“You’ve never liked boosterspice.”
“Scares me out of my mind,” said Yankee. “Especially after I’ve talked to Hunker for a while about some of the weird side-effects that can turn up.” on his rich old playboy experimental animals. Is he experimenting on Nora?”
“Yah. He’s being careful. Taking it easy. A little at a time. It’s a tough problem. Construction and repair don’t go by the same rules. It is easier to build something that can’t be repaired than it is to build something that can be repaired. Humans weren’t built to be repaired. We come in disposable containers. If we last long enough to see our children live through the terrible teens, our genes don’t see the need to have us repaired.”
“My poor daddy is ready for the junkyard?”
“You haven’t made it out of your teens yet, kid. You might still need him.”
“Men think of women as disposable containers,” said Chloe.
“Aw, no we don’t. Neither of you.” And he kissed the baby. “I didn’t design humans as disposable containers; God did. Suppose you build a gizmo and it wears out and you have to repair it. What do you do? If it is cheaper to build a new one than repair the old one, you throw away your gizmo. If it is cheaper to repair than replace, you repair it Humans are too hard to repair so they have evolved in disposable format. They are cheap to make.”
“Just wave your magic wand and say ‘Kakabuni,’ right?” She grinned.
“Not that easy.” He took Val and laid her on his chest where she burbled. “You’ve got to factor in the price of raising the little buggers until they are smart enough to leave home. There’s a bit of expense in that. You and I don’t know the worst of it yet. But still, for the price of one boosterspice shot I can raise ten teen-agers. At prices like that, what is a company going to do? They can hire a freshly weaned kid out of university train him and bury the worn-out worker, or they can buy a boosterspice shot for the older worker. At present prices they have no choice.”
“Is it costing so much to help Nora?”
“It’s costing a fortune. The Institute of Knowledge is footing the bill. They expect to learn a lot. The information in our genes tells us how to build a brain and not a damn thing about repairing it because the genetic cost of carrying that information is greater than the going price for a teen-ager, you being the exception.”
“You’re into buying me now!”
“I’m into going to sleep-and your little darling just pissed on me.”
At breakfast, refreshed, Yankee continued the discussion. He printed out pictures of Nora’s brain with enlargements of critical segments. Breakfast consisted of guinea pig jerky and flapjacks with cultured maple syrup.
“When Hunker tells me about brain repair my eyes go into orbit. That’s why nature knows enough not to try. Brain cells die and that’s it. We can’t activate the genes that grow the brain because Nora already has a brain. We can’t just plant the right kind of baby neurons where Nora’s language processor used to be because they have to grow and connect-and the rules for connecting them in an adult are different than the rules for connecting them in a baby. Hunker has to design the language-repair protocols and program it into the spice. Boosterspice already has in it half the information of the whole human genome. That’s a lot”
“Yankee, I’m miserable. You don’t come home at night. Don’t you love me anymore?”
“Just another one of my damn projects.”
“What project!?! A new one? You don’t tell me anything! Is it a military secret?”
“No. I’m too involved in this Nora thing.”
“So am I! You’re supposed to talk to me. We’re supposed to work together.”
“I thought you might be jealous. It’s almost like I’m caught up in an old love.”
“Oh Yankee!”
“You’re right.” He took her into the bedroom and transferred the whole Nora file in from his work computer. “Read it. It’ll take all day. Tell me what you think.”
Chloe had rabbit stew for dinner and he came home early. She was happy again. “It’s marvelous. Now what are you going to do with it? They’ll kill you. You never change.”
“I’ll publish it.”
“On Earth? Over the ARM’S dead body you will! You’ll never get clearance!”
“Did I lay it on that thick? I guess I did. I want to tell Nora’s story but I’m also trying to use her as a political club.”
“Neither of the Noras would mind and you know it!”
“I’m not going to try for clearance. I’m not going to publish with a copyright. I’m going to make a thousand chip copies and hide them under rocks. Then I’m going to smuggle one copy to Earth and put it on the nets, free. The ARM can try to suppress the story. It will be like running around with cans of antiweed, spraying the dandelions.”
Chloe was wide-eyed. “Defy them? They haven’t let anyone write about Nora. They’ll kill you. They’ll put you in the brig. They’ll send you to the other side of Kzin. They’ll feed you tranquilizers!” What would become of Val? Happiness was supposed to last-at least forever. But it never did.
“Nah.”
“Nah!” she imitated angrily. “Why do I fall in love with brave men? I’m such a damn fool.”
“Chloe. Listen carefully to an old man’s advice. I’ve been in trouble since I was a kid. Suppressive people have one great weakness. They believe their own stories. They hint darkly at what they’ll do to you when you speak up. Naive people believe them and get afraid and, being afraid, suppress themselves. The suppressors are stupid enough to think that they are doing the suppressing. I don’t have anything to worry about from the ARM. I just have to dodge all those poor people who are afraid.”
“Will General Fry protect you?”
“Sure. And so will your father. The best people are my friends. You’d be surprised at how large that group has become.”
“After reading your story I feel brave myself. But I’m still one of those people who are afraid.”
“It’s okay. For us it’ll be a roller-coaster ride for a few years. Outrage and argument. No big deal. Then in about five years some poor schmuck will come back bloodied by an encounter with a kzinti hyperdrive warship. Then instantly, I’ll be a prophet and a hero. But it is Nora they’ll remember. When the going gets rough and the starscape is full of grinning kzinti and monkey-life looks hopeless, they’ll remember the Heroic Myth of Lieutenant Nora Argamentine, and they’ll say, ‘What the hell, if Nora could do a little kzin bashing, so can I.’ ”
“Why do you call it a myth? Yankee, she did all of those things.”
“Chloe. Look at me. All writers are liars. I’m a political writer. Humanity hasn’t been at war for hundreds of years. We’re short of heroes. We’re going to need them. So I took this story and built Nora up larger than life. I wrapped it around all the old archetypes. That’s a myth. My only excuse is that I was inspired. Stories just grow. This one will become humongous. I’m sorry to do it to my sweet Nora but I couldn’t help myself. Guys in cans being shot at by kzinti hypershunt dreadnoughts will take courage from this crazy story. That’s what myth is all about.”
TROJAN CAT
Mark O. Martin
Gregory Benford
·Chapter One Relativistic Hunt
We were only a half light-year out from Sol, but it took me a moment to find that bright point among so many other suns. Somehow it looked no warmer than the other brilliant dots. Probably my imagination.
The more immediate target was obvious. A finger pointed straight at it-a radiant finger a hundred thousand klicks long.
The slowboat was huge, even by the standards of the kzin troopship that had carried me across four light-years. Distant stars glittered coldly around the image-enhanced shape on the viewscreen. It was a relief to see a starscape not distorted and squashed by relativity, fore and aft. The Doppler shift was almost imperceptible at 10 percent of lightspeed.
I felt an itching sensation all over my body, but I didn’t look away from the viewscreen to scratch. My little singleship had to be within their sensor range by now, and the crew had no way to determine if I was friend or foe.