“Are you sure you really want to know?” she asked, dropping her voice into cello range.
“I want to know all there is to know about you,” Manuel said earnestly. “For better, for worse. So forgive me for coming late, will you? I’ll be taking a Lilith lesson in Duluth. And I love you.”
“I love you,” said Alpha Lilith Meson to the son of Simeon Krug.
1158, Duluth. The main Earthside plant of Krug Synthetics, Ltd. — there were four others, on as many continents, and several offworld plants — occupied a vast sleek block of a building nearly a kilometer long, flanking the shore of Lake Superior. Within that building, operating virtually as independent provinces, were the laboratories that formed the stations of the way in the creation of synthetic life.
Manuel now toured those stations of the way like a visiting proconsul, weighing the work of the underlings. He rode in a plush bubblecar as seductively comfortable as a womb, which glided along the fluid track that ran the length of the building, high above the operations floor. Beside him in the car was the factory’s human supervisor, a neat, crisp, fortyish man named Nolan Bompensiero, who, although he was one of the key men in the Krug domain, sat tense and rigid, in obvious fear of Manuel’s displeasure. He did not suspect how resentful Manuel was of this assignment, how bored he was, how little he cared to brandish power by making trouble for his father’s employees. Manuel had only Lilith on his mind. This is the place where Lilith was born, he thought. This is the way that Lilith was born.
At each section of the factory an alpha — the section supervisor — entered the car, riding with Manuel and Bompensiero to the end of his own zone of responsibility. Most of the work at the plant was under the direction of alphas; the entire giant installation employed only half a dozen humans. Each alpha looked as tense as Bompensiero himself.
Manuel passed first through the rooms where the high-energy nucleotides constituting DNA, the basic building-block of life, were synthesized. He gave half-hearted attention to Bompensiero’s quick, nervous spiel, tuning in only on an occasional phrase.
“—water, ammonia, methane, hydrogen cyanide, and other chemicals — we use an electrical discharge to stimulate the formation of complex organic compounds — the addition of phosphorus—
“—a simple process, almost primitive, don’t you think? It follows the line of the classic Miller experiment of 1952 — medieval science, right down there on the floor—
“—the DNA determines the structure of the proteins in the cell. The typical living cell requires hundreds of proteins, most of them acting as enzymes, biological catalysts—
“—a typical protein is a molecular chain containing about two hundred amino acid subunits linked together in a specific sequence—
“—the code for each protein is carried by a single gene, which in turn is a particular region on the linear DNA molecule — all of this of course you must know, forgive me for restating such elementary material, forgive me, I only wish to—”
“Of course,” Manuel said.
— and here, in these vats, we make the nucleotides and join them into dinucleotides, and string them together to form DNA, the nucleic acid that determines the composition of—”
Lilith, from those vats? Lilith, from that stinking brew of chemicals?
The car drifted smoothly forward. An alpha supervisor departed; another alpha, bowing stiffly, smiling fixedly, entered.
Bompensiero said, “We design the DNA templates, the blueprints for the life-form we wish to create, but then the task is to make the living matter self-replicating, since surely we cannot build an android cell by cell ourselves. We must reach what we call the takeoff stage. But naturally you know that the DNA is not directly involved in protein synthesis, that another nucleic acid acts as an intermediary, RNA, which can be coded to carry the genetic messages laid down in the DNA—
“—four bases or chemical subunits, arranged in varying combinations, form the code — adenine, guanine, uracil, cytosine—”
“—in these vats — you can almost imagine the chains forming — the RNA transmits the DNA instructions — protein synthesis is conducted by cellular particles called ribosomes, which are about half protein and half RNA — adenine, guanine, uracil, cytosine — the code for each protein is carried by a single gene, and the code, inscribed on messenger-RNA, takes the form of a series of triplets of the four RNA bases — you follow?”
“Yes, certainly,” said Manuel, seeing Lilith swimming in the vats.
“As here. Adenine, adenine, cytosine. Cytosine, cytosine, guanine. Uracil, uracil, guanine. AAC, CCG, UUG — it’s almost liturgical, isn’t it, Mr. Krug? We have sixty-four combinations of RNA bases with which we can specify the twenty amino acids — quite an adequate vocabulary for the purpose! I could chant the whole list for you as we travel this hall. AAA, AAG, AAC, AAU. AGA, AGG, AGC, AGU. ACA—”
The alpha who was traveling with them at the moment coughed loudly and clutched his waist, grimacing.
“Yes?” Bompensiero said.
“A sudden spasm,” said the alpha. “A digestive difficulty. Pardon me.”
Bompensiero returned his attention to Manuel. “Well, no need to run down all the sequences. And so we put together the proteins, you see, building up living molecules in precisely the way it happens in nature, except that in nature the process is triggered by the fusion of the sexual gametes, whereas we synthesize the genetic building-blocks. We follow the human genetic pattern, naturally, since we want a human-looking end product, but if we wished we could synthesize pigs, toads, horses, Centaurine proteoids, any form of life we chose. We pick our code, we arrange our RNA, and presto! The pattern of our final product emerges precisely as desired!”
“Of course,” said the alpha, “we don’t follow the human genetic code inevery respect.”
Bompensiero nodded eagerly. “My friend here brings up a vital point. In the earliest days of android synthesis your father decided that, for obvious sociological reasons, androids must be instantly identifiable as synthetic creations. Thus we introduce certain mandatory genetic modifications. The red skin, the absence of body hair, the distinctive epidermal texture, are all designed mainly for identification purposes. Then there are the modifications programmed for greater bodily efficiency. If we can play the role of gods, why not do it to the best effect?”
“Why not?” Manuel said.
“Away with the appendix, then. Rearrange the bony structure of the back and pelvis to eliminate all the troubles that our faulty construction causes. Sharpen the senses. Program for optimum fat-versus-muscle balance, for physical esthetics, for endurance, for speed, for reflexes. Why make ugly androids? Why make sluggish ones? Why make clumsy ones?”
“Would you say,” Manuel asked casually, “that androids are superior to ordinary human beings?”
Bompensiero looked uneasy. He hesitated as if trying to weigh his response for all possible political impacts, not knowing where Manuel might stand on the vexed question of android civil rights. At length he said, “I think there’s no doubt about their physical superiority. We’veprogrammed them from the moment of conception to be strong, handsome, healthy. To some extent we’ve been doing that with humans for the past couple of generations, too, but we don’t have the same degree of control, or at least we haven’t tried to obtain the same degree of control, on account of humanistic objections, the opposition of the Witherers, and so forth. However, when you consider that androids are sterile, that the intelligence of most of them is quite low, then even the alphas have demonstrated — pardon me, my friend — relatively little creative ability—”