Sporting Chance

Chapter Seventeen

The grounds of the Institute of Neuroscience had lush green lawns and flowering shrubs. A few low domes protruded through the greenery, and a stubby blocklike building rose from a grove of trees in the distance. Heris rode a silent electric car hardly big enough for her and the driver from the public transit stop to the entrance, and wondered aloud at the spaciousness.

“A bomb attack thirty years ago,” the driver said, over his shoulder. “The Benignity, of course. They thought they were getting a manufacturing complex . . . we rebuilt underground, even though that’s no real protection against modern munitions. But it was all ugly and crowded before; this way we have something pretty to look at.”

At the front desk, Heris handed over her official documents, with the Royal Seal of the Familias Regnant. She had noticed three nondescript men in the waiting room . . . Geralds all, scattered among the other patients.

“Ah—are you the patient, Captain?”

“No. But I would prefer not to explain here.”

“Of course. Perhaps you and . . . is the patient here?” The clerk managed, heroically Heris thought, not to peer into the waiting room.

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps you and the patient would come this way.” Heris gave the hand signal the Geralds had taught her, and one by one they ambled up to the desk, leaned over, and took the colored card the clerk held up. Her eyes widened but she said nothing.

Doctors Koshinsky and Velun. Male and female, short and tall, thick and thin, dark and fair. Koshinsky’s dark beard was only slightly darker than his skin, and he came up to Velun’s elegant silk-clad shoulder. Heris wondered what they thought of her and the clones. The clones had shed their disguises, and now wore identical coveralls; they looked like a frieze of tall blond princes, to which she was a short dark punctuation. Or, in the metaphor of music (she still thought it was strange to name a planet Music), “da-da-da-dum.”

“Can you describe the problem any more precisely, Captain?” asked Dr. Velun. Height, blonde hair, a glacial beauty . . . she could be mother or aunt to those princes.

“I thought that was in the king’s letter.”

“Unfortunately not. What it says is that he was given a demonstration of a drug to inhibit higher cognitive processes, and its reversibility, in a person of his son’s age. Then that same drug—he thinks—was administered to his son, causing a relative inability to learn and perform cognitive tasks at the level his innate abilities warranted—” She broke off and gave Heris a hostile look. “Quite frankly, Captain Serrano, we would regard such a use of any method of lowering intelligence to be quite unethical. In our culture, intelligence is respected.”

“If I understand correctly,” Heris said, “the king was given a choice of having his son partially and temporarily incapacitated or assassinated; his older sons had both died, one by assassination and one in . . . er . . . dubious circumstances. It was not an easy choice.”

“Even so,” Dr. Velun said. “And now, I understand, he wants to see if the effect can be reversed by someone other than the . . . mmm . . . perpetrator?”

“That’s right. I should also mention that the use of clone doubles is not only unethical but illegal in our society.”

“Not here,” Dr. Koshinsky said. “We grow clones all the time; we’ve nothing against clones. They have full legal identity.”

“The problem is, these clones have been trained to be the prince’s doubles. Now each of them claims he is not the prince, that the prince is somewhere else. I was twice informed that the person I was taking aboard was the prince, only . . .” Heris nodded at the three. “Only I have no way of telling the difference. And I think it likely that they are somehow programmed or conditioned not to reveal the prince’s identity.”

“Were the clones also treated to inhibit their intelligence?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t even told there were clones.”

“Hmm. Then, the first step is to examine these young men—with their permission of course—”

“Certainly,” said the three princes, or clones, or Geralds. And, still in unison, “You won’t be able to distinguish us from one another.” Heris had her doubts. Anyone who could scan weapons an R.S.S. ship would miss might well have new and better ways to tell a prime from its clone.

Two days later, Dr. Velun called Heris in for another conference. She had a stack of data cubes and a cube player already set up.

“Let me tell you what we’ve found out so far . . . do you have a medical background, by any chance?”

“No, sorry.”

“Well—I’ll do my best. Do ask questions when they occur, will you? Now. We know that the prince is a Registered Embryo. Now in the Familias Regnant, that means an embryo guaranteed to carry the genetic markers of the certified biological parents. All known flaws eliminated, and enhancements included—”

“Enhancements?”

The doctor was glad to explain. “Legally, all the genes—whole genes—must come from either the certified mother or the certified father. Given a sufficiency of sperm and ova, from almost anyone, it’s possible to select desirable—even outstanding—gene fragments. Humans are superbly heterozygous; it’s only a question of knowing which sequences correlate with which desired trait. But there are practical limits on the quantity of genetic material . . . time constraints, for instance. By the time you’ve located the single recessive gene you want, in one of the fifty million sperm you examined, the ovum may be overripe. If it’s not to be a gamble, much like the original, you use enhancements.”

“And those are?”

“Gene fragments, not whole genes, which means they can be substituted—with the usual techniques—” Heris had no idea what the usual techniques were and didn’t really care. “For instance, intelligence. Everyone has known since Old Earth times that intelligence is not a single entity, a single faculty. There are modules, specialized clumps of neurons which preferentially work with certain inputs.” That made Heris think of the yacht’s scanning computers—this one for detecting one kind of input and interpreting it, and that one for another. She said that and Dr. Velun looked pained. “Not really. Or rather, in a way, but not completely. The human brain has developmental preferences, but it’s also remarkably plastic: it responds to experience, so that the more experience in a cognitive domain, the more likely that function is to work well. But more important, to this patient, is what happens when things go wrong.”

Heris nodded. She found it hard to concentrate, even though she needed to be able to explain to the king later. What had gone wrong was the prince got stupid: simple, and—if not reparable—the end of the king’s hopes. The doctor talked on and on, and Heris felt herself falling more and more behind. What was a dedicated neuron? What did Dr. Velun mean by saying that some of them were supposed to die off?

Dr. Velun began to talk about drugs that might have caused the prince’s problem. “One thing that would work is a protein that blocks the production of a given neurotransmitter by tying up the RNA on which the protein would be constructed—I presume you do know something about biochemistry—?”

She must have recognized Heris’s glazed incomprehension at last. “Sorry,” Heris said. “My specialty lies elsewhere. I know what DNA is—” Sort of, she thought to herself. A spiral molecule of genetic material, that was about it. “But the function of different kinds of RNA—that’s beyond me.”

Dr. Velun looked pained, started with a chemical description, stopped short, glared at her, and finally shrugged. “You won’t get it, not in the time we have.”

Perversely, Heris was now determined to understand. “Look—if you’ll give me time to read something—even a child’s version—I’m sure I can learn. It’s just that it’s so far from my own background—”

Velun’s face contracted in a scowl. “Right. Warfare. I suppose you know how to kill people.”

This sort of hostility was familiar; Heris smiled at her. “Well, yes, but so do you. Any medical researcher knows as many lethal tricks as I do. No, my expertise is in the equipment and the personnel—to take just one system, knowing how the environmental system aboard each class of ship works, where the pipes are, how many technicians are needed to service it, and what to look for to be sure it’s working correctly. I must know the interactions of all shipboard systems, so that if the electrical system goes down for any reason, I can keep the ship’s crew alive without the electrically powered pumps and blowers in the environmental system.”

“Engineering,” the doctor muttered.

Heris let her smile widen. “Yes, it is. So is clinical medicine, to my view: know the systems, recognize when something’s wrong, and know what to do about it.”

That coaxed a tiny smile. “Well . . . I suppose. We like to think of ourselves as researchers, too.”

“I’m sure you are. So are some of us—spacefleet officers, I mean. A friend of mine solved a century-old problem in oxygen exchange systems. That’s never been my talent—I can keep on top of existing systems, but I’m not an innovator. But I know and respect those who are.”

“Well.” Velun seemed to be considering that fairly. “If you really want to know, then, there’s an undergraduate course on cube—I have a copy because my second daughter’s going to be taking it next year. Or, if you want a fast take, there’s the induction trainer.”

The induction trainer gave Heris a headache. Still, it was fast. She agreed.

When she came up from the course, the first thing she thought of was not the prince, but Lady Cecelia. She had a glimmer of what might have been done to her, although she recognized her own inexpertise.

“Could that—the same mechanism—cause a strokelike appearance in an elderly patient?”

This time she talked to Dr. Koshinsky; Dr. Velun was, he said, busily working out sequences . . . and now Heris understood, in principle, what that was and why it was important. Dr. Koshinsky rocked back on his heels, considering her suggestion. “Not by itself, I wouldn’t think. It could maintain that appearance, but the onset would be too slow. Why?”

Heris explained all she knew of Cecelia’s condition. “One of her visitors described what looked like an implanted delivery system for drugs. That could be the maintenance drug you’re talking about.”

The doctor’s eyebrows went up. “Is this a . . . political person you’re speaking of?”

“Heavens no.” Heris wondered, even as she said it, if that were completely true. Lady Cecelia did not choose to involve herself in politics much, but she had, after all, pressured the Crown into arranging the pardon and restitution for convicted military personnel. If that wasn’t political power, Heris wondered what was. She tried to explain to the puzzled doctor. “She’s a very wealthy, very independent elderly lady—my former employer, in fact. In perfect health, so far as anyone knew. She collapsed in what appeared to be a stroke, followed by coma, but we have reason to suspect that’s not what really happened. If she was felled by some chemical attack, could you reverse it?”

The doctor pursed his lips. “We’d have to get to her, or her to us. There’s no way I’d touch this long distance. Where is she?”

“I have no idea. I can—possibly—get in contact with someone who knows where she is.”

“It would be better to intervene as soon as possible. If spontaneous recovery doesn’t occur in the absence of the neurotoxins, degeneration can occur from inhibition of response.”

“I—don’t know how her recovery has gone.”

“Find out. You’re sure this was an intentional injury?”

“Reasonably sure. She had made some enemies.” Heris paused a moment, then added, “In fact, I was suspected of having done it.” If their investigation revealed this, better she had been open about it. “Her family, a very prominent one, was upset because she mentioned me in her will.” She paused a moment, and realized there was no real advantage to concealing Cecelia’s identity. “Lady Cecelia de Marktos . . .” He was nodding before she finished the full thing; he recognized the name.

“I see. But you want her to recover.” It was not quite a question. Heris fought back the automatic anger.

“Yes. Not only is she my employer, she’s my friend. She’s . . . remarkable.” There was no way to describe Cecelia to a stranger. Heris’s memory presented an image of Cecelia on that special horse at Bunny’s, wind whipping back her short grizzled hair, face alight as they galloped down to a stone wall. “You’d have to know her.”

“As a matter of fact, I know a little. My niece is horse crazy, and we gave her the complete set of Great Riders. So I’ve seen Lady Cecelia, at least as she was at her peak.” He paused, then went on. “If you don’t know where she was taken, may I suggest a possibility? She used to own a stud farm and training facility on Rotterdam . . .”

“She wouldn’t be there,” Heris said quickly. “It’s too obvious. She’d have been taken somewhere less . . .”

“The thing is, you could find out without much trouble. She’s known and loved in the world of those who breed and train performance horses. They don’t care about politics, on the whole, but they do care about each other. They will know where she is, I’m sure, and while they may not tell you, they’ll tell her friends you’re looking.”

It was a chance, the best one she’d had. “Do you need me here while you work on the prince?”

“Not really.”

“Then—I think I’ll go find her. Bring her back. You have adequate security here . . . ?”

“We hope so.”

“Then I can leave the prince and his clones—or the clones without the prince—and, by the way, haven’t you found any way yet to distinguish them?”

“Not yet. They claim they were told it was possible, but none of them knows how it worked. Or so they say. It’s a pity; I have to say we find their creation and use as mere doubles very bothersome. As I said before, we consider clones to be fully human, with the same rights as other humans. These young men seem to think they have no right to exist without their so-called prime. It is an ethical problem for us, because we would normally attempt to give them the psychological support they need to become independent, fully-functioning adults . . . yet this is not what your king asked for in his contract, and we suspect he will not approve that service. You are only his agent, I realize, but if you’re going back to Familias space, I hope you can convey to him our very grave reservations. We would like to have some guarantee that these young men will be granted some sort of citizenship when they return.”

“Do they need all three clones to untangle them?” Petris asked when she reported this conversation.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because like you I worry about assassination. If those doctors are so convinced the clones should be treated like everyone else, then they aren’t going to confine them. After all, they’re healthy, full of energy . . . what do you want to bet they’ll decide to give them outpatient privileges or something? I agree that we should try to find Lady Cecelia and bring her here if she wants to come—but even though the king lied to us, we still have that obligation.” Petris sounded as if he’d been thinking about this for days.

“So, what do you suggest?”

“Take one or two of the clones with us. Openly. Then if someone tries to wipe them out, they’ll get only two—or one—whatever.”

“Ah. So which should I take?”

“I don’t see that it matters; let them choose.”

“Get us ready, then. I want to leave as soon as possible.”

“I suppose I should warn you that Oblo’s made some new friends.” But there was a trickle of amusement in Petris’s voice.

“What this time?” Heris asked.

“Well, he got a good deal on a new ship identity that he thinks will hold up better than the last one. . . . we’re now the Harper Valley, in case you want to know.”