Текст книги "Cyteen "

"Of course not," he said to Petros, across the desk from him, while the Scriber ran, and he knew well enough they had a voice-stress running, that was probably reading-out to Petros on that little screen. Petros glanced from it often and sometimes smiled at him in his best bedside manner.

"You're involved in an intimate relationship with your companion," Petros said. "Don't you have any misgivings about that? You know an azi really can't defend himself against that kind of thing."

"I've really thought about that. I've talked with Grant about it. But it's the pattern we were brought up with, isn't it? And for various reasons, you know what I'm talking about, we both have problems that cut us off from the rest of the House, and we were both—let's call it—in need of support."

"Describe these problems."

"Oh, come on, Petros, you know and I know we're not on top of the social set. Political contagion. I don't have to describe it for you."

"You feel isolated."

He laughed. "My God, were you at the party? I thought you were."

"Well, yes." A glance at the monitor. "I was. She's a nice little kid. What do you think?"

He looked at Petros, raised an eyebrow at Petros' dour drollery, and gave a bitter laugh. "I think she's a bit of a brat, and what kid isn't?" He made it a quiet smile, catching Petros' eye. "Thank God Icouldn't get pregnant. You might have a kid of mine to play with. Put that in your tapes and file it. How am I doing on voice-stress?"

"Well, that was tolerably stressed."

"I thought it was. You're trying to get me to react, but do we have to be grotesque?"

"You consider the child grotesque."

"I consider the kid charming. I think her situation is grotesque. But evidently your ethics can compass it. They're holding my father at gunpoint as far as I'm concerned, so I'm damn well not going to make a move. Those are my ethics. Am I lying?"

Petros was not smiling. He was watching the monitor. "Nice. Nice reaction."

"I'm sure."

"Annoyed as hell, are you? What do you think of Giraud?"

"I love him like my own father. How's that for comparisons? True or false?"

"Don't play games with this. You can do yourself harm."

"Register a threat to the patient."

"I'm sure that's not what I intended. I am going to insist you undergo some therapy. Mmmmn, got a little heartbeat there."

"Of course you did. I'll do your therapy, in your facility. As long as my azi sits through it with me."

"Irregular."

"Look, Petros, I've been through hell in this place. Are you trying to drive me crazy or are you going to give me a reasonable safeguard? Even a non-professional has a right to audit a psych procedure if the patient requests it. And I'm requesting a second opinion. That's all. Do it right and you won't even need Security to bring me in. Do it wrong and I'll consider other options. I'm not a panicked kid anymore. I know where I can file a protest, unless you plan to lock me up and have me disappear—damned bad for your tape record, isn't it?"

"I'll do better than that." Petros flipped switches and the monitor swung aside, dead. "I'll give you the tape and you can take it home. I just want your word you're going to use it."

"Now you've got real surprise. Pity you cut the monitor."

"You're scared out of good sense," Petros said. "I don't blame you. Good voice control, but your pulse rate is way up. Psyched yourself for this, have you? I could order a blood test. Verbal intervention? Grant try to prep you?"

"I have to sign a consent."

Petros let out a slow breath, arms on the desk. "Keep yourself out of trouble, Justin. This is off the record. Keep yourself out of trouble. Take the orders. They aregoing to put off the phone calls."

"Sure." The disappointment made a lump in his chest. "I figured. It's all a game, anyway. And I believed Denys. I knew better."

"It's not Denys. Military security nixed it. Denys is going to put together a file that may convince them. Just cooperate for a while. You can't improve things by the show you just put on. You understand me. Keep out of trouble. You will go on getting the letters." Another sigh, an intensely unhappy look. "I'm going to see Jordan. Is there anything you want to tell him?"

"What are they doing with him?"

"Nothing. Nothing. Calm down. I'm just going over there to check out some equipment. Supering my techs. I just thought I'd offer. I thought it might make you feel better. I'm going to take him a photo of you. I thought he'd like that. I'm going to bring one back—or try."

"Sure."

"I'm going to. For his sake, as much as yours. I was his friend."

"The number of my father's friends amazes me."

"I won't argue with you. Any message?"

"Tell him I love him. What else won't be censored?"

"I'll tell him as much as I can. This is still off the record. I have a job here. Someone else would do it worse. Think about that for yourself. Go home. Go to your office. Don't forget to pick up the tape at the counter."

He was not sure, when he had left, when he was walking back across the quadrangle toward the House with the tape and a prescription, whether he had won or lost the encounter. Or what faction in the House had won or lost.

But he had not known that for years.

Verbal Text from:

PATTERNS OF GROWTH

A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1

"An Interview with Ariane Emory": pt. 1

Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1 approved for 80+

Q: Dr. Emory, thank you for giving us the chance for a few direct questions about your work.

A: I'm glad to have the opportunity. Thank you. Go on.

Q: Your parents founded Reseune. Everyone knows that. Are you aware some biographers have called you the chief architect of Union?

A: I've heard the charge, [mild laughter] I wish they'd wait till I'm dead.

Q: You deny your effect—politically as well as scientifically?

A: I'm no more the architect than Bok was. Science is not politics. It may affect it. We have so little time. Could I interject an observation of my own—which may answer some of your questions in one?

Q: By all means.

A: When we came out from Earth we were a selected genepool. We were sifted by politics, by economics, by the very fact that we were fit for space. Most of the wave that reached the Hinder Stars were colonists and crews very carefully vetted by Sol Station, the allegedly unfit turned down, the brightest and the best, I think the phrase was then, sent out to the stars. By the time the wave reached Pell, the genepool had widened a bit, but not at all representative of Sol Station, let alone Earth—we did get one large influx when politics on Earth took a hand, and the wave that founded Union ended up mostly Eastern bloc, as they used to call it. A lot of chance entered the genepool in that final push—before Earth slammed the embargo down and stopped genetic export for a long time.

Cyteen was the sifting of the sifting of the sifting. . . meaning that if there was one population artificially selected to the extreme, it was Cyteen—which was mostly Eastern bloc, mostly scientists, and very, very small, and very far, at that time, from trade and the—call it . . . pollination . . . performed by the merchanters. That was a dangerous situation. Hence Reseune. That's where we began. That's what we're really for. People think of Reseune and azi. Azi were only a means to an end, and one day, when the population has reached what they call tech-growth positive, meaning that consumption will sustain mass production—azi will no longer be produced in those areas.

But meanwhile azi serve another function. Aziare the reservoir of every genetic trait we've been able to identify. We have tended to cull the evidently deleterious genes, of course. But there's a downside to small genepools, no matter how carefully selected, there's a downside in lack of resiliency, lack of available responses to the environment. Expansion is absolutely necessary, to avoid concentration of an originally limited genepool in the central locus of Union. We are not speaking of eugenics. We are speaking of diaspora. We are speaking of the necessary dispersion of genetic information in essentially the same ratios as that present on ancestral Earth. And we have so little time.

Q: Why—so little time?

A: Because population increases exponentially and fills an ecosystem, be it planet or station, in a relatively short time. If that population contains insufficient genetic information, that population, especially a population at greater density than the peripheries of the system—we are of course speaking of Cyteen—and sitting at the cultural center of Union, which is another dimension not available to lower lifeforms, but very significant in terms of a creature able to engineer its own systems in all senses—if that population, I say, in such power, contains inadequate genetic information, it will run into trouble and confront itself with emergency choices which may be culturally or genetically radical. In spreading into space at much lesser density and with such preselection at work, humankind faces potential evolutionary catastrophe in a relatively small number of generations—either divergence too extreme to survive severe challenge or divergence into a genetic crisis of a different and unpredictable outcome—certainly the creation of new species ofgenus homo and very probably the creation of genetic dead ends and political tragedy. Never forget that we are more than a social animal, we are a political animal; and we are capable of becoming our own competitor.

Q: You mean war.

A: Or predation. Or predation. Never forget that. Dispersion is absolutely essential, but so are adequately diverse genepools in the scattered pockets that result. That is the reason azi were created and continue to be created. They are the vectors of that diversity, and that some economic interests have found them—profitable—is understandable but overall repugnant to me personally and to everything Reseune stands for. History may accuse me of many things, ser, but I care profoundly what becomes of the azi, and I have exerted every influence to assure their legal protection. We do not create Thetas because we want cheap labor. We create Thetas because they are an essential and important part of human alternatives. The ThR-23 hand-eye coordination, for instance, is exceptional. Their psychset lets them operate very well in environments in which CIT geniuses would assuredly fail. They are tough, ser, in ways I find thoroughly admirable, and I recommend you, if you ever find yourself in a difficult situation in Cyteen's wilderness, hope your companion is a ThR azi, who will survive, ser, to perpetuate his type, even if you do not. That is genetic alternative at work.

Someday there will be no more azi. They will have fulfilled their purpose, which is to increase, and multiply, and fill the gaps in the human record as the original genepool disperses to a mathematically determined population density—as it must disperse, for its own future well-being, its own genetic health.

I say again: azi are genetic alternative. They are the vector for change and adaptation in the greatest challenge the human species has yet faced. They are as they are precisely because the time within which this can be accomplished is so very brief. Reseune has not opposed the creation of additional labs, simply because its interests are primarily scientific and because the task of maintaining the impetus to expansion requires vast production and education facilities. But Reseune has never relinquished its role in the creation and selection of new genesets: no other laboratory has the right to originate genetic material.

While you're being patient, let me make two most essential points: one– Reseune insists on the full integration ofall azi genesets into the citizen population in any area of Union that has achieved class one status: in practical terms—azi are ideally a one-generation proposition: their primary purpose is not labor, but to open a colonial area, bring it up to productivity, and produce offspring who will enter the citizen genepool in sufficient numbers to guarantee genetic variety. The only azi who should be produced for any other purpose are those generated as a stopgap measure for defense and other emergencies in the national interest; those engaged in certain critical job classifications; and those generated for appropriate research in licensed facilities.

Two—Reseune will oppose any interest which seeks to institutionalize azi as an economic necessity. In no wise should the birthlabs be perpetuated as a purely profit-making operation. That was never their purpose.

Q: Are you saying you have interests in common with the Abolitionists?

A: Absolutely. We always have had.

CHAPTER 5