ROBERT CHILSON
In His Image
Ginger danced lightly from one foot to the other, chanting in a whisper, seeming to float. Her red head scarcely seemed to move, while her feet flew. Sugar and Pepper were as excited, still locking horns in front of the mirror and occasionally giggling breathlessly. Even the view of the mountains above Lake Titicaca was forgotten, though this was their first visit to Earth. Mr. Koeppels would be not merely their first reporter, but their first Man. The robot monitor brought them His heavy voice as He showed Mr. Koeppels in.
"Hurry up, girls," said Ginger, increasing amazingly the speed of her dance. "They're already here."
"This is my first visit to Earth since my research entered its last Phase, nearly three years ago," came His voice. Its perpetual undertone of warm amusement was very apparent. "You can see where all my credit has gone. Though I did use a lot of it in my research."
"It certainly is impressive," said the reporter respectfully. Yuri Koeppels was as impressed as he sounded, though he didn't expect much of a story from this Dr. Birrel, who'd been in retirement on the Moon for seven years or so. Still, the man must've been some scientist, to be able to afford an astromobile home. He said as much.
Dr. Birrel laughed in the quiet, heavy way he had. He was black-haired and black-eyed, fat but not offensively so, light on his feet, and apparently very good-humored. He had obviously not taken geriatrics treatments. He shrugged. "I am more a good engineer, or even inventor, than a scientist. My work has been mostly applying what my betters in pure science have discovered. I get the credit and they get the fame and prestige."
"Still," suggested Yuri shrewdly and hopefully, "all the important men in the biologic sciences will be watching their telefaxes for your reports in the journals. They could hardly have forgotten the man who developed substitution catalysis in DNA electrosynthesizers. It would take several pages just to list all the applications of that: geriatrics, mensation, and orthosomatics all use it And, of course, biomorphics, which is your field, isn't it?"
"In a way, yes. I have done quite a bit of work in the edges of that field, but I am merely a biochemist specializing in DNA, RNA, and proteins—not quite the same thing, though DNA synthesis is the heart of biomorphics."
"Then you haven't actually done much work in controlled mutation?" asked Yuri, controlling his disappointment. That was a big field these days.
"I can't say that I have, not directly," rumbled Dr. Birrel. "The field has never lived up to its early promise. It never will, as a matter of fact."
"I know," said Yuri, who had read up on the subject in preparation for this assignment. "We still lack an elegant solution for the genetic code, a method of predicting mathematically the shape of an organism from its genes. It's still hit or miss, just a cheaper and faster method of mutating than the old radiation experiments in the late Twentieth Century. Not controlled mutation. But again," he said with sudden hope, "that's your field, in a way. I mean, you have to study DNA before you can synthesize it. Do you have an elegant solution or at least an approach?"
"I must confess I haven't able to come up with an elegant solution," he said. "Though I do an approach of sorts." Yuri's face lit up. He reached into his shirt pocket and squeezed his audio recorder on. Dr. Birrel forestalled his eager questions with a little hand. "First let's sit down and have something cool to drink," he said, looking gratefully around the luxurious room. Yuri followed him impatiently.
"They're in the lounge," whispered Sugar. "Hurry up!"
"Wait a minute!" said Pepper in panic. "Sugar, please—that clasp just behind my ear I can't get right."
"There," said Sugar. "Ready to go? Ginger, your shoes!"
"Right here," said Ginger, patting her pouchbelt. "I'm to dance, remember? I want to be all ready."
"Let's go!" Pepper dropped Sugar's hand and dashed ahead. The others followed, hand in hand, saying in frantic whispers, "Wait, Pepper! Don't go in yet!"
They caught up with her in the conservatory just next to the lounge. All three were with excitement and stage fright as they huddled into a rose arbor in a big-eyed cluster, arms around each other, cheeks pink.
"As you know," said Dr. Birrel, pursing his lips over a tall, insulated tumbler, "the primary problem in attempting to produce that elegant solution is the fact that there are many different gene patterns that will build highly similar somatic structures; for instance, the eyes of men and octopi. In their attempts to solve the problem, the biosynthesists have analyzed thousands of human and animal gene patterns and related them to the somatic structures they define—feathers, fur, tongues, beaks, hearts, and so on. But they have still not discovered the mathematical relationship between gene and structure.
"The biomorphists' empirical approach, which makes use of the known genes, is becoming ineffective, too. Double-hearted animals are commonplace, but real improvements in plants and animals come slower, because they are more subtle—disease resistance, nitrogen-fixation for plants, better fruits and vegetables, and so on."
Yuri got that. "But you say you have a practical approach that promises success?"
"That is right. But perhaps it would be simpler to show you the results of the approach, then ex-Plain it to you."
"Fine!" said Yuri heartily, coming to his feet. He hoped—it began to seem—that this would be something really good, a real breakthrough. That would be very good for his career, too—Pan Solar was the only news service that had sent a reporter to interview Dr.Birrel on his latest research. But he made no move.
Pepper, springing lithely to her feet, almost fell. Hearts pounding, taking short steps and frequently bumping each other, the sisters crowded up to the door, thumbed it open, and spilled into the lounge. Pepper was still in the lead.
They stopped in a tight cluster, Sugar and Ginger looking over her shoulders. After a reassuring glance at Him, they focused their attention on Yuri Koeppels. They saw a tall, rather broadshouldered, though slender young man with wavy brown hair. His face was smooth and rather stubby, as if he were still in his teens, but he was good-looking enough for all that.
Yuri's interest had perked at first sight of the girls. His second glance had caused him to redden slightly with surprise, as the girls were bare from the waist up; he had hardly expected that in the lounge of a man conservative enough to ignore geriatrics treatments. Resolutely not staring, he looked at their faces, which were highly similar. The girls were small, slender, about five-five, apparently in the middle or late teens; each wore tight, furry pants the color of her curly hair: black, red-gold, platinum blond. Then the girls focused their attention on him. Their pointed ears swept forward an inch or so, starkly outlined against their hair. His smile froze and his jaw dropped. The ears drew his attention to the horns sprouting from above and a little behind them; short, curving toward each other over the top of the head. There was room between and under them to pat a hand or comb, but tbey were quite small and close. He had thought they were merely fancy hats. Each girl's horns were nearly the color of her hair: a kind of translucent ebony, pearl gray, translucent redwood.
Wide-eyed, Yuri's gaze traveled down their figures to their feet, which turned out to be hooves, tiny things, split, the color of the horns. The ankles were deliciously slender; it seemed impossible for them to balance themselves. Then he looked again at the pants and was only mildly surprised to discover that they were actually fur, not pants at all. The girls were bare but for pouchbelts. Of course, he thought numbly. No pockets!