“Professor Marquette speaks somewhat metaphorically,” Pyragy amended. “Let us say that we wish to explore the possibility that the kzinti need to be liberated from the eugenics programs that their one-time-masters-the Jotoki-apparently imposed upon them. And, having followed down that same path themselves, we must further explore what would happen if the modern kzinti were freed from their own hide-bound genetic tyranny.”
“Genetic tyranny?”
“Of course. Veiled references to the routine euthanization of intelligent females, and the cloned breeders you found are proof enough of that. Having the knowledge we now do, we can liberate the kzinti from their own self-perverted evolutionary growth, from the senseless violence in which they have immersed themselves. Even more deeply than we did. Until the ARM brought peace and order to our society.”
Good grief, thought Selena, he’s a true believer.
Armbrust muttered a guttural curse in some Wunderlander dialect and stared up at the director. “So you will correct the aberrations in the kzinti, the same way you did with humanity for the better part of three centuries? I’m tempted to dismiss it as impossible, but then again, you so pacified humanity that it took a near-genocidal wake-up call from the known universe’s apex predator to shake us out of that lotus-eater’s dream. But evidently even that hasn’t taught you that the universe is not inherently aligned with your cherished notions of nonaggression. So, now you’re going to try to make pacifists out of the kzinti? Good luck-and send the kzinti my regards and sincere commiseration.”
“They will no doubt appreciate such sympathetic wishes, coming from a warrior like yourself.” The director was smiling again. “Set a beast to catch a beast, I always say. And so we did, apparently. I thank you for bringing a set of beasts back to us, Captain. I am quite sure we can handle it from here, your own lofty cosmological warnings notwithstanding.”
Armbrust collected his papers and data chips, all the while glowering at the director. In the captain’s eyes, Selena saw a more profound, unconstrained variety of her own Belter sensibilities: the ARM had never managed to bring her people as completely under the yoke as they had the rest of the system, and particularly Earth. And now stalking from the room, mouth rigid, was the living evidence that the colonial ARM had been even less successful completing its pacification campaign in the Centauri system.
Which for some primal reason suffused Selena Navarre with a feeling of deep relief and reassurance. And then she understood why: we always had some real warriors left. But we still came awfully close to being utterly defenseless when it really counted…
“Dr. Navarre, tell me, what did you think of Captain Armbrust’s presentation?”
Selena nearly jumped: the director wasn’t wasting any time determining if the Wunderlander had any secret allies in his own camp. Particularly that part of the camp which was entrusted to assessing kzin behavior. In short, her camp. She schooled her features to bland compliance, and turned to look at him.
Pale blue eyes, so pale that it was momentarily difficult to discern where the white of the eye ended and the iris began, stared down at her, patient and cool. The mouth beneath them was smiling in benign receptivity. “Director Pyragy, the presentation was informative. It is unfortunate that the transmission of information became entangled with the expression of opinions, however.”
As she had hoped, Pyragy seemed very pleased by the response, construing it to fit the context he preferred. “It is refreshing to hear such sanity today,” Pyragy commented, casting a self-satisfied glance at Boroshinsky, who smiled faintly, eyes almost twinkling as he stared at Selena. His expression widened into an amused grin before he looked away, leaving her with the distinct impression that although he was quite old, there was nothing wrong with his ears or his mind. He had obviously understood that Selena had crafted her response so that Pyragy could construe it as he wished. Huh, leave it to a Muscovite to instantly perceive plausible deniability in action: Communism and the commissars have been gone for almost four centuries, but the Russians still remember the lessons. Besides, Selena was glad that Boroshinsky had seen through to her real reaction. As the Project Manager of the Biological Research Initiative, he would be a useful ally and could be trusted not to knuckle under if Pyragy brought his considerable weight of influence to bear.
Selena let her eyes slide over to the director himself, who was busy reviewing the agenda of the rest of their meeting. Shwe Pyragy was known for being utterly practical in his pursuit of greater institutional power: he was a career bureaucrat who had managed to get himself assigned to the Kzin Research Project simply as a matter of prestige. He did not have the credentials to be a primary researcher or even team manager, but he did have a nose for politics, a vast collection of owed favors, and a taste for high-profile assignments. This one certainly fit the bill, and might also be the last chance he had to prevent his career from a final, irremediable slide into back-office mediocrity and anonymity.
Pyragy was something of a failed prodigy within the Life Sciences Directorate of ARM. He had been a promising young star whose rise had staggered and slumped just when it was poised to become meteoric. It was impossible to say why this had occurred, or at least, Selena did not know anyone with access to the files that might have explained his surprisingly underwhelming career. It was whispered that Pyragy’s sexual tastes had been so wide and so injudicious that he spent an inordinate amount of energy-and took inordinate risks-in satisfying them. Along the way, he had evidently experimented with not merely a broad range of practices and partners, but with profound, and ultimately unsuccessful, changes to his own body. Both facially and physiognomically, he had been left stranded in a zone that was not so much androgynous as it was an arresting amalgam of distinctly male and distinctly female features.
Selena knew her negative reaction to be a function of her generation-the first of the post-Golden Agers-who, growing up with the threat of kzin-effected extinction hovering over their heads, reflexively considered such experimentation with inherited physical characteristics to be frivolous. She knew it was not-at least, not for all who pursued it-but the flip side of the peace and unprecedented personal liberties of Earth’s Golden Age had, all too often, verged over into egomaniacal license. In the decades just prior to Earth’s first encounter with the kzinti, increasing numbers of individuals, lacking purpose, had been caught in a growing undertow of ennui and hedonism, their self-indulgences masquerading under labels such as “unfettered exploration of the self.” She often wondered if this was what humans did when they did not have urgent matters to attend to: what historians, speaking of other empires and epochs, had frankly labeled “decadence.”
Well, the peace of the Golden Age, and the world it had spawned-good, bad, indifferent-were gone. Blood and sweat were back, and, if not exactly stylish, were accepted as the price of speciate freedom, perhaps survival. That made Shwe Pyragy a de facto anachronism who had outlived the cultural immediacy of his own choices. He looked down at her again: “Tell me, Dr. Navarre, do you feel that you can synchronize your research phases with those of the biology group?”
Selena nodded. “Yes. From what I’ve been able to deduce, kzin maturation is not only faster than ours, but has comparatively sharp developmental boundaries. Some of that may be simply because their growth stages are compressed into a shorter span of years. It simply seems their physical and behavioral development evince greater synchrony. It is also possible, however, that their physical and behavioral changes march to a much more powerful, chemically governed drumbeat than that which drives development in young humans.”