Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

understand,” he said. “As far as I can make out, it’s not cataloged.”
    “But there’s that log reference,” Bram said.
    “Yes,” the librarian agreed. “It goes back half a millennium. It must have been withdrawn from circulation for some reason.”
    “But why?”
    “I don’t know. The only thing I can think of is that somebody must have borrowed the file while it was still at a temporary memory address. And that it’s been gathering electronic dust in a private file all these centuries. Why don’t you ask Voth-shr-voth?”
    “I suppose I’ll have to. I didn’t want to bother him. He has a lot on his mind these days.”
    Hogard nodded in understanding. “When he goes into the change, a whole era goes with him. He may be the last living member of that touch group. He was one of the youngest associates.”
    Bram ran a fingertip along the tens axis of the Nar-style waistwatch he wore for a belt. “It’s almost quitting time. I’m supposed to meet someone at the gene co-op. I’ll talk to Voth tomorrow.”
     
    “You’re already registered, of course,” the gene broker said. “At birth. We’ve called up copies of your charts from the central files. But we like to do our own mapping. You’d be surprised at the discrepancies that can crop up when you’re dealing with more than a hundred thousand genes per person, to say nothing of the chromosomal protein factors.”
    He was a plump-cheeked young man in a high-collared tunic that looked uncomfortable where it cut into the underside of his chin. He had turned on a practiced heartiness as soon as he had seated Bram and Kerthin opposite him at the little round console that, Bram supposed, controlled the wall screen.
    “Is it legal?” Bram asked.
    The broker gave him a pained look. “My dear friend, of course! The Nar reproductive monitors are perfectly happy to have us act as their agents in these matters. After all, human beings are not cabbages. They understand perfectly that an element of free choice must be preserved. All we’re required to do is to stay within the parameters.”
    “ Their parameters,” Kerthin said scornfully.
    Bram’s heart sank. He had hoped Kerthin would be on her best behavior.
    But the gene broker was used to coping with difficult clients and their doubts. “Very broad parameters in our generation, fortunately,” he said smoothly. “Essentially, all we’re doing is following Original Man’s plan for avoiding the dangers of genetic drift—extrapolating from the master genome in an orderly mathematical progression. By now we’ve derived enough new genotypes and expanded the human population sufficiently to give us considerable latitude. In fact—” His face took on an expression of professional benevolence. “—our chief function these days, I sometimes feel, is to assign custody of the children. And the Nar very wisely agree that those decisions are best left to a human agency.”
    Kerthin’s face softened at the mention of children, and Bram gave a silent sigh of relief. “And what would our chances be of getting jurisdiction of a construct?”
    The broker pursed his lips. “Excellent, I’d say. I can’t see that any question would arise. You’re both young, healthy, with no obvious heterozygous matching problems in your charts. You’ll almost certainly qualify for the twenty-five percent minimum, so that if the young lady opts to exercise her prerogative for host mothership as well as gene mothership, that should clinch matters. You understand, of course, that every human child must be assigned a Nar proxy parent—just as we ourselves were—but the baby would be yours to raise.”
    “What about it, Kerthin?” Bram asked, looking into her eyes.
    She bit her lip. “I’d like time to think about it.”
    “Of course, of course, take all the time you wish,” the genebroker boomed. “There’s no hurry.”
    “I suppose,” Kerthin said slowly, “that other bits and pieces of our gametes will go into the construction of other babies?”
    “That goes without saying,” the broker said. “Look at it this way. Your primary offspring will have dozens of partial brothers and sisters running around the Compound.” He assumed an expression of piety. “When it comes to that, we’re all brothers and sisters in a sense— every human being alive. We all share nucleotide sequences in some degree from the metagenome and its appendices.”
    “I don’t know,” Kerthin said. “It seems to me