Retreat And Adapt (A Galaxy Unknown) (6 page)

"As Jen said, it must have something to do with making themselves independent of the GA," Admiral Woo said. "Knowing the wealth is safely buried somewhere isn't the same as having it available for purchases."

"What sort of purchases, Lon?" Admiral Yuthkotl asked.

"That's the big question," Admiral Woo said. "I'd bet it has something to do with their number one problem— the sterility issue."

Following lunch, Jenetta said her good-byes and headed for the base's shuttle port with Lt. Commander Ashraf. As Jenetta boarded a shuttle with her pets for the trip back to the Potomac base, Lori boarded a shuttle for a flight to the Mediterranean island home of her family.

~ February 26
^th
, 2286 ~

"Today's meeting will come to order," Chairman Gladsworth said as he pounded the decorative gravel once on the equally ornamental sounding-block. He waited until the meeting hall was silent and all council members were seated and looking at him before he added, "We shall dispense with the reading of the minutes today because we have a visitor who is not authorized to hear Upper Council business. I welcome the chairperson of the Lower Council, Arthur Stephen Strauss. You have the floor, Mr. Chairman."

"Thank you, sir. And thank you to the council for allowing me to come before you today on such short notice. I have good news and I believed you would want to hear it as soon as possible. For four decades, this organization has lavished almost unlimited funds on a special project. I'm here to tell you today that the project is about to begin returning dividends on those expenditures."

"You're referring to the Age Prolongation Procedure?" Council member Whitely asked.

"Yes, sir," Strauss said to one of the oldest members of the council. For that matter, there wasn't a single member younger than one hundred forty. The advanced ages of the council members were probably most responsible for their continued monetary support of Arneu's project.

"As you all know, the formulas had just been proven successful when Ensign Jenetta Carver managed to destroy Raider-One, wiping out the development lab and killing all of the research scientists. The loss of the scientists alone far exceeded the value of the station and the other eighteen thousand employees. That fool Arneu had refused to turn over the formulas until they were proven, so we lost everything and had to start over. It's taken him almost two additional decades to recreate the lost work, but we once again have proven formulas,
and
they have been turned over to our Central Laboratories this time. Plus, we have an additional enhancement. We can now reverse the aging process completely."

"You say the formulas have been proven?" Gladsworth asked. "Is that definite?"

"Anyone who doubts the success of the procedures need only look at an image of Admiral Jenetta Carver or one of her clones, all of whom appear the same as the day she graduated from the NHSA in 2256. The ability of her body to heal almost any injury is legendary in Space Command. As you know, one of our people recently went against orders and tried to assassinate one of Carver's clones. He shot her three times at close range with a lattice weapon as she shot him with a laser. He died almost instantly while she survived her injuries and has already returned to active duty."

"But Carver was altered with the old formulas, the ones that were lost with Raider-One," Whitely said.

"The individual in charge of the project, Mikel Arneu, has used the new formulas on himself to change his sex and return his body to age twenty-three. That certainly indicates his confidence in the procedures. He, or rather she, is as healthy as a person can be and damned attractive to boot. I propose a return to our original plan of producing sex slaves for our brothels for a one-year test period. If no complications arise, we could then offer the DNA Manipulation procedures to anyone who has the trillion credits to buy it, but I further recommend that we alter our original plan and not offer the Age Prolongation procedure to anyone outside of senior company personnel."

"What's your reasoning behind that?" Gladsworth asked. "That procedure could make us an additional trillion on each sale."

"If we offer the Age Regression procedure and the DNA Manipulation processes, we'll still make those trillions. Then the patients will begin to age normally again. In ten or twenty years they'll be back to undergo the procedure again.
But
if we sell the Age Prolongation procedure, we've lost those trillions for possibly thousands of years. I suggest we reserve that one for ourselves."

"Good thinking, Strauss," Gladsworth said. "We can keep milking their vanity forever."

"I question the price," Whitely said. "If we get too greedy, we'll be limiting our market to just a few dozen people. Instead of a trillion credits for the procedures, I think we should establish a price of say ten billion credits. That way we'll have tens of thousands of potential customers.

"Yes, that makes sense," Gladsworth said. "All in favor of only charging ten billion for the two procedures, signal by raising your hand."

Everyone at the table raised his or her hand except Strauss, who didn't have the right to vote at an Upper Council meeting.

"The motion passes. Er, Strauss?"

"Sir?"

"You said that Arneu changed his sex?"

"Yes, sir. He's now a twenty-three-year-old female. And since he's used the Age Prolongation procedure on himself, or rather herself, she should live for possibly another five thousand years. At least that was the original projection for Admiral Carver."

"I didn't realize the DNA Manipulation procedure could be used just to alter
sex
," Whitely said. "We could market that process alone and clean up. We wouldn't be adversely affecting the size of the general population if we didn't combine it with the other procedures. The sex change clinics are always busy these days and the final result is not a true gender change. It's more or less cosmetic. We could easily charge a hundred times the sex-change rate for a full genetic conversion."

The other council members began talking among themselves about the merits of offering single-procedure packages until Gladsworth pounded the gavel.

"There will be plenty of time to discuss alternate possibilities later. The issue nearest and dearest to any of us here should be the use of the procedures on ourselves. I would love to be twenty-three again and have the energy of a youthful body."

"Uh, there's a small— glitch, sir," Strauss said. "Arneu says that the Age Regression procedure only works on women. That's why he changed his sex. It was necessary if he was to become twenty-three again."

"And you can't change back to male afterwards?"

"Yes, you can, but the process of changing sex is quite painful according to Arneu, and it takes a full year to complete just the basic changes. That's allegedly the reason she's procrastinated beginning the procedure to become a male again. Also, I think she likes her new form."

"That doesn't mean that everyone would prefer to remain a woman. And we could charge outsiders for every change."

"But if you are already female," Council member Paula Sorreto asked, "you wouldn't have to change to male first. Is that correct?"

"Yes, ma'am. The process requires you be female when the Age Regression procedure is performed. It has something to do with the percentage of male and female hormones in the body. There's no need to alter your body in preparation for the process if you are already female."

"Well, that's okay," Gladsworth said. "You'd only have to go through the Age Regression procedure once if you then go through the Age Prolongation process."

"What if we opt to only undergo the Age Prolongation procedure?" Whitely asked.

"At your age, sir, it would probably only extend your life by forty years at most, and repeated application wouldn't extend it further. The age at the time the process is first administered makes all the difference."

"Well, it seems that we all have a great deal to think about. That's all, Strauss. Thank you for coming in. And congratulations on your success with this issue. It's been a long time in coming, but it's worth every credit we've expended. And it clears the slate of your Dakistee blunder."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

* * *

Chairman Strauss leaned back in his sumptuous chair and stared out the full wall of glass in the penthouse apartment provided for his use by the corporation. An orange sun was setting over distant mountains that wore caps of white below a cloudless sky. Far below his domicile the 'little' people were struggling to eke out a daily living in the timeless tradition of the less affluent. Strauss had never had a moment's remorse about the role he played in the misery and suffering of so many. When he stood at the window and looked down at the tiny dark shapes moving in endless streams of traffic, he always thought of them as insignificant insects. If an action he took or was responsible for killed a few, a few hundred, or a few thousand, it didn't lead to any sleepless nights. His only concern was that their deaths not make his life or job any more complicated or difficult.

Strauss hadn't believed Ravenau for a second when she spun that lie about not having plans to kill Carver when she visited the military quarters on Dakistee, but he couldn't harm her until he had the formulas. Now he could dispose of her at any time, but killing her would be a waste of a beautiful body. Perhaps he should simply have her mind wiped and put her into one of the corporation's brothels where she would continue to produce income for hundreds, or maybe thousands, of years. Or perhaps he should let her live and serve the corporation in some more useful capacity. He couldn't deny that she had succeeded in providing a product that would make hundreds of trillions for the corporation in the years ahead, so the question was whether or not that was enough to forgive her past transgressions. Should he emulate the clemency exhibited by the Upper Council, who had just forgiven Strauss for the costs associated with the bollixed operation on Dakistee, even though the problems were beyond his control, or should he follow his instincts and condemn Ravenau to a life of sexual adulteration and degradation? He decided he should sleep on it some more.

A handsome face and tall, slim body meant that Strauss had no real desire to make use of the DNA Manipulation process for the sake of appearance, but the side benefits might be desirable. Having a body that repaired itself ten times faster than ordinary humans, even those with surgical nano-bots in their bodies, was surely an enviable attribute. That process and the Age Prolongation process would be the extent of his treatments. Now in his early seventies, he was just middle-aged and had the distinguished appearance of a wealthy power broker, so he certainly wasn't going to spend a year in pain just to change his sex so he could look thirty or forty years younger as Ravenau had, but he had no doubt that every one of the Upper Council members would soon begin the changes.

After ordering a drink from his automated servant, Strauss relaxed until the three fingers of bonded scotch whiskey was poured and delivered. He never drank until his business for the day was over, and even then he strictly maintained a limit of two. When he had drunk more than that in his younger years, he had tended to desire female companionship and sometimes gotten foolish and talked too much, leaving himself open to possible blackmail. He'd always regretted it in the morning and had finally outgrown the behavior after a woman had been dumb enough to try using his loose talk to her advantage. She'd disappeared very soon thereafter and was never heard from again. He couldn't even remember which whore palace she had been sent to after her mind was wiped.

After his second drink, Strauss walked to the bedroom and flopped onto his bed. His dinner, untouched, grew cold on his dining room table and eventually went into the disposal unit.

* * *

Nicole Ravenau stretched out languidly as she relaxed on the sofa in her quarters, an excellent bottle of wine from the Sebastian Colony chilling in a wine bucket on the side table. The DNA Manipulation formula she'd subjected herself to while at Raider-One had left her almost impervious to the effects of alcohol, and the most recent application, the one that changed her sex, hadn't altered her tolerance. Where in the far distant past she had sometimes used alcohol to intentionally dull her memory, that was no longer possible. Now she imbibed only in social situations or when she had acquired a particularly excellent vintage. On this occasion she was celebrating with a bottle of the priciest wine available in the online catalog. She had delivered the formulas to the Raider Central Labs and was still alive. What's more, she was still free. That was more than she had expected following her meeting with Strauss.

Of course, Strauss could still come after her, but every day that didn't happen lessened the chances that it would. Perhaps he had decided she still had enough value to the corporation as an administrator that he should keep her around— at least for now.

Ravenau was currently attired in the slinkiest lingerie she owned. She was trying to fully adapt to her gender change, and lingerie was the most pleasant aspect. She still hadn't been able to wrap her head around engaging in sex with a male, though. She had all the right equipment now, and there was no lack of admirers who would love to bed her, but more than sixty years of living as a male had left her with certain— prejudices. She had three times tried sex with female partners since her gender change, but it just wasn't the same as when she had been a male, and each encounter had left her more unsatisfied. She was alone at present and wasn't expecting company, so she was trying to drown her current sexual frustration in a fine wine.

Suddenly Ravenau sat up straight, her eyes wide. Then a huge smile played across her face. Perhaps it was the wine or perhaps it was just her baser instincts, but she had been struck by an idea, nay an epiphany, on how to settle the issue with Strauss once and for all and at the same time resolve several other longstanding issues.

* * *

"Sir," the controller at a Flordarya Planetary Defense Distant DeTect Grid console said to the lead controller via his com headset, "I'm getting some strange readings on the grid.