“You’ve built yourselves a real paradise, haven’t you?” Diana ventured.
The response surprised her. “There are those who would consider it a hell. This is ours, as water is for the fish and air for the bird. Each is forever denied the environment of the other.”
“Humans can go into both,” she said, mostly to show that she too had a brain. “You Zacharians get around on Daedalus, yes, throughout the Empire, don’t you?” Smitten by realization, she hesitated before adding: “But we, the rest of us, we couldn’t live here, could we? Even if you allowed us.”
“We have special needs,” he answered soberly. “We have never claimed to be … common humans. Foremost among our needs is the conserving of our heritage. Only here is it secure. Elsewhere our kind exists as individuals or nuclear families, all too susceptible to going wild.”
“Uh, goin wild ?
“Outbreeding. Outmarrying, if you will. Losing themselves and their descendants in the ruck.”
She stiffened. He saw and went on quickly. “Forgive me. That sounded more snobbish than I intended. It’s a mere phrase in the local dialect. If you reflect upon our history you’ll understand why we are determined to maintain our identity.”
Interest quelled umbrage. Besides, he was intelligent and good-looking and they were bound along a stately street, downhill toward a bay whose minute planet life made the water shine iridescent. Persons they passed gave her glances—marvelling from children, knowing from adults, admiring and desiring from young men. Often the latter hailed Kukulkan and moved close in unmistakable hopes of an introduction. He gave them a signal which she guessed meant, “Scram. I saw her first.” The compliment was as refreshing as the wind off the sea.”
“Frankly, I’m ignorant of your past,” she acknowledged. “I’m a waif, remember, who’d heard little more than the name of, your people.”
“Well, that can be remedied,” said Kukulkan cordially, “though not in an hour, when our origins lie almost a thousand years back in time, on Terra itself.”
“I know that, but hardly any more, not how or why it happened or anything. Tell me, please.”
Pride throbbed through the solemnity of his tone. He was a superb speaker.
“As you wish. Travel beyond the Solar System was just beginning. Matthew Zachary saw what an unimaginably great challenge it cast at humankind, peril as well as promise, hardihood required for hope, adaptability essential but not at the cost of integrity. A geneticist, he set himself the goal of creating a race that could cope with the infinite strangeness it would find. Yes, machines were necessary; but they were not sufficient. People must go into the deeps too, if the whole human adventure were not to end in whimpering pointlessness. And go they would. It was in the nature of the species. Matthew Zachary wanted to provide them the best possible leaders.”
Kukulkan waved his left hand, since Diana had his right arm. “No, not ‘supermen’, not any such nonsense,” he continued. “Why lose humanness in the course of giving biological organisms attributes which would always be superior in machines? He sought the optimum specimen—the all-purpose human, to use a colloquialism. What would be the marks of such a person? Some were obvious. A high, quick, wide-ranging intelligence; psychological stability; physical strength, coordination, organs and functions normal or better, resistance to disease, swift recuperation from any sickness or injury that did occur and was not irreversible—you can write the list yourself.”
“I thought a lot of that had already been done,” Diana said.
“Of course,” Kukulkan agreed. “Genetic treatment was in process of eliminating heritable defects. To this day, they seldom recur, in spite of ongoing mutation and in spite of the fact that comparatively few prospective parents avail themselves of genetic services. Many can’t, where they are. I daresay your conception was entirely random, ‘natural.’ But thanks to ancestors who did have the care, you are unlikely to come down with cancer or schizophrenia or countless other horrors that you may never even have heard named.
“Still, this does not mean that any zygote is as good as any other. The variations and combinations of the genes we accept as normal make such an enormous number that the universe won’t last long enough to see every possibility realized. So we get the strong and the feeble, the wise and the foolish, ad infinitum. Besides, Zachary understood that that optimum human is unspecialized, is excellent at doing most things but not apt to be the absolute champion at any one of them.