The Creatures of Man (57 page)

"So," she finished, "here we are, Marvis Jans and myself—and Gweanvin Oster in the Commonality. We have some structural differences that set us apart from homo sapiens, such as nasal bridges of solid bone. Also we mature more slowly and probably live longer. But the really important difference is that genetically we're a new species, with zero genetic tension. Our offspring can adapt like mad for a long time to come.
They're
the ones who'll really be different."

Plackmon nodded slowly, and started to speak but at that moment Boll Marchell joined them. "Hope I'm interrupting something intimate," he remarked, favoring Gweanvin with his best dirty-old-man leer.

"Rayeal was just explaining why my love for her is tragic," Plackmon replied. "Sit down, Boll."

Marchell sat, punched his selection on the menu. "Gene-crossed lovers, hah?"

Gweanvin said, "I think Don's real throb is for a big-busted visitor I had this morning. His eyes bulged out into the scrambleway when he saw her."

"Marvis Jans?" asked Marchell.

"Yes. Have you met her?"

"Just briefly."

"What do you think of her?"

"Well, if you and she are does I'd hate to tangle with the buck!" Marchell chuckled. "She's quite a doll, but hardnosed in more ways than one."

"One step farther from the primordial flat-faced apeman," said Gweanvin. "Do you really find her formidable?"

"Damned right I do. And you, too. That's why I'd hate to tangle with a male of your species."

Gweanvin thought about it, puzzled momentarily. "Oh, you mean because men are more competitive, more combative than women," she hazarded.

He nodded. "Yours would make a terrific econo-warrior—if he bothered with the econo-war at all."

Gweanvin considered the point with interest. She hadn't thought of the missing male from that standpoint before. What Marchell had said about the male role was certainly true for humanity and numerous other species.

"What else is the male's job?" she asked.

"Finding and courting a mate, of course," said Marchell.

"Well, ours is certainly goofing on that," she replied.

"Or biding his time perhaps. I get the impression Marvis Jans is trying to do both his job and her own as well. The typical female role is merely to make known her presence and readiness, by whatever means of communication is appropriate for the species. Miss Jans has done that. Now she's searching, and that's usually the male's prerogative."

Gweanvin chuckled. "Then it's enough for Marvis or me to announce, 'Here I am. Come get me.' And then wait for Mr. Super-Econo-Warrior to show up."

"Probably. And just keep yourselves amused in the meantime, you with the project and such as poor Don here, Marvis with her frontlining and every homo sap who lays eyes on her."

"Speaking of which, I have a hunch big things are about to happen on the project, now that Marvis has come to make sure our labs aren't spy-infested. Pay-off time may be here, gents."

Plackmon grinned. "You still think our project is Monte-related?"

"What else?" she shrugged. "We are on Narva, a nothing-planet except for being Orrbaune's nearest habitable neighbor—a mere six light-years away from where Monte is, of necessity, permanently located. And our section has been building a . . ."

"If you're going to give us one of your speculative commentaries on the nature of the project," Plackmon broke in, mashing a button on the table's control box, "let's keep it between the three of us." A baffle-screen snapped on surrounding the table, effectively curtaining the occupants and their words from others in the dining garden.

Marchell laughed. "We don't need security agents with Don around," he said.

"Yeah, I wonder sometimes if his interest in me is as ulterior as he pretends that it is," said Gweanvin.

"I'm merely a conscientious little econo-warrior," Plackmon contended stoutly. "As you were about to say . . ."

"Well, our section has been building what we hope is a reasonable facsimile of the Primgranese Commonality's telepathic transceiver, the Bauble. We don't know—or I don't—what the other section's been doing. But my guess is that they're working on a communications link to tie Monte on Orrbaune in with the Bauble here on Narva.

"Now, essentially, a Bauble is just a dead device," Gweanvin continued, with the eagerness of a bright child showing off its talent, "whereas Monte is a living being, not only capable of receiving and sending telepathic messages, but of originating thoughts of his own. This makes him far superior, and more useful, than a Bauble could ever be. But one shortcoming of both Monte and a Bauble is limited range. One can cover a single planetary system, and that's all.

"What we really need to get ahead of the Primgranese is a Federation-wide telepathic comm system, something that can spread throughout our portion of the galaxy. Maybe it would be possible to link Baubles alone into that kind of network, but the Primgranese must be trying that, with no success that I know of.

"Anyway, we have Monte, and would want him in our network. And if we have some linkage system to tie him in with a Bauble at interstellar distance, the logical place to locate the first test Bauble would be right here on Narva. Otherwise, this under-populated ball of dirt would be about the
last
place in the Federation to rate a Bauble."

She paused, looking at Boll Marchell, then asked, "Well, what do you think?"

Marchell grinned. "I think it would take one hell of a comm system to link Monte with the Bauble when they are six light-years apart."

"Yes," she nodded, "that's what fascinates me. All our section has done is try to duplicate Primgranese work. But Hobard Dawnor's section . . . gosh, I'd give my eye teeth to know what they've got!"

"You never had any eye teeth," said Plackmon.

"Figure of speech," she replied absently. "Of course the actual spanning-signal could be an exceedingly broad-band version of standard subwarp communications. What intrigues me is the nature of the interface between Monte and the transmitter on Orrbaune, and between the receiver and the Bauble here on Narva. In other words, how is telepathy translated into transmittable signals, and how are those signals then converted back into telepathy? That's the real breakthrough involved in this project."

"And you can't figure it out?" asked Marchell.

"No. In fact, I bet Monte himself had to figure it out. Who else would know enough about telepathy?" She studied him closely. "You know if I'm right or not, Boll," she accused, although she knew he did not, "but you won't tell me."

He chuckled. "That's econo-war for you, Rayeal. Never let your right hand know what your left is doing."

"Suppose you are right, Rayeal," said Plackmon, wearing a serious frown, "don't you think such a project has some disturbing implications?"

"I don't see why it should," she lied. "I would think it might bother my new friend Marvis Jans, though. If Monte's telepathic ability is extended over the whole Federation, that'll put all our internal security agents out of work, her included."

"That's what I'm getting at," said Plackmon. "Every Federation citizen's mind will be subject to scrutiny. As matters now stand, those of us who prefer to keep some mental privacy have the option of staying away from Orrbaune. If your speculating is accurate, we're going to lose that option."

"That doesn't sound much like the conscientious little econo-warrior," Gweanvin kidded. "Actually, though, I'm a little hesitant about giving up mental privacy, too. But if everybody else does . . . and the people on Orrbaune don't seem bothered by it. They say Monte is a perfect gentleman and very discreet. He doesn't spread around the thoughts that need to remain private. And since he's not human, it doesn't matter much if he knows a person's thoughts. He doesn't take advantage. And if you're worried about some kind of thought control, he steers totally clear of that."

"Now, but will he always?" Plackmon argued.

Gweanvin shrugged. "What's 'always'?"

Marchell put in, "The Primgranese gave up emotional privacy long ago. They use emo-monitor implants, and it doesn't seem to bother them. It merely improves communication."

"We would have had emo-monitor implants of our own by now," said Gweanvin, "except that if this project is a success we won't need them—so they're dragging their feet on getting them into production."

"You sound so sure of everything you say," laughed Plackmon. "Is that because you're a woman, or is it a characteristic of the new breed?"

"It's because we're having an argument," she replied. "If I'm right about the purpose of the project I don't want my triumph weakened by a lot of 'perhapses' and 'maybes'. And if I'm wrong you guys won't be polite enough to remember any 'maybes' anyway.

The lunchtime conversation was a mild disappointment to Gweanvin. She had hoped to learn something from Marchell about plans for the test, but obviously he knew no more and had guessed far less than she had.

After the normal amount of dawdling about after lunch, she returned to her work console and pretended to be absorbed by her task while she exteriorized once more and returned to the test chambers and the Bauble.

She found it still untouched but now there were sounds in the test chamber. Equipment was being brought in, she judged.

"This has to be turned slightly to the left," she heard someone say.

"That enough?" said another voice.

"Yes. Good. Now roll it closer. It has to be in contact with the Bauble."

"Okay . . . how's that?"

Gweanvin felt the contact. Something was touching the Bauble over about thirty per cent of one side of its surface. Aha! This was it! The interface system that she had to probe. She shifted all her attention to that part of the Bauble surface, but found nothing but touch-pressure. The interface was inactive.

"Hadn't we better switch it on and check for good contact?"

"No. We turn nothing on until the test begins. Don't worry about the contact. It's good, all right."

Footsteps moved away from the Bauble and the test chamber was silent once more.

Gweanvin used the delay for one last review of her contingency plans.

The Gordeen Consolidated building was not designed for the convenience of spy-saboteurs. Its outside walls were thick, tough, windowless. To leave in the normal manner meant going out on her balcony, semi-inerting, flying up through the scramble area to the roof exit seventy-one floors above, where one of the gates would check her identity and let her through.

Minimum exit time: ten seconds . . . 
if
she ran into no traffic jams, and
if
the gates had not been alerted to detain her.

Still, that would be the best way out if she had time to use it. If not . . .

She opened a drawer of the console desk, considered its clutter of contents, took a light-pen out of it. She used the pen to streak a pair of trial vectors across the diagram on the console screen, and gazed studiously at the result.

The drawer's contents were such as most anyone might accumulate over a period of a few years on a job. Some items, such as the light-pen, definitely belonged there. Others, such as a zercrown and a couple of sheets of slightly worn warprag, did not belong but were readily explainable, in case anyone asked. The warprags, for example, she had swiped from one of the shops—which no one would mind—with the intention of taking them home to see how they would work as abrasives on gold sculpture, which she made in her spare time.

Also, most of the jumble of stuff in the drawer was as harmless and useless as it looked; anyone would have to take a very close look indeed to know that some of it was not.

Unfortunately, she mused, suspicion would have been aroused had she added a charged implant power-unit to the accumulation—and if things got really tight, she would doubtless need plenty of power in a hurry. She had an answer to that, of course, but it would have been better if . . .

There was a murmur of voices and footsteps down in the test chamber.

"If everyone will find seats," spoke an authoritative voice. "Thank you. Now, how are we on security, Marvis?"

"We're snug, Thydan," the voice of Marvis Jans replied. "The Gordeen people have done a good job of keeping this project tightly wrapped."

There was a murmur of appreciation, in which Gweanvin could make out Falor Dample's rumbled, "Thank you, Miss Jans."

"This room could not possibly be bugged, then?" demanded a voice she did not recognize.

"Not unless the Primgranese have developed an entirely novel technique," replied Marvis Jans with a touch of disdain, "which is most unlikely. And if they had, the likelihood of their both knowing of this project and getting an agent inside approaches zero."

"Okay, Marvis," chuckled the man she had called Thydan. "I have one specific question: what about Rayeal Promton?"

"All clear there, and I might say Rayeal is drawing more security attention than she merits simply because she happens to match a particular Commonality operator in age and basic genetics. Admittedly, the question, 'Could Rayeal Promton be Gweanvin Oster?' is a tempting one to consider . . . and it has been—but just because it is such an obvious one the Primgranese command would not have sent in the Oster woman on an assignment where . . ."

"They could have counted on us discounting our suspicions," put in Thydan, "for that very reason."

"Well . . . the important thing is that right now, she is forty-one floors above us working in her office and under observation from across the scrambleway."

"I'd like to be sure she'll stay there," grumbled the man who had asked about bugs.

"That can be arranged—if you think it's necessary," said Marvis.

"Good. Arrange it."

Thydan said, "One point that bothers me about Miss Promton is that she has speculated accurately on the nature of this project and has discussed her speculations rather freely."

"She's a very bright girl," Marvis broke in. "If I were in her position, I would probably have drawn the same conclusions. And she has been discreet in her indiscretion—only with people such as her boss, and agents such as Don Plackmon and myself. Obviously she's playing give-the-security-boys-a-hard-time. We're used to stirring up a little resentment."