The Margrave led the way in silence into the next room. Luther Brachis followed, slowly. Even if the display of Sorudan had been laid on just for his benefit, it was no less impressive. The ugly artist had created a work of astonishing beauty.
The walls of the next room were lined with cages and holographic images. Brachis saw to his satisfaction that the range of this Needler lab’s output was diverse, and seemingly unlimited in its range. Aquaforms, peering out from their tanks of green-tinged water, sat next to the blinking raptor shapes of gryphons, while just beyond that a holograph of a skeletally-thin kangaroo stood next to — and loomed over — a giraffe. Farther along, under intense arc lights, an inch-long bear ambled along the flat pad of a water-lily. Above it, and above everything, mobile plants quivered and snaked along the ceiling, following moving sources of overhead light.
The Margrave waved a casual arm across the display. “Just to give you an idea. The King tells me that you’re not interested in a simple art product, which most of these are. So why don’t you outline your requirement? Then I’ll tell you if I think it can be done, and give you a cost estimate.”
“I don’t have a complete description. Not yet. But I’ll be willing to pay you very well. And he’ll have to go.” Brachis nodded to Bester. “What I have to say is for your ears only.”
King Bester looked startled. He began to object, then shrugged. “All right by me. I get paid either way.”
He went sulkily through to the next room and watched while Luther Brachis carefully closed the door. After a few seconds Bester went across and put his ear to it. He could hear nothing. He waited impatiently for fifteen minutes, even standing on a chair to see if anything was visible over the top of the door. It wasn’t. By the time the door opened again and the two men came out, he was hopping in inquisitive frustration.
“I’ll send the full specifications just as soon as I have them,” said Brachis.
The Margrave nodded and opened the outer door. “And after that I’ll need about three weeks. At the end of that time I’ll tell you how close I can come to what you want. And you will, of course, need to appoint a suitable intermediary. I dare not meet with just anyone.”
“Understood. I will make those arrangements.” The heavy door closed. All light vanished, and Brachis and Bester stood together in a moonless and overcast Earth night.
“Why Needlers?” said Brachis, as they climbed to the top of the stairs and waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. “I looked over the Margrave’s whole lab, and I didn’t see one needle.”
“They don’t prick. Not any more.” Bester was peering around, in every direction. “That’s how it was done when method started, ages back. Way Margrave tells it, in early days, they were all biologists, playing around with female animals and producing offspring. No poppas.”
“Parthenogenesis, you mean. Lots of organisms propagate that way.”
“Yeah. Partho-that. Knew it was fancy long word. Biologists heated eggs, and put eggs in acid, and gave ’em electric shocks or poked ’em with needles. Sometimes egg developed, more often not. Then they got fancier and started new game. If you use hollow needle, real fine one, you can inject stuff into middle of cell. That way you get new DNA into nucleus.”
“King, when they taught you standard Solar, didn’t they ever mention articles? Let’s talk Earth-lingo. You’re making my head ache.”
Bester grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Fine by me, squire. Not many foreigners can talk Earth talk, so I tend not to use it with ’em. Anyway, after they learned the DNA injection and gene splicing techniques, the Needlers never looked back. They learned how to put duck DNA in an eagle, or spider DNA in a mosquito, or anything in anything. It’s a tricky technology, of course — if you and me tried it, the egg would die. But some of them are hot-shot good at it, like the old Margrave there. If you want it, he can make it.” Bester stared at Luther Brachis with vast curiosity. “Did he say he can make it — what you want?” Brachis did not answer. He could see fairly well, and he started forward. King Bester grabbed him by the arm. “One minute longer, squire. Never rush it, at night on the surface.”
“Wild animals?”
“You might say that. Scavvies. They come up out of the warrens at night, see what they can find. If you ever meet Bozzie’s Scavengers when you’re up here, you run for it and don’t stop. They’re tough and they’re mean. They’ll cut you to pieces for your clothes — or just for the fun of it.”
Luther Brachis was listening to Bester very closely, and taking in everything that he saw or heard. He was going to be visiting this place again, several times, and he had better learn how to operate here.
The steady breeze on his face was already less disconcerting, but the smell of decay — it must be dead plants or animals, crumbling away to unplanned and uncontrolled dissolution — made his nose wrinkle with disgust. There was a strange, whispering sound on all sides. It was the sedge, leaf rustling over leaf. He stared upwards. The cloud layer above was not unbroken, and in the open patches of sky he could now see stars, strangely soft-edged and subdued. They seemed to move and flicker as he watched.
Brachis saw the entry point to the lower levels, thirty steps ahead. “The work that the Margrave will be doing for me is none of your business.” The hook had been set back in the lab. Now it was time to strike. If King Bester could be caught anyhow, it was by the nose — his nose for curiosity.
“Of course, King, things would be quite different if I could be sure you were on my side. I could tell you a lot of things, then, and you could really be involved in them. There could be lots of jobs for you.”
“I can’t go to space, squire. It’s not safe up there.”
“Forget space. I’m talking down here, on Earth.”
Bester snapped his fingers. They had begun the descent now, in a slow, steady elevator that seemed to go down forever. “Try me, squire, just try me.”
“I’d like to. But it seems to me that you’re already working for Mondrian. Anyone who works for him can t work for me.”
“I don’t work for him — swear I don’t.”
“You were waiting for him, when we came out of the Link exit.”
“Not true, squire. I wasn’t waiting for him, he came to me. I was waiting for anyone who came in from outside, because that’s where I get business. People want things — just like you wanted things.”
“Maybe. But if you work for me, we’ll have to start slowly, and carefully. You’ll have to prove you don’t work for Esro Mondrian. He’s smart, and he’s sneaky.”
“He frightens me, squire, and that’s no lie. I don’t even like to look at his eyes.”
“Then you stay that way. It’s safest. So you think you’re ready to do a job for me?”
“You name it.” Bester was almost too eager. “You name it, and I’ll do it.”
“All right. For a beginning, you can keep an eye on the product that the Margrave will be developing for me.’
“I will. But I don’t know anything about it.”
“You will — as soon as I have the full spec myself. I’ll send that to you, and I’ll want you to deliver it to the Margrave. Naturally, you don’t tell anybody one word about it. And I’ll want you to keep a close eye on it as it’s being developed.”
“He thinks he can make it for you when you don’t even know what it is yet?”