“Don’t be silly. I just recorded one and kept editing the pattern. I noticed the transfer booth system was bugged, so I took advantage of that.” She handed him another bulb, and he ate and drank in silence as he thought about this.
When he was done, he said, “You duplicated a Puppeteer?”
“Hell, no. I just flat-out kidnapped him, then replaced the original recording when I was done and sent him on his way. With a few minor edits, so he didn’t notice the discrepancy in the time.”
It occurred to Early that she’d killed the original.
She must have been able to read his face and body language better than he could imagine. “You do realize that, unless you assume the existence of souls, a transfer booth kills the user and delivers a replacement,” she said. “It’s how you can tell no Protector has ever been to Jinx. There are people who believe transfer booths don’t send the soul along, and on Jinx that means the only way for them to get from one End to the other in a reasonable time is by suborbital craft. A Protector would have put a hullmetal tube through the planet for them to use.”
“You’d go to that much trouble and expense to humor a superstitious belief?”
“You let people vote.”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
“Anyhow, that was why Lucas Garner suppressed the human-built version back in the twenty-first century. That and the fact that you could, technically, make copies of anyone who used one. He reckoned you’d have to make murder legal.”
“Can you? Copy people?”
“Sure. Of course, blacking out the entire planetary power grid for eight months to charge up for it would be a bit of a giveaway. Garner wasn’t so hot on the math part, more concerned about souls.”
“Do we have souls?” he said.
“How should I know? And why would I care? Souls are of significance after death. That puts them just exactly out of my jurisdiction. My job is to keep you all alive and reproducing and happy enough to stick with it.”
“The Mor-” he said, and shut up.
“The Morlocks on Wunderland took an interest because they had never been exposed to the concept, and were too busy to think the implications through.”
“You know about them.”
“Of course. I even know whose fault they were. Relax, you’re not in trouble for approving Project Cherubim. I’m a Protector, I expect breeders to screw up.”
“You have a problem with creating Protectors to fight the kzinti?”
“I have a problem with creating an army of immortal nursemaids to supervise the human race.”
“They were exposed to a lot of radiation on the trip. They were supposed to live just long enough to win the war.”
“Interesting theory.” (Somehow she made that rhyme with “you schmuck.”) “One of the reasons I think Brennan’s death was suicide was, if he’d made an effort to survive, he could have recovered. I know I could. Anything that doesn’t kill a Protector outright can heal.”
“You said he was cut in half.”
“Top half still worked.” She patted his arm. “Don’t worry about it. All the human Protectors from Home are headed for the Core to kill off the Pak, and I have serious issues with manipulative parents. I might add that you, personally, are very lucky that the plan failed.”
His mind raced but got no traction. “Why?”
“Marshall, who did you consider the sexiest woman in the world when you were growing up?”
“Well, you know, it’s been hundreds of years-”
“Buford.”
He looked at her and remembered who, or rather what, he was trying to be evasive with. “Leslie Cordwainer.”
She got a pad out of a pocket, scribbled on it, and said, “Not bad. I take it the pendulum had swung back to Rubens.”
“Hah. No, the Dead Wirehead look was in full force. She kind of stood out.”
“Literally. Mine weren’t that big. Now, can you imagine what her sex life was like?”
“I have been known to manage not to for days at a time now,” he said mordantly.
“Sorry. But I need you to imagine that, thanks to you, she has become an asexual, superintelligent killer, having nothing which would qualify as a conscience by your standards, and with reflexes so fast she can dodge pistol slugs, cells with internal reinforcements that would allow her to survive a few hits with nothing more than bruises, and bones and muscles so strong she can take the gun away and rip it apart,” she took a breath, “who remembers every detail of her sexual history and knows where you live.”
He made a noise in his throat, and she turned to get him another bulb. While she was getting it he opened his desk, only to find several more pieces of paper that said COLD. “Hey, where’s my cigar lighter?” he demanded.
“Obviously I took it.”
“Well, dammit, give it back! It’s a priceless heirloom, maintained and handed down from agent to agent for over six hundred years.”
“I should just think it has been. I found eighty-two different ways it can be used to ruin somebody else’s day. Eighty-three if they don’t smoke. You’ll get it back later, I don’t want you wasting time. You had enough to eat?”
“I want a cigar,” he grumbled.
Her rigid face was as capable of expression as a Noh mask-exactly so: when she turned it to change the shading, she displayed a new mood. She detested tobacco smoke.
“You mind if I smoke?” he said, prepared to see if Protector hide would blister.
“Hell, I don’t mind if you catch fire and burn to the ground like Miss Havisham. You’ve spent almost three hundred years making my job harder to do.” She opened his cigar box-he saw another slip of paper-got one out, snipped the end, handed it over, and lit it for him.
“Is that a wooden match?” he said after the first drag.
“They’re supposed to preserve the flavor.”
“I just-mm, it does, thanks-I just think that’s a little extravagant.”
“Marshall, this planet has ten million square miles of forest. That’s about a trillion trees. Cut down one percent a year and that’s five tons of lumber per flatlander, with another five tons of foliage and slash for reductive petroleum synthesis. That resource is the principal factor that keeps the dolphins from taking over the plastics industry with their corner on the algae market. You’ve started to believe ARM press releases.”
Early took a gloomy puff to avoid answering. She was right. Then he said, “Who’s Miss Havisham?”
“Early selective-breeding reformer, precursor of the Fertility Board. Marshall, I need to find the other Freezer Banks.”
“Other?”
“The only one I can find in ARM records is under this building.”
“They were combined right after the start of the First War,” Early said. “What was left. They were just about emptied out.”
The mask turned again, to become forbidding and cold. “Transplants?”
“Sergeants.”
The Protector blinked six times. Then she got her pad back out and scribbled on it again. She had damn long fingers, from the extra joint that gave a Protector retractable claws. The effect was exceedingly creepy. Without looking up from the screen, she said, “A lot of things that frighten people are hardwired into the brain from Pak days.”
“How did you do that without seeing my face?” he said.
“Your body language changed.” Ursula lifted her gaze again, and he paid attention to her eyes for the first time. They were pretty. It was a jarring contrast with the rest of her looks. Also, the pupils were different colors-one red, one blue. “That was your idea too.”
“Yes.”
“That was brilliant, and this is me saying it. Well done.”
“What kind of frightening things?” he said, embarrassed.
“It’s a long list. For example, revulsion at the idea of old people having sex comes from the fact that the Pak were accustomed to anyone past menopause becoming physically asexual. Bald people are intimidating. And before boosterspice, children used to be afraid of kissing Grandma.”
“I remember.”
“So you would,” she said, nodding.
“I don’t get why, though.”