“You’re too late,” Carl said, searching for something witty to say to redeem himself. “She’s already conceded that I’m a bore.”
“Then my help is unneeded.” Saul chuckled as he said this, but Carl felt a quick jolt of irritation.
“I was arguing that we’re all going to get rich out of this expedition, if we’re patient,” Carl said evenly. “And we should leave politics behind us.”
Saul nodded, took a long pull at his drink. “Admirable sentiments.”
“We’ve got to. Halley Core is too small for the kind of petty—”
“Insert coin for Lecture Twelve,” Virginia said lightly.
“Well, it’s true.” Carl did not know how to take her, didn’t like the way her attention had swerved to Saul Lintz the moment he joined them. She had turned halfway in her chair, nearly facing Saul, and barely glanced back as Carl finished. “And any hints that some people are going to profit more than the rest of us—well it’ll cause troubl.”
Saul lifted an inquiring eyebrow. He seemed to know how to comment on what you’d said with a minimal gesture or shrug, an economy of expression Carl envied.
‘He refers to scuttlebutt below decks,” Virginia explained. “The fact that, ah, non-Percells hold all the important slots.”
“Non-Percells such as myself?”
“Now that you mention it,” Carl said.
“Seniority. After all, none of you genetically preselected people are over forty.”
“You sure that’s all?” Carl leaned forward, hands knitted together, elbows on knees.
The older man frowned, sensing something in Carl’s voice. “What else do you think it could be?”
“How about Earthside not wanting any of us where we could make trouble?”
Saul carefully put his drink down and sat back. “Exiles are ill powered to cause Pharaoh grief,” he said as if to himself.
The remark seemed irritatingly opaque to Carl. “Why don’t you just answer my question?”
“Was that a question? It sounded like an accusation.”
Carl’s voice had been more harsh than he had planned, but he’d be damned if he’d back down now. “Look at Life Support Installation, my group. Our section head is Suleiman Ould-Harrad, an…”
“Ortho?” Saul supplied quietly.
“Well, that’s the slang, yeah.”
“So he is. Genetically orthodox.” Saul leaned back, making a steeple of his fingers “Meaning an untampered zygotic mix from the sea of human genes-no more. Genes do not carry opinions.”
Carl shook his head. He disliked the pedantic manner the scientists always adopted, as if all that jargon made them better, smarter, wiser. “Look—the outgassing work, the slot studies—all in the hands of… you people.”
“So you surmise that they will clutch these fruits to themselves? To sell their skills upon our return?”
Virginia said mildly, “It’s not an impossible scenario, Saul.”
Saul looked surprised to hear this coming from her. “I’m afraid for me it is. The direct implication that there is some conspiracy of the normal contingent—”
“See?” Carl pounced. “He calls his people `normal’—so we’re not.”
Saul said stiffly, “I did not mean it that way.”
“That’s the way it came out.”
Virginia said, “Carl, you can’t jump on every—”
“I’m not. I’m just looking to see if where there’s smoke there’s fire.” He felt warm, gulped his drink.
Saul paused, running his tongue meditatively over his lower lip. “Let me begin afresh. Carl, if you knew anything about me, you would understand that I am not hostile to you people. Precisely the opposite, in fact.” He looked steadily at Carl. “I suppose you would find out sooner or later anyway… I worked for years with Simon Percell.”
Carl was stunned. Virginia gasped and said, “You did? I’d heard rumors, but… I didn’t believe them.”
“Merely as a postdoc.” Saul shrugged. “Our last project together studied deviations in the activation level of lupus erythematosus. You may remember that was one of the principal diseases Percell freed you people from. That awful, untreatable thing that attacked skin, connective tissue, spleen, kidneys.”
Virginia nodded. “My mother died from it.”
“Yes,” Saul said. “And your grandmother as well.”
Virginia ’s lips pursed in surprise. Saul shrugged. “I remember your case. Simon carried out the necessary alterations of your mother’s DNA while I was first learning the techniques.”
Virginia leaned forward. “Did you…”
“Do the actual work? I cannot remember, honestly. I performed as assistant for marry gene-tailoring methods, some experimental, some fairly straightforward.”
“Then you… could be…”
Saul blinked, sitting back in his chair, avoiding her rapt gaze. “It was a purely mechanical task by that time. Very little research to it, other than my part. I did studies of how the resulting… cells… responded to chemical incursions which, for normal lupus, would cause a spontaneous rise in the disease.”
Virginia said slowly, “And mine… did not?”
“Obviously, you were one of our successes. You have no trace of lupus, I trust?”
She shook her head. “Because of you.”
“No; Simon Percell. I merely went to him to learn his techniques. It was during those few years when he enjoyed full support, when all things were possible. Or so we thought.”
Carl said, “Still… I didn’t know you’d worked with Percell.” He felt chagrined. Saul had probably been present when Carl’s mother’s genes were delicately trimmed, freed of the microscopic molecular constellation that carried heritable leukemia. Then the gene wizards had added expert snippets of DNA to give him the suite of physical improvements that now marked every Percell. To Carl, that small, brave band of genetic engineers was legendary. He had never met one before.
Saul crossed his legs, smoothed his pants leg, visibly uncomfortable. Carl realized that the man must have been through similar meetings often, and was wary of the pent-up emotion that might burst forth from any Percell.
“I… I’m sorry about what I said,” Carl murmured.
Saul nodded silently. He, too, was holding feelings behind a tight-lipped dam.
Virginia ’s eyes brimmed. “You… could be…
Carl saw that she wanted to say You are my father, too but could find no way to state the complex blend of emotions she felt. Saul had helped give life to thousands who would have been blighted, killed, maimed. Those years could not be forgotten—except by the braying, suspicious, hate-filled majority Earthside.
That kind had killed Percell, as surely as if they had pressed the muzzle of the.32 revolver to his temple. Simon Percell himself had pulled the trigger, driven into a depression over what was now obviously an unavoidable mistake.
One gene-editing error in a treatment to eliminate an inheritable kidney disease had killed an entire year’s program of children.
Worse, they had not died until the age of three. Then it struck suddenly.
The sight of so many writhing in agony, yellow-skinned and gnarled, their kidney and liver functions stopped abruptly—it had been torture. Media bigots flashed the images around the globe. Coupled with the growing public chorus against him, the threats of prosecution, and the sudden cuts in his research support, it had been too much for a man who held himself to the very highest standards.
Carl shook himself. It was still so easy to touch off the memories. His own mother dying miserably. The years of waiting to see if he, too, would begin to show the signs. The final liberation when he knew it was all right, that he could go into space with a clean genetic record. Those memories cut deeply in him still.