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But Colin's analogy was simple. "Think of a chromosome as a microscopically tiny string of beads present in every plant and animal cell. Now each head is a gene that determines or helps to determine some characteristic of its own animal or plant, like 6ie color of its eyes, the structure of its bones, the smoothness or roughness of its coal, everything about it.
"What we do is sort of rework the beads, repair any damaged ones, shape the string to grow into what we want it to be."
Harrison Bullitt shrugged his meaty shoulders. "Sounds cut and dried to me."
"I suppose it is, in theory. But we're dealing with a living organism. It can be killed, and quite easily… or just die. A temperature can get a shade too warm or a shade too cold … or a stray cosmic ray can strike it… and it turns out in a way we didn't predict. Just being alive, I guess, is enough for it to not always do what you expect it to.** "Sounds like pretty much of a slipshod operation to me,"
Harrison Bullitt said, and from his voice Colin didn't know if he was being talked to or if the big man was just thinking aloud and not particularly interested or caring if he was heard.
But Bullitt went on. "Can you switch parts around?"
Colin thought of fruit flies with misplaced wings, of experimental animals with third eyes, of two-headed dogs. The early researchers had produced all of these and more, and with modem pressor and laser beam techniques it would be even simpler to do. But it was one of those understandings that can exist between two men without ever having been mentioned or even thought of, that he and Ed would not debase their profession by peddling sideshow freaks.
"We can." Colin said aloud, "but we won't."
Mrs. BuUitt laughed shortly. "That's one of the stupidest expressions in the language. Young man, never say you won't do some particular thing. You'd be surprised at me things you'd do if the bind gets tight enough."
Colin had no answer for her except to hold his rising temper in check. What answer did anyone ever have for boors, particularly influential ones like these two?
Mrs. Bullitt dropped her heavy figure into the plastifo
Colin noticed roweled spurs and was surprised. He didn't think anyone wore the spiked discs anymore, particularly to ride valuable animals.
There were other chairs in the room, two long sofas along opposite walls, but Mrs. Bullitt did not wave them to a seat.
Colin, Ed, and Martin off to one side of them now, remained standing. The Commodore settling deep in the chair dropped into when they came in.
"I want a horse," the sitting woman said matter-of-factly,
"with wings."
"A horse," Colin started to say and then did a mental double-take. "A what?"
"A great idea, isn't it?" A horse that can fly. Nobody, but nobody in the association, in me worid, will be able to top that."
Colin could only stare at the woman. She couldn't be serious, but from the set of her face it was plain that she was.
"It's impossible," he managed to say. "It's a physical impossibility."
A
"But it is impossible," Colin said and he didn't know if he was pleading for her to understand or to hold on to his own sanity. He had never before in his life met people like mis.
Beside him, Coiin heard Ed whistle through his teeth. softly to himself. "A Pegasus she wants. A flying, neighing, flaming Greek legend she wants."
"A flying horse is a physical impossibility." Colin said.
Harrison Bullitt seemed amused. "Everything is impossible… until the price gets right. All right," and he sat up in his chair, "let's stop this nonsense. How much is it going to cost me?"
Colin fell like a man trying to keep his footing on a mound of slippery sand. "You don't understand. It's not a question of money. It's not money at all."
Bullitt seemed to be getting a
The feeling of floundering on shifting sand deepened in Colin. "A wing isn't just something added onto the outside of an animal, and it's not an oversized shoulder blade. It's an integral part of the skeleton, it has a full system of muscles to support it, to move it. Look."
He held up his arm, his fingers extended, his hand bent downward at the wrist. "It's like an arm. The finger bones are long." He made the stretching gesture with his other hand, slapped his arm. "These bones are there, holding, supporting the tissues of the wing itself…"
"I never noticed much of a skeleton in a fly wing,"
Hamson Bultitt interrupted, not bothering to hide the growing of his a
The sand was begi
"Now a horse. Even a lightly built saddle horse will weigh a thousand pounds, and you know better than I how large his muscles have to be just to move him around on the ground.
Even if we did…" he stopped himself. He was begi
"Even if we could," he corrected himself and went on.
"Even if we could re-form his front tegs into some semblance of wings, the muscle structures needed to lift half a ton into the air would be so huge that the poor beast probably couldn't even stand under their weight. Then to support all that weight we'd have to make the bones thicker and sturdier and that would add to the weight and… don't you see?" he ended helplessly.
"Weight," Bullilt said. "Don't prattle about weight. Only last night on TriV we saw a… some kind of a flying dinosaur. Weight." He snorted.
"A reptile," Colin said, and it was quicksand he felt the suction of. "A pterodactyl. But even the largest of those had only a twenty-foot wing span."
Colin hadn't been watching Mrs. Bullitt particularly, but now she seemed to explode out of her chair. "You see," she flung at her husband. "I told you there was no point in trying to be nice to these people. They know only one kind of language. All right, if that's the way they want it."
Her eyes, flat and expressionless in spite of the anger in her voice, bored into Colin's. "Young man." she said, "I want a flying horse. Are… you… going… to… give … it… to… me? She spaced me words deliberately.
"I • -. I…" Coiin floundered and then was amazed to hear Ed's voice.
Calmly, rationally, Ed was saying, "Now let me understand this clearly, Mrs. Bullitt. You want us to recreate for you the legendary Hying horse Pegasus. Is that correct?"
Colin stared at Ed. Recreate… legendary… what had gotten into Ed?
And then he heard Mrs. Bullitt's voice. "Legendary. You mean someone has already had a flying horse?"
Colin's eyes snapped back to Mrs. Bullitt's face. Petulance seemed to be always in the set of her mouth, but was there something else there now? Did he see disappointment?
Hope flared up in Colin at the method he thought he saw in Ed's apparent madness. If Mrs. Bullitt became convinced that someone else had beaten her to me possession of a flying horse, even centuries removed in time, then maybe enough of the bloom would be rubbed off the idea of her to abandon it.
But he must have, couldn't have, but he must have misread Ed's intent because his partner's next words were, "Not exactly, perhaps, but 1 do believe that many legends, even the more fantastic, may well have a basis in fact."
Mrs. Bullitt took Ed's words for ammunition. "You see." she snapped at Colin. "Your partner admits that it can be done."
But Colin was staring at Ed. Unbelieving.
"What are you talking about?" he half shouted at Ed.
"What legends and what facts?"
And Ed was looking him right in the eye and saying, "Almost any legend… or folk saying. Like 'dumb blonde' for example. You know that every once in a great while someone comes up missing one of the pigment-forming enzymes.
Naturally, they can't help but be blonde. But they are also mentally retarded, and seriously. Somebody noticed the two conditions, jumped to a vastly broader conclusion than the observation warranted, and there you are. But there was.some basis in fact."
Colin could only stare at Ed. The enzyme was phenylalanmase and the mental condition phenylpyruvic oligophrenia.
But Ed couldn't be serious about a Pegasus.
Or could he? Ed was going on. "And you remember the zoo on the continent that was back-breeding legendary animals?"
"Backbreeding legendary animals? They took modem cattle and backbred them until they had a cow that looked like an extinct ancestor. Where," he demanded, "where are you going to get me the germ plasm of a demigod to repeat the feat for a flying horse?"
Taking firm hold of his voice because he didn't know whether to laugh or hit somebody or just bang his head on the paneled and trophy-hung walls, Colin said to the room in general, "Thank you very much for your confidence in our ability. It is very flattering, but very much misplaced. We ca
And he put a hand under Ed's elbow and almost shoved him out of the room, and into the passageway, the angry voice of Mrs. Bullitt following them out.
"You'll be back, I promise you. You'll be back, and remember, I won't be as easy to get along with next time."
Controlling himself, Colin slid the door shut gently.
He turned to Ed. "What got into you? You know as well as I do that we can't give her what she wants. Nobody can.*' "Of course I know it," Ed said. "But that woman isn't rational. I was hoping to at least gain us a little time to figure out something, anything. The way it is now. Lord knows what she'll do."