the two populations, and to provide a reference in event of global catastrophe or unforeseen lapse in contact.
Of the two worlds presently supporting human colonies, one, Downbelow, is, of course, a protectorate, and there is no question of changing the environment to any extent that would wipe out the indigenes. Humanity remains a visitor to Downbelow.
Cyteen, far less hospitable, harboring no species more advanced than the various platytheres and ankyloderms, was far more suitable for radical terraforming, and Cyteen’s ability to store genetic material against irrevocable climatic and atmospheric change at least raises hopes of selective recoveries in specific protected habitats should changes exceed their intended limits.
Terraforming, while wreaking havoc on many native species, has provided a unique opportunity to study interface zones and compare adaptive changes in Terrene and indigenous species, advancing our understanding of catastrophic changes which have impacted Terrene species over geologic time, and of the degree of change facing the human species in its radical changes of habitat.
Understanding that genetic changes are inevitable but not always desirable, Earth has begun to look on Cyteen as a repository for genetic information on species threatened with extinction. Some of the more ambitious projects involve large-mammal habitat, from the bottom of the food-chain up. Ironically, the experience in terraforming Cyteen, destructive as it has been of Cyteen’s indigenous life, is making possible the recovery of certain threatened ecosystems on Earth, and the establishment of more fragile systems on Mars, fourth planet of Sol system.