“Let me go. What if it was?”
“What’s Pite doing here?”
“He can look at a treeship if he wants to.”
“No, he can’t. He’s supposed to be under house arrest after that last fracas. How did he get up here?”
“None of your business. I said let me go.”
He released her. “He borrowed somebody else’s identity, didn’t he? Like his idol, Penser, does.”
“What if he did? Pite has lots of friends. It’s their business.”
“You were one of them, weren’t you?” Bram said. “That’s why you wanted to get to the farewell party — and then hardly bothered to say ten words to Orris and Marg. And that’s why you disappeared at Lowstation. You met somebody there. Why is Pite interested in star trees?”
“You’re being ridiculous,” she snapped.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “Pite and his friends are up to something, and you’ve gotten yourself involved in it. Kerthin, I don’t like to see you getting yourself in trouble. I thought you had more sense than that.”
“All right,” she said. Her demeanor changed abruptly, became affectionate and wheedling. “Pite did use somebody else’s name, and he had the help of a friend aboard the tree in getting an invitation. And I found out about it, and I helped cover it up. What’s so awful about that? It isn’t as if Pite was doing anything wrong. All he wanted to do was explore this tree. Just like you’re doing.”
“I’m sorry, Kerth, I didn’t mean to question you like that.”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she asked quickly. “That you recognized Pite?”
“Kerthin …” he began wearily.
“You said it yourself. It could get me into trouble.”
“All right,” Bram said. “I won’t say anything.”
In the shuttle on the way down, after the reentry trajectory changed the gimballed overhead tiers into horizontal rows on the deck in front of him, Bram saw Pite’s shaggy blond head in a nest ahead. Kerthin gave no sign that she knew Pite was there, and neither did Bram.
Just before touchdown, Pite twisted his head around and gave Bram a single hard stare. Bram stared past him, showing no reaction. Pite treated him to a small, mocking smile of approval, not much more than a flicker, and turned to face front again. When the shuttle landed and cooled down enough for exit, Pite was the first one out. Bram looked for him in the electric jitney to the terminal, but Pite did not reappear.
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Part II
Genesis
Chapter 9
The library annex was dimming for the night as the overhead tubes drained and the biolight fluid flowed back to its holding tanks. A few diehards were still bent over the screens in the reading booths, waiting for Hogard, the librarian, to kick them out.
“Are you all set?” Hogard asked. “You got everything you need?”
Bram glanced at the neat stacks of holos he had arranged in a semicircle around the apparatus that the librarian had helped him carry into the cubbyhole and set up. There was an ordinary, rather beat-up, viewscreen that had been cannibalized from an older machine, and a human-style lap console with touch bars, but there was also a jumble of connections slaving everything to a Nar-type desk reader, with curved screen and input sleeve. Another set of temporary connections led to the librarian’s prized whole-body reader on its wooden platform.
“Yes,” Bram said. “I’ll be all right.”
“Be sure to turn everything off when you’re finished. How long do you think you’ll be here?”
“I don’t know. Two or three hours.”
Hogard shook his head, looking aggrieved. “If Voth-shr-voth fixed it up, I guess it’s all right. But I don’t do this for everyone.”
“I appreciate that. Thanks.”
Hogard pointed at the first stack of holos. “That the new translation program?”
“Yes. An interim realization of it, anyway. There are still years of work to go into it. The hackers who took the job on are working with Voth-shr-voth’s second touch brother, and at his request they pasted together a test model from their unassembled routines to date.”
“I don’t like it. It should have come to me first.”
“It was only delivered this afternoon. I’ll leave you a copy. You’ll find it on your desk in the morning.”
“I hope it doesn’t blow anything.”
“It won’t. It’s been tested in a closed system.”
“That’s no guarantee. This library system has been growing for thousands of years. Nobody knows where all the forks and interconnections are.”
“Voth’s taking full responsibility.”
Hogard scratched his chest. “He must sure think a lot of you.”
“The results will interest him, too. There’s a lot that’s still not known about Man’s codicil.”
“Well, go to it, Bram. Let me know what you turn up.”
Some instinct of caution prompted Bram’s reply. “Don’t expect anything startling for a while. I’ll just be noodling my way through the datastreams for the next few months.”
Hogard gave a final worried look to the interface bulbs attached to his precious whole-body reader, then set about the task of shooing the late browsers out of the annex. One by one, they reluctantly switched off their reading machines and got up to go. The last to leave was the clerkish, sallow-featured man Bram had recognized from the political meeting where Penser’s manifesto had been read. He seemed to hang around the annex a lot. He saw Bram looking at him and dropped his eyes. Bram resolved to find out who he was and if he worked at the biocenter, then promptly forgot about him.
He found it on the fourth night. It was down one of the endlessly dividing data branches growing out of that single muffled reference to the set of synthetic genes that had been derived from the embryonic switching mechanisms of the axolotl and the fearsome dragonfly nymph.
It back-referenced to another tangle of data branches arising from a cultural package that had been included in the monumental afterthought that was the codicil to Original Man’s great message, and there was no doubt at all that it had to do with new genetic information for the human genome. And that was odd, because the complete recipe for cooking up a human being had already been transmitted fifty years earlier in the first — or hundredth? — cycle of the human message to be intercepted.
It sat in the center of his screen, a multicolored geometric figure with twenty hexagonal facets, rotating slowly in space to show its three-dimensional structure. A long, hollow tail dangled from it, endlessly flexing as if in search of something.
Bram knew what it was. He had made simpler versions himself many times for projects to inject new genetic information into food plants and industrial crops. It was the protein overcoat for a synthetic carrier virus. Inside that faceted overcoat was a molecule, or molecules, of infectious DNA.
Bram knew nothing about the nucleotide sequence of the viral DNA or what receptor sites in what human chromosomes it was meant to attach itself to. But he knew what it did.
It made human beings immortal.
“You look as if someone just told you that you were going to die!” Kerthin said. “Can’t you act a little more lively?”
“Sorry,” Bram said.
She faced him, her hands on her hips. “You’ve been moping around ever since you got back from the biocenter last night. You’re no fun at all! Is something wrong?”
“No,” he lied.
She peered at him suspiciously. “You found out something, didn’t you? Something that you don’t want to tell me.”
“I’m just working late on a project, that’s all.”
“You don’t want to tell me because you found out that I was right. Your precious Voth-shr-voth has been lying to you.”
That stung. Bram told himself that Kerthin could not be right. If Voth had been trying deliberately to conceal the existence of a genetic amendment that kept human beings from aging, then he would
not have encouraged Bram to keep on searching through the archives, not have lent his assistance. No. The explanation must be that the Nar simply didn’t realize the implications of the unculled information in their files, and that was why it had lain there undisturbed for half a millennium. The file was simply a dumping ground for all the dangerous data having to do with that unstable dragonfly allele.
But the fact remained that human beings died after a century or two — and kept on dying, generation after generation, while the Nar lived for a thousand years.
“The Nar don’t lie,” he said. “It’s physically impossible for them to lie to one another, and they never got into the habit.”
“Have it your own way.” She tossed her head. “When you decide to join the human race, you can tell me about it. We need all the information we can get to help us in the struggle.”
A finger of ice traced Bram’s spine. He could imagine what use Kerthin’s Schismatist friends would make of the information that human beings were meant to live forever — and that the Nar had not yet gotten around to conferring this gift upon them. He didn’t want to think about what such poisoned knowledge would do to the human community once it got out.
He needed more time to think about this, time to decide what to do.
“There’s nothing to tell, I said. Anyway, I’m not working tonight.” He smiled with an effort. “Why don’t we go to that new repast house you like? And afterward they’re having a singfest down at the bay. It ought to be fun.”
Kerthin was at the clothes chest, pulling an outdoor tabard over her head, an anonymous gray garment that seemed at odds with her liking for color. “I’m going out tonight. You’ll have to find something yourself to eat. I think there’re some leftover potato cups in the locker. Or you can eat at the bachelors’ lodge.”
“Where are you going?” Bram said. “It seems to me you’re going out a lot lately.”
“What do you expect?” She bristled. “You’re gone half the night, and when you are here, you act all grumpy. I didn’t know if you were coming back tonight, and I promised I’d — I’d look at someone’s sculpture.”
“Go some other time.”
She belted the tabard. “I can’t. I said I’d be there tonight. Some other people will be at the showing.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No — I mean it’s private. Just for a few artists. They aren’t ready to show it to outsiders.”
“It’s a meeting, isn’t it?”
“Oh, why are you acting this way? I’m going. Good night!”
She flounced out. The door fluttered with the force of her exit. Bram stared thoughtfully at it for a moment, then got his own overgarment out of the clothes chest.
Before he left, he checked the food locker. There was nothing in it except a few stale cornflats. Kerthin hadn’t been spending much time at home either.
The bachelors’ lodge was about two hundred years old, if you dated it from the time its original occupant died and was scraped out of the interior. Thick deposits of lime partially filled in the original grooves of the spiral, turning the basic helical shape into a squat, bumpy cone. Nevertheless, you could easily distinguish the five fat bulges that comprised it, not counting the cap chamber, which was almost too cramped to stand up in and which was used mainly for storage.
Bram felt a pang of nostalgia as he let himself through the outer gate and looked up at the calcified ribs and old-fashioned casements fitted into the reticulated pattern they formed. The manicured grounds looked exactly as they had looked on the day he had first moved in with his few belongings, ready to begin his independent life and uncertain of how the other members would receive him.
Jimb, the old man who tended the plantings, was working with a spade near the path. He looked the same too, bent and ageless, his face a network of unchanged wrinkles, his knotted forearms burned brown by the suns. He was wearing the same stained garden smock, the same shapeless bags over his feet, tied around the ankles to keep out loose dirt.
“Hello, Jimb, how’ve you been?” Bram said as he approached.
The old groundsman looked up from the hole he had been digging and squinted incuriously at Bram’s face.
“Fair enough, young fellow, fair enough,” he said, and went back to his work. Old Jimb had seen them come and seen them go for over a century. There had been no glimmer of recognition in the faded eyes.
The anteroom was dark and cool, with heavy comfortable furniture and the worn appointments that had reassured generations of new members. A smell of cooking and a clatter of dishes came from the dining chamber beyond, where they would be having the early serving about now. A few neophytes, too young for Bram to recognize them, stood around, talking in appropriately hushed voices.
He hesitated, wondering if he ought to speak to the steward first, when one of the older members came through the curtain and spotted him.
“Welcome back, Bram. Drop by to say hello to the old fogies? How are you? We’ve been hearing great things about you.”
Bram pressed palms. “Hello, Torm. You’re not ready to join the fogies yet, I hope.”
Torm laughed. He was a small, neat, pink man who supplemented his allowance by doing free-lance sound transcription for the Nar. “Any day now, but I’m trying to stave it off.” He winked broadly. “I’ve got myself a new girl friend out at the cove. A lady of mature years like myself, but worth the trip every Tenday, if you know what I mean. I’d take the monandry pledge with her and move out of this place if I wasn’t so set in my ways.”
“Well … I’m glad to see you so lively.”
“Stay young, my boy. Any way you can. That’s my motto. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Bram said, concealing the jolt that Torm’s words had given him. The man couldn’t possibly have read his thoughts. Bram’s eyes strayed to the curtain as he remembered the errand that had brought him here.
“Looking for Smeth? He isn’t here tonight. He had a guild meeting.”
“No. I was wondering … is Doc Pol around?”
Torm’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ll find him in the common room, same as always. What do you want with the old codger?”
“Just thought I’d have a few words with him. He was very helpful when I was studying mol-med applications. I couldn’t have passed my molecular biology exam without him.”
“So? I’d have thought his mol-med would have been out of date even then. Don’t let him trap you into a game. Smeth’s his usual victim, so tonight is dangerous. Shall I tell the steward you’re staying for supper? Second serving’s in about an hour.”
“Thanks, Torm,” Bram said.
He found Doc Poi in the corner chair that was reserved for him by the general consent of the members. When an unwary newcomer tried to sit in it, he was quickly set right. Doc evidently had just finished supper, skipping the sweet as usual so that he could plant himself in the common room for the serious business of whiling away the evening. An after-dinner drink was on a small taboret beside him, within easy reach of his hand, and he was reading an old, often-refolded printout of Moliere’s Imaginary Invalid.
He looked up and brought Bram into focus. “Good halftide, young fellow. Bram, wasn’t it? The bioengineer? Pull up a chair, my boy, and sit down.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bram said, and settled opposite.
Doc Pol had grown whiter and more withered since the last time Bram had seen him. His voice was cloudier, his hands less steady. It was impossible to guess how old he might be. He had been a fixture of the lodge when Bram had first met him — fifty years retired and full of dusty, forgotten honors. Some unspecified disappointment had driven him to pare down his life and consign himself to the lodge. Nobody from outside ever came to see him. Perhaps he had simply outlived everyone close to him.
“You look fit, Bram. Older. Filled out a bit. Let me think. You’d been accepted as an initiate by a Nar touch group. Did you ever get your apprenticeship?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks to you. The h
elp you gave me with human biology. You know more about molecular repair than anyone I’ve met.”
“Nonsense,” the old man snorted. But Bram could see that he was pleased. “My practical knowledge was fifty years behind the times. Why, at the time I retired they hadn’t even begun to autoclone cortical tissue. Nowadays it seems that every senescent old fool runs to have it done as soon as he begins forgetting a few things. I wouldn’t do it myself. We have more than enough brain cells to keep us going until we croak — the trick is to keep on using the ones we have left.”
“Well, cerebral enhancement aside, you certainly opened my eyes about how autoclone grafts work on the cellular level. Kidney tissue, lung tissue, intestinal tissue — even the cellular mechanisms involved in regrowing working structures like limbs.”
Doc Pol took a small sip of his drink. “Hmph. Clone grafts for injury repair, organ replacement for nonsyn-chronous wear and tear. That’s about all we bumbling medcrafters are good for, apart from broken bones and obstetrics. Original Man didn’t leave much work for a doctor to do. Not after he edited out the oncogenes and selected for longevity, good eyesight, good teeth, and the rest of it. And kindly kept his germs to himself. It all catches up with you in the end, of course.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, sir.”
“Talk about what?”
“Why it catches up.”
Doc Pol turned a pair of bright blue eyes on him. “You mean why can’t we go on recloning parts of our bodies forever and live on as patchworks?”
“Well … something like that.”
“Each of us has a fetal analog frozen in nitrogen and put on file before blastocyst implantation. And that’s fine in case of medical catastrophe. Particularly when someone needs a new heart or kidney. But you can go back to the well only so often. And even if that weren’t so, eventually you’d be stitching your patches to worn-out material.” He shook his head sadly. “No, my young friend, if you’re looking for a prescription for immortality, you’ll have to find it in the cell itself. Our fetal analogs stay young only because they’ve been arrested by freezing. Thaw them out, grow the differentiated cells into the replacement part you want — and your new lung or kidney goes through exactly the same number of cell generations as the rest of you. It might outlast you — but not for long.”
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