Chapter 11 chapter Ten

Simon and Weir are senior genetic safety ministers who recently arrived from the United States.Whenever the two men came to the consulate's genetic security department office, Brian.Gately would grit his teeth. This morning, Brian had been at work for less than half an hour, and they came.He felt his upper and lower molars grinding again. Simon was tall, sullen and grim.Will was fifteen centimeters shorter than him, so fat that he might have to buy trousers at a specialty store.Will could still laugh, but Simon didn't. They walked over to Brian, who was standing by the water cooler.Mr. Gately, Simon said, and Will said, can we speak to you in private?

Come to my office. Brian's office was small, but it had a window overlooking the consulate's walled garden.The office cubicle contained a filing cabinet, a log desk, enough floating memory to hold several times the contents of the Library of Congress, and a plastic fig tree.Correspondence between the Department of Genetic Safety and the Provisional Government filled the desk, a small tributary of the long flow of information that flows back and forth between the two realms, like the eternal, filthy Nile.Brian sat in the chair he always sat in.Will slammed into the guest chair, while Simon stood with his back to the door, like a bird eating carrion, and his patience was even more sinister.

You talked to your ex-wife.Weir said. Yes.I told her what you asked me to tell her. Looks useless.Do I need to tell you that she's with Turk again.Finlay connected? Need not.Brian blurted out, I don't think so. They are together now.Simon said.Simon doesn't talk much, but every word is annoying.Very likely.Him and her. The problem, though, Weir said, is that we can't find them right now. Brian wasn't sure whether to believe the words.Weir and Simon represent the executive committee of the Department of Genetic Safety. Most of what the executive committee does is highly confidential, so it has become the stuff of legend.On Earth, they can ascribe to themselves constitutional immunity with more or less spontaneous judicial assent.And in Equatoria, with a United Nations interim government, competing national interests, and the overlapping powers of wealthy oil powers, their work is, at least in theory, more restrained.

Brian is not an idealist.He knew that there were layers and classes in the Department of Genetic Safety that he would never be able to enter, where policy was made and rules were laid.But given the scope of his work, he considered his work to be useful, if not stimulating.American criminals often flee to Equatoria for acts that fall under the purview of Genetic Security, such as cloners, money scammers, people peddling bogus or deadly longevity cures, extreme types of fourth-year fanatics, A purveyor of premium products for parents willing to pay to raise better offspring.Bryan wasn't going to chase or arrest these criminals, but what he did (liaising with the Provisional Government, smoothing out judicial disputes) was important to apprehending them.The relationship between the police-like organization attached to the country's consulate and the UN-backed local government is delicate and difficult to manage.You have to be polite and have some reciprocal gestures.Don't force your way in and offend everyone.

But it seems that these people can come hard.This was disappointing, because Brian believed in legal norms, and despite their inevitable imperfections, bewildering, excruciating inefficiencies, and occasional corruption, laws are absolutely necessary.Without laws and regulations, people are worse than animals.That's how he ran his office, carefully and cleanly. And now there are two dear friends, Simon and Weir, tall as bitter as Angostina bitter medicine, short as hard and strong as a bowling ball wrapped in velvet, and they remind him everywhere , at heights even dizzying than his own, laws can be tailor-made to suit certain circumstances.

You have been a great help.Weir said. Oh I hope so.I'd love to be able to help. You put us in touch with the people we faced in the interim government.And, of course, Liz.Adams thing.The personal relationship between you and this lady I mean, the embarrassment is beyond description. Thank you for noticing.Brian said, still dumbfounded and grateful, even though he knew he was being used. I can assure you again, we don't want to arrest her, or speak to her directly.Liz is definitely not our target in this case. You are looking for the woman in the photo. So, of course, we don't want Liz in the way.we hope you can tell her what's on your mind

I tried. I know, we appreciate that.But let me tell you what's going on, Brian, so you'll understand what our concerns are.Because when your image search is hooked up to our database, it's absolutely amazing.You said Liz explained why she told Suliane.Moai interested? Before Lisi's father disappeared, he was seen with Su Lian.Along with Moy, she had no ties to the university or anyone in his family's social circle.In the case of Lise's father's interest in the fourth year, this is an obvious connection.Lise suspects that this woman is the one absorbing the newcomers.

The truth is even stranger.Legally, we deal with fourth year people by convention.You won't be surprised by this.But longevity therapy is just one of the medical transformations our Martian relatives have brought to Earth. Brian nodded. We're after something bigger than your average fourth-year fanatic here.Details are scant, and I'm not a scientist, but it has to do with an attempt to bioengineer to communicate with hypothetical intelligent beings, Weir said. Bryan, like many in his generation, cringes at the mere mention of hypothetical intelligent beings, or the time gyrations associated with them.The time spin ended before he even went to school, and hypothetical intelligent beings were just one of the more esoteric facts of everyday life, an important but abstract thing like air, like electromagnetism or the movement of tides.

But, like everyone else, he was raised and educated by time-turn survivors who believed they had lived through the greatest turning point in human history.Maybe they are.The aftermath of time gyrations, such as wars, religious and counter-movements, general human insecurity and vitriolic global cynicism, still shape the world.Mars is a habitable planet, and humans have been able to enter a labyrinth as big as the sky.Undoubtedly, these changes confused those who endured them, and this confusion would last for centuries. But these changes also became a license to insanity for a whole generation, which for Brian was less easily justified.Millions of otherwise rational men and women respond to the whirlwinds of time with astonishing irrationality, mutual suspicion, and downright malevolence.These same people now think they deserve the respect of anyone Brian's age or younger.

They don't deserve it at all.Crazy is not a virtue, nor is decency a boast.In fact, decency was something Brian and his generation were left to build.Decency, trust, and a certain dignity in human behaviour. Hypothetical intelligent beings are the culprits behind the time gyrations.Why would anyone want to communicate with them?What does that mean?Even if it is the biological modification method of the Martians, how can communication be achieved through biological modification? What this technology does is modify the human nervous system to be sensitive to the signals that hypothetical intelligent beings use to communicate with each other, basically they create a human medium.A messenger that could act as a translator between our species and something like a hypothetical intelligent creature.

Did they really do this?Simon said. The Martian refused to speak.Maybe it's been tried on their planet, maybe more than once.But we believe that this technology, like the longevity cure, was brought to Earth by Vanovan and leaked to the common people. So why haven't I heard more about it? Because it's not something that everybody would want, like an extra forty years of life or something.If our intelligence is correct, this technique can be lethal when applied to adults.Maybe Jason.Lawton died because of it. What good is it if it costs people their lives? It doesn't have to be fatal, Weir said, and if the agent is injected into a human in the womb, the developing embryo will grow around the biotechnology.Humans and aliens grow together. God!Brian said, do that to a kid Very immoral, obviously.You know, we spend a lot of time in the ministry worrying about the fourth year, about the changes that fanatics are making in human biology.That's the real, legitimate question.But this one was far more astonishing.Really, very evil is the only word you can use to describe it. Has anyone actually done it on Earth? Well, that's exactly what we're investigating.So far we don't have a lot of corroborating evidence or eyewitness testimony.But wherever we go, someone always shows up.There are many names, but only one person, one face.Do you want to guess who it is? The woman in the photo.The woman who was seen with Liz's father. Su Lian.Moy showed up in the facial recognition profile at the Port Magellan docks, and when we came to investigate, we found Lise.Liz had a relationship with her before and is doing the same now, talking to her father's old co-workers and so on.The reason is perfectly reasonable, yes.She was curious, it was a mystery in the family, and she thought knowing the truth would make her feel better.But that leaves us with a question: are we going to stop her?Are we going to let her do what she's doing and watch from the sidelines?Shall we warn her that she is in danger? The warning didn't help either.Brian said. So we have to use her in other ways. Use her? We're not going to arrest her, some of my superiors have been wanting to do that, but we think a wait-and-see approach might end up being more beneficial.She has been in contact with others involved.One of them is Turk.Finlay. Turk.Finlay, the freelance pilot with little success.It was bad enough that Brian hadn't been able to maintain his marriage to Liz, how bad could it be that she was in close contact with someone who was so capricious, bad-behaved, and arguably of no use to humanity?Turk.Finlay is another fallout from the time gyration, Brian thought.A maladaptive human being.A wanderer with no purpose.If Simon's hints were correct, there might be something worse. You mean, Turk.Finlay had something to do with the older woman, besides the fact that she had chartered him a plane? Uh, of course it makes people think so.But Turk was also in contact with other equally suspicious people, known and suspected fourth-year people.Turk was still a criminal.do you know?There was a warrant for arrest when he left the United States. A warrant for what case? He was involved in a warehouse fire. What did you say?He is an arsonist? The statute of limitations is running out, but he might burn his dad's business down. I thought his father was a petroleum scholar. His father had worked in Turkey and had some ties to Aramco, but he made most of his money in an import business.There was a feud between him and his father, the old man's warehouse burned down, and Turk slipped out of the country.Conclusion You can figure it out for yourself. Too bad, Brian thought.So we have to keep Liz away from him.She may be in danger. We suspect that she is attracted to something she does not understand, and we suspect that she is being coerced into cooperating with this person.Probably Turk told her not to answer the phone. But you can find them, right? sooner or later.But we are not magicians, and we cannot conjure them out of nothing. Then tell me how I can help.Brian couldn't help but say, if you just say it before I talk to her Would you do it differently?We cannot just spread the news casually.Neither can you, Brian.you know too.Now we let you know our secret.These are not to be discussed anywhere other than you, me, and Simon. of course, but What we want you to do, is continue to find ways to reach her.Let her know it was you who called, and even if she doesn't answer, she may end up feeling guilty or lonely and decides to talk to you. What if she did? All we want now is her location.It would be best if you could convince her to meet you, with or without Turk. As much as he disliked handing her over to the Executive Committee, it was certainly better than getting her further involved in some criminal enterprise.I will try my best.Brian said. Very good.Will grinned.really thankful. The two shook Brian's hand and walked out of the office, leaving him to sit there alone, thinking for a long time.