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"Creatures with up to forty-nine percent human genes are property?"
"I didn't make the laws, Peej. I just enforce them."
She snorted. "And as for abuses-why, I could show you the records of things that would penetrate even that armored skin of yours and make your stupid failsafe heart go into fibrillation!"
I thought about some of the things I had seen. "I sincerely doubt that, Peej."
"Every one of us should be ashamed to participate in such a system! Don't you ever feel ashamed?"
"Not when I'm doing my job, Peej."
Realizing she was getting nowhere with me, Grahame-Ballard seemed to deflate. "And your job now is to find and execute a noble creature who is plainly the moral and ethical and sentient equal of you or me… "
"Peej," I said, trying to keep calm, "you have not seen the bloody results of that 'noble creature's' brutal actions. I have."
"And who made him what he is? Mankind!"
I got wearily to my feet. "Peej, the Kat is one bad splice.
I advise you to use a long spoon when you dine with him."
"There are no bad splices, only bad owners."
"If you say so."
Back on the street I was silent for a while, letting Grahame-Ballard's rifkinesque memes percolate uneasily through my cortex.
After a few blocks, Sonny said, "We will now be staking out Peej Grahame Ballard? Perhaps you have surrepetitiously planted dustcams on her already?"
''What makes you say that?"
"Plainly you intend to catch her dining with Krazy Kat."
I had to replay the conversation in my head.
"Metaphor," I sighed.
"Thank you."
***
I met Xuly Beth that night in Hopcroft's Cockaigne.
In reality, of course, I was back in our apartment in Boston and she was off on assignment somewhere up in the Arctic, twiddling with icebergs or glaciers or some other such pleasantly nonsentient and tractable phenomenon. We made it a point when she was in the field to meet at least four times a week at one virtuality site or another. Our current favorite was Hopcroft's Cockaigne, with its candy mountains and sodapop rivers, peppermint trees and cottoncandy clouds. (Although I couldn't imagine coming here much more: not only was the construx starting to reveal its shallowness, but lately it reminded me too much of the strange reality humanity was making of baseline Earth!)
We were wearing our actual appearances, since we saw too little of each other lately to be bored by our real shapes and faces.
"Creatures with up to forty-nine percent human genes are property?"
"I didn't make the laws, Peej. I just enforce them."
She snorted. "And as for abuses-why, I could show you the records of things that would penetrate even that armored skin of yours and make your stupid failsafe heart go into fibrillation!"
I thought about some of the things I had seen. "I sincerely doubt that, Peej."
"Every one of us should be ashamed to participate in such a system! Don't you ever feel ashamed?"
"Not when I'm doing my job, Peej."
Realizing she was getting nowhere with me, Grahame-Ballard seemed to deflate. "And your job now is to find and execute a noble creature who is plainly the moral and ethical and sentient equal of you or me… "
"Peej," I said, trying to keep calm, "you have not seen the bloody results of that 'noble creature's' brutal actions. I have."
"And who made him what he is? Mankind!"
I got wearily to my feet. "Peej, the Kat is one bad splice.
I advise you to use a long spoon when you dine with him."
"There are no bad splices, only bad owners."
"If you say so."
Back on the street I was silent for a while, letting Grahame-Ballard's rifkinesque memes percolate uneasily through my cortex.
After a few blocks, Sonny said, "We will now be staking out Peej Grahame Ballard? Perhaps you have surrepetitiously planted dustcams on her already?"
''What makes you say that?"
"Plainly you intend to catch her dining with Krazy Kat."
I had to replay the conversation in my head.
"Metaphor," I sighed.
"Thank you."
***
I met Xuly Beth that night in Hopcroft's Cockaigne.
In reality, of course, I was back in our apartment in Boston and she was off on assignment somewhere up in the Arctic, twiddling with icebergs or glaciers or some other such pleasantly nonsentient and tractable phenomenon. We made it a point when she was in the field to meet at least four times a week at one virtuality site or another. Our current favorite was Hopcroft's Cockaigne, with its candy mountains and sodapop rivers, peppermint trees and cottoncandy clouds. (Although I couldn't imagine coming here much more: not only was the construx starting to reveal its shallowness, but lately it reminded me too much of the strange reality humanity was making of baseline Earth!)
We were wearing our actual appearances, since we saw too little of each other lately to be bored by our real shapes and faces.