John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

"Not yet," Creek said.

"Perfect," Robin said, "Meet me at the west entrance, then. Ground floor, seven o'clock. Dress casual. Bye." She clicked off.

"That's going to be an interesting date," Brian said.

"I need you to connect me with Ben," Creek said.

" 'Ben' as in my brother Ben," Brian said.

"That's the one," Creek said.

"Interesting," Brian said. "I don't suppose he knows about me."

"I have to tell him that the sheep we're looking for is a woman who runs a pet store," Creek said. "I think telling him his younger brother's been resurrected as a computer program might be a little much for one day."

Archie almost missed the connection between Robin and the sheep. The Rod-ordered background check offered nothing of interest; a long-term scan of her business records showed her ordering a sheep only once in the history of her store, and it was a common breed, not something genetically modified. Archie kept going back in Robin's history, past the point of boredom, until he was presented with an electronic version of the very first document of Robin's life: Her birth certificate. It listed "Jane Doe" as the mother and Zach Porter as the father.

Archie moved to close out all the documents, then hesitated. Somewhere in the back of his head the name "Zach Porter" fired up some neurons. Archie decided this would be a good time for a break.

"I'm going to get a snack," he said, to the room. "Anybody want anything?" Ed, the other guy, barely looked up from his show and shook his head; Takk was still out of it.

Rod and his crew were camped out in a shitty apartment in a shitty complex in a shitty part of town. Rod's "apartment" was jacked up with some serious equipment which Archie would have suspected to be mighty tempting to the local scum. But he also noticed, on his couple other times out, that the local population gave the door of Rod's apartment a wide berth. Being a scary motherfucker meant no one messed with your shit.

The vending machine was at the end of the hall, next to the stairs; the sticker in the top right corner of the display case read "Ross Vending, Inc." Inside the display case was a truly interesting assortment of vendables, from small cartons of LSL Milk (irradiated for a six-month shelf life) to three-packs of Whisper brand condoms, with patented Electro-Ecstatic™ molecule-binding technology to make the condom membrane as thin yet impermeable as possible. Archie had never tried that particular brand; something about the combination of an electric charge and his genitals just didn't seem appealing. Slot B4 held a small bag of white chocolate M&Ms. Archie smiled; those were in fact pretty tasty. He slipped in his credit card and pressed the button.

It felt like someone had stabbed him directly in both eyeballs. Archie crumpled, banging his head on the vending machine on the way down. As his forehead jammed against the vending machine Plexiglas, the rattle of the impact dislodged information about Zach Porter; Archie finally remembered why he remembered that name. He spent a couple more minutes on the ground, gathering his strength, before he wobbled back up and headed back towards the apartment. About three-quarters of the way there, he realized he'd forgotten his snack. He went back to get it.

Back at the computer, Archie pulled up news stories relating to Zach Porter, and there it was: Porter involved in a murder-suicide involving Arthur Montgomery. Of course, Archie knew the name Arthur Montgomery very well. If a religious organization as laid-back and nebulous as the Church of the Evolved Lamb could be said to have an apostate member, Montgomery would have been it. In one of the few real church scandals on record, Montgomery had joined the Church, worked his way into the top ranks of the church's genetic hybridization concern on Brisbane colony, and then snuck off back to Earth to form ZooGen, using Church genetic techniques.

Montgomery had gambled that the Church would back off rather than sue him and have its entire genetics organization and its goals hauled into court and into the papers. The gamble paid off. The Church's genetics program was not a high-priority enterprise in a commercial sense—its goals were esoteric and long-term—and the Ironists who ran Hayter-Ross didn't want anything to rock the business end of their organization. And in any event one of Dwellirt's more maddeningly vague prophecies suggested that something like mis was supposed to happen. The Church officially let it go, although it suggested to its individual members that they might consider investing in ZooGen stock, since Montgomery had stolen some very advanced and likely profitable techniques.

So in one of those nice little ironies, Church members soon comprised the single largest voting bloc of shareholders. After Montgomery's murder, they worked quietly to install a Church-vetted executive as the new CEO. Several years later, ZooGen's executives and board voted to be acquired by Hayter-Ross. This was quickly approved by the shareholders and by the FTC, which saw no conflict as, outside of livestock, Hayter-Ross had been to that point a marginal player at best in the bioengineering field.

Like many Church members, Archie was aware of the scandal that led to Montgomery's murder, and how he'd tried to blackmail Porter; the sheep-woman Montgomery had hybridized had been a horrifying use of genetic engineering. But with all the documents laid out in front of him, Archie began to suspect for the first time what the connection between the pet shop lady and sheep was. Archie called up Robin's insurance records to get the name of her provider, snuck into their system to grab her DNA map, and ran it through the processor.

"Oh boy," he said, after the comparison was done. Then he called out to Rod Acuna.

"You're shitting me," Acuna said to Archie, a few minutes later.

"It's all there," Archie said. "She's mostly human, but there's whole sequences of her DNA which are from your sheep genome."

"She didn't look like a sheep," Acuna said.

"Looks like most of the sheep DNA is in areas of the code that are switched off in humans," Archie said. "It's called 'junk DNA.' It wouldn't affect the way she looked or how her body worked. Functionally she's totally human. But according to this DNA, she's about eighteen percent sheep."

"Fucking scientists," Acuna said. "Ruin a perfectly good-looking woman like that." He flipped open his communicator and made a call.

"The hell you say," Secretary of state Heffer said, to Ben Javna, over the communicator.

"No joke, sir," Javna said. "Our sheep is a pet shop owner from Virginia."

"That's it?" Heffer said. "You don't have any other sheep? Real ones?"

"That's all we got," Javna said. "All the real Android's Dream sheep are dead from sabotage. Whoever's killing them off is moving fast."

Heffer rubbed his temples. "Well, crap, Ben. This is all we need."

"Where are you, sir?" Javna asked

Heffer looked out the window of the delta, which was just starting the downslope of its parabola. "Hell if I know," he said. "Most of the Pacific Ocean looks like any other part. We'll be landing in LA in about forty-five minutes and then I've got to make an appearance at the State Department building. The director there is retiring. I get back into DC around midnight your time."

"What do you want to do?" Javna asked.

"What are our options?" Heffer asked.

"None that I can think of right off the top of my head," Javna said. "DNA aside, this is a human being and a U.S. and UNE citizen. We can't hand her over to the Nidu for a ceremony without her consent."

"Can't we just give them a quart of her blood or something?" Heffer asked. "I don't think a quart of blood is an unreasonable request to make."