Then there had been a quarrel, over a new technique which the younger man had developed. There was no need, he claimed, to wait for the immemorial nine months between conception and birth, now that the entire process was under control. If certain precautions were taken to safeguard the health of the human foster mother who carried the fertilized egg, there was no reason why pregnancy should last more than two or three months.
Needless to say, this claim excited wide attention. There was even facetious talk of “instant clones.” Mortimer Keynes had not disputed his colleague’s techniques, but he deplored any attempt to put them into practice. With a conservatism that some thought curiously inappropriate, he argued that nature had chosen that nine months for very good reasons, and that the human race should stick to it.
Considering the violence that cloning did to the normal process of reproduction, this seemed a rather strange attitude, as many critics hastened to point out. This only made Sir Mortimer even more stubborn, and reading between the lines Duncan felt fairly certain that the surgeon’s expressed objections were not the real ones. For some unknown and probably unknowable reason, he had experienced a crisis of conscience; what he was now opposing was not merely the shortening of the gestation period, but the entire process of cloning itself.
The younger man, of course, disagreed completely. The debate had become more and more bitter—also more and more public, as it was inflamed by sensation-seeking hangers-on who wanted to see a good fight. After one abortive attempt at reconciliation, the partnership split up, and the two men had never spoken to each other again. A major problem at medical congresses for the last decade had been to ensure that they were not present simultaneously at any meeting.
That he been the end of Mortimer Keynes’s active career. The famous clinic he had established was closed down, though he still kept his Harley Street office and did a little consultation. His ex-partner, who had a remarkable gift for acquiring public and private funds, promptly established a new base and continued his experiments.
As Duncan read on, with increasing curiosity and excitement, he realized that here was the man he needed. Whether he would take advantage of the high-speed cloning technique he could decide later; it was certainly interesting to know that the option existed, and that if he wished, he could return to Titan months in advance of his original schedule.
Now to locate Sir Mortimer’s ex-colleague and successor. It was lucky that the search did not have to rely on the name alone, for it was one that occurred in some form or other half a million times in the Earth Directory. But he had only to consult the Classified Section—often referred to, for some mysterious reason lost in the depths of time, by the utterly meaningless phrase “Yellow Pages.”
And so, on a small island off the east coast of Africa, Duncan discovered El Hadj Yehudi ben Mohammed.
He had scarcely made arrangements to fly to Zanzibar when a small bombshell arrived from Titan. It bore Colin’s identification number, but he was unable to make sense of it until he realized that it was both in cipher and the Makenzie private code. Even after two processing trips through his Minisec, it was still somewhat cryptic:
PRIORITY AAA SECURITY AAA
NO RECORD OF ANY SHIPMENT TITANITE REGISTERED BUREAU OF RESOURCES LAST TWO YEARS. POSSIBLE INFRINGEMENT FINANCE REGULATIONS IF PRIVATE SALE FOR CONVERTIBLE SOLARS NOT APPROVED BY BANK OF TITAN. PERSISTENT RUMOR MAJOR DISCOVERY ON OUTER MOON, ASKING HELMER TO INVESTIGATE. WILL REPORT SOONEST. COLIN.
Duncan read the message several times without any immediate reaction. Then, slowly, the pieces of the puzzle began to drift around into new configurations, and a pattern started to emerge. It was one that Duncan did not like at all.
Naturally, Colin would have gone to Armand Helmer, Controller of the Resources; the export of minerals came under his jurisdiction. Moreover, Armand was a geologist—in fact, he had made one small titanite find himself, of which he was inordinately proud.
Was it conceivable that Armand himself might be involved? The thought flashed through Duncan’s mind, but he dismissed it instantly. He had known Armand all his life, and despite their many political and personal differences, he did not for a moment believe that the Controller would get involved in any illegality—especially one that concerned his own Bureau. And for what purpose? Merely to accumulate a few thousand solars in some terrestrial bank? Armand was now too old, and too gravity-conditioned, ever to return to Earth, and he was not the kind of man who would break the law for so trivial a purpose as importing Terran luxuries. Especially as the chicanery was always discovered, sooner or later; smugglers could never resist displaying their treasures. And then there would be another acquisition for the impecunious Titan Museum, while the criminal would be barred from all the best places for at least a month.
No, Armand could be excluded; but what of his son? The more Duncan considered this possibility, the more likely it seemed. He had no proof whatsoever—only an array of facts all pointing in one direction.
Consider: Karl had always been daring and adventurous, willing to run risks for what he believed sufficiently good reasons. As a boy, he had taken positive delight in circumventing regulations—except, of course, those basic safety rules that no sane resident of Titan would ever challenge.
If titanite had be discovered on one of the other satellites, Karl would be in an excellent position to take advantage of it. In the last three years, he had been on half a dozen Titan-Terran surveys. To Duncan’s certain knowledge, he was one of the few men who had been to Enceladus, Tethys, Rhea, Hyperion, Iapetus, Phoebe, Chronus, Promethius. And now he was on remote Mnemosyne...
Already Duncan could draw up a seductively plausible scenario. Karl might even have made the find himself. Certainly he would have seen all the specimens coming aboard the survey ship, and his well-known charm would have done the rest. Indeed, the actual discoverer might never have known what he had found. Few people had seen raw titanite, and it was not easy to identify until it had been polished.
Then it would have been a simple matter of sending a small package to Earth, perhaps on one of the resupply ships which did not even call at Titan. (What would be the legal situation then? That could be tricky. Titan had jurisdiction over the other permanent satellites, but its claim to the obvious temporary ones like Phoebe & Co. was still in dispute. It was possible that no laws had been broken at all...)
But this was sheer speculation. He had not the slightest hard evidence. Why, indeed, had he thought of Karl at all in this context?
He reread the message, still glowing on the Comsole monitor: MAJOR DISCOVERY ON OUTER MOON. ASKING HELMER... That was what had triggered this line of thought. Guilt by association, perhaps; the juxtaposition might be pure coincidence. But the Makenzies could read each other’s minds, and Duncan knew that the phraseology was deliberate. There was no need for Colin to have mentioned Helmer; he was sending out an early warning signal.
It was ridiculous to pile speculation upon speculation, but Duncan could not resist the next step. Assuming that Karl was involved—why?
Karl might take risks, might even get involved in petty illegalities, but it would be for some good purpose. If—and it was still an enormous “if”—he was trying to accumulate funds on Earth, he must have a long-range objective in mind. The most obvious was the establishment of a power base—precisely as Duncan was doing.