Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

He made a noise in his throat, and she turned to get him another bulb. While she was getting it he opened his desk, only to find several more pieces of paper that said COLD. “Hey, where’s my cigar lighter?” he demanded.

“Obviously I took it.”

“Well, dammit, give it back! It’s a priceless heirloom, maintained and handed down from agent to agent for over six hundred years.”

“I should just think it has been. I found eighty-two different ways it can be used to ruin somebody else’s day. Eighty-three if they don’t smoke. You’ll get it back later, I don’t want you wasting time. You had enough to eat?”

“I want a cigar,” he grumbled.

Her rigid face was as capable of expression as a Noh mask-exactly so: when she turned it to change the shading, she displayed a new mood. She detested tobacco smoke.

“You mind if I smoke?” he said, prepared to see if Protector hide would blister.

“Hell, I don’t mind if you catch fire and burn to the ground like Miss Havisham. You’ve spent almost three hundred years making my job harder to do.” She opened his cigar box-he saw another slip of paper-got one out, snipped the end, handed it over, and lit it for him.

“Is that a wooden match?” he said after the first drag.

“They’re supposed to preserve the flavor.”

“I just-mm, it does, thanks-I just think that’s a little extravagant.”

“Marshall, this planet has ten million square miles of forest. That’s about a trillion trees. Cut down one percent a year and that’s five tons of lumber per flatlander, with another five tons of foliage and slash for reductive petroleum synthesis. That resource is the principal factor that keeps the dolphins from taking over the plastics industry with their corner on the algae market. You’ve started to believe ARM press releases.”

Early took a gloomy puff to avoid answering. She was right. Then he said, “Who’s Miss Havisham?”

“Early selective-breeding reformer, precursor of the Fertility Board. Marshall, I need to find the other Freezer Banks.”

“Other?”

“The only one I can find in ARM records is under this building.”

“They were combined right after the start of the First War,” Early said. “What was left. They were just about emptied out.”

The mask turned again, to become forbidding and cold. “Transplants?”

“Sergeants.”

The Protector blinked six times. Then she got her pad back out and scribbled on it again. She had damn long fingers, from the extra joint that gave a Protector retractable claws. The effect was exceedingly creepy. Without looking up from the screen, she said, “A lot of things that frighten people are hardwired into the brain from Pak days.”

“How did you do that without seeing my face?” he said.

“Your body language changed.” Ursula lifted her gaze again, and he paid attention to her eyes for the first time. They were pretty. It was a jarring contrast with the rest of her looks. Also, the pupils were different colors-one red, one blue. “That was your idea too.”

“Yes.”

“That was brilliant, and this is me saying it. Well done.”

“What kind of frightening things?” he said, embarrassed.

“It’s a long list. For example, revulsion at the idea of old people having sex comes from the fact that the Pak were accustomed to anyone past menopause becoming physically asexual. Bald people are intimidating. And before boosterspice, children used to be afraid of kissing Grandma.”

“I remember.”

“So you would,” she said, nodding.

“I don’t get why, though.”

The mask shifted, and she was about to tell him something unpleasant. “Protectors recognize their descendants by smell, and can detect the mutation of a single codon. Any creature not under protection is a threat to descendants. And Protectors make maximum use of resources. When someone big and wrinkly leans over close enough to smell you, there’s a chance you’re about to be eaten.”

He didn’t want to believe that, but he had quite a good memory-and that was exactly the way he’d felt about his grandmother the first time he’d been shown to her.

It would have shown on his face to someone not nearly as smart as she was. “You’re safe,” she said.

Badly wanting to change the subject, he said, “What do you want with the Freezer Banks?”

“We need generals.”

“There’s not an intact head in the lot,” he said.

“Not a problem. I plan to use sections of at least three brains each and splice them together, rectify the DNA, and use the combined experience to make encyclopedic geniuses. I’ll grow them new bodies.”

The thought was ghastly. “Three sets of memories? They’ll be insane!”

She shrugged. “Insanity in a breeder is about as serious as warts on a leper. I have a Sinclair accelerator, so I can provide enough therapy to get the personality fragments to establish a working relationship. They’ll have the advantage of being genetic supermen-superwomen, rather, since the rectifying process would treat a Y chromosome as a defect.”

“Are you talking about nanomachines?”

“Right.”

He snorted. “Good luck with that. We’ve had people working on that since before I was born. They always break down.”

“I know. Brennan saw it happening, made nanotech that attacks all other nanotech, and turned it loose. I have to do all my work in a chamber that’s been cleared of the hunters.”

“What in hell did he do that for?”

“Marshall, consider what may be defined as nanomachinery. When photosynthetic life began releasing free oxygen as a byproduct, it exterminated almost everything on the planet and replaced it with its own kind. The plants you live with and eat aren’t nearly as efficient at using light as what I’ve made. And that’s just an intentional feature. Can you imagine what someone might make if he screwed up? Brennan may have been a quintessential Belter, but even his imagination was good enough for that.”

Early reeled. “That’s a hell of a note for Weeks,” he said.

He evidently didn’t have to explain who Weeks was. “When I looked in on him he was moving in that direction. Would have made a ’bot that hunted the hunters. Fortunately I stopped him before he could do any damage.”

He closed his eyes. “He’s dead?”

“Humph,” she said. She didn’t grunt, she pronounced it. “Thanks to Phssthpok and the Morlocks, people think of Protectors as casual murderers. It’s most unfair. I’m not casual at all. Besides, as soon as I saw him I realized he was a Cellar Christian.”

Early hated that term. “Religion has never been prohibited.”

“No, just heavily edited. And a good thing, too. Weeks was raised on source material, and he’s peculiar even for a breeder. I altered my cloaking system, appeared in his room, and offered to teach him all the secrets of nanomachinery in return for his soul. I expect he’s still at church.”

Early stared, gaped, and said, “You’re a fiend.”

“You know, that’s just what he said. Slightly different emphasis, though.”

Early got up, breathing heavily, and went into the bathroom. Here and there, where his weapons of opportunity had been, he found a few more notes that read COLD. It was getting annoying.

It became more annoying when he realized he didn’t need a shower. He got out casual clothing, dressed, and said, “I like taking showers.”

“You can switch off the ’doc’s body cleaner if you’re just going to sleep. It wasn’t very good, so I redesigned it while I was undoing the Puppeteer hacks.”

Something that had been bothering him-besides Ursula-came to a point: “I was wounded before humans had encountered Puppeteers,” he said.