Birthright

they were the first race ever to defeat us in anything resembling a major battle. It happened something

like five centuries ago, and, since it occurred so far out on the Rim, the Oligarchy managed to cover it up for more than a century without much difficulty. Then the news finally got back to Deluros VIII, Sirius V, and some of the other major worlds, and all hell broke loose. The people demanded that the Oligarchy do something. For a decade or so the whole damned government racked its collective brain to come up with an answer before they were overthrown, and then some pigeonholer remembered the Project. Overnight, we were given a staff of two hundred men, which gradually increased to three thousand, and our budget was absolutely astronomical. The science of biochemistry learned more in the next ten years than it had in the past seventy centuries, and the Oligarchy had sold the public on a pipedream: we were going to create a race of supermen that would blast the Setts to kingdom come. Worked out beautifully all the way around. Of course, we found out a little while later that the Setts were terribly vulnerable to measles, and they surrendered without any trouble once we sprayed their home world with about a million tons of the virus. But the people had bought the dream of a super race, and the government found it politically expedient to keep up work on the Project.” “Is that what you meant when you implied it was all a fraud?” asked Rojers hotly. “That the Oligarchy really doesn't want to come up withHomo superior ?” “Not at all,” said Herban. “They probablydon't want any supermen knocking about—and, if they thought about it, neither would the populace at large. But no one has tried to hinder us in any way. If God Himself popped out of one of our incubators, there's no way anyone could make us put Him back. Nor,” he added with a chuckle, “could they make Him go back if He decided He didn't want to. But that's not the case. God isn't about to crop up around here. At least not as a direct result of our experiments.” “You keep saying that,” said Rojers, feeling more lost than ever. “Why?” “It should be obvious,” said Herban. He pressed a series of buttons on his desk computer, waited for a moment, then glanced at the readout. “As of this minute, we have made 1,036,753 experiments involving human genes. We have tried to force evolutionary patterns on DNA molecules, we have tried to create out-and-out mutations, we have bombarded genes and chromosomes with preset patterns and at random. We have tried well over three thousand approaches, and hundreds of thousands of variations on these approaches. In the process, we've done a hell of a lot for the science of parthenogenesis, but we haven't come up with our supermen yet. Did it ever occur to you to ask why?” “No more than once an hour or so.”

“Well, the problem is too simple for a bright young feller like yourself to solve. Now, if you asked some savage descendant of one of the Delphini II colonists, he'd probably tell you right away.” “Since I don't know any aborigines on a first-name basis,” said Rojers, “I'll have to put the question to you. With no comparison intended.”

“No offense taken.” Herban smiled. “The solution to the problem is simply one of definition, which is doubtless caused by our somewhat more sophisticated background.” “I don't follow you, sir,” said Rojers. “Let's put it this way. Our idea of a racial superman would differ considerably from an aborigine's, wouldn't it? I mean, his ideal would be a man who could kill a large herbivore with his bare hands, survive under extremes of temperature, have the sexual potency to father a whole world, and so forth. Agreed?”