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information."
"I didn't want to argue philosophy. What I was really getting at is this:
could a billion zygotes have been stored much more compactly, and just
as accurately, in digital form, as information records?"
Annie took deep thought over that one. "I don't know," she
admitted at last. "You could fairly easily, I suppose, record
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anyone's genetic architecture, as it were. But not a protopersonality,
as represented by the patterns of brain activity-in that sense a zygote
has developed nothing to record.
There is as yet no brain. Whereas even a three- or four-month fetus has
quite a lot going on between the ears."
Scurlock was back. No one besides Dirac, and probably the reclusive
Carol, even realized that he had been absent from the station for almost a
full day.
He reported privately to Dirac, and he handed over to the
Premier a small, mysterious, innocent-looking piece of hardware.
"You actually spoke to a functioning machine?"
"Sir, I did." The tall man was once more seated opposite the
Premier in the latter's private quarters. He described how his
physical journey had been accomplished according to plan. To make the
secret journey possible, Dirac had taken an extra turn at sentry himself and
had arranged for Hawksmoor to be distracted.
Dirac let out a long sigh. "Then I was right."
"Yes sir. You were right. The great machine is certainly not dead.
Though I believe much weakened."
"And this?" Dirac was balancing the little piece of hardware in his hand. It
looked like an anonymous spare part from somewhere inside one of a
million complex Solarian devices.
"A secure communications device. So it informed me.
Anything you say near it will be heard-over there. Now and then the machine
may use it to talk to you. It said it would not talk to you very often,
lest some speech come through at a moment when you might find it
embarrassing."
"How considerate. So, it is listening to us now?"
"I assume so, Premier."
"And what else can you tell me? What were you able to
observe?"
"Very little, Premier. I rode the space sled over there and looked
around until I discovered what looked like a hatch. Then I
waited, in accordance with your instructions. After several minutes
the hatch opened and a small machine came out to investigate my
presence."
"A small machine of the type you encountered here on the station,
during the berserker occupation?"
"Yes, the same type, as far as I could tell."
"Go on."
"When I made an openhanded gesture to the small machine, it escorted me
inside the hatch-it wasn't an airlock, of course. I
didn't get any farther than just inside, and there was very little to see.
Just metal walls. I didn't really learn anything about the machine's
interior construction."
"I didn't really think you would be able to." Dirac tossed up the little piece
of hardware and caught it in midair. "You have done well."
Jenny was delighted when Nick came to report that he was on the verge of
starting their great secret project.
He had succeeded in copying Freya, without Freya's being aware of
it, and in making the necessary alteration in the fundamental
programming of Freya . Soon it should be possible to
2
begin operations with a pair of the artificial wombs located in an area seldom
visited by fleshly people.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Nick told himself and Jenny.
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If the secret work should be noticed, he could make some excuse, disguise the
work as something other than what it was. But Nick thought it unlikely that
anyone would even notice that the project was going on.
Jenny was growing enthusiastic. "But first, of course, we must
select from the cargo the zygotes we want to use."
"Yes. We have a billion to choose from. If you don't want to go out there,
I'll bring likely samples for your consideration."
"And after that, it is still going to take years."
"As I see it, we shall have years. I can control the yacht's drive
indefinitely. And the Premier will not really be disappointed, I
believe. I tell you, he is in no hurry at all to get started for home.
The only thing that worries me& "
"Yes?"
"Never mind. An idle thought."
Nick didn't want to tell Jenny what he'd heard from Freya, that
Dirac had apparently been contemplating a secret project of his own, something
along the lines of Nick's.
He started to devise a simple program to let a robot sort through
zygotes, a preliminary step in picking out the pair they'd use. One for
Jenny's new body. And one for Nick's own body, the first and very likely
the only fleshly form that he would ever have.
Nick's imagination kept coming back to the vital, difficult questions
that could not be avoided. Might it be possible to push forward on two fronts
at once, start trying to make both methods, growth and capture, work? Or would
running two secret projects simply make discovery twice as likely?
The capture method would require him somehow to seize control of
suitable adults and wipe their brains clear of pattern without killing any
of the body's vital organs-to injure the brains delicately, precisely,
without destroying the tissue's capacity to take and retain the patterns
of thought once again.
Murder. Sheer murder of innocent bystanders. Despite his determination
to be ruthless, he shrank from the thought. Not to
mention the difficulties he and Jenny would face after technical success. Even
if they could somehow avoid the Premier's wrath and that of other
potential victims, what human society would give shelter to such
murderers?
Of course it would be years quicker than growing zygotes. And the actual
capture should pose no great difficulty. Nick, in his suit mode, could
easily overpower any organic human not wearing armor, and few wore armor
these days except on sentry duty.
The real difficulty was that very few adults were currently
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