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“He’s right, Marya
“Tyre will do fine so far as I’m concerned,” Matthew said. “I seem to have arrived at a bad time, in more ways than one.”
“I think the serum is working,” Marya
“I guess it was a Rand Blackstone among slugs, as opposed to the Marya
“I hope not,” the patient replied, with a groan. “It hurts.”
“You won’t be walking again for a few days,” Kriefma
“Sure,” said Ikram Mohammed. “Will we need a stretcher?”
The patient tried to say no, but she was summarily overruled. While Ike went to get a stretcher Kriefma
“It looks as if the meeting has been postponed,” Ly
Matthew was a little reluctant to leave while the toxicologist was still in trouble, but Ikram Mohammed was already returning with a stretcher.
Matthew glanced at Vince Solari, but the detective merely shrugged his shoulders.
As soon as Matthew and Ly
“Can’t stop,” Blackstone said, as he brushed past them. “Got to get this to Tang.”
“Sure,” Matthew said. “I’ll have time to take a closer look later.”
When the big man had gone inside, Ly
“He didn’t get the chance to say as much as he’d probably have liked,” Matthew told her. “Dulcie Gherardesca brought me breakfast, and she was still around when Ike came back. She had a point of view to put across, just as Blackstone had when he walked us back yesterday. I’m begi
“I would have walked you back myself,” she said, “but it’s not easy to get in Rand’s way when he’s determined to have first shot. I suppose he was hoping that you had a message from Shen Chin Che?”
“He was. I suppose he wanted it so desperately in order to boost morale in the Tyrian Counterrevolutionary Front.”
“Don’t be so quick to make a joke of it, Matthew,” the genetic engineer replied, frowning. “ Didyou have a message?”
“Not as such. Shen’s back’s to the wall, but he didn’t seem to be in any mood to give in yet. If he has any cards left to play he didn’t dare show them to me—but if he doesn’t, it’s only a matter of time before the crew winkle him out. He’s too old to fight a long campaign. The crew have the upper hand, and all the time in the microworld.”
Ly
“Vince Solari is okay too,” Matthew assured her. “He’s not here to hunt witches or fit anybody up. Why would it compound the problem if the murderer were identified and charged?”
“That depends who it is,” the woman replied. “If it’s one of us—well, we’re stretched beyond the limit already. If he really was killed by an alien humanoid that might be even worse, in terms of tying further knots in the situation. I wish I could believe in a sneaky invader from Base One, but I can’t—which seems to me to leave the bad possibility and the worse possibility.”
“You do believe the aliens exist, then?” Matthew deduced. “You think it’s unlikely that an alien hand wielded the glass dagger, but you don’t believe they’re extinct?”
“No, I don’t,” Ly
“Gradual chimerical renewal,” Matthew said. “The Miller Effect, built in to the ecosphere at a fundamental level, in a way that makes it far less ruinous to the learning process. But if everything here’s emortal, how does evolution happen?”
“Did Lityansky tell you about the second genome?” Ly
“He showed me the diagrams, but he said that no one knows what it does. He wouldn’t speculate. What do you think?”
“You mean, what did Bernal think?”
“I dare say you tossed the ideas back and forth between you—and Ike too. What’s your best guess?”
“We think it’s a homeobox. We think that our own genome may suffer some crucial disadvantages because the homeotic genes are mixed in with all the rest.”
“Homeotic genes control embryonic development,” Matthew said, slightly puzzled. “I thought you hadn’t managed to find any embryos.”
“Homeotic genes control anatomical organization,” Ly