Then Viktor switched views. "Habitats," he commanded, and his mentor provided him with the fact that there were more than eight hundred of them circling sullen, swollen Nergal. Then there were the natural moons human beings had colonized: Mary, Joseph, Mohammed, and Gautama were the important ones. (Sudden thrill almost of nostalgia: so some of the religious differences of frozen Newmanhome had persisted even here!)
Then he switched again, to study the other planets once more. Nothing had changed on most of them. Ishtar was still Ishtar, Marduk Marduk—gas giants with nothing much to recommend them—and Ninih, of course, was still too small and too far from the primary to be of interest to anybody. He stared briefly at the surface of ruddy Nergal (nothing much to look at but storms of superheated gases), then turned to the planet that mattered most to him: old, almost abandoned Newmanhome.
He caught his breath.
Newmanhome had changed again. It was reborn, all rolling seas, empty meadows, and young forests where the ice had gone—but it was not the Newmanhome he had lived on. It was scarred. During the glaciation all the planet's liquid water had been ice, covering the continents. As it melted, it formed huge meltwater lakes, blocked by ice dams. When the dams broke through, great torrents had scoured out scablands all the way to the sea.
There was no trace left that Viktor could find of the docks for the ocean-going ships or the town. True, in the hills near where he thought Homeport might have been, trying to translate the desk's coordinate system into his familiar navigation numbers, there was a cluster of buildings. But whether that was related to the old city he could not say.
This time he definitely heard the sound, and he could tell that it came from the kitchen.
"Who's there?" he cried. He heard the freezer door close, but there was no other answer. Puzzled, Viktor went to the food room.
Someone was leaving through the other door—hastily, as though not wanting to be seen. Viktor stood there, blinking. The bowls had been refilled with fresh fruit. The scatter of used dishes he had left was gone.
So that, he thought dazedly, was how the housework got done. But how peculiar that it was done by someone squatter and broader than himself, wearing a grizzled gray fur coat.
Half an hour later Nrina came back, to be greeted by his questions. "Yes, of course," she said, surprised he should ask. "Naturally we have someone to do things like that. Who would do them, otherwise? You saw one of the gillies."
"Gillies?" Viktor repeated, and then blinked as he connected the sound of the word with the glimpses he had caught. "Do you mean gorillas?"
"They're called 'gillies,' Viktor," Nrina said impatiently. "I don't know the word 'gorilla.' They are related to humans but without much intelligence—normally. Of course, we have modified them to be somewhat brighter—and quite a lot less belligerent and strong. Even so, they can't speak."
"You modified them?" he repeated.
"From genetic materials we found in the freezers, yes. Why not? Did you think I only made human beings?"
"I didn't know what you made," he said. He sounded aggrieved even to his own ears. He must have sounded so to Nrina, because she looked at him seriously for a moment.
Then she laughed. "Well," she said, "why don't I show you? Would you like to watch me work?"
Nrina was a creature shaper. Viktor began to realize that this woman was a major VIP, a star, famous through the habitats. She was remarkable even among the small number of greatly respected people who designed living architectures. The gorilla menials had come from their labs. So had the food animals and plants; so had the gorgeous and bizarre-smelling blossoms that decorated the spaces of their lives. Although their biggest business was making babies to order, she and her assistant, Dekkaduk, could make almost anything.
Dekkaduk was not pleased at Viktor's visit. He insisted that Viktor wear the gauzy robe over his cache-sex, and then fussily demanded he wear a hat, too. "Who knows what parasites might be in that disgusting fur on his head?" Dekkaduk demanded. He was nearly bald himself.
"Why, Dekkaduk," Nrina said, laughing, "probably about the same sorts of things as in my own hair. By now." Dekkaduk flushed furiously.
Nevertheless, Viktor wore the cap.
When Dekkaduk considered Viktor sufficiently sanitary, he turned away, glowering, and started work. He used the desk keypad to set up a large picture on the wall screen. It was a three-D representation of a young woman. She looked something like Nrina, but her hair was cocoa where Nrina's was butter, and her eyes were closer set. "Who is she?" Viktor asked politely, and Dekkaduk glared at him.
"You must not talk to us while we are working," he scolded. "But I will answer this question for you. She is no one. She hasn't been born yet. This is only what her parents want her to look like, and so we will arrange it. Now don't ask more questions until we are through."
So Viktor watched the image of the child who was not only not yet born but not even conceived, as Nrina and Dekkaduk matched the DNA strings that would produce that height, that color of eye, that taper of finger and that delicate arch of foot. That part of the process was not interesting for Viktor to watch, simply because he could not follow what was happening. Under the holographic image was a changing display of symbols and numbers—specifications, Viktor supposed, though he couldn't read them. No doubt they had to do with not only external appearances but nerve structures and disposition and … well, who knew what characteristics these people would want in a child?
But whatever the desire was, Nrina could supply it. She had no problem preparing the genetic blueprint that filled the order, and then it was only a matter of cutting and splicing and matching in.
The things they did were not merely a matter of surface appearance. They weren't even mostly surface appearance. The most important thing they built into every new baby was health.
There were all kinds of hereditary traits that had to be added or deleted or simply changed around a little. The effect was vast. The boys who came from Nrina's laboratory would never lose their virility or develop that benign prostatic hyperplasia called "old men's disease." The girls, however long they lived, would never acquire the "widow's hump" of osteoporosis. Bad genes were repaired on the spot.
Single-gene disorders were the easiest to deal with, of course. They came in three main kinds. There was the kind where a bad gene from either parent made the trouble; the recessive (or homozygous) kind where there wasn't any trouble unless it came from both parents; and the X-linked recessives that affected only males. All Nrina had to do with such conditions was a little repair work. If there was something wrong with the Apo B, C, and E genes Nrina made it right—and reduced the risk of a future coronary. If the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl-transferase gene was defective, a good one was patched in, and the child would not have Lesch-Nyhan disease. Codon 12 of the c-K-ras gene could be supplemented with a single nucleotide, and therefore went the risk of most pancreatic carcinomas and a lot of the colorectal ones, too. So Nrina's handmade children were exempt from many of the ills the flesh was (otherwise) heir to. No child born of their laboratory would ever have Epstein-Barr, or sickle-cell anemia, familial hypercholesterolemia, Huntington's disease, hemophilia, or any other of the hereditary nasties. Their arteries shrugged cholesterol away. Their digestive tracts contained no appendix; there were no tonsils in their throats.
For that reason Nrina knew very little of surgery. In some ways her grasp of medical science was centuries behind old Earth's—or even Newmanhome's. Dealing with Viktor's freezer-ulcerated leg was about as far as they could go. No one in Nrina's world was competent to cut out a lung or chop a hole in a side for a colostomy bag. No one ever needed such things. Oh, they did die—sooner or later. But usually later; and usually because they were simply wearing out; and almost always because they knew that death was coming and chose not to stay around for the final decay.