David Weber - Hell's Gate

That was why Gadrial and Shaylar had effectively packed the two of them off to the lookout pod where they could?hopefully?spend a little time getting over the worst of their mutual prickliness.

Of course they can, the magister thought dryly. And the Evanos is only a little damp.

"Do you think they've said three words to each other the whole time they've been up there?" Shaylar asked, and Gadrial blinked as the other woman's words broke in on her thoughts.

"What?" she asked, and Shaylar snorted in amusement.

"I asked if you think they've said three words to each other the whole time they'd been up there," she repeated, waving one hand at the lookout pod.

"I'd like to think so," Gadrial said after a moment, grinning as they both admitted what was really going on. "I'm not holding out a lot of hope, though."

"Me either." Shaylar's slight smile slowly faded, and she drew a deep breath. "Not that I can really blame either of them. It's an … ugly situation, isn't it?"

"Very," Gadrial agreed with a heavy sigh of her own. "If there were any way we could undo it, we'd?"

"Don't say it," Shaylar interrupted. Gadrial's eyes widened, as if with an edge of hurt, and Shaylar shook her head. "What I mean, is that you don't have to say it. I know it's true, and so does Jathmar, however … uncomfortable he may still be around Jasak. It's just that there's not any point. Saying it won't change anything, and there's no good reason why you should keep beating yourself up over it, apologizing for things that weren't your fault and that no one can change, anyway."

"I suppose not. But in that case," Gadrial smiled crookedly, "what can we talk about to wile away this pleasant little ocean voyage?"

Shaylar chuckled. As nearly as she could figure out, they were traveling from the eastern coast of the great island-continent of Lissia across the Western Ocean to the western coast of New Farnalia. That was almost five thousand miles, which was going to take them around nine days, even aboard one of the Arcanans' marvelous ships. Still, as she'd told Gadrial, she was profoundly grateful for the break in their arduous travels, even if every mile of seawater they crossed did remind her of her mother's embassy back home.

"Actually," she said, after moment, "I've been thinking about what Fifty Varkal and Jasak had to say about the difference between Skyfang and Windclaw."

"Yes?"

"I got the distinct impression that there are more significant differences between 'battle dragons' and what Fifty Varkal calls 'transports' than just their size and maneuverability." Shaylar ended on an almost questioning note and raised both eyebrows.

"Oh, there are," Gadrial agreed. "Mind you, I'm no magistron, and what I know about dragons?or, for that matter, any other augmented species?isn't much more than any other layman would be able to tell you. Well," her lips quirked, "maybe a little more than that, given what I do for a living, but not a lot. Still, if you'd like, I'll tell you what I know."

"By all means, please," Shaylar said, sitting up a bit straighter in her deck chair and rolling slightly up on one hip as she turned to face the other woman more squarely.

"Well," Gadrial began, "as Daris suggested back at Fort Talon, battle dragons are deliberately designed to be faster and more maneuverable than transport dragons."

"'Designed'?" Shaylar repeated. Gadrial looked surprised by the question, and Shaylar gave her head a little shake. "I haven't had much choice but to accept that your people can do all sorts of 'impossible' things, but I guess I'm still just feeling a bit … uncomfortable over the notion of 'designing' a living creature."

"As I said, I'm not a magistron, so it's not remotely my area of specialization," Gadrial replied, "but the actual techniques have been around for a long time. As matter of fact, it's one of the few areas in which Ransar actually led the way in both theoretical and applied research for something like three hundred years."

"Over Mythal, you mean?"

"Exactly." Gadrial looked away, gazing out across the endless, steady swell as the passenger ship sliced through it with a graceful, soothing motion. "It was a Ransaran magistron who first perfected the spells for examining what he called the genetic map of living creatures."

"And what's a 'genetic map'?" Shaylar inquired with an air of slightly martyred patience.

"Sorry." Gadrial looked back at her and smiled. "The word 'genetic' is derived from the Old Ransaran word for race or descent. And the reason Hansara?Rayjhari Hansara, the magistron who developed the original concept and spells?called it that was that it's basically a symbolically congruent representation of the physical characteristics of the creature. It's a fundamental principle of magic that the map is the territory, and once Hansara came up with a way to represent a living organism's characteristics in a fashion which could be visualized and manipulated, it really did become possible to 'design' creatures to order."

Shaylar shivered as if a sudden icy wind had found its way up and down her spine. And, in fact, one had, in a metaphorical way of speaking.

"And does that include people?" she asked after moment.

"No," Gadrial said firmly. Shaylar looked both relieved and skeptical, in almost equal measure, and Gadrial shrugged. "There's no arcane reason it couldn't include people," she conceded. "Human beings' codes can be visualized just as well as those of any other creature. But from the very beginning, any efforts to tinker with humanity were outlawed."

"Even in Mythal?" Shaylar said, with rather more skepticism, and Gadrial surprised her with a harsh bark of laughter.

"Especially in Mythal! The last thing any shakira would want to do is come up with a way to turn garthan into shakira. Given their religion, they'd see it as blasphemous, at the very least. And from a practical perspective?which I personally happen to think is even more important to them than their ludicrous religious concepts?if they were to turn all of the garthan into Gifted shakira, what happens to the existing shakira's slave class? It's been my observation that their 'religious principles' serve their more worldly ambitions much more than the other way around."

"But what about turning garthan into even more obedient slaves?"

"Now that probably would be something that would appeal to the caste-lords," Gadrial admitted with a grimace of distaste. "These days, at least. But at the time the rules and laws which prohibit tampering with humans were being put into place, no Mythalan garthan had any hope of ever managing to escape or defy his overlords. There was no need to turn them into 'more obedient slaves,' because it was impossible for them to be disobedient under the existing system."

"And why did everyone else feel it should be outlawed?"

"Because, at the time, it was all a process of trial and error," Gadrial said. "In fact, that's still the case whenever anyone begins mapping a new species, in a lot of ways. Hansara had found a way to producer congruent map, but it's an incredibly complex chart, Shaylar, and initially, he had no way of establishing the congruency between a particular section of the map and specific characteristics of the creature it represented. So he and his fellow magistrons not only had to come up with techniques to modify the chart, they also had to figure out which parts of it they needed to modify to achieve a specific objective. Most of their initial efforts?for decades, literally?produced creatures which couldn't possibly survive on their own. Or, at best, which were far, far cries from what they'd wanted to produce. No one was willing to allow them to experiment on humans when they might as readily produce a three-headed monster as an improvement on the original model. And, of course, Hansara and his colleagues were almost all Ransarans."