Her shock increased as she learned about the reproductive aspect of genetics. Lilo was not a geneticist or a breeder. In the same sense that the builder of a machine might know little of the metallurgy that had produced its parts. Lilo was only vaguely aware of the laws of inheritance. Her job was to take something that was already there and bend it to her will with the direct manipulation techniques learned from the Ophiuchi Hotline. Now she delved into the world of recessives and inbreeding. She began to wonder if the human race might be turning into idiots, with no baseline to indicate the change.
She tried to stir up some interest among other genetic engineers, but had no luck. There seemed to be no political current she could tap in an effort to have the genetic laws rescinded. If there was a taboo in human society which had taken the place of sex, it was human genetics. No one wanted to look at the problem, simply because no one saw it as a problem. It was accepted as a fact of life, the way things were; human DNA was inviolable.
Lilo thought for a year about the courses open to her.
She could forget it. That was a real possibility, and even now she was unsure of why she had gone on. Some days the inertia of society had felt like an actual drug in her veins, soothing her and telling her to leave things alone. It was good enough for your grandmother, why isn't it good enough for you?
Or she could explore it, cautiously. In the end, that's what she did. But not cautiously enough.
Her guide was the Ophiuchi Hotline. Of the huge volume of encoded transmissions that came down the Line, fully ninety-five percent had always been untranslatable. But she had heard rumors that a part of that, maybe a lot of it, had been found to relate in some way to human DNA. She set her computer to scan portions of the data which were in the public record. It was blind work; she had little idea of what she was looking for. The field was so unexplored that she had to go back to pre-Invasion records to find any meaningful work on the subject. She knew it was a job for hundreds of researchers, for the type of scientists who had existed in the days of basic research and who she suspected were no longer to be found. She had come to the realization that she had not been trained to be a scientist; she was an engineer, or at best, a tinkerer.
The indications were good. She did not bother herself with the question of how the Ophiuchites were able to know so much about human genetics; they seemed to know just about everything, and the human race had been relying on that stream of new knowledge for centuries. She set up a base on Janus and began her first halting experiments on her own egg cells. She had no intention of producing living human beings. What she did was introduce changes and grow the result to a fetal stage of development, then use what she had learned to guide her next step.
She was not sure what she was seeking. She was not sure why she was doing it. At her worst times, she suspected she was merely acting out the desires of a little girl who had loved to play medico.
But at other times she was sustained by a vision. She did not know where it came from, but at times it felt as though it were not really a part of herself, not a product of her own mind. It was a vaguely defined but compelling vision of a human race scattered to the stars, redefined, transformed.
There was one vivid picture that went along with the vision. She saw it every night as she fell asleep. She was running through tall grass and trees under a blue sun. It was a lovely blue that washed into her skin and the flowers that waved beneath a gentle breeze. There was someone running with her.
Lilo was staying at Earthhome, Tweed's pocket disneyland, sleeping in a grass shack she had been forced to build herself.
Her first visitor every morning was Mari. Lilo could not leave Earthhome without someone to escort her. She had tried several times, but had been unable to find the streambed entrance effectively one-way. So each morning Mari came and blindfolded her, then led her splashing through the water.
But this time the two of them reached the embankment leading down to the stream and Mari did not reach for the scrap of cloth.
"Himalaya this week, right?" Lilo said, casually.
"No," Mari said. "You're shipping out today."
"Today?" But it made sense. If she had known when she would leave, she might have made an escape deadline.
"That's right. Take my hand, and hold on to your gut. This is not too pleasant until you get used to it." She led Lilo to a tree that grew from the opposite bank. Lilo was sure she had explored it. They started to go around the tree....
Lilo had an attack of vertigo as everything seemed to tilt down in front of her. She held back. The scene was distorted, like looking through a bottle. Mari pulled on her hand.
"Step up," she said. "Three steps. You won't fall." Lilo gulped, and stepped into the empty air. She felt concrete under her bare feet. She was rising, but it looked as though she were going down a vertical hillside. "Turn left, then left again. Close your eyes, it'll be easier." But Lilo kept them open. She had seen trick holos like this at funhouses, but none so perfect. They emerged into the water-filled corridor.
"Can you tell me where I'm going?" Lilo asked. "So I'll know what to pack?"
Mari laughed. "No. Truthfully, I don't know where it is."
They stopped off at Mari's lab. An hour later, Lilo emerged minus her left lung. In its place was a null-suit generator, something she had never used before. It seemed to indicate that she was going to Mercury or Venus, since these were the only places where null-suits were necessary to get by. She curiously fingered the small metal flower below her collarbone, which was the air exhaust valve and control unit of the suit, as Mari explained how to operate it. She had a slight soreness in her neck where Mari had installed the binaural radio and voder that went with the suit.
Lilo was sure she was going off Luna when she was introduced to Iphis. He was certainly a spacer, since he had no legs. He was obviously on a layover too short to justify the expense of getting legs grafted on. He sat strapped in a padded basket on top of a spidery walker.
The female Vaffa appeared, as she had a habit of doing, right beside Lilo's elbow.
"Where's Tweed?" Lilo asked.
"He said to tell you he can't come," Mari said. "Vaffa will be coming with you. I asked to go, but the Boss needs me because there's another prisoner who... oh, I'm not supposed to tell you that. But it doesn't matter." She kissed Lilo. "I hate good-byes," she said, looking away. "You be careful. Maybe we'll meet again."
"I hope so."
Lilo did not see the ship. She followed Iphis and Vaffa through a collapsible tube into the living quarters. They were quite small. Iphis heaved himself out of his walker and into his couch, and Vaffa put the contraption out of the lock.
"Grab seats," Iphis said. "We lift in two minutes."
Lilo tried again. "To where?"
"Titan."
They had planned a tacking maneuver on Jupiter. Lilo didn't like it, but was not about to mention the fact. She had not bought a ticket, and couldn't complain about the service.
But a few days before the insertion Vaffa had a surprise for her.
"We're not really going to Titan. I am, eventually, but you're not."
"Where am I going?"
"Little place called Poseidon."
"Where the hell is that?"