Cyteen: The Betrayal Read Online Free PDF

to their motives. All this lay behind that sober pleasantness and those younger-than-forty eyes.
    “You may have guessed,” Lu said, “that this is more than I told you it would be.”
    A little alarm registered on Warrick’s face. “Oh?” he said.
    “Councillor Corain very much wanted to speak with you-without public attention. This is political, Dr. Warrick. It’s quite important. Certainly if you would rather get on to your other meeting, for which you will otherwise be perhaps ten minutes late-we will understand that you don’t want to involve yourself with our questions, and I hope you’ll accept my personal apologies in that case. It’s my profession, you understand, a disposition to intrigue.”
    Warrick drew a breath, distanced himself the few paces to the conference table, and set his briefcase down on it. “Is this something to do with Council? Do you mind explaining what, before I make any decision?”
    “It’s about the bill coming up. The Science appropriations bill.”
    Warrick’s head lifted just the little bit that said: Ah. A small smile touched his face. He folded his arms and leaned back against the table, in every evidence a relaxed man. “What about the bill?”
    “What’s in it,” Corain asked, “-really?”
    The secret smile widened and hardened. “You mean what’s it covering? Or something else?”
    “Is-what it’s covering-in any way connected to the Hope project?”
    “No. Nothing in that budget to do with it. Nothing I’m aware of. Well, SETI-scan. But that’s fairly general.”
    “What about the Special appointment? Is Reseune interested?”
    “You might say. You want to know about Fargone in general?”
    “I’m interested in whatever you have to say, Dr. Warrick.”
    “I can spare the ten minutes. I can tell you in less than that what’s going on. I can tell you in one word. Psychogenesis. Mind-cloning, in the popular press.”
    It was not the answer Corain had expected. It was certainly not what the military expected. Gorodin snorted.
    “What’s it covering?”
    “Not a cover,” Warrick said. “Not the process in the popular press. Not exact duplicates, but duplicate capabilities. Not real significant for, say, a child trying to recover a lost parent. But in the case of, say, a Special, where the ability is what you want to hang on to-You’re familiar with the attempt to recover Bok.”
    Estelle Bok. The woman whose work led to faster-than-light. “They tried,” Corain said. “It didn’t work.”
    “Her clone was bright. But she wasn’t Bok. She was a better musician than she was a physicist, and desperately unhappy, thanks to all the notoriety. She wouldn’t take her rejuv for days on end, till the effects caught up with her and she’d have to. Wore herself down that way, finally died at ninety-two. Wouldn’t even leave her room during the last few years of her life.
    “What we didn’t have then was the machinery we have now; and the records. Dr. Emory’s work in the war, you know, the studies with learning and body chemistry-
    “The human body has internal regulating systems, the whole complex that regulates sex and growth and defense against infection. In a replication, the genetic code isn’t the whole game. Experience impacts the chemical system the genetic code set up. This is all available in the scientific journals. I could give you the actual references-“
    “You’re doing quite well,” Corain said. “Please.”
    “Say that we know things now that we didn’t when we cloned Bok. If the program does what Dr. Emory hopes, we can recover the ability in the same field. It involves genetics, endocrinology, a large array of tests, physiological and psychological; and the records have to be there. I don’t know all of it. It’s Dr. Emory’s project, it’s secret, and it’s in a different wing. But I do know that it’s serious and it’s not extremely far off the present state of the art. A little speculative, perhaps; but you have