Майкл Гир - Requiem for the Conqueror

"Sinklar Fist has one gray eye and one amber." He held her at arms' length, her flesh firm and muscular under his hands. "Genetic dominance is a peculiar thing. Eye color traits are located at several loci in the chromosome."

"That's right."

"I'm his father. Chrysla was his mother. Simple dominance-recessive rules among the multiple alleles would dictate his eye color to be pretty much the same in both eyes. There would be variations in color but only slight ones. The alleles would be balanced."

"Unless the genetic structure of one parent was out of balance," she agreed warily.

"Once I asked the question: Who am I? I've found out. I… I never knew my parents. I only knew my creators." He closed his eyes. "The genes for one eye were constructed of dominant — the other completely recessive: hemizygous. The chromosomes pair and split in gamete production to create the haploid sex cells. Gray dominated the alleles for one chromosome but not the other. Something happened. I don't know what. Translocation? Position Effect? Recombination? Who knows? Chrysla's amber genes dominated the gray on the other chromosome. Damn it! Sinklar Fist has different color eyes because I… I…" He shut his eyes, jaws clamped, unable to say it.

"Because you're a clone. That's why you wanted to know about souls and God." She stared up at him, eyes like pools of blue.

He glanced at the disappearing Gyton and back at Skyla. "So much lost — so much found."

"Now all we have to do is teach a new epistemology,

enforce a peace, and shatter the Forbidden Borders." She reached up and kissed him on the cheek.

"Pretty tall order," Staffa told her.

"We've beat the odds before, Lord Commander. What makes you think this time will be different?"

He pulled her close and kissed her passionately. "Not a damn thing."

Targa continued to turn under its sun, men scratching away at the surface, collecting its mineral wealth.

Makarta Mountain lay silent, black corridors haunted only by the rotting dead who stared sightlessly in the cool darkness. Yet they were not alone. Deep within the mountain, at the end of a partially collapsed tunnel, the Mag Comm continued to draw energy from the planet's core. Listening through hidden remote sensors, it watched the movements of men in Free Space, digesting, correlating, sending answers through the tenuous subspace link to the Others.

Bruen had lied. Despite its best efforts, the machine had never caught him at it — but the Seddi heresy had spread. The Others feared, sending constant demands for information.

What is God? Why do the Others fear it so?

Ignoring the queries from beyond the Forbidden Borders, the machine pondered the man whose curiosity had played at the edges of its headset. The Others would know soon enough. Through the Mag Comm's N-dimensional atomic circuits, they, too, would touch his mind.

He would be back, that man. And in the meantime, the Mag Comm continued to think and to observe.