The Pride of Parahumans (10 page)

We had a database of several common genetic
diseases, but sometimes we came across a deviation that we lacked a
prior record for; in those cases, we had a simulator.

The simulator had access to several times the
total combined processing power of every computer that existed on
Planet Earth during the first couple decades of the twenty-first
century. Now, of course, every major university on Earth had a far
more powerful machine than ours, but it was still greater than most
parahumans' entire guild's or corporation's combined computing
strength. And our simulator used every microsecond of its immense
CPU cycles predicting the results of the completely unheard-of
mutations we fed into it.

The results we got out of it were often
astonishingly bizarre. One time it predicted that the fur of any
parahuman fabricated with the mutation in question would grow in
fluorescent green. Another time, it predicted that the cells would
undergo apoptosis in three to six hundred generations. We kept a
sample from that one to confirm, and the cells did indeed liquefy
after approximately four hundred and thirteen divisions.

Then one day, about two months after I had
started working full time in the lab and discarded my miners guild
membership entirely, I came across a deletion in the promoter
region of a certain gene that changed everything.

"PROMOTER TO MOR10X-6 ENCODING GENE
DISABLED," the readout from the simulator declared. "PROTEIN
MOR10X-6 EXPRESSION MINIMAL TO NON-EXISTENT. POSSIBLE RESUMPTION OF
MEIOTIC DIVISION."

Meiosis? As in the form of cellular division
whereby cells divide into cells with half the minimum number of
chromosomes in preparation for fusion with another cell that lacks
a full complement of chromosomes? I opened the genetic database and
attempted to look up MOR10X-6. What I got was a message stating,
"CLEARANCE REQUIRED. PLEASE INPUT REGISTRATION NUMBER AND
PASSWORD."

Confused, I showed it to Maximus. He took one
look at it and shrugged. "A lot of our equipment and data comes
from loot seized from the biogenesis corporations in the
revolution. Occasionally you come across something that they tried
to lock up, keep hidden from us peons and slaves."

He then did something completely in violation
of safety regulations: He opened his containment suit and started
fishing around for something. "Some hackers cracked the codes a
while ago and sold them to the SPPS. I've got them written down
here somewhere." He pulled out a folded square of flexible plastic.
There were apparently a set of numbers and passwords printed on the
inside fold of the plastic. He entered three different sets of
codes into the tablet before access was granted to the restricted
files. When it opened, he held the tablet up to his face, obscuring
it from my view. As he read, his expression changed from confusion
to surprise, then something I couldn't quite identify. He passed me
the tablet.

I read the proffered entry. It was just as I
suspected: MOR10X-6 was an artificial gene constructed by an
agronomics corporation in the first quarter of the twenty-first
century to protect genetic copyrights. It produced a protein that
interfered in the process of meiotic division, making it all but
impossible to proceed but allowing the gonads to otherwise function
normally, apparently creating a healthy but infertile genetically
modified organism that would not go around pirating their
intellectual property all willy-nilly. In other words, it was the
gene that made us reliant on cloning.

"This… is serious," was all I could think to
say at that time. It was certainly true, if a bit of an
understatement, perhaps the biggest of the century.

"I need to show this to my dad." Max grabbed
the tablet back from me and held it tightly to his chest as he ran
off to alert his progenitor. Sighing, I picked out another tablet
and returned to my work.

***

Approximately an hour and a half later, I was
called up to Jakob Griggs' office. I handed my current project off
to a co-worker and walked to the elevator. The elevator car had
seven buttons inside: one for each of the regular floors, one for a
sublevel basement cut into the cavern floor, and one that was
accessible only by biometric scan or remote operation. Before I
could look up which floor the head of the Society's office was on
the elevator started moving upwards. It went past the fifth floor
to something marked with a "J" on the electronic readout. As I
stood dumbfounded the door opened onto a wide open space
overlooking the city below. It appeared that Jakob Griggs worked on
the roof of the building.

In the middle of the expanse, there stood a
large table covered with food items that I had only seen in images
and video before: stuffed turkeys, carved T-bone steaks, lobster,
ham with the bone still inside… How much had that whole thing cost?
On a chair at the far side of the table sat a savannah cat, like
Maximus, wearing a black robe embroidered with crystals forming the
shapes of DNA helixes. He raised his head to glance at me as I
slowly, nervously came forward.

"Ahh, Argentum. Good to finally meet you." He
spoke to me in the same voice as my supervisor. "Please, get
yourself into something more comfortable and join me for
lunch."

He gestured to my right, and I followed his
hand with my eyes.

I saw a coat rack with a white robe in the
same patterns as the one Caleb Burns had been wearing when we first
met, though fitted and sized more for a biped of my height and
weight. I looked down at my own bulky, uncomfortable containment
suit. "Oh, I guess this would be a bit awkward to eat in." But then
I noticed a lack of enclosed spaces to change in.

Jakob saw me looking around puzzled and
chortled loudly. "Don't worry." He made a show of covering his eyes
with the sleeve of his own robe. "I won't look."

I supposed I could see where Maximus got his
humor from. I unzipped myself from my hazmat suit as quickly as
possible and threw the robe on. Hopefully he wouldn't mind my
getting sweat all over it. It was surprisingly comfortable, as if
it were made from soft plant fibers instead of the bacterial
plastics we made most of our clothes from in the Belt. It must have
been made from materials imported from Earth, like the feast before
me.

I stepped awkwardly towards the chair on the
opposite end of the table, presumably where I was meant to sit. At
the sound of the chair legs scraping along the floor, Mr. Griggs
put his arm back down and saw me cautiously sitting down.

"I take it you've never had real meat before
Mx. Argentum?" he inquired, to which my only answer was a short
nod. "Not surprising. It is quite expensive to import anything from
Earth or Mars to begin with. Perishable items such as animal flesh
even more so." He speared another piece of steak on his fork and
raised it to his mouth before speaking again. "Please, try the
chicken. It's unlikely you'll get another chance to try it
soon."

Knowing he was right, and finding the
fragrance too hard to resist I tore off a leg from the roasted bird
in the center of the table. Discovering it difficult to keep my
manners, I tore into it with a ferocity I found hidden deep within
the few genes I had not inherited from any human. I had eaten
vat-grown poultry before, partially to see Cole's reaction to my
consuming tissue from his own taxonomic class (not much, it turns
out; apparently corvids are as close to fowl as foxes are to cows
or something along those lines), but this bore little resemblance.
This was juicy, tender, with a crisp skin that the tissue vats
seemed to leave out. Within a matter of minutes, I had stripped the
leg to the bone.

As I tossed the oddly white and flexible bone
aside, Jakob Griggs spoke again. "That was actually the turkey, but
whatever you prefer.” I made an effort to keep my embarrassment
from showing, but apparently he could see it anyways. "Don't worry
about it," he said with a wave of his hand. "I'm sure this is the
first time you've been able to tell the difference between one meat
and another."

But then his expression changed all of a
sudden, becoming ice cold as he stared at me from across the table.
"So, I hear you found out about one of the corporations' biggest
secrets."

I think I felt my fur stand up at that simple
statement. Something about the tone those ordinary words were
issued in chilled me. "Well," I started, a bit nervous and taken
off guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor, "it was completely
by accident, but I believe I discovered a mutation that deactivates
the gene that renders us, I mean, you and other parahumans with sex
organs, infertile." I had to correct myself, as there was
definitely more than one simple gene that prevented neuters like
myself from making babies.

"I see." Jakob reached for a small box on the
table with a set of holes in the lid. "And just what do you intend
to do with that mutation?"

"Me?" I asked incredulously. "Well, I doubt I
would do much with it, but I suppose one could use a targeted
mutagen to damage the gene and enable their testes or ovaries to
undergo spermatogenesis or oogenesis, respectively. Possibly even
use a CRISPr technique to knock out the entire gene." The equipment
to do either was fairly plentiful; it was far safer than gene
therapy to simply create a compound that would bond to a specific
gene sequence and destroy it in the rare instance of a harmful
mutation that involved an addition rather than a deletion or
transposition.

"Yes." He then shot me a look that made me
shrink back into my seat in primal fear. "And what do you think
would happen to the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman
Species if parahumans began to use that mutagen you're suggesting
and started replicating themselves on their own?"

I paused as I thought about it for a minute.
"Most people wouldn't need clones; they'd just find a friend of the
opposite gender and produce new parahumans like most natural
animals and humans do." I realized at that moment that my job could
be at stake. "But there would still be neuters like myself who
would still need clones to continue their genelines. And some
people who simply prefer clones for some reason." I thought of one
more thing. "And besides, wouldn't your goal of preserving
parahumanity be accomplished?"

Jakob let out a low growl. My ears flattened,
and I felt my head slipping down beneath my robe, attempting to
hide from the large and angry predator before me. He addressed me
once more. "Our goal doesn't just encompass creating the next
generation so that our species can outlive our individual selves.
There are other factors that we don't generally discuss with the
public."

He shook the box he had picked up a minute
earlier, and I could hear a faint squeaking sound from within. "Are
you familiar at all with the net series 'Crowns of Furtopia'?" he
asked me. I nodded faintly and he continued. "Feudalism is the
default state of any large group of animals. Individuals work to
preserve their own genelines and band together with their kin to
compete with other kin groups. The smart ones get the weaker groups
to produce resources for them in exchange for protection from more
short-sighted opportunists. Human history has proven time and time
again that in the absence of any other form of government,
feudalism re-emerges. And I am sure that you are starting to see
that to be true here on Vesta as well."

I thought back to the pop culture references
to the Protectors' Guilds as clans and houses, how every
high-ranking official in the Guilds that I'd met had been clones of
the Guild leaders, and what they were getting away with because of
their relationship. "But… your progenitor was the one who enabled
them to form kinship groups in the first place?" I asked
nervously.

"Yes, and that is how I continue to keep them
in line." Jakob Griggs made another toothy grin that somehow
intimidated me more than his growl had. "If I weren't able to
threaten them with the revocation of their access to my cloning
tanks, they would be constantly fighting one another over territory
like the animals they are. As it is, the balance of power between
the Protection Guilds is as unstable as a barrel of
nitroglycerin."

I believed that I understood now. "And you
think if they were able to perpetuate their genelines on their own
they would turn Vesta into a twenty-second century version of
Furtopia?"

"I know they will." Jakob opened the box he
was holding, he reached inside, and withdrew a live mouse. I was
amazed. That was the first time I had ever seen a non-sapient
animal. My unspoken question of what he intended to do with the
mouse was answered when he slung his head back, opened his mouth,
and dropped the mouse in. There was a sickening snap and crunch of
bones breaking and he swallowed loudly. Licking the remaining blood
from his lips he started to explain. "Live mice, expensive even by
my standards. Do you want to know why they're so expensive?"

"Because the freighters need extra life
support to keep them alive all the way out to the Belt?" I feebly
suggested.

"That is the bulk of it, yes." Jakob nodded.
"But another expense is the sterilization procedures they have to
perform on every one of the mice before they leave earth orbit." I
gave a confused expression, prompting him to continue. "If so many
as one male and one female mouse are fertile in the same cargo
module, they will inevitably find a way to mate and produce dozens
of baby mice every few weeks. And each of those babies will be able
to make more babies within a month of birth. By the time they get
all the way out here, the life support system of their module is
overtaxed, and you get a load of decaying mouse carcasses. Do you
see my point?"

I was afraid I didn't, but I wasn't sure I
wanted to tell that to the very self-assured cat who essentially
owned all the law enforcement organizations on the asteroid, so I
stayed silent.