Birthright

the Project demanded that everything be aboveboard and open. In fact, the Project had been created and maintained solely because of the demands of the populace.

The doors opened, and Herban led Rojers past two security checks, and into still another horizontally moving enclosure. There were three more changes of direction, all accompanied by increasingly rigid security inspections, until at last they arrived before a massive lead portal, which slowly slid back before them when Herban inserted his identification card into a small practically invisible wall slot. “This is it,” grunted the Chief of Biochemistry as he walked through the doorway. Rojers looked around and was unimpressed. It didn't seem all that different from the portion of the complex he was familiar with: corridors going every which way, numerous doors with signs indicating the departments and subdepartments contained within, and what seemed to be a fair-sized auditorium at the far end of the largest corridor. An occasional technician in a lab smock walked out of one door into another, and once Rojers thought he saw a woman scurrying down a corridor in a lead body suit. By and large, however, there didn't seem to be any of the frantic hustle and bustle and frenzied activity that marked the huge incubator room and its surroundings.

Still, there were a couple of oddities. Like the woman in the lead suit, and the fact that two of the doors

he passed as he followed Herban seemed to be made of lead, while the others covered a whole range of plastics.

They came to a corridor marked MAXIMUM SECURITY and turned down it. Herban nodded to a couple of technicians who were speaking in low tones outside one of the doors, then stopped at a large, unmarked panel. Another insertion of his identification card was followed by another sliding of the barrier, and the two men walked into what gave every indication of being an extremely sophisticated laboratory, though it was filled with equipment that was, for the most part, totally unfamiliar to Rojers. There were far fewer pieces of apparatus for working on genetic structures, but considerably more devices which seemed, on the surface at least, to bear some resemblance to encephalographic and cardiographic machines. Unlike the sterile laboratory atmosphere Rojers had become used to working in during the greater portion of his adult life, this place seemed built for comfort as much as efficiency. All around him were padded chairs, ashtrays (though that could simply be an offshoot of Herban's assumption that everyone—buteveryone— should smoke cigars), food-dispensing machines, books and tapes of popular fiction, and the facilities for bathing the room in music, light images, or both. “Have you any idea where you are?” asked Herban pleasantly, seating himself by an ashtray. “No,” said Rojers. “Though I must admit I've often thought your bedroom would bear a resemblance to this place.”

Herban chuckled and lit up another cigar. “Afraid not. My bedroom is usually filled to the brim with the fattest, nakedest women money can buy. No, boy, you're in one of our basic testing rooms.” “Who do you test here,” asked Rojers, “and for what?” “We test people,” said Herban. “And we test them to see if they're your hypothetical supermen.” “Now I'm thoroughly confused,” said Rojers. “I thought you said we couldn't create supermen, and you sounded damned convincing. Are you telling me now that you were lying?” “Not at all.”

“Then how do these so-called supermen come to be? What lab produces them?” “No lab does. When I said Man will not evolve into a mental superman, I wasn't lying to you. I did not, however, say that a mental superman cannot exist.” “I feel as if I were back in school,” said Rojers in exasperation. “Every time I think I know what you're talking about, you stick another stone wall in front of me.” “Well, I'll admit you've had to discard a lot of wrong assumptions,” said Herban, “but everything I've told you today is both true and noncontradictory. For example, I said that we cannot evolve into mental supermen. That's true. Now I'm telling you that there are indeed mental supermen, and that we work with them down here. That's also true.”

“If we didn't create them, how did they get here?” persisted Rojers. “Pretty much the same way you and I got here: natural selection, natural conception, and very likely natural childbirth as well.” Rojers just stared at him. “You see,'’ continued Herban, “these supermen

aren't mutations—or at least, not in the sense that you've been working on mutations. I'll make it simple

for you. Possibly a million human mutations are conceived every day. Probably half of them are reabsorbed within hours. Of the others, most are such minor mutations as to go virtually unnoticed: a child born with a yellow spot in a head of otherwise red hair, or maybe with a weird-looking birthmark. Some get minor attention, like a baby with six fingers, or with a thin layer of flesh over its anal outlet, or with the potential for only twenty-six teeth at adulthood. Usually they're so minor we don't even notice them. And, to be sure, very few mutations breed on. We still have the appendix, we still have tonsils, we still have hair on our bodies. Despite the fact that there have been some families where no mother has nursed her baby in eighty or ninety generations the female children still develop breasts, sometimes rather large and lovely ones. No, as I said, mutations rarely breed on, and no mutation has yet produced a superman with any more mental capacity than you or I possess. “However,” he said, stabbing the air with his cigar, “no mutation isneeded to produce a mental superman. As I mentioned upstairs, all that's required is for a man or a woman to use one hundred percent—or even fifty percent—of the potential he or she is born with.” “And you've found such people and test them down here?” asked Rojers. “We've been finding such people for four millennia or more,” said Herban. “And yes, we test them here.”

“And what talents have you found?”

“Oh, a little bit of everything. Except for prescience. Usually the hunchers, as we call them, can sense impending events, but never the details. Most often it's simply a feeling of almost unbearable expectation, and rarely does it apply or relate to anyone but themselves. But we've gotten telepaths who can send, receive, or both. We've gotten levitators. We've found teleporters, though there have been only three of them, and two of the three had to be threatened irreversibly with death before they could find the wherewithal to teleport themselves. We've found far more people who are adepts at telekinesis. And, of course, we've gotten some intelligences that have gone right off the scale, brainpower so high that we've still no real way of measuring it.”

“Fantastic!” said Rojers. “And wonderful!” “Fantastic, at any rate,” said Herban dryly. “Still, most of them go home intact.” “What do you mean, go home intact?” demanded Rojers. “Just what I said. Why do you think we're doing all this testing?” “I assume for the same reasons we've been trying to force evolution in the incubator rooms: to create a superman.”

“Butthese supermen have already been created,” pointed out Herban. “Then I would imagine you'd want to train them to use their talents to the best of their abilities, for the good of the Oligarchy.”

“What an absolutely childish answer!” Herban laughed. “If enough of them used their abilities to their maximum potential, the Oligarchy—and Man—would be finished within fifty years or so. No, my idealistic boy, we definitely donot help them become supermen and then turn them loose on society.”

“You mean youkill them all?” demanded Rojers.

“Don't look so damned horrified,” said Herban. “Let's not forget that you have killed just about every single life you've created.'’

“But those were just babies,” protested Rojers. “And more than half of them were still in the fetal state.” “It comes to the same thing,” said Herban. “However, if it'll put your mind at ease, we don't bring them down here for the express purpose of killing them. We have a galaxy-wide structure set up to spot every human with what you might call a wild talent. And considering how many trillions of humans there are, we don't miss very many. Anyway, once they're found—and adolescence is usually the earliest that such traits can be determined by outside observers—they're either brought here or to one of seven similar labs scattered throughout the galaxy.

“Once here, they're tested thoroughly. Before we're done, we know the absolute limits of their abilities; quite often, we find talents eventhey didn't know they possessed. We also run a comprehensive analysis of their genetic structure, DNA code, sperm, ovum, everything that could possibly influence their offspring, though I must admit we've found nothing unusual as yet. That done, we are free to reach one of three decisions. If there is any chance that the talent will breed on—and since we can't determine it genetically, we simply assume it is possible if anyone in the past five generations has displayed any