Black Steel Steve Perry

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.They were both enjoying the special of the day, Green Moon beef.Reason sipped at an expensive blue wine, Mtuan Azure; Sleel, working, didn't usually do strong chem; instead, he drank splash, as mild as beer.The smell of the meat was rich, the taste exquisite, and Sleel savored the texture and flavor."I could scrape up perhaps a hundred million standards," Reason said."Depending on property values around the galaxy at any given time."Sleel nodded, chewing on a mouthful of the steak.Big money didn't impress him."So, where to?" Reason asked."I assume you have something more specific in mind than the entire Bibi Arusi System?""Yep.""And I must say I was somewhat surprised that you booked passage for us under our own names."Sleel swallowed the steak and grinned."No, you weren't."Reason tilted his head slightly to one side."Oh?"Sleel leaned back in his chair, automatically scanning the dining room again.He had done so a dozen times during the meal and now as then, there was no apparent threat.None of the waiters had offered to cut Sleel's steak for him with a black sword."You didn't get to be the best thief in the galaxy by being stupid.And you didn't stay out of Confed jails for more than half a century by accident.I think maybe you're being a bit disingenuous here, old man."Reason chuckled."Why, Sleel.Where'd you learn a word like that?"Sleel said, "Where's the best place to hide something?"Reason didn't ponder that one."Where nobody will think of looking.I didn't know you were a fan of Poe.""Mostly the poetry," Sleel said."But I liked 'The Purloined Letter.' Emile made us read it.Where's the next best place?""Where they know where it is but can't get to it.""What I figure," Sleel said."Now, we can hide where nobody will ever find us, but that limits things.You'll always be looking over your shoulder.""I am anyway.""Maybe, but you've managed to stay ahead of the game until now.First we take care of the guys with swords, then we worry about other stuff.""All right.Meaning…?""We go somewhere where they can find us but can't get to us—unless they do it on our terms.Then we got time to figure out who is behind this and take them out.""Cut off the head and the body dies?""It worked against the Confed." Sleel said.Reason nodded."That makes sense.So, where are we going?""To The Brambles," Sleel said.Reason shook his head."That will be a neat trick.I'm given to understand that there are only a handful of people in the whole galaxy who can go there without spending a year getting the needed permissions and documentations to visit.They don't encourage visitors."Sleel's smile was tight and bitter."I know somebody," he said."Let me tell you a story."There were three worlds in the Bibi Arusi System: Mwanamamke, Mtu, and Rangi ya majani Mwezi, the Green Moon.The center planet, the backrocket-lanes Mtu, had but few things of galactic note upon it, Sleel said, some decent wines, colorful silks—but it did have The Brambles.The area known as The Brambles covered almost four thousand square kilometers on the semitropical side of the fourth continent, Ua Ngumi, which translated roughly meant, "Flower Fist."Much had been written about The Brambles: that it was the largest briar patch in the galaxy; that it contained—depending upon whom asked—either mankind's salvation or damnation.That it was the most brilliant botany experiment ever conducted.So important an idea was it that the Confederation had left it virtually alone for more than fifty years, no small accomplishment in itself, rather than risk interfering with its mission.Even stupid Confed officials wanted to live forever.For the unique plant that formed the dense sticker bush that was The Brambles might hold within its nodular roots the secret to an unlimited life span.To be sure, there were already drugs that increased productive human lives considerably.The Bindodo vine, the genetic grandmother from which the bramble bush—Uzima edmondia—had been developed, was native to the Green Moon, and its adaptogenic properties had already given mankind and its mues up to a hundred and fifty useful years.That seemed to be the limit, however.Even eliminating most diseases, discounting accidents or murder, anything over a hundred and sixty or eighty T.S.years was still far beyond man's grasp.Past this, normal cells hayflicked and died, and while no "death-hormone" had been discovered, something wore out.Certain cancerous growths could be kept going virtually forever, but though scientists had been trying for hundreds of years, no way to impart the benefits of this growth to people without the side-effects had been uncovered.Until U.edmondia.Maybe.Sampson Lewis Edmonds, acknowledged as the most brilliant applied botanist to have ever lived, along with his wife, Elith Liotulia, considered the second-most brilliant botanist in galactic history, had apparently worked a biological miracle upon the offshoot Bindodo cuttings they had transplanted to Mtu.The growth had a number of names, though those who worked with it usually just called it bramble.The resulting plant, though not a true Rubus, certainly looked the part.At maturity, it was estimated that a thigh-thick trunk would reach perhaps two meters before spreading up into a weeping-willowlike spray that would rise another twenty meters.This would then spill over in a graceful arch that dangled the ends of the straight and barbed branches all the way back to the ground.The bramble at maturity would look like nothing so much as a giant, sparsely leaved blackberry bush, bigger than a house, without fruit, but with wicked thorns.It would be incredibly tough, the fibers of the branches being dense and very flexible; deep rooted, and genetically engineered to resist disease, insects and even fire.The wood would make great pipes for smoking, or violin bows.The real achievement, however, would lie in a fist-shaped knot of burl that lay just under the ground between the trunk and roots.The size of a man's head, this burl would contain, if everything went as hoped for, a chemical compound that would safely allow human cells to bypass the Hayflick Limit without side effects—by a factor of five to seven.Such a chemical elixir would give the possibility of an eight-hundred- to thousand-year life span.And various permutations of such a substance might, even if the primary purpose failed, cure virtually every known disease.Certainly this was enough to keep the Confed from meddling in things.The payoff would be priceless, if it worked.Nobody wanted to risk killing this particular goose.There was, however, a catch:From first planting to maturity, it would take at least seventy-five years.The oldest patch of U.edmondia was but fifty years old.Although the plant achieved its full height within ten or fifteen years, the burl would not be ready for harvest for at least another three score after that.Computer projections and growth curves all predicted that the biological chemical factory that was the burl should work as designed, but there was no way to hurry it.Something about the processing defied artificial attempts to speed it up; certainly it had been tried [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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