Ursala twitched her shoulders in a kind of shrug. “Yes,” she said. “I know. I was escorted to a room last night and warned that it wasn’t safe to wander. Then this morning, when I was escorted back, Paul left the drone here with some vague comment about routine security scans. Obviously I’m being watched, just as you are.
“That’s one side of the equation. Here’s the other. I’ve been given access to the most incredible array of medical technology I’ve ever seen – including back in Duglas before it fell. The sub-assemblies and plug-ins in this room are quite literally priceless. There’s probably nothing like this facility anywhere in the world. Whatever their motives are, I can’t afford to say no to what these people are offering.”
“They’re not people,” Monono said.
“Neither are you, dead girl, and yet you expect us to trust you. The way I see it, we came here in the very faint hope of finding gene-editing tech. So we could stop an extinction event.” Ursala waved her hand over the bench, and all the tech that was there. “Well, we might end up finding exactly what we need. Against all the odds, it could be right here in this room.”
“The odds might look different from the dealer’s side of the table, baa-baa-san.”
“What do you mean?”
“You said they might be offering exactly what you needed. Exactly what do they need?”
Ursala didn’t seem to want to answer that. For the first time since I knowed her, she dodged a question. “You know what’s at stake here. If I can turn the diagnostic into a genetic loom, I can increase the ratio of live births to a level that could make all the—”
“Blah blah blah!” Monono broke in, loud enough so it made me start even though I knowed we was inside the cone of silence. “Stop telling us what we already know. You did a deal with them and you don’t want to say what it is.”
Ursala grimaced. “They’ve asked me to use the diagnostic to treat the boy.”
“To treat him for what?” I asked. “What’s he sick with? Is it something to do with the sores on his head?”
“According to Paul and Lorraine, he has a number of congenital conditions. Birth defects of one kind and another. They’ve refused to be any more specific than that, but what they want me to do – assuming I can build a working loom – is to edit his chromosomes to remove the aberrant genes.”
“Is that a kind of medicine to make him better?”
Ursala gun to answer, but hesitated.
“That would depend on the genes, wouldn’t it, baa-baa-san?” Monono said. “And you don’t seem convinced.”
“Don’t try to browbeat me.” Ursala sounded impatient. “But you’re right, I’m inclined to be sceptical. The list of gene loci they’ve provided… Well, it’s long. Several hundred different alleles, none of which have any medical significance. In fact, some of them don’t have any function at all. They’re in parts of the chromo-some that aren’t expressed.”
“It sounds like they’re lying to you then,” Monono said. “Giving you some make-work to keep you busy while they go ahead and do something else.”
“I don’t know though,” I said. “They seem awful eager to get Stanley fixed. And they was asking about the dagnostic even before they picked us up out of the water. If this is a trick, they’re putting their shoulder to it.”
“I don’t think it’s a trick.” Ursala touched her finger to one of the pieces of tech on the bench, giving it what I thought was a longing look. “I just think they’re lying about what they want, and why they want it. If the boy is a clone, as you say… Well, perhaps something went wrong with the cloning process. Transcription errors or…” She shaked her head. “I don’t know. Perhaps I should have refused to cooperate. But given what I could do with a gene-splicer if I got it to the mainland, it was hard to say no.” Her finger was tapping light but fast on the tech, like her thoughts was racing by and she was trying to count them as they passed. “There’s a full surgical module in here too. A fluid regulator. A brain imager. I don’t know if I can build a working interface, but it feels wrong not to try. It’s not as though we’ve got any way of leaving without the Banners’ help. We don’t even have a boat any more.”
“I’ll find us a boat!”
“Fine then. But in the meantime, the only way I maintain access to this stuff is by playing along with the Banners’ agenda.”
“You mean you’re willing to perform surgery on a child?” Monono’s voice was sharp. “Without knowing what it is you’re doing?”
Ursala looked unhappy her own self, but she give back that sharpness when she spoke. “I know exactly what I’m doing, even if the reasons are obscure. What they’re asking for is completely harmless. It won’t do the boy any good, but it can’t injure him. It’s an unnecessary procedure – it must be – and that’s a line I wouldn’t normally cross. Right now, I’m prepared to stretch a point.”
“They’re unlikely to keep their promises,” Monono said.
“I’m not a fool. Perhaps while I’m working here the three of you can find a way for us to get us out of here once I’m done. I assume they must have lifeboats. Probably in plastic drums on the deck. If this was a warship, they could have tactical skimmers too.”
“It’s going to be hard for us to do it,” I said. “They’re watching us close, like I said. But we’ll try.”
“Koli, that surgical module…”
“What about it?”
“I checked its inventory. It includes gender reassignment.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It could give Cup an outside that matches her inside. A woman’s body. Fully functional.”
My mouth gaped open, and at first I couldn’t find no words to speak. That sounded like magic to me. Then again, tech was like magic in a whole lot of ways.
“Don’t mention that to Cup. If I don’t succeed… I wouldn’t want to raise a hope like that and then take it away again. But you see why I’ve got to stay? Why I’ve got to try at least? Everything we hoped for is here.”
“Time’s up,” Monono said. “The Stepford wife is coming back. I’m going to have to drop the field, so you should probably say something boring for the sake of appearances.”
But the door opened before I could think of anything, and Lorraine was among us again.
“The dread hour is come,” she said, with a big smile on her face to show this was meant to be a joke. “I’ve come to claim my prize. Come along, Koli Faceless.”
“A moment, please,” Ursala said. “Koli, I want you to pass this along to Cup. Her hormone mix. It should keep her going for… oh, at least four days.” She give me a little box from inside the dagnostic’s big cupboard. The lid of the box was made of something like glass, that you could see through. Inside was a row of bottles no longer than the top of my thumb, all filled with what looked like water. They was not just bottles though, they was what Ursala called hypos, with plungers at the top and needles at the bottom.