"The Transgenic Falcon"

I read once that even after a situation when people expect to die they don’t immediately jump for joy if they live. The author talked about our instinctive avoidance of our own mortality and the fact that size of the concepts of self-ending and self-continuance are far too big to wrestle with in the first minutes after survival. I can’t say if it is true or not but “I’m alive!” is not the first thing I said when I came to.

It was “Ow”. That’s me all over; a pithy comment for every situation.

I was lying on my back and everything hurt. Head, back, stomach, legs; the whole package was one big throb of pain. I couldn’t see. I didn’t figure out that I was bleeding into my eyes until I raised both hands and felt the wetness. I used both hands to wipe it away.

Using both hands was odd, since I had intended to use only my right hand. It was then that my brain found its gear and realized that my hands were taped together. Someone had rescued me from a mob that probably would have killed me, but it wasn’t Gen-Tech security.

It was dark where I was lying, but the space seemed to sway a little every now and then. And there was the tell-tale hiss of rubber on asphalt. I was in the back of a van of some description, going somewhere unknown. Not good.

I tried to sit up, but flexing my abs at this point was counter-indicated; as they informed me in a chorus of literally gut-wrenching pain. I groaned and fell back.

“Hey! I think he’s awake” said a voice off to my left and beyond my feet.

I heard shuffling footsteps. Someone took a grip on my shoulders, pulling me up into a sitting position against what I assumed was the back doors of the van. It hurt but nowhere near as much as trying to get myself up without the help of my hands.

“There you go, fellow,” said a different voice near my head. “We thought you might be happier waking up lying down. That was one hell of a beating you were taking.”

Now I was confused and it wasn’t just because of incipient shock. My first guess had been that this was the van of some of the god-botherers who had been playing a drum solo on me. But they wouldn’t have given two damns about my comfort.

That little fact was on the plus side. Still on the negative side was the fact I was in a panel van with my hands tied. You don’t have to be genius to know that rarely ends with cake and balloons for everyone. I decided to await new developments.

“Now that you’re awake, let’s get you cleaned up a little bit,” said the second voice. I heard a water bottle being opened then a cool wet clothe was being run over my face. “I’d say that your shirt is ruined, but I can’t tell if looked like that already.”

Everywhere I go there is an endless supply of frustrated comedians. I decided I’d call the second voice Funny-Boy until I had a name for him. And maybe even after.

After getting most of the blood out of my eyes, and off my face, Funny-Boy gently pulled off a blood soaked bandage, one I hadn’t even known I was wearing. He started replacing it, giving me a chance to get a good look at one of my captors.

He wasn’t anything special. If you saw him on the street, you’d probably forget him before you reached the next block, if not sooner. Five ten, medium build, tanned face, with squint lines around that eyes that suggested someone who boats a lot, curly dark brown hair cut short, and brown eyes. Like I said, not that memorable, though I was filing every detail away so I could describe him later to the police.

He took out a little flashlight and waved it back and forth in my eyes. Ow. Between his calm manner with the blood and the light I figured he’d been a paramedic or corpsman in one of the armed services.

“I don’t think you’re bleeding anywhere else, how do you feel?”

“I’d feel a lot better if you untied me,” I said in a croaking voice. Funny-Boy nodded and with a half smile handed me the rest of the bottle of water he’d been using to clean me up. I took a long and grateful swig.

“Yeah, sorry about that, but we’ve been asked to bring you to talk the Big Man. Given how you were when we snagged you, we figured you might wake up still ready for a fight.”

“And now?”

He scratched at an ear, looking a little embarrassed.

“Well, now, we need to be sure you don’t kick up a fuss before we get there. I’m sure you see how it is.”

Oh, yeah, of course I saw how it was! After all people kidnapped from an angry mob can be so unreasonable. You might not believe it, but I managed to keep my mouth from actually saying that. It probably counts as a miracle or something.

“So where are we going? Is it going to be long? I might need to worry about circulation being cut off.”

Funny-Boy sat back on his haunches against one wall, no mean trick in a moving van.

“Thirty or forty minutes depending on traffic. But don’t worry I put the tape on myself, it won’t be a problem. Why don’t you just sit back and relax?”

Now I knew we were going somewhere outside the city center. Other than the port, which is closer and a straight shot, it didn’t rule anything out. Relaxing sounded like a good idea, but so far my captors had been willing to talk, so it was important to keep them talking. You never know what you might find out that would be useful.

“So, you guys rescued me? Thanks, though I kind of wish you’d been a little faster.”

Funny-Boy laughed a little under his breath. “Well, it wasn’t like we had much choice. You had a lot of playmates who wanted a piece of you. We waded in before the Gen-Tech cops even got their thumbs out of their asses.”

“And how come you were there at all?”

“When the big man said he wanted to talk to you we thought we’d be able to catch you coming out and invite you.”

“Invite?” I asked holding up my bound hands

“The plan was always to have you come voluntarily. The fact is, you want to talk to our boss; you just don’t know it yet.”

“If you say so. Since we have some time, who are you guys? Who do you work for?”

The quiet one stood up and duck-walked back to us, holding his balance with one hand on a wall. He came forward into the light. He had a long face, and one of those really long mustache and goatee combos like Fu Man Chu in an old comic book. His long black hair was tied back and his very pointed ears showed. He leaned forward and smiled, showing off pointed teeth. They were either filed or a custom set of veneers, not that it mattered at this point.

“We are the Alliance for Transhumanism! The AT is where it’s at!”

He said it with a lot of dramatic flourish, as if it should mean something to me and fill me with awe or fear or whatever. I didn’t even have to pretend I had no idea who they were.

I looked over at Funny-Boy and raised my eyebrows in a mute question. He rolled his eyes.

“The Alliance for Transhumanism is a lobbying group with the goal of making genetic engineering for humans a reality. To let us blend what is best of the animal kingdom with humanity.”

“Oh, the AT, sure, very impressive,” I told them. It’s always a good idea to let kidnappers think you are a swell guy, but somehow Pointy-Ears-and-Chompers seemed less than convinced. Maybe it was something in my tone.

“Scoff all you want monkey-boy, but transhumans are the future of hominid evolution!” he hissed.

“Good to know. Is that how you got the…” I trailed off and made a two handed gesture to his after-market add-ons.

“I wish! These are only cosmetic changes, they aren’t genetic. When the government finally stops repressing the technology, I’ll make the full change to a chimera, a Man-Bat!”

Uh-huh. Bat as in bat-shit crazy for sure. That’s a great big flashing red light when you are a captive. I turned what I hoped was the more sane of my captors.

“What about you? Are you looking to become a man-cheetah or something?”

He slid down the wall and sat crossed legged. “Not me. Flyer here is an idiot. He thinks that we’ll have the tech to make major changes in living people in the next ten years.”

“I’m telling you man, it’s already there, it’s just a question of letting the public have access!” Flyer burst in.

Funny-Boy gave him a medium hard glare, and Flyer retreated to his seat towards the front of the cargo area. Well, that settled the question of who was in charge. I dug a little deeper.

“So if not for yourself, why do you want this tech?”

“For my children, of course. Man evolved in certain conditions, and then continued to do so as he built a civilization. Our early modern human ancestors couldn’t digest milk as adults, like all other mammals. But once we started keeping heard animals that changed. Are you with me?”

“Sure, those who could use the new food source lived longer, had more kids so the trait was bred in.”

“Right, but the process is too slow and is short circuited by modern medicine. We find ways to help people with counter-productive mutations survive. That’s a good thing, but it means natural selection has slowed way, way down.”

“So you want to speed up human evolution. To what end?”

“Well, imagine if you had a pilot who had the visual acuity of an eagle, with the blazing reflexes of a humming bird. Miners with the eyes of a night predator and the disproportional strength of a chimpanzee. The possibilities are endless!”

Funny-Boy started to warm to his subject, but I was only listening enough to make the right noises to keep him talking. I thought about what he was saying.

I get wanting your kids to have things better than you did, that’s a basic human drive. But I didn’t think that the kind of specialization he was talking about would work out. He saw it from a private citizen’s point of view, but it was what a government could do with it that worried me.

Extra strong people with super night vision, doesn’t sound like a miner to me. It sounds like a combat scout. Same with the pilot example, what would make a great commercial pilot goes double for any air force in the world.

Then there is the problem of specialization in the first place. I’d just spent time with people who had been created for a specific job and were, as far as I could tell, ill suited for other jobs. What if your kid doesn’t want to be a pilot or a miner? What if she isn’t mentally suited for it? At that point you’ve made your child a misfit for life.

There were other problems as well. After the first few generations would these altered people still consider themselves human? Sure the ones raised by unmodified parents would, but as they had their own children and passed on these hard-wired traits would they feel any kinship to the rest of us? Would they even be human enough to feel that kinship?

We don’t really know what killed off the Neanderthals. It was probably climate change. But at least a little of the blame has to be laid at the feet of Homo Sapience’s, who were competing for the same food, the same living spaces. Would these new transhumans eventually out-compete us?

And if they did start to out-compete us, is there anyone who thinks that we old-style humans will take it quietly? I sure as hell didn’t.

Maybe it was the day I was having, but as Funny-Boy talked about the rosy future from genetic engineering, all I could see was a dark time where humanity was fractured not along lines of race or religion or national origin, but by an unbridgeable chasm of genetics.

Worst of all it was giving me some sympathy for the god-botherers point of view. Not that man shouldn’t meddle with these things because the invisible sky daddy says so but the fear they had of the results. I hate it when I find myself agreeing with people I think of as annoying busy-bodies.

While I’d been mulling this over, we’d slowed and come to a stop. I though we were at our destination, but then the van started moving forwards, slowly. After another minute we did come to a halt.

Flyer and Funny-Boy helped me to my feet. Every muscle in my body queued up to the complaints window.

The backdoors swung open and I jumped down onto a crushed white granite driveway. We were standing in the shade of huge old oaks, in front of an honest to God mansion. Marble steps were flanked by columns of the same material. The windows all had a reflective coating, making them look like so many mirror-shaded eyes.

A man tall and wide enough to make Funny-Boy look unfinished came out of the front door and down the steps. He was wearing a suit that had to cost more than my monthly rent, and if it were not for the buzz cut and the distinctive shape of a suit coat cut to hide a gun, I would have thought he was the head honcho. He just oozed with authority.

Body-guard, sub-type commander, no doubt.

He looked the four of us over with eyes the same color and warmth of arctic skies, paying special attention to me and my disheveled state.

“Why is Mr. Hunt restrained?” he asked in a gorgeous syrupy baritone. If he ever wanted to give up the flunky business, he had a big career in radio.

“Uh, we didn’t want him to try to run or escape,” Funny-Boy said looking anywhere but directly at the man.

“You couldn’t just ask him not to?” he asked, then turned to me. “Mr. Hunt, my apologies for the way you’ve been treated. If we untie you will you give your word not to try to leave until you’ve talked with Mr. Logue?”

I gave a quick glance around. At the end of about three hundred yards of driveway there was a gate in the ten foot high wall. It must have been where we stopped. The gate was manned by two guards and a set of obvious cameras.

“Not really much point in trying, is there?”

“No, sir. As I hope my associates have said, Mr. Logue expects this meeting to be of benefit to you as well as him.”

“In that case, sure, I’ll talk with your boss.”

Quick as a snake a blade appeared in his hand and before I could flinch he’d cut through the layers of tape holding my writs together. The knife vanished as quickly as it appeared.

Holy Cats this guy was fast! The two I’d be talking to might be low level muscle, but this guy was the real deal.

After giving my rescue/kidnap party a “see how easy that is?” look he gestured to the house.

“If you would come inside, Mr. Hunt?”

There really weren’t any other options and by this point I was starting to be more curious than scared, so I nodded and started up the steps.

The inside of the house was a little dim and blessedly cool. More marble was in evidence on the floor and the big stair case about twenty feet away, opposite the front door. Persian rugs laid here and there on the floor matched the few pieces of dark wood furniture that had to be antique. It was all very tasteful, very old money.

“Mr. Logue had no way of knowing when you might arrive, and is in the middle of a business meeting right now. He will be done in thirty minutes to an hour.”

Oh sure, kidnap me and then make me wait to meet the head-cheese! I ask you is that any way to run a crime?

“You could wait in the sitting room, or, if you like, you could take a shower, change out of those soiled clothes and have our in-house doctor make sure there is nothing worse than bruises.”

If I were a tough guy type detective I’d spurn the offer and then gloat at ruining one of Logue’s expensive antique sofas. I’ll admit that the idea had a certain attraction, but the fact was I was already stiff. The blood from my head wound had my shirt clinging to my chest and ribs, and being knocked completely out is a damned good reason to have a medical professional look at you.

If I am being completely honest, it was the idea of hot water that sealed the deal for me.

“I’ll take the second option.”

The security guy nodded as if it were the only reasonable option and ushered me towards the big stairs. He went slow, in deference to my aching body.

“So what do I call you?”

“My name is Derek Kent. You can call me Kent; everyone does, except my mother.”

I looked around as I hobbled up the stairs. The pain was enough to make me appreciate the fact there are no stairs at Gen-Tech.

“Nice place you’ve got here, Kent. By the way, where is it located?”

I’d half expected him to hedge on that information; it was a quick and dirty way to check his intentions. Kent gave me a closed lipped smile that said he knew exactly what I was doing, and that he appreciated the effort.

“This mansion in located in the River Oaks neighborhood.”

That made sense. River Oaks has been an enclave of wealth in Houston for more than a hundred and thirty years. So I was still in the city after all. Good. Not that I gave myself much of a shot at getting out the gate or over the wall without permission. But if I did, I could disappear or find help in moderately short order. Has anyone ever escaped from a rich neighborhood by bus?

It made me feel a lot better, which is exactly what good-old Kent wanted.

The marble steps had given way to a hardwood floored hall, with a red and green runner of intertwined rose bushes down the center. The same wood as the floor had been used for wainscoting, with white plaster walls running the rest of the way to the ceiling.

There was a part of my mind that was trying to get my attention. Some connection between the name Logue and River Oaks, but it was a nagging feeling, nothing concrete. I told my subconscious to shut up and focused on walking down the hall.

We only had to go as far as the second door, which Kent opened and stepped through first. The room beyond the door was bigger than my entire apartment with a huge four-poster bed in the middle of the room, complete with a canopy and carvings on the posts. We didn’t stop. Kent threw open another door to a bathroom fit for a king.

Blue and green tiles of marble, again, covered the floor, and there was a huge tube for soaking, but what I really wanted was the shower.

It was in a corner, glassed in on two sides, and was big enough to wash a hippo in, or a small soccer team. It had one of those little seat things, as well as a recessed set of shelves with just about every product you can think of for taking the stink off and putting the shine on. The water controls looked like something from a Space-X shuttle.

Kent gave me a brief tutorial. Water could come from above, and both sides, it could pulse, swing up and down, with needle spray to fog. I wanted to ask if it could make tons and tons of Julian fries, but was afraid the answer would be yes.

“I’ll leave you to your shower, Mr. Hunt. I’ll also send Dr. Yu up in a bit, but please take your time.”

“Thanks Kent, but you’re sure you didn’t just park me in Logue’s own bathroom?”

He smiled a polite smile. “This is one of the guest rooms. The master suite is about three times this size.”

That put me in my place. I couldn’t decide if working around rich folks was making me disgusted or envious, or both.

“Good for him. Hey! I just realized I don’t know Mr. Logue’s first name.”

He had a confused expression on his face, then shook his head. “I’m sorry; I thought you would have figured it out already. This house belongs to Ashton Logue.”

With that he stepped out the bathroom door, shutting it behind him.