Xenocide

It was the end of the day. Han Fei-tzu was exhausted, his eyes hurting from all that he had read. He had adjusted the colors on the computer display a dozen times, trying to find something restful, but it didn't help. The last time he had worked so intensely was as a student, and then he had been young. Then, too, he had always found results. I was quicker, then, brighter. I could reward myself by achieving something. Now I'm old and slow, I'm working in areas that are new to me, and it may be that these problems have no solutions. So there's no reward to bolster me. Only the weariness. The pain at the top of my neck, the puffy, tired feeling in my eyes.

He looked at Wang-mu, curled up on the floor beside him. She tried so hard, but her education had begun too recently for her to be able to follow most of the documents that passed through the computer display as he searched for some conceptual framework for faster-than-light travel. At last her weariness triumphed over her will; she was sure she was useless, because she couldn't understand enough even to ask questions. So she gave up and slept.

But you are not useless, Si Wang-mu. Even in your perplexity you've helped me. A bright mind to which all things are new. Like having my own lost youth perched at my elbow.

As Qing-jao was, when she was little, before piety and pride claimed her.

Not fair. Not right to judge his own daughter that way. Until these last weeks, hadn't he been perfectly satisfied with her? Proud of her beyond all reason? The best and brightest of the godspoken, everything her father had worked for, everything her mother had hoped.

That was the part that chafed. Until a few weeks ago, he had been proudest of all of the fact that he had accomplished his oath to Jiang-qing. This was not an easy accomplishment, to bring up his daughter so piously that she never went through a period of doubt or rebellion against the gods. True, there were other children just as pious– but their piety was usually achieved at the expense of their education. Han Fei-tzu had let Qing-jao learn everything, and then had so deftly led her understanding of it that all fit well with her faith in the gods.

Now he had reaped his own sowing. He had given her a worldview that so perfectly preserved her faith that now, when he had discovered that the gods' “voices” were nothing but the genetic chains with which Congress had shackled them, nothing could convince her. If Jiang-qing had lived, Fei-tzu would no doubt have been in conflict with her over his loss of faith. In her absence, he had done so well at raising their daughter as Jiang-qing would have that Qing-jao was able to take her mother's view flawlessly.

Jiang-qing would also have left me, thought Han Fei-tzu. Even if I had not been widowed, I would have been wifeless on this day.

The only companion left to me is this servant girl, who pushed her way into my household only just in time to be the one spark of life in my old age, the one flicker of hope in my dark heart.

Not my daughter-of-the-body, but perhaps there will be time and opportunity, when this crisis is past, to make Wang-mu my daughter-of-the-mind. My work with Congress is finished. Shall I not be a teacher, then, with a single disciple, this girl? Shall I not prepare her to be the revolutionary who can lead the common people to freedom from the tyra

The soft breathing of the girl Wang-mu was like his own breath, like a baby's breath, like the sound of a breeze through tall grass. She is all motion, all hope, all freshness.

“Han Fei-tzu, I think you are not asleep.”

He was not; but he had been half-dozing, for the sound of Jane's voice coming from the computer startled him as if he were waking up.

“No, but Wang-mu is,” he said.

“Wake her, then,” said Jane.

“What is it? She's earned her rest.”

“She's also earned the right to hear this.”

Ela's face appeared beside Jane's in the display. Han Fei-tzu knew her at once as the xenobiologist who had been entrusted with the study of the genetic samples he and Wang-mu had collected. There must have been a breakthrough.

He bowed himself down, reached out, shook the girl's hip as she lay there sleeping. She stirred. She stretched. Then, no doubt remembering her duty, she sat bolt upright. “Have I overslept? What is it? Forgive me for falling asleep, Master Han.”

She might have bowed herself in her confusion, but Fei-tzu wouldn't let her. “Jane and Ela asked me to wake you. They wanted you to hear.”

“I will tell you first,” said Ela, “that what we hoped for is possible. The genetic alterations were crude and easily discovered– I can see why Congress has done its best to keep any real geneticists from working with the human population of Path. The OCD gene wasn't in the normal place, which is why it wasn't identified at once by natologists, but it works almost exactly as naturally-occurring OCD genes work. It can easily be treated separately from the genes that give the godspoken enhanced intellectual and creative abilities. I have already designed a splicer bacterium that, if injected into the blood, will find a person's sperm or ova, enter them, remove the OCD gene, and replace it with a normal one, leaving the rest of the genetic code unaffected. Then the bacterium will die out quickly. It's based on a common bacterium that should already exist in many labs on Path for normal immunology and birth-defect-prevention work. So any of the godspoken who wish to give birth to children without the OCD can do it.”

Han Fei-tzu laughed. “I'm the only one on this planet who would wish for such a bacterium. The godspoken have no pity on themselves. They take pride in their affliction. It gives them honor and power.”

“Then let me tell you the next thing we found. It was one of my assistants, a pequenino named Glass, who discovered this– I'll admit that I wasn't paying much personal attention to this project since it was relatively easy compared to the descolada problem we're working on.”

"Don't apologize," said Fei-tzu. "We are grateful for any kindness. All is undeserved. "

“Yes. Well.” She seemed flustered by his courtesy. “Anyway, what Glass discovered is that all but one of the genetic samples you gave us sort themselves neatly into godspoken and non-godspoken categories. We ran the test blind, and only afterward checked the sample lists against the identity lists you gave us– the correspondence was perfect. Every godspoken had the altered gene. Every sample that lacked the altered gene was also not on your list of godspoken.”

“You said all but one.”

“This one baffled us. Glass is very methodical– he has the patience of a tree. He was sure that the one exception was a clerical error or an error in interpreting the genetic data. He went over it many times, and had other assistants do the same. There is no doubt. The one exception is clearly a mutation of the godspoken gene. It naturally lacks the OCD, while still retaining all of the other abilities Congress's geneticists so thoughtfully provided.”

“So this one person already is what your splicer bacterium is designed to create.”

“There are a few other mutated regions that we aren't quite sure of at the moment, but they have nothing to do with the OCD or the enhancements. Nor are they involved in any of the vital processes, so this person should be able to have healthy offspring that carry the trait. In fact, if this person should mate with a person who has been treated with the splicer bacterium, all her offspring will almost certainly carry the enhancements, and there'd be no chance of any of them having the OCD.”