by John Ringo
“Aye,” Aikawa said. “ ‘The true abomination is intolerance.’ ”
“Aye,” Ungphakorn.
“Aye,” Ishtar finished. “That’s it. You need nine votes to override all the protocols in place to prevent your ‘program,’ Paul. So until three of us die, you’re shit out of luck.”
“We’ll see,” Bowman said. “The necessity for this will become clear. I promise you.”
“Not as long as I’ve got eyes to see,” Sheida answered.
CHAPTER TWO
Over the desk a three dimensional hologram of a double helix broke apart, incorporated new DNA, broke down into sections, simulated protein linkage, then recombined only to start over again.
Daneh Ghorbani watched the simulation with a distant expression. The Doctor of Genetic Repair was fine skinned like her sister, with the same titian hair. Unlike her sister she wore it long, and a good geneticist would be able to tell that her eyes probably were not naturally cornflower blue. However, like her sister, she had very little in the way of “enhancements” and the ones that she did have were all nongenetic. She had enough problems fixing other people’s lives without screwing up her own code.
The hologram was not running at the actual speed of the program; it was just a graphic representation of a process that was going on much faster than the eye could see. Computations and comparisons were going on across the Net, looking for a combination of genes that would eliminate a particular problem in the current patient’s code.
The result of that problem was sitting on a chair across from her, twitching and watching her earnestly. Herzer Herrick had been born with a genetic condition with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s disease. It had gone undetected in standard genetic scans and only started to manifest itself when he was five years old as hidden retrogenes broke loose and began randomly encoding. In the last ten years it had progressed to the point that he was losing vision because of inability to control his eyes, had occasional epileptic fits and had to be transported most of the time. The prognosis was that if his condition continued to be untreated, and up until now it had been untreatable, he would shuttle off this mortal coil before his twentieth birthday. Or about four hundred and seventy-five years before he should.
Despite these problems he was in fairly good physical condition. Up until recently, exercise had tended to reduce the worst effects of the disease, so he had exercised assiduously. Now, though, his physical condition was starting to deteriorate along with his nerves.
To make matters worse, he was a friend of her daughter. It was one of the reasons Daneh had avoided contact with his treatment; she knew that so close a relationship was asking for trouble. Furthermore, she and Herzer’s parents did not get along. From the first sign of Herzer’s “spasms,” his parents, Melissa and Harris, had begun shunning him as if the genetic damage was infectious. It was not until they had “given him his freedom” at the ripe age of fourteen and Herzer had personally approached her, that she was willing to take the case. Now, given his deterioration, she reproached herself for waiting so long.
But an end might be in sight. If Dr. Ghorbani had anything to do with it.
“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, Herzer,” she said, watching the double helix form and reform. “Some genes won’t go with other genes, no matter how you cram them together. Sometime in your family’s history somebody decided to cram a couple of your genes together. And they don’t fit. The result is your nerves can’t regulate your neurotransmitters anymore.”
“Ye’, doct’or,” the boy said with a sigh. “ ’H know.”
“Yes, you do know,” she said with a smile. “I’m trying to think of a way to fix it. A way the autodocs wouldn’t.”
“Trie’ docs ’fore,” the boy said, trying and failing to focus on the hologram or even the doctor across from him. His head, though, steadfastly twitched out of line and he couldn’t get his eyes to compensate. “They can’ fin’ uh promem.”
“Oh, they can find the problem,” Ghorbani corrected. “You didn’t know that?”
“N-no,” Herzer replied. “Uh ’ought ’ey couldn’ fi’ it.”
“Those are two entirely different things, son,” she said softly. “The problem is that fixing it the normal way would kill you.”
“Whuh? Whah?”
“The problem is in neurotransmitter regulation,” Daneh said. “To fix it would require changing your DNA and then changing out all of your regulatory proteins. Since while that’s going on, none of your neurotransmitters are going to work at all, that’s tantamount to killing you. We might as well pump you full of neurotoxin. That’s why the docs won’t treat it; they aren’t allowed to take any chances beyond a certain parameter.”
“ ’Ange?” he asked. “Or a ’ansfer?”
“Both have ramifications under the circumstances,” she replied with a lifted chin and a “tchuck” that signified “no.” “I think it was a Change sometime in your gene history that was the problem; the complex that is interfering with the neurotransmitter production is nearly co-located with the site for a gill protein. And I see you have mer-people about three generations back. Trying to do either a Transfer or a Change would be chancy. A Transfer assumes that your nerves, your brain cells not to put too fine a point on it, are acting normally. Yours aren’t. I’d put about a thirty percent likelihood that if we tried to Transfer you to a nannite entity or something similar you’d either lose significant sections of memory, or base-level processing ability, or both. Lose base-level process and you’re going to be a semifunctional mind in a nannite body you can’t control. Not a good choice either.”
“Muh ’ody’s go’g and muh brain ’oo,” the boy pointed out. “Don’ ha’ ’oo ma’y ’oices lef’, doc’or.”
“Hmmm…” she said. “I have an idea. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than Transference; I’ll have to model it. The problem is getting worse, but we’ve got a little time to figure it out.” She looked over at him and smiled. “I will figure it out, Herzer. I promise.”
“Ogay, doct’or,” he said.
“In the meantime, have as good a time as you can. I’ll get back to you in no more than a week.”
“Ogay, doct’or,” he repeated. “I can go now?”
“You should go now. All the usual. Get rest, drink fluids, exercise if you can.”
“I ’ill,” he said with a sigh. “ ’Bye.”
“Take care,” she replied as he disappeared from the chair.
She leaned back in her float-chair and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then waved at the hologram to dismiss it and snapped her fingers. “Genie: Chile.”
The transfer was the closest thing to instantaneous so a moment later she closed her eyes and let the ocean breeze blow over her as the sound of surf and waterfall filled her ears. The small wooden cottage was on the slope of a ravine near Puntlavap, overlooking the Po’ele Ocean. A large stream cascaded down the ravine to meet the crashing waves twenty meters below and the combination of sounds both soothed her and aided her focus.
But today it didn’t seem to be working.
She opened her eyes after a few moments and balefully regarded the clouds that were sweeping in from the west.
“It’s there,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”
She stood up and began striding back and forth on the cottage’s deck as the first blast of wind from the approaching storm blew through. The wind caught her hair, blowing it into her face but she barely noticed as she stopped and stared into the approaching storm abstractedly.
“A jigsaw,” she muttered, as the rain started to fall, the droplets streaming off of the barely visible force-field. “Do it one piece at a time?” She was sure there was an idea there, if it would just come into focus. It was close.
At that moment there was a faint but increasing chiming.
“Yes? Genie? I told you I didn’t want calls here,” she said in exasperation.
“Except from a limited list of individuals,” the disembodied male head of her gen
ie popped into midair and grimaced. “It is Sir Edmund. He says it is an urgent message.”
“Put him through,” Daneh sighed, all thoughts of jigsaw puzzles blown away as if from the storm. “What is it, now, Edmund?”
The image of her former gene-mate had changed little in the last two years; he was just as broad and heavily muscled and his face was still barely creased with lines. Maybe there were a few more gray threads in his beard, but not many. His demeanor, however, was… odd.
“Daneh, thanks for letting me talk to you,” he said. “I’d like you to consider donating your excess energy credits to the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project. Wolf Four requires a major refit including the removal of trillions of tons of crustal material and the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project needs your help.”
“WHAT?!” she shouted. “I come here to get away, Edmund! I’ve got a very sick boy I’m trying to heal and I do not need you soliciting me for terraforming funds! And just what do you care about terraforming? It’s going to take a half a million years to form a viable planet! You’re the one who always pointed that out to me.”
“Terraforming is essential to the future, not just of the human race but of life itself. In a few million years, this planet will be consumed by our own sun. If we do not have new planets to move to, planets that have been prepared for terrestrial life, all life on Earth, the only planet with significant life yet found in the galaxy, will be destroyed.”
“Hold on,” she said. “What are you? You’re not Edmund Talbot, are you?”
“I am a legally authorized message from the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project, a project that needs your help.”
“Genie! Spam!” she shouted as the image disappeared. “Oh! Oooooo! Genie, contact Edmund, use an avatar, tell him his image has been hacked. And tell my sister, too.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the personal program replied. “I asked if it was an avatar of Edmund Talbot and it said it was.”
“But it had to tell me the truth,” she said. “I’ve asked Sheida when they are going to fix that, but she keeps telling me there aren’t enough votes in the Council.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the genie replied. “Both will be informed.”
“Okay,” Daneh sighed. “Never mind; I can’t think anymore today anyway. Home, genie.”
* * *
Edmund Talbot looked up from the inlay he was applying with painstaking care as his butler projection made the sound of a throat clearing.
“Master Edmund, there is an avatar at the door to see you.”
The projection was dressed in thirteenth-century court dress of the Frankish kingdoms, its surcoat of wool and silk marked with a blazon of red and silver, argent upon gules, a human head, erased. With its fully human appearance and placed beside the antique tools, armor and weaponry arraying the room, the projection did not look outlandish in the least. It looked like a standard medieval flunky, not a cloud of nannites dressed in silk, wool and linen.
There was, in fact, no sign of advanced technology anywhere in the cluttered workshop. The grinding wheel was foot powered, the forge at the end was pumped with hand bellows, the barrels that held sword blanks and bar steel were of local oak and the materials were all natural with the appearance of having been handmade. The sun was setting, leaving the shop in a chiaroscuro of shadows and golden light, but the sole lighting source was a glass-shaded tallow dip.
Edmund himself was dressed in trews and a rumpled tunic that, with the exception of the cosilk material and extraordinary fineness of the weave, would have blended well in any medieval Ropasan setting from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. With his callused hands, massive forearms, graying hair and beard and heavy-set physique, he could have been mistaken for a medieval master smith. Or, perhaps, a lord with a hobby.
Which was the whole point.
The sole exception to the period garb was a pair of thin-rimmed glasses that he now pushed down his nose to look at the butler.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Mistress Daneh, my lord,” the projection replied. “Shall I show her in?”
“By all means,” Talbot replied, taking off his glasses and standing up.
It took only a moment for the projection and the avatar to return. The avatar could have simply appeared, but that would not have given the impression of being shown into the room. Since the entire teleport program was managed by the Net, which theoretically could send anyone, anywhere, protocols were in place to prevent unauthorized entry. Persons who were not specifically given access to a home had to translate to outside of the dwelling, and noncorporeal beings, projections, avatars and persons who had been Transferred into nannite clouds, could not simply enter a home without prior permission. Technically, Daneh Ghorbani’s avatar could have translated directly to his location. But Edmund’s friends and relations, who had such permission, were well aware of his peculiarities and always asked permission.
“Edmund,” the avatar said.
Talbot paused for a moment drinking in the sight of his former lover. Avatars by default simulated the current appearance of their host. This was not always the case but Daneh would not have adjusted it if she was using her real name. Thus it appeared that physically she had hardly changed. Her hair was a tad redder and showing some blond highlights, probably from sun. By the same token her skin was a bit more tanned. But other than that she was identical to when they had been together. She looked… well.
While he could feel himself getting older day by day.
“Mistress Daneh,” he replied with a slight bow. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“Someone’s spamming you as an avatar,” the avatar replied in an acid tone. “I don’t suppose you gave the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project permission.”
“I don’t think so,” Talbot replied with a snort. “Sorry about that; I’ll try to get to the bottom of it. Avatar, I don’t suppose you have any details?”
“Mistress Daneh did not ask me to gather any,” the avatar replied in a toneless voice.
“Very well. Are you keeping well?”
“Mistress Daneh is fine and I will convey that you asked about her.”
“And Rachel? She is well also?”
“Miss Rachel is well. She is currently energy surfing off Fiji.”
“Well, tell Daneh my door is always open to her and give Rachel my love. Tell her I look forward to her visit next month.”
“I will, Master Talbot. Good day.”
“God speed, avatar.”
He stood tapping his lip in thought until the projection had walked out of the room and his butler returned.
“Charles, send avatars to all of my friends telling them about this and apologizing. Send a complaint to the Council on the subject. Send a copy with a warning of further action to the Terraforming Project and contact Carb and ask him to see who decided I was a good target.”
“Very well, my lord. And you have another visitor.”
“Who?” Edmund asked.
“Dionys.”
“Oh, hellfire and brimstone,” Talbot swore. “What does that donkey’s ass want?”
“He did not vouchsafe that to me, my lord,” the butler replied. “Shall I show him in or tell him to go find a short and unpleasant route to hell?”
“Avatar or being?”
“Being, my lord.”
“I’ll meet him in the Hall,” Talbot replied after a moment. “In three minutes.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Edmund first donned a tabard with his coat of arms, then walked to the main room of the large house. The walls of the room were lined with armor and banners celebrating victories over the years against a range of opponents. There were katanas, broadswords and tulwars on the wall, while one end of the room had a surreal sculpture consisting of literally hundreds of fantasy swords, virtually all of them not worth the metal they were made from, welded together. The tabards of a hundred knights acted as little more than wallpaper and the doors were faced in battered shields.
A se
t of late medieval plate armor, quite battered and worn, stood on one side of the room’s outsized fireplace while the other side was flanked by a tower shield from the top of which protruded a hammer and a long horseman’s lance.
Edmund took a seat in front of the fireplace and waved at the butler to show his visitor in.
Dionys McCanoc was tall, two meters and a bit, and broad as a house. He was currently humanoform with a touch of elven enhancements; not enough to violate protocols, but enough to set any true-elf’s teeth on edge. His hair was long and silver with holographic highlights — it hung down his back in a waterfall that caught the light in a rainbow effect — while his skin was pure midnight black, not the black of a Negroid effect, but an absolute pitch black.
His eyes had vertically slit pupils and glowed faintly even in the light from multiple oil lamps.
“Duke Edmund,” he said in deep velvety baritone while bowing at the waist.
“What do you want, Dionys?” Edmund asked.
When Dionys had started showing up at tournaments, Edmund had taken the time to do some research. They had never ended up in competition, but Talbot was always careful to check out potential opponents, and problems, and Dionys had “problem” tattooed to his forehead.
Talbot had determined that Dionys was a fairly recent pseudonym, as was the general elven appearance. He had heard rumors that McCanoc’s previous incarnation had gone so far off the permissible track that it had actually come to the attention of the Council.
Whether he had actually been remanded to therapy or simply placed on probation was unclear, just as the crime for which he had been accused was buried under privacy restrictions, but as soon as he entered the recreationist sub-culture the reason for his problems became obvious: Dionys was just bug-house nuts.
He had started his career in recreationism by trying to force a duel with the King of Avalonia. Since the king had no reason to accept the challenge of a duel from a person who hadn’t even won his spurs, he rather pointedly declined.
Dionys then proceeded to start a whisper campaign against the king, accusing him of everything from cowardice to pedophilia. At the same time he began gathering a group of henchmen — who were immediately dubbed “The Young Louts” — and used them to sow discord far and wide in Avalonia. Throughout this period he either avoided tournaments or participated only against the weakest possible opponents, especially when the rules permitted enhanced weaponry. With excellent power-blades and his Changed size, he swiftly crushed all his opponents.