A slow smile spread on Ari's lips. "I like you, boy, I really rather like you. Loyalty's the rarest thing in Reseune. And you have so much of it. What if I gave you Grant, untouched, unaltered? What's he worth to you?"
"It's possible," Justin said, in a measured, careful tone, "you can misjudge how far you can push me."
"What's he worth?"
"You release him. You don't run tape on him."
"Sweet, he's a little confused. He's been through hell. He needs rest and treatment."
"I'll see he gets it. Jordan will. I'm telling you; don't push me too far. You don't know what I'd do."
"Oh, sweet, I know what you can do. A lot of it really exquisite. And I don't have to deal with you about Grant at all. I have some very different kind of tapes. Your father would die, he would outright die."
"Maybe you underestimate him."
"Oh? Have you told him? I thought not. You have to understand the situation, you see. It's not just his son. It's not 'some woman.' You're his twin. It's me, Ari Emory. Not mentioning the azi." She chuckled softly. "It's a marvelously good try, it really is. I respect that. I respect it enough to give you a little latitude. Come here, boy. Come here."
She held out her hand. He hesitated in confusion and finally held out his own within her reach. She took it gently, and his nerves jumped, his pulse fluttered and a flush came over his skin, confusing all his thinking.
He did not jerk away. He did not dare. He could not formulate a sarcasm. His mind was darting too fast in a dozen directions, like something small and panicked.
"You want a favor? You want Grant back? I'll tell you what, sweet: you just go on cooperating and we'll just make that our private little deal. If you and I get along till your father goes, if you keep your mouth shut, I'll make him a present to you."
"You're using deep-tape."
"On you? Nothing to really bend your mind. What do you think, that I can take a normal, healthy mind and redesign it? You've been reading too many of those books. The tapes I used with youare recreational. They're what the Mu-class azi get, when they're really, really good. You think you can't stand them? You think they've corrupted you? Reseune will do worse than that, sweet, and I can teach you. I told you: I like you. Someday you'll be a power in Reseunehere, or Fargone, or wherever. You've got the ability. I'd really like to see you survive."
"That's a lie."
"Is it? It doesn't matter." She squeezed his fingers. "I'll see you at my place. Same time. Hear?"
He drew his hand back.
"It's not like I don't give you a choice." She smiled at him. "All you have to do is keep things quiet. That's not much, for as much as you're asking. You make my life tranquil, sweet, and stand between me and Jordan, and I won't have his friends arrested, and I won't do a mindwipe on Grant. I'll even stop giving you hell in the office. You know what the cost is, for all those transfers you want."
"You sign Grant over to me."
"Next week. In case something comes up. You're such a clever lad. You understand me. Make it 2200 this evening. I'm working late."
Verbal Text from:
PATTERNS OF GROWTH
A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1
Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1 approved for 80+ ATTENTION OPERATOR
BATCH ML-8986: BATCH BY-9806: FINALFINALFINAL
The computers flash completion, appealing for human intervention. The chief technician alerts the appropriate personnel and begins the birth-process.
There are no surprises: the womb-tanks, gently moving and contracting, have all manner of sensors. The two ML-8986s, female, Mu-class, have reached the mandated 4.02 kilo birth-weight. There are no visible abnormalities. The two BY-9806s, Gamma-class, are likewise in good health. The techs know their charges. The BY-9806s, highly active, are favorites, already tagged with names, but the names will not stay with them: the techs will have no prolonged contact with them.
The wombs enter labor-state, and after a space, send their contents sliding down into fluid-cushioned trays and the gloved hands of waiting techs. There are no crises. There is little stress. The Mu-class females are broad-faced, placid, with colorless hair; the two Betas are longer, thin-limbed, with shocks of dark hair, not so handsome as the Mu-classes. They make faces and the techs laugh.
The cords are tied, the afterbirth voided from the bottom of the tray, and clean warm water gives the infants their first baths. The techs weigh them as a formality, and enter the data on a record which began with conception, two hundred ninety-five days ago, and which will have increasingly fewer entries as the infants pass from a state of total moment-by-moment dependency into the first unmonitored moments of their lives.
Azi attendants receive them, wrap them in soft white blankets, to be tenderly handled, held and rocked in azi arms.
In intervals between diaper changes and feeding, they lie in cribs which, like the wombs, gently rock, to the sound of human heartbeat and distant voice, the same voice that spoke to them in the womb, soft and reassuring. Sometimes it sings to them. Sometimes it merely speaks.
Someday it will give them instruction. The voice is tape. As yet it is only subliminal, a focus of confidence. Even at this point it rewards good behavior. One day it will speak with disapproval, but at this stage there are no misbehaviors, only slight restlessness from the Betas. . . . BATCH AGCULT-789X: EMERGENCYEMERGENCY
AGCULT-789X is in trouble. The experimental geneset is not a success, and after staff consultations, a tech withdraws lifesupport and voids AGCULT-789X for autopsy.
The azi techs swab out the womb, flush it repeatedly, and the chief tech begins the process that will coat it in bioplasm.
It will receive another tenant as soon as the coating is ready. The staff waits results of the autopsy before it attempts the fix.
In the meanwhile the womb receives the male egg AGCULT-894, same species. This is not the first failure. Engineering adaptations is a complex process, and failures are frequent. But AGCULT-894 is a different individual with a similar alteration: there is the chance it will work. If it fails it will still provide valuable comparisons.
Reshaping the land and altering the atmosphere is not enough to claim a world for human occupation. The millions of years of adaptation which interlocked Terran species into complex ecosystems are not an option on Cyteen.
Reseune operates in the place of time and natural selection. Like nature, it loses individuals, but its choices are more rapid and guided by intelligence. Some argue that there are consequences to this, a culling of the ornamental and nonfunctional elements which give Terran life its variety, with an emphasis on certain traits and diminution of others.
But Reseune has lost nothing. It plans deepspace arks, simple tin cans parked around certain stars, vessels without propulsion, inexpensive to produce, storage for genetic material in more than one location, shielded and protected against radiation. They contain actual genetic samples; and digital recording of genesets; and records to enable the reading of those genesets by any intelligence advanced enough to understand the contents of the arks.
A million years was sufficient for humankind to evolve from primitive antecedents to a spacefaring sapient. A million years from now humankind will, thanks to these arks, have genetic records of its own past and the past of every species to which Reseune has access, of our own heritage and the genetic heritages of every life-bearing world we touch, preserved against chance and time. . . .