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genetics team. They spent a couple of months at it, under need-to-know
security. This probably saved several lives, later. The order was sent off on
a non-stop freight run to Kline Station, where it sat in a warehouse for two
months waiting for the yearly census courier to take it to Athos. Nine big
white freezer boxes " she described them in precise detail, right down to the
serial numbers. "Is that what you got?"
Ethan nodded grimly.
She went on. "Just about the time the shipment was leaving Kline Station for
Athos, Millisor and his team arrived on Jackson's Whole. They went through
Bharaputra's lab like well, professionally speaking, it was a very successful
commando raid." Her lips closed on some angrier private judgement. "Millisor
and his team escaped right through House Bharaputra's private army, vaporizing
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the laboratory and all its contents behind them. The contents included most of
the genetics team, quite a few innocent bystanders, and the technical records
of the work done on your shipment. I gather they must have spent some time
questioning the Bharaputra people before they crisped them, because they got
it all. Pausing only to murder the wife and burn down the house of one of the
geneticists, Millisor and company vanished from the planet, to turn up under
new identities here just three weeks too late to catch your shipment.
"So then I arrived on Jackson's Whole, innocently asking questions about
Athos. House Bharaputra Security about had a colonic spasm. Fortunately, I was
finally able to persuade them I had no connection with Millisor. In fact, they
think I'm working for them, now." She smiled slowly.
"The Bharaputrans?"
Her smile became a grimace. "Yes. They hired me to assassinate Millisor and
his team. A lucky break for me, since now I'm not racing one of their own hit
squads to the target. I seem to have made a start in spite of myself. They'll
be so pleased." She sighed, and drank again. "Your turn, Doctor. What was in
those boxes to be worth all those lives?"
"Nothing!" He shook his head in bewilderment. "Valuable, yes, but not worth
killing for. The Population Council had ordered 450 live ovarian cultures, to
produce egg cells, you know, for children "
"I know how children are produced, yes," she murmured.
"They were to be certified free of genetic defects, and taken only from
sources in the top 20 intelligence percentiles. That's all. A week's routine
work for a good genetics team such as you describe. But what we got was
trash!" He detailed the shipment received with increasingly irate fervor,
until she cut him off.
"All right, Doctor! I believe you. But what left Jackson's Whole was not
trash, but something very special. Somebody therefore took your shipment
somewhere in transit and replaced it with garbage "
"Very odd garbage, when you think about it," Ethan began slowly, but she was
going on.
"What somebody, then, and when? Not you, not me although I suppose you've only
my word for that and not, obviously, Millisor, although he would have liked
to."
"Mlllisor seemed to think it was this Terrence Cee person, or whatever he is."
She sighed. "Whatever-he-is had plenty of time for it. It could have been
switched on Jackson's Whole, or on shipboard en route to Kline Station, or
anytime before the census courier left for Athos ye gods, do you have any idea
how many ships dock at Kline Station in the course of two months? And how many
connections they in turn make? No wonder Millisor has been going around
looking like his stomach hurts. I'll get a copy of the Station docking log
anyway, though. . . ." She made a note.
Ethan used the pause to ask, "What is a wife?"
She choked on her beer. For all that she waved it about, Ethan noticed that
its level was dropping very slowly. "I keep forgetting about you. . . . Ah,
wife. A marriage partner a man's female mate. The male partner is called a
husband. Marriage takes many forms, but is most commonly a legal, economic,
and genetic alliance to produce and raise children. Do you copy?"
"I think so," he said slowly. "It sounds a little like a designated alternate
parent." He tasted the words. "Husband. On Athos, to husband is a verb meaning
to conserve resources. Like stewardship." Did this imply the male maintained
the female during gestation? So, this supposedly organic method had hidden
costs that might make a real Rep Center seem cheap, Ethan thought with
satisfaction.
"Same root."
"What does it mean 'to wife,' then?"
"There is no parallel verb. I think the root is just some old word meaning
simply, 'woman.' "
"Oh." He hesitated. "Did the geneticist whose house was burned and his his
wife have any children?"
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"A little boy, who was in nursery school at the time. Strangely enough,
Millisor didn't bother to torch it, too. Can't imagine how he overlooked that
loose thread. The wife was pregnant." She bit rather savagely into a protein
cube.
Ethan shook his head in frustration. "Why? Why, why, why?"
She smiled elliptically. "There are moments when I think you might be a man
after my own heart that was a joke," she added as Ethan lurched, recoiling.
"Yes. Why. My very own assigned question. Millisor seemed convinced that what
Bharaputra's labs produced was actually intended for Athos, in spite of the
subsequent diversion. Now, if nothing else, I've learned in the past few
months that what Millisor thinks had better be taken into account. Why Athos?
What does Athos have that nobody else does?"
"Nothing," said Ethan simply. "We're a small, agriculturally based society
with no natural resources worth shipping. We're not on a nexus route to
anywhere. We don't go around bothering anyone."
" 'Nothing,' " she noted. "Think of a scenario where a planet with 'nothing'
would be at a premium . . . You have privacy, I suppose. Other than that, only
your insistence upon reproducing yourselves the hard way sets you apart." She [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]