Miles, Mystery & Mayhem - Lois McMaster Bujold [157]
She leaned back in her chair and whistled tunelessly a moment. "Damn that diversion anyway. But for that, I'd say the cuckoo's-egg scenario had the most appeal. It accounted so nicely for Millisor's activities. . . . Rats."
"The what scenario?"
"Cuckoo's-egg. Do you have cuckoos on Athos?"
"No . . . Is it a reptile?"
"An obnoxious bird. From Earth. Principally famous for laying its eggs in other birds' nests and skipping out on the tedious work of raising them. Now found galaxy-wide mainly as a literary allusion, since by some miracle nobody was dumb enough to export them off-planet. All the rest of the vermin managed to follow mankind into space readily enough. But do you see what I mean by a cuckoo's-egg scenario?"
Ethan, seeing, shivered. "Sabotage," he whispered. "Genetic sabotage. They thought to plant their monsters on us, all unawares . . ." He caught himself up. "Oh. But it wasn't the Cetagandans who sent the shipment, was it? Uh—rats. It wouldn't work anyway. We have ways of weeding out gene defects . . ." He subsided, more puzzled than ever.
"The shipment may have incorporated material stolen from the Cetagandan research project, though. Thus accounting for Millisor's passion for retrieving or destroying it."
"Obviously, but—why should Jackson's Whole want to do that to us? Or are they enemies of Cetaganda?"
"Ah—hm. How much do you know about Jackson's Whole?"
"Not much. They're a planet, they have biological laboratories, they submitted a bid to the Population Council in response to our advertisement year before last. So did half a dozen other places."
"Yes, well—next time, order from Beta Colony."
"Beta Colony was the high bid."
She ran a finger unconsciously across her lips; Ethan thought of plasma burns. "I'm sure, but you get what you pay for. . . . Actually, that's misleading. You can get what you pay for on Jackson's Whole too, if your purse is deep enough. Want to have a young clone made of yourself, grown to physical maturity in vitro, and have your brain transferred into it? There's a 50% chance the operation will kill you, and a 100% guarantee it kills—whatever individual the clone might have been. No Betan med center would touch a job like that—clones have full civil rights there. House Bharaputra will."
"Ugh," said Ethan, revolted. "On Athos, cloning is considered a sin."
She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, yeah? What sin?"
"Vanity."
"Didn't know that was a sin—oh, well. The point is, if somebody offered House Bharaputra enough money, they'd have cheerfully filled your boxes with—dead newts, for instance. Or eight-foot-tall bioengineered super-soldiers, or anything else that was asked for." She fell silent, sipping her beer.
"So what do we do next?" he prodded bravely.
She frowned. "I'm thinking. I didn't exactly plan this Okita scenario in advance, y'know. I don't have orders for active interference in the affair—I was just supposed to observe. Professionally speaking, I suppose I shouldn't have rescued you. I should have just watched, and sent off a regretful report on the radius of your splatter to Admiral Naismith."
"Will he, ah, be annoyed with you?" Ethan inquired nervously, with a skewed paranoid flash of her admiral sternly ordering her to restore the original balance by sending him to join Okita.
"Naw. He has unprofessional moments himself. Terribly impractical, it's going to kill him one of these days. Though so far he seems able to make things come out all right by sheer force of will." She speared the last tidbit on the platter, finished her beer, and rose. "So. Next I watch Millisor some more. If he