Dying of the Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

me, t’Larien,” he said, “do you consider the Altered Men human?”
    “Of course,” Dirk said. “They are. Settled by the Earth Imperials way back during the war. The modern Prometheans are only the descendants of the old Ecological Warfare Corps.”
    “In truth,” Janacek said, “yet I would disagree with your conclusion. They have manipulated their own genes to such a degree that they have lost the right to call themselves men at all, in my opinion. Dragonfly men, undersea men, men who breathe poison, men who see in the dark like Hruun, men with four arms, hermaphrodites, soldiers without stomachs, breeding sows without sentience—these creatures are not men. Or
not-men,
more precisely.”
    “No,” Dirk said. “I’ve heard the term
not-man
. It’s common parlance on a lot of worlds, but it means human stock that’s been mutated so it can no longer interbreed with the basic. The Prometheans have been careful to avoid that. The leaders—they’re fairly normal themselves, you know, only minor alterations for longevity and such—well, the leaders regularly swoop down on Rhiannon and Thisrock, raiding, you know. For ordinary Earth-normal humans—”
    “Yet even Earth is less than Earth-normal these past few centuries,” Janacek interrupted. Then he shrugged. “I should not break in, should I? Old Earth is too far away, in any event. We only hear century-old rumors. Continue.”
    “I made my point,” Dirk said. “The Altered Men are still human. Even the low castes, the most grotesque, the failed experiments discarded by the surgeons—all of them can interbreed. That’s why they sterilize them, they’re afraid of offspring.”
    Janacek took a swallow of beer and regarded him with those intense blue eyes. “They do interbreed, then?” He smiled. “Tell me, t’Larien, during your year on that world did you ever have occasion to test this personally?”
    Dirk flushed and found himself glancing toward Gwen, as if it were somehow all her fault. “I haven’t been celibate these past seven years, if that’s what you mean,” he snapped.
    Janacek rewarded his answer with a grin, and looked at Gwen. “Interesting,” he said to her. “The man spends several years in your bed and then immediately turns to bestiality.”
    Anger flashed across her face; Dirk still knew her well enough to recognize
that
. Jaan Vikary looked none too pleased either. “Garse,” he said warningly.
    Janacek deferred to him. “My apologies, Gwen,” he said. “No insult was intended. T’Larien no doubt acquired a taste for mermaids and mayfly women quite independently of you.”
    “Will you be going out into the wild, t’Larien?” Vikary asked loudly, deliberately wrenching the conversation away from the other Kavalar.
    “I don’t know,” Dirk said, sipping his beer. “Should I?”
    “I’d never forgive you if you didn’t,” Gwen said, smiling.
    “Then I’ll go. What’s so interesting?”
    “The ecosystem—it’s forming and dying, all at the same time. Ecology was a forgotten science in the Fringe for a long time. Even now the outworlds boast less than a dozen trained eco-engineers between them. When the Festival came, Worlorn was seeded with life forms from fourteen different worlds with almost no thought as to the interaction. Actually
more
than fourteen worlds were involved, if you want to count multiple transplants—animals brought from Earth to Newholme to Avalon to Wolfheim, and thence to Worlorn, that sort of thing.
    “What Arkin and I are doing is a study of how things have worked out. We’ve been at it a couple years already, and there’s enough work to keep us busy for a decade more. The results should be of particular interest to farmers on all the outworlds. They’ll know which Fringe flora and fauna they can safely introduce to their homeworlds, and under what conditions, and which are poison to an ecosystem.”
    “The animals from Kimdiss are proving particularly poisonous,” Janacek