"Yes ma'am," the little man said and his voice sounded sincere.
There was a long silence while Mrs. Bullitt continued to stare at her hireling, long enough for Colin to become conscious of his own heavy breathing. In a reflex of discomfort he cleared his throat and the woman's eyes snapped to his face.
"You," and again she spoke without preamble, "and you."
And her eyes shifted to the space behind Colin where he knew Ed stood, and back to his with a darting motion of her head that somehow made him think of a lizard he'd once seen catching flies.
"You are the two young men who call yourselves Animals to Order?"
It was a question, but to Colin it somehow sounded like an accusation. "Yes, ma'am," he said.
"Speak up, speak up," she said. "I can't hear you. I like people to speak up when they talk to me."
"Yes, Mrs- Bullitt, we are," Colin said, louder, more than a tittle annoyed with himself at the way her sharp tone had put him off balance. Angry also that she could bring disaster to his and Ed's long-held hopes if her objection to their entry in the arena above should stand.
"Good," the small woman in the striped riding jacket said.
The word of approval startled Colin. "Good? 1… I don't understand."
"What is there to understand?" and her voice was impatient sounding. "You say you can make animals to order.
Very well, 1 want you to make one for me. A horse… a special horse… and after you make it I want you to smash the mold or whatever it is you use. I want it to be unique… mine alone and no one else ever to have another like it.'* The light that had come into Mrs. Bullitt's eyes as she spoke made Colin think shiveringly of medieval princelings who would have a craftsman's hands cut off after he'd provided a work of art for them so that he could not surpass it for another, of architects blinded and put to death so that they could not build for another prince, in another place, a palace, a castle greater, or even the match of, the one possessed by their executioner.
Ed's voice in his ear, low, urgent. "Hey, a contract for an exclusive animal with Bullitt Farms. It may not be NavAir, but from the look of that vistaphoto behind the old man, it's no small-stake operation either. Don't haggle, man- After all, it's quick money and we've already done a lot of the groundwork with Ato."
Harrison Bullitt leaned forward. Even sitting he was a big man, and, although he bore no apparent physical resemblance to his wife, there was a certain flatness about the expression in his eyes that made the thought skim the surface of Colin's mind that here, Harrison Bullitt and his wife Abby, were two of a very unpleasant kind.
"Animals to Order," Bullitt said. "What is it that you do?"
Colin had answered that question dozens of times. He did not need to grope for an analogy to tell of his and Ed's work with the living germ plasm of animals; of the fascination and the monotony of charting gene positions; of converting desired qualities into intricately interacting enzyme patterns; of eliminating genetic loads, the stores of harmful genes carried by all sexually reproducing species.
Of their bio-solutions and the organism growing in its succession of tanks, of the enjoyable tension of watching it until it could emerge and survive without their direction in the open world and be, if they were as lucky as they were entitled to be for their chosen profession was still as much an art as it was a science, be exactly as they had envisioned it at the start.
But Colin's analogy was simple. "Think of a chromosome as a microscopically tiny string of beads present in every plant and animal cell. Now each head is a gene that determines or helps to determine some characteristic of its own animal or plant, like 6ie color of its eyes, the structure of its bones, the smoothness or roughness of its coal, everything about it.
"What we do is sort of rework the beads, repair any damaged ones, shape the string to grow into what we want it to be."
Harrison Bullitt shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Sounds cut and dried to me."
"I suppose it is, in theory. But we're dealing with a living organism. It can be killed, and quite easily… or just die. A temperature can get a shade too warm or a shade too cold … or a stray cosmic ray can strike it… and it turns out in a way we didn't predict. Just being alive, I guess, is enough for it to not always do what you expect it to.** "Sounds like pretty much of a slipshod operation to me,"
Harrison Bullitt said, and from his voice Colin didn't know if he was being talked to or if the big man was just thinking aloud and not particularly interested or caring if he was heard.
But Bullitt went on. "Can you switch parts around?"
Colin thought of fruit flies with misplaced wings, of experimental animals with third eyes, of two-headed dogs. The early researchers had produced all of these and more, and with modem pressor and laser beam techniques it would be even simpler to do. But it was one of those understandings that can exist between two men without ever having been mentioned or even thought of, that he and Ed would not debase their profession by peddling sideshow freaks.
"We can." Colin said aloud, "but we won't."
Mrs. BuUitt laughed shortly. "That's one of the stupidest expressions in the language. Young man, never say you won't do some particular thing. You'd be surprised at me things you'd do if the bind gets tight enough."
Colin had no answer for her except to hold his rising temper in check. What answer did anyone ever have for boors, particularly influential ones like these two?
Mrs. Bullitt dropped her heavy figure into the plastifonn visitor's chair beside her husband's desk, letting her booted heels fly out in front of her as she did so.
Colin noticed roweled spurs and was surprised. He didn't think anyone wore the spiked discs anymore, particularly to ride valuable animals.
There were other chairs in the room, two long sofas along opposite walls, but Mrs. Bullitt did not wave them to a seat.
Colin, Ed, and Martin off to one side of them now, remained standing. The Commodore settling deep in the chair dropped into when they came in.
"I want a horse," the sitting woman said matter-of-factly,
"with wings."
"A horse," Colin started to say and then did a mental double-take. "A what?"
"A great idea, isn't it?" A horse that can fly. Nobody, but nobody in the association, in me worid, will be able to top that."
Colin could only stare at the woman. She couldn't be serious, but from the set of her face it was plain that she was.
"It's impossible," he managed to say. "It's a physical impossibility."
Annoyance flared in Mrs. Bullitt's pale eyes. She struck the arm of her chair sharply with the flat of her hand. "Don't use that word," she said- "I don't like it. Do you hear? I don't like it."
"But it is impossible," Colin said and he didn't know if he was pleading for her to understand or to hold on to his own sanity. He had never before in his life met people like mis.
Beside him, Coiin heard Ed whistle through his teeth. softly to himself. "A Pegasus she wants. A flying, neighing, flaming Greek legend she wants."
"A flying horse is a physical impossibility." Colin said.
Harrison Bullitt seemed amused. "Everything is impossible… until the price gets right. All right," and he sat up in his chair, "let's stop this nonsense. How much is it going to cost me?"
Colin fell like a man trying to keep his footing on a mound of slippery sand. "You don't understand. It's not a question of money. It's not money at all."
Bullitt seemed to be getting annoyed. "I don't see that you should have any particular problem. You said that you could switch pans around. What's so tough about grafting a pair of wings onto a horse?"
The feeling of floundering on shifting sand deepened in Colin. "A wing isn't just something added onto the outside of an animal, and it's not an oversized shoulder blade. It's an integral part of the skeleton, it has a full system of muscles to support it, to move it. Look."