People and drones hustled to and fro down the prescribed paths. One or two raised their hands in greeting, but Iyal only nodded absently in return.
Arla Stone. Arla Stone. Iyal had been all but breathing Arla Stone since Perivar had brought her to the lab. For weeks now, Iyal had wished in vain that she could find whoever had designed the woman’s ancestors so she could shake their hands, and then pick their brains, even if they were the Vitae.
She’d told Perivar that Arla was a walking work of art, but now Iyal was ready to revise that interpretation. The woman was nothing short of a miracle.
Iyal was used to the idea of genetic engineering. Every piece of flora and fauna on Kethran had been built to fit into the tailored biosphere. Her own work carried on the family profession and she was proud to do it. But there wasn’t a soul alive on Kethran, or anywhere else she knew of, that could design a DNA string that contained nothing but the bare essentials organized to express themselves in a totally predictable fashion in a human being. In a strain of yeast or algae, maybe. But not a human being. She had learned more about neurochemical regulators in the three weeks she’d known Arla than she had in ten years of active study.
But not everything about Arla made sense. Who would design an organism that did not have enough room left over in its DNA to allow for adaptation or compensation for changes in environment? The rate of birth defects would be astronomical. Arla was perfect, but if one or two of her perfect traits hadn’t expressed themselves because of environment, she could have been in trouble. Iyal was surprised Arla had even managed four living kids out of a total of seven births. If you wanted to keep her branch of humanity alive, you’d have to do an incredible amount of outbreeding, which would negate all that careful engineering, or you’d have to be able to check each fetus to make sure conception had worked, and then you’d have to monitor each child to make sure they grew up all right, and tinker with them all as necessary to keep weaknesses from creeping in.
No. It made no sense. A group like that would require more maintenance than … Kethran Colony.
The comm screen still showed Arla hunched over Allenden’s table, reading the documents flowing past. Nothing in those short, perfect strings she carried around inside her explained this. Nothing at all. Not even the incredible organization inside her skull.
Iyal’s translator disk beeped and she winced.
“Cousin Manager Zur-Iyal ki Maliad,” said Director ki Sholmat’s voice, “I require your attendance at my office immediately.”
Iyal felt her forehead wrinkle. The Director hadn’t chosen to acknowledge their First Family connection since Iyal’d deigned to marry a third wave colonist.
She touched the TRANSMIT key on her torque and whispered, “With respect, Cousin Director, I have an emergency in the lab.” Arla had moved on to a new set of documents. These had the lab’s privacy logo on them.
“Delegate it,” said the Director. “I have an Ambassador from the Rhudolant Vitae sitting in front of me. The Vitae want to talk to you about some property of theirs they say the lab has wrongfully appropriated.”
Iyal’s eyes bulged in their sockets as she tried to keep from gagging audibly. Under her gaze, Arla went on reading, completely undisturbed.
“Cousin Manager?”
“I’ll be there in five minutes, Cousin Director.” Iyal shut the connection down.
Iyal ground her teeth together and, at last, touched her torque and whispered Allenden’s name.
“Zur-Allenden,” she said. “This is Zur-Iyal. There’s trouble. I need you to get Arla out of the lab. Send her to sweep the attic, anything, just keep her out of the way of the management halls for at least the next hour.”
“But …” came Allenden’s hesitant voice.
“The Vitae are sitting in the Director’s office,” she said. “Get Arla out of sight.”
“Done and done.” Her translation disk buzzed as he closed the connection.
The sedan halted in front of the double doors labeled CENTRAL RESEARCH FACILITIES BLOCKS 6—12. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and froze its legs, settling toward the ground so she could climb out. Iyal cut the comm board off and shut the chair’s power off.
She rubbed her temple as she pushed through the facility doors and walked down the bare, tiled corridors. Her gaze strayed to the portrait of Killian that she wore on her wrist. He was off-shift tonight. She could put in a real-time call. It’d be good to talk to him. It’d help sort out the jumble of problems swirling around inside her mind.
Director Zur-Kohlbyr ki Sholmat’s office was a three-room suite at the east end of the building. Kohlbyr was an entrepreneur, an aspiring politician, and the oldest child of the first of the First Families. As a result, he knew all about the importance of appearances and he used all that he knew when creating his workspace.