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our founders anticipated; and if we make this further push there’s going to be a critical difference between us mid our descendants-there’s no miracle, no Estelle Bok, no great invention going to close up this gap. That’s my view. I can’t express that from Reseune.”
    “Dr. Warrick, are you telling me your communications are limited there?”
    “I’m telling you there are reasons I can’t express that view there. If you leak this conversation to the press I’ll have to take Reseune’s official position.”
    “Are you telling me, Dr. Warrick, that that transfer is what you’re holding out for?”
    “The transfer, Councillor. Myself. And my son. Then I would have no fear of expressing my opinions. Do you understand me? Most of us in the field that could speak with authority against the Hope project-are in Reseune. Without voices inside Science, without papers published-you understand that ideas don’t gain currency. Xenology is strongly divided. The most compelling arguments are in our field. You do not have a majority in the nine electorates, Councillor. It’s Science itself you have to crack, Ari Emory’s own electorate. This, this psychogenesis project is very dear to her heart-so much her own, in fact, that she doesn’t let her aides handle it. It’s the time factor again. On the one hand, there’s so very little in a lifetime. On the other-a process that involves a human life has so many hiatuses, so many periods when nothing but time will produce the results.”
    “Meaning we’ll still have her to deal with.”
    “As long as she lives, definitely, you’ll have her in Council to deal with. That’s why the Fargone project is an advantage to both of us. I’d like to take a public position, on your side. An opposition from inside Reseune, as it were, particularly from another Special-would have considerable credibility in Science. But I can’t do it now, as things are.”
    “The important question,” Gorodin said, “aside from that: is the Rubin project likely to work? Is it real?”
    “It’s very likely that it will, Admiral. Certainly it’s a much more valid effort than the Bok project was. You may know, we don’t routinely create from the Specials’ genesets. Even our genetic material is protected by statute. On a practical level, it’s the old ‘fine line’ business-genius and insanity, you know. It’s not total nonsense. When we create azi, the Alpha classes take far more testing and correction. Statistically speaking, of course. What went wrong with the Bok clone was what could have gone wrong with Bok, give or take her particular experiences, and influences we don’t have record of. Our chances of recovering a currently living Special are much better. Better records, you understand. Bok came here as a colonist, her records went with her ship, and it was one of the de-built ones: too much was lost and too much just wasn’t recorded. I’m not sure we ever will get Bok’s talent back, but it certainly won’t be in the present project. On the other hand-recovering, say, Kleigmann … who’s, what?- pushing a century and a half … would be a real benefit.”
    “Or Emory herself,” Corain said under his breath. “God. Is that her push? Immortality?”
    “Only so far as any human might want progeny like himself. It’s not immortality, certainly no sense of identity. We’re talking about mental similarity, two individuals more like each other than identical twins tend to be, and without a dominant twin. Essentially the recovery of an ability latent in the interface between geneset and what we call tape in an azi.”
    “Done by tape?”
    Warrick shook his head. “Can’t be done with tape. Not by present understanding.”
    Corain thought it through again. And again.
    “Meaning,” Gorodin said, “that with our lead in genetics and reconstructive psych, we might replicate living Specials as well as dead ones.”
    “That is a possibility,” Warrick said quietly, “if