Cyteen

Azi attendants receive them, wrap them in soft white blankets, to be tenderly handled, held and rocked in azi arms.

In intervals between diaper changes and feeding, they lie in cribs which, like the wombs, gently rock, to the sound of human heartbeat and distant voice, the same voice that spoke to them in the womb, soft and reassuring. Sometimes it sings to them. Sometimes it merely speaks.

Someday it will give them instruction. The voice is tape. As yet it is only subliminal, a focus of confidence. Even at this point it rewards good behavior. One day it will speak with disapproval, but at this stage there are no misbehaviors, only slight restlessness from the Betas. . . .

BATCH AGCULT-789X: EMERGENCYEMERGENCY

AGCULT-789X is in trouble. The experimental geneset is not a success, and after staff consultations, a tech withdraws lifesupport and voids AGCULT-789X for autopsy.

The azi techs swab out the womb, flush it repeatedly, and the chief tech begins the process that will coat it in bioplasm.

It will receive another tenant as soon as the coating is ready. The staff waits results of the autopsy before it attempts the fix.

In the meanwhile the womb receives the male egg AGCULT-894, same species. This is not the first failure. Engineering adaptations is a complex process, and failures are frequent. But AGCULT-894 is a different individual with a similar alteration: there is the chance it will work. If it fails it will still provide valuable comparisons.

Reshaping the land and altering the atmosphere is not enough to claim a world for human occupation. The millions of years of adaptation which interlocked Terran species into complex ecosystems are not an option on Cyteen.

Reseune operates in the place of time and natural selection. Like nature, it loses individuals, but its choices are more rapid and guided by intelligence. Some argue that there are consequences to this, a culling of the ornamental and nonfunctional elements which give Terran life its variety, with an emphasis on certain traits and diminution of others.

But Reseune has lost nothing. It plans deepspace arks, simple tin cans parked around certain stars, vessels without propulsion, inexpensive to produce, storage for genetic material in more than one location, shielded and protected against radiation. They contain actual genetic samples; and digital recording of genesets; and records to enable the reading of those genesets by any intelligence advanced enough to understand the contents of the arks.

A million years was sufficient for humankind to evolve from primitive antecedents to a spacefaring sapient. A million years from now humankind will, thanks to these arks, have genetic records of its own past and the past of every species to which Reseune has access, of our own heritage and the genetic heritages of every life-bearing world we touch, preserved against chance and time. . . .

The arks preserve such fragmentary codes as have been recovered from human specimens thousands of years old, from Terran genepools predating the development of genebanks in the 20th century, from the last pre-mixing genepools of the motherworld, and from remains both animal and human preserved through centuries of natural freezing and other circumstances which have preserved some internal cellular structure.

Imagine the difference such reference would make today, if such arks had preserved the genetic information of the geologic past. Earth, thus far unique in its evidences of cataclysmic extinctions of high lifeforms, might, with such libraries, recover the richness of all its evolutionary lines, and solve the persistent enigmas of its past. . . .

Reseune has never abandoned a genetic option. It has seen to the preservation of those options to a degree unprecedented in the history of the human species, and, working as it does with a view toward evolutionary change, has preserved all the possible divergences. . . .

CHAPTER 3

i

Time stopped being. There was just the tape-flow, mostly placid, occasionally disturbing. There were intervals of muzzy waking, but the trank continued—until now, that Grant drifted closer to the surface.

"Come on, you've got a visitor," someone said, and a damp cloth touched his face. The washing proceeded downward, gently, neck and chest, with an astringent smell. "Wake up."

He slitted his eyes. He stared at the ceiling while the washing proceeded, and hoped they would let him loose, but it was not much hope. He wished they would give him trank again, because the fear was back, and he had been comfortable while it lasted.

He grew chill with the air moving over damp skin. He wanted the sheet back again. But he did not ask. He had stopped trying to communicate with the people that handled him and they did not hurt him anymore. That was all he asked. He remembered to blink. He saw nothing. He tried not to feel the cold. He felt a twinge when the tech jostled the needle in his arm. His back ached, and it would be the most wonderful relief if they would change the position of the bed.

"There." The sheet settled over him again. A light slap popped against his face, but he felt no pain. "Come on. Eyes open."

"Yes," he murmured. And shut them again the moment the azi tech left him alone.

He heard another voice then, at the door, young and male. He lifted his head and looked and saw Justin there. He distrusted the vision at once, and jerked at the restraints.

But Justin came to him, sat down on the side of his bed and took his hand despite the restraint that gave him only a little movement. It was a warm grip. It felt very real.

"Grant?"

"Please don't do this."

"Grant, for God's sake— Grant, you're home. You understand me?"

It was very dangerous even to think about believing. It meant giving up. There was no secret sign his own mind could not manufacture. There was no illusion tape could not create. Justin was what they would use. Of course.

"Grant?"

Tape could even make him think he was awake. Or that the mattress gave, or that Justin held him by the shoulder. Only the keen pain in his back penetrated the illusion. It was not perfect.

Reality—had such little discordances.

"They won't let me take you back to the apartment yet. Ari won't. What are they doing? Are you all right? Grant?"

Questions. He could not figure how they fitted. There was usually a pattern. These had to do with credibility. That was the game.

"Grant, dammit!" Justin popped his hand against his cheek, gently. "Come on. Eyes open. Eyes open."

He resisted. That was how he knew he was doing better. He drew several breaths and his back and shoulders hurt like hell. He was in terrible danger . . . because he thought that the illusion was real. Or because he had lost the distinction.

"Come on, dammit."

He slitted his eyes cautiously. Saw Justin's face, Justin with a frightened look.

"You're home. In hospital. You understand? Ari blew them all to hell and got you out."

(Blood spattering the walls. The smell of smoke.)

It looked like hospital. It looked like Justin. There was no test that would confirm it, not even if they let him out to walk around. Only time would do that, time that went on longer than any tape-illusion.

"Come on, Grant. Tell me you're all right."

"I'm all right." He drew a breath that hurt his back and realized he could get things out of this illusion. "My back's killing me. My arms hurt. Can you move the bed?"