She walked out on her balcony, semi-inerted and soared across the scrambleway to Don Plackmon's office. He watched her approach, and stood up and stepped around his desk when she came in. He gave her a squeeze and a kiss to which she responded with casual pleasure. Don was nice—and handsome as well.
She pushed herself back from him after a moment and said, "I know I'm early for your invitation to lunch, Don, but I'm starving. Let's go now."
"Sure, Rayeal," he agreed, nuzzling her. "You always give me an appetite."
"For what?"
He chuckled. "I'll settle for food right now. Look. Old Marchell wants to join us, and much as I'd prefer to be alone with you, it's not good form to say no to the boss. I'd better give him a call."
"Okay," she nodded.
Plackmon tongued his toothmike and commed briefly with Boll Marchell while Gweanvin considered the point that Marchell was not with the lunching group of bigwigs, which probably meant he would not be present at the upcoming test. Security wraps must be on very tight indeed to exclude one (and perhaps both) of the two major production chiefs, she mused.
Plackmon reported, "Boll says for us to go on and he'll join us in a few minutes."
"Good. Let's go."
They left the office and soared up through the scramble area to the dining garden level, which they entered and found a table for three where Marchell would see them when he arrived. "I'm going to try something on the ancient Egyptian menu today," said Plackmon.
"Go ahead. I'm in a steak and potatoes mood myself."
He laughed. "You weren't kidding about being starved."
They punched their orders, and Plackmon said, "Was that dish who came to see you who I think it was?"
"How you ever get any work done with all your girl-watching, I'll never know," Gweanvin replied tartly. "Yep, that was my fellow mutant, Marvis Jans."
"You're much prettier than she is," he murmured, leaning close. "She doesn't have your full lips."
"Yeah, but she's got a lot of full other places I don't—as you might just possibly have noticed."
Plackmon laughed. "Give yourself time, Rayeal. You're beginning to bud very nicely." Their lunches arrived and they busied themselves with eating for a moment before he said, "I find it very hard to think of you as a mutant, you know. You don't look all that unusual. Neither does she. It's hard to imagine your genes being so different from mine."
"Genetic tension," she replied around a mouthful of extremely rare steak.
"Tension?"
She nodded. "That's part of evolutionary theory which post-dates Darwin by several centuries, after geneticists began to find out how such things really work. You're the same species as Homo Neanderthalensis, who was chipping flint on Earth thirty thousand years ago. He was homo sapiens the same as you, but if you saw him you probably wouldn't be sure he was even human—and he would be just as dubious about you. But still you could mate and produce offspring. And knowing you, you probably would."
"Only in a pinch, my dear," he chuckled.
"The difference between you and Neanderthal Man can be summed up as genetic tension," she continued her explanation. "The species changes, adapts to new environmental demands and to somatic responses to our conscious ideas of what man should be. Changes in the genetic structure go with these adaptations, but they aren't the kind of basic changes that mark a difference of species . . . only the difference between individuals or races within a species.
"But they do place something of a strain on the original pattern. This strain, genetic tension, gradually builds toward a point where no further departure from the original is possible without breaking the species pattern itself. Humanity reached that stage in late Earth-Only times, it seems. People have been pretty much the same ever since.
"But in the meanwhile, we've changed our environment drastically. We have our life-support implants that enable us to live on almost any half-way habitable planet—or go streaking through interstellar space stark naked, for that matter. We've found the psych-release techniques with which to clean up ourselves, as ego-fields, and eliminate insanity. We've developed the econo-war as our major social institution, simply to make existence more of a competitive challenge than it would be otherwise. All of which adds up to the fact that homo sapiens needs to change into something as different from present man as present man is from the Cro-Magnon. But he can't, because his genetic tension is already as tight as it can get.
"So," she finished, "here we are, Marvis Jans and myself—and Gweanvin Oster in the Commonality. We have some structural differences that set us apart from homo sapiens, such as nasal bridges of solid bone. Also we mature more slowly and probably live longer. But the really important difference is that genetically we're a new species, with zero genetic tension. Our offspring can adapt like mad for a long time to come. They're the ones who'll really be different."
Plackmon nodded slowly, and started to speak but at that moment Boll Marchell joined them. "Hope I'm interrupting something intimate," he remarked, favoring Gweanvin with his best dirty-old-man leer.
"Rayeal was just explaining why my love for her is tragic," Plackmon replied. "Sit down, Boll."
Marchell sat, punched his selection on the menu. "Gene-crossed lovers, hah?"
Gweanvin said, "I think Don's real throb is for a big-busted visitor I had this morning. His eyes bulged out into the scrambleway when he saw her."
"Marvis Jans?" asked Marchell.
"Yes. Have you met her?"
"Just briefly."
"What do you think of her?"
"Well, if you and she are does I'd hate to tangle with the buck!" Marchell chuckled. "She's quite a doll, but hardnosed in more ways than one."
"One step farther from the primordial flat-faced apeman," said Gweanvin. "Do you really find her formidable?"
"Damned right I do. And you, too. That's why I'd hate to tangle with a male of your species."
Gweanvin thought about it, puzzled momentarily. "Oh, you mean because men are more competitive, more combative than women," she hazarded.
He nodded. "Yours would make a terrific econo-warrior—if he bothered with the econo-war at all."
Gweanvin considered the point with interest. She hadn't thought of the missing male from that standpoint before. What Marchell had said about the male role was certainly true for humanity and numerous other species.
"What else is the male's job?" she asked.
"Finding and courting a mate, of course," said Marchell.
"Well, ours is certainly goofing on that," she replied.
"Or biding his time perhaps. I get the impression Marvis Jans is trying to do both his job and her own as well. The typical female role is merely to make known her presence and readiness, by whatever means of communication is appropriate for the species. Miss Jans has done that. Now she's searching, and that's usually the male's prerogative."
Gweanvin chuckled. "Then it's enough for Marvis or me to announce, 'Here I am. Come get me.' And then wait for Mr. Super-Econo-Warrior to show up."
"Probably. And just keep yourselves amused in the meantime, you with the project and such as poor Don here, Marvis with her frontlining and every homo sap who lays eyes on her."
"Speaking of which, I have a hunch big things are about to happen on the project, now that Marvis has come to make sure our labs aren't spy-infested. Pay-off time may be here, gents."
Plackmon grinned. "You still think our project is Monte-related?"
"What else?" she shrugged. "We are on Narva, a nothing-planet except for being Orrbaune's nearest habitable neighbor—a mere six light-years away from where Monte is, of necessity, permanently located. And our section has been building a . . ."
"If you're going to give us one of your speculative commentaries on the nature of the project," Plackmon broke in, mashing a button on the table's control box, "let's keep it between the three of us." A baffle-screen snapped on surrounding the table, effectively curtaining the occupants and their words from others in the dining garden.
Marchell laughed. "We don't need security agents with Don around," he said.
"Yeah, I wonder sometimes if his interest in me is as ulterior as he pretends that it is," said Gweanvin.
"I'm merely a conscientious little econo-warrior," Plackmon contended stoutly. "As you were about to say . . ."
"Well, our section has been building what we hope is a reasonable facsimile of the Primgranese Commonality's telepathic transceiver, the Bauble. We don't know—or I don't—what the other section's been doing. But my guess is that they're working on a communications link to tie Monte on Orrbaune in with the Bauble here on Narva.
"Now, essentially, a Bauble is just a dead device," Gweanvin continued, with the eagerness of a bright child showing off its talent, "whereas Monte is a living being, not only capable of receiving and sending telepathic messages, but of originating thoughts of his own. This makes him far superior, and more useful, than a Bauble could ever be. But one shortcoming of both Monte and a Bauble is limited range. One can cover a single planetary system, and that's all.
"What we really need to get ahead of the Primgranese is a Federation-wide telepathic comm system, something that can spread throughout our portion of the galaxy. Maybe it would be possible to link Baubles alone into that kind of network, but the Primgranese must be trying that, with no success that I know of.
"Anyway, we have Monte, and would want him in our network. And if we have some linkage system to tie him in with a Bauble at interstellar distance, the logical place to locate the first test Bauble would be right here on Narva. Otherwise, this under-populated ball of dirt would be about the last place in the Federation to rate a Bauble."
She paused, looking at Boll Marchell, then asked, "Well, what do you think?"
Marchell grinned. "I think it would take one hell of a comm system to link Monte with the Bauble when they are six light-years apart."
"Yes," she nodded, "that's what fascinates me. All our section has done is try to duplicate Primgranese work. But Hobard Dawnor's section . . . gosh, I'd give my eye teeth to know what they've got!"
"You never had any eye teeth," said Plackmon.
"Figure of speech," she replied absently. "Of course the actual spanning-signal could be an exceedingly broad-band version of standard subwarp communications. What intrigues me is the nature of the interface between Monte and the transmitter on Orrbaune, and between the receiver and the Bauble here on Narva. In other words, how is telepathy translated into transmittable signals, and how are those signals then converted back into telepathy? That's the real breakthrough involved in this project."
"And you can't figure it out?" asked Marchell.
"No. In fact, I bet Monte himself had to figure it out. Who else would know enough about telepathy?" She studied him closely. "You know if I'm right or not, Boll," she accused, although she knew he did not, "but you won't tell me."
He chuckled. "That's econo-war for you, Rayeal. Never let your right hand know what your left is doing."
"Suppose you are right, Rayeal," said Plackmon, wearing a serious frown, "don't you think such a project has some disturbing implications?"
"I don't see why it should," she lied. "I would think it might bother my new friend Marvis Jans, though. If Monte's telepathic ability is extended over the whole Federation, that'll put all our internal security agents out of work, her included."
"That's what I'm getting at," said Plackmon. "Every Federation citizen's mind will be subject to scrutiny. As matters now stand, those of us who prefer to keep some mental privacy have the option of staying away from Orrbaune. If your speculating is accurate, we're going to lose that option."
"That doesn't sound much like the conscientious little econo-warrior," Gweanvin kidded. "Actually, though, I'm a little hesitant about giving up mental privacy, too. But if everybody else does . . . and the people on Orrbaune don't seem bothered by it. They say Monte is a perfect gentleman and very discreet. He doesn't spread around the thoughts that need to remain private. And since he's not human, it doesn't matter much if he knows a person's thoughts. He doesn't take advantage. And if you're worried about some kind of thought control, he steers totally clear of that."
"Now, but will he always?" Plackmon argued.
Gweanvin shrugged. "What's 'always'?"
Marchell put in, "The Primgranese gave up emotional privacy long ago. They use emo-monitor implants, and it doesn't seem to bother them. It merely improves communication."
"We would have had emo-monitor implants of our own by now," said Gweanvin, "except that if this project is a success we won't need them—so they're dragging their feet on getting them into production."
"You sound so sure of everything you say," laughed Plackmon. "Is that because you're a woman, or is it a characteristic of the new breed?"
"It's because we're having an argument," she replied. "If I'm right about the purpose of the project I don't want my triumph weakened by a lot of 'perhapses' and 'maybes'. And if I'm wrong you guys won't be polite enough to remember any 'maybes' anyway.