Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [9]
Van Atta's comconsole disgorged a couple of data disks, which he plucked off. "You put me on the fast track. I've always thought it must give you a sense of satisfaction, since you spend so much of your time training, to see one of your old students make good."
Van Atta was no more than five years younger than Leo. Leo suppressed profound irritation—he wasn't this paper-shuffler's ninety-year-old retired Sunday school teacher, damn it. He was a working engineer, hands-on, and not afraid to get them dirty, either. His technical work was as close to perfection as his relentless conscientiousness could push it, his safety record spoke for itself. . . . He let his anger go with a sigh. Wasn't it always so? He'd seen dozens of subordinates forge ahead, often men he'd trained himself. Yeah, and trust Van Atta to make it seem a weakness and not a point of pride.
Van Atta spun the data disks across the room at him. "There's your roster and your syllabus. Come on, and I'll show you some of the equipment you'll be working with. GalacTech's got two projects in the wind they're thinking of finally turning these Cay Project quaddies loose on."
"Quaddies?"
"The official nickname."
"It's not, um . . . pejorative?"
Van Atta stared, then snorted. "No. What you do not call them out loud, however, is 'mutants,' genetic paranoia being what it is after that Nuovo Brasilian military cloning fiasco. This whole project could have been carried out much more conveniently in Earth orbit, but for the assorted legal hysterias about human gene manipulation. Anyway, the projects. One to assemble jumpships in orbit around Orient IV, and another building a deep space transfer facility at some nexus away the hell-and-gone beyond Tau Ceti called Kline Station—cold work, no habitable planets in the system and its sun is a cinder, but the local space harbors no less than six wormhole exits. Potentially very profitable. Lots of welding under the most difficult free-fall conditions—"
Leo's brief angst was swallowed in interest. It had always been the work itself, not the pay and perks, that held him in thrall. Screw executive privilege—didn't it mostly mean being stuck downside? He followed Van Atta out of the office back into the corridor where Tony still waited patiently with his luggage.
"I suppose it was the development of the uterine replicators that made it all possible," Van Atta opined while Leo stowed his gear in his new quarters. More than a mere sleep cubicle, the chamber included private sanitary facilities and a comconsole as well as comfortable-looking sleep restraints—no morning backache on this job, Leo thought with minor satisfaction. Headache was another problem.
"I'd heard something about those things," said Leo. "Another invention from Beta Colony, wasn't it?"
Van Atta nodded. "The outer worlds are getting too damn clever these days. Earth's going to lose its edge if it doesn't shape up."
Too true, Leo thought. Yet the history of innovation suggested this was an inevitable pattern. Management who had made huge capital investments in one system were naturally loath to scrap it, and so the latecomers forged ahead—to the frustration of loyal engineers. . . . "I'd thought the use of uterine replicators was limited to obstetrical emergencies."
"Actually, the only limitation on their use is the fact that they're hideously expensive," said Van Atta. "It's probably only a matter of time before rich women everywhere start ducking their biological duties and cooking up their kids in 'em. But for GalacTech, it meant that human bioengineering experiments could at last be carried out without involving a lot of flaky foster-mothers to carry the implanted embryos. A neat, clean, controlled engineering approach. Better still, these quaddies are total constructs—that is, their genes are taken from so many sources, it's impossible to identify their genetic parents either. Saves quantities of legal grief."
"I'll bet," said Leo faintly.
"This whole thing was Dr. Cay's obsession,