Borders of Infinity

'They offered me protection from House Bharaputra. Although, if you're it …' he looked doubtfully down at Miles.

Ha. And, hell. The man really was ready to bolt. Leaving Miles to explain the failure of his mission to Chief of Imperial Security Illyan in person. 'They bought our services,' said Miles, 'and therefore you command our services. They want you safe and happy. But we can't begin to protect you when you depart from a plan designed to maximize your safety, throw in random factors, and ask us to operate in the dark. I need full knowledge of what's going on if I'm to take full responsibility for the results.'

'No one is asking you to take responsibility.'

'I beg your pardon, doctor, but they surely have.'

'Oh,' said Canaba. 'I … see.' He paced to the window, back. 'But will you do what I ask?'

'I will do what I can.'

'Happy,' Canaba snorted. 'God . . .' he shook his head wearily, inhaled decisively. 'I never came here for the money. I came here because I could do research I couldn't do anywhere else. Not hedged round with outdated legal restrictions. I dreamed of breakthroughs . . . but it became a nightmare. The freedom became slavery. The things they wanted me to do . . . ! Constantly interrupting the things I wanted to do. Oh, you can always find someone to do anything for money, but they're second-raters. These labs are full of second-raters. The very best can't be bought. I've done things, unique things, that Bharaputra won't develop because the profit would be too small, never mind how many people it would benefit—I get no credit, no standing for my work—every year, I see in the literature of my field galactic honors going to lesser men, because I cannot publish my results . . .' He stopped, lowered his head. 'I doubtless sound like a megalomaniac to you.'

'Ah . . .' said Miles, 'you sound quite frustrated.'

'The frustration,' said Canaba, 'woke me from a long sleep. Wounded ego—it was only wounded ego. But in my pride, I rediscovered shame. And the weight of it stunned me, stunned me where I stood. Do you understand? Does it matter if you understand? Ah!' He paced away to the wall, and stood facing it, his back rigid.

'Uh,' Miles scratched the back of his head ruefully, 'yeah. I'd be glad to spend many fascinating hours listening to you explain it to me —on my ship. Outbound.'

Canaba turned with a crooked smile. 'You are a practical man, I perceive. A soldier. Well, God knows I need a soldier now.'

'Things are that screwed up, eh?'

'It . . . happened suddenly. I thought I had it under control.' 'Go on,' sighed Miles.

'There were seven synthesized gene-complexes. One of them is a cure for a certain obscure enzyme disorder. One of them will increase oxygen-generation in space station algae twenty-fold. One of them came from outside Bharaputra Labs, brought in by a man—we never found out who he really was, but death followed him. Several of my colleagues who had worked on his project were murdered all in one night, by the commandos who pursued him—their records destroyed—I never told anyone I'd borrowed an unauthorized tissue sample to study. I've not unravelled it fully yet, but I can tell you, it's absolutely unique.'

Miles recognized that one, and almost choked, reflecting upon the bizarre chain of circumstances that had placed an identical tissue sample in the hands of Dendarii Intelligence a year ago. Terrence See's telepathy complex—and the main reason why His Imperial Majesty suddenly wanted a top geneticist. Dr. Canaba was in for a little surprise when he arrived at his new Barrayaran laboratory. But if the other six complexes came anywhere near matching the value of the known one, Security Chief Illyan would peel Miles with a dull knife for letting them slip through his fingers. Miles's attention to Canaba abruptly intensified. This side- trip might not be as trivial as he'd feared.

'Together, these seven complexes represent tens of thousands of hours of research time, mostly mine, some of others—my life's work.

I'd planned from the beginning to take them with me. I bundled them up in a viral insert and placed them, bound and dormant, in a live . . .' Canaba faltered, 'organism, for storage. An organism, I thought, that no one would think to look at for such a thing.'

'Why didn't you just store them in your own tissue?' Miles asked irritably. 'Then you couldn't lose 'em.'

Canaba's mouth opened. 'I … never thought of that. How elegant. Why didn't I think of that?' His hand touched his forehead wonderingly, as if probing for systems failure. His lips tightened again. 'But it would have made no difference. I would still need to . . .' he fell silent. 'It's about the organism,' he said at last. 'The . . . creature.' Another long silence.

'Of all the things I did,' Canaba continued lowly, 'of all the interruptions this vile place imposed on me, there is one I regret the most. You understand, this was years ago. I was younger, I thought I still had a future here to protect. And it wasn't all my doing—guilt by committee, eh? Spread it around, make it easy, say it was his fault, her doing . . . well, it's mine now.'

You mean it's mine now, thought Miles grimly. 'Doctor, the more time we spend here, the greater the chance of compromising this operation. Please get to the point.'

'Yes . . . yes. Well, a number of years ago, House Bharaputra Laboratories took on a contract to manufacture a … new species. Made to order.'

'I thought it was House Ryoval that was famous for making people, or whatever, to order,' said Miles.

'They make slaves, one-off. They are very specialized. And small– their customer base is surprisingly small. There are many rich men, and there are, I suppose, many depraved men, but a House Ryoval customer has to be a member of both sets, and the overlap isn't as large as you'd think. Anyway, our contract was supposed to lead to a major production run, far beyond Ryoval's capabilities. A certain subplanetary government, hard-pressed by its neighbors, wanted us to engineer a race of super-soldiers for them.'

'What, again?' said Miles. 'I thought that had been tried. More than once.'

'This time, we thought we could do it. Or at least, the Bharaputran hierarchy was willing to take their money. But the project suffered from too much input. The client, our own higher-ups, the genetics project members, everybody had ideas they were pushing. I swear it was doomed before it ever got out of the design committee.'

'A super-soldier. Designed by a committee. Ye gods. The mind boggles.' Miles's eyes were wide in fascination. 'So then what happened?'

'It seemed to … several of us, that the physical limits of the merely human had already been reached. Once a, say, muscle system has been brought to perfect health, stimulated with maximum hormones, exercised to a certain limit, that's all you can do. So we turned to other species for special improvements. I, for instance, became fascinated by the aerobic and anaerobic metabolism in the muscles of the thoroughbred horse—'

'What?' said Thorne, shocked.

'There were other ideas. Too many. I swear, they weren't all mine.'

'You mixed human and animal genes?' breathed Miles.

'Why not? Human genes have been spliced into animals from the crude beginnings—it was almost the first thing tried. Human insulin from bacteria and the like. But till now, no one dared do it in reverse. I broke the barrier, cracked the codes … It looked good at first. It was only when the first ones reached puberty that all the errors became fully apparent. Well, it was only the initial trial. They were meant to be formidable. But they ended up monstrous.'

'Tell me,' Miles choked, 'were there any actual combat-experienced soldiers on the committee?'

'I assume the client had them. They supplied the parameters,' said Canaba.

Said Thorne in a suffused voice, 'I see. They were trying to reinvent the enlisted man.'

Miles shot Thorne a quelling glower, and tapped his chrono. 'Don't let us interrupt, doctor.'

There was a short silence. Canaba began again. 'We ran off ten prototypes. Then the client . . . went out of business. They lost their war—'

'Why am I not surprised?' Miles muttered under his breath.

'—funding was cut off, the project was dropped before we could apply what we had learned from our mistakes. Of the ten prototypes, nine have since died. There was one left. We were keeping it at the labs due to … difficulties, in boarding it out. I placed my gene complexes in it. They are there still. The last thing I meant to do