"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Will they be punished, sir?"

"Who?"

"The... people who abused the aliens, sir."

"Ah, I see. Well, you must understand, Newton, while we're here, as well as enforcing the local law, we're also subject to it. That's what gives us the legitimate right to procure the assets that we do, because we work within their own legal framework even if they don't like or admit that. What we don't do is impose and enforce foreign laws on the indigenous population. If their constitution says it's okay to sleep with your sister, then that's what we let them get on with. So unfortunately, while enslaving and conducting experiments on animals or aliens is illegal in most countries on Earth, it isn't here."

"You mean they've done nothing wrong!"

"Not at all. They launched a serious assault on legitimate law-enforcement officers in the pursuit of their duty."

"So what's going to happen to them?"

"That's what I'm about to decide."

Simon paused as he was going up the ramp, looking down on yet another discreetly covered alien corpse. "Have you learned anything about them?" he asked McKean.

"Not much," the doctor admitted. "They're native to Floyd. Mammalian. Socially, they're halfway between a pack and a hive. Their whole physiology slows down considerably during the night-time cold. They eat Wellsweed; in fact, they spend ninety percent of their time grazing. And that's about it."

"So they're not sentient?"

"No, sir. We're trying to mine some references to them from Manhattan's memory, but so far we've drawn a blank. It's obviously been deep encrypted. Certainly nobody on Earth knew about them. Which is surprising. From a xeno-biological viewpoint I cannot overstate how important they are. Kaba should have been shouting about them from the moment of discovery."

"Kaba's Earth Board probably weren't informed," Simon said. "You never reveal a good poker hand, Doctor."

He continued up the ramp, with Major Bibi leading the way. The interior of the tank had been split into two levels, each subdivided into several compartments. The arrangement reminded him of a bomb shelter. Not a bad analogy, Simon thought. They were certainly zealous about their security.

"I take it you have debugged this?" he asked Major Bibi.

"Yes sir. I've had technicians sweep it for physical defenses, and the plant's AS has been dumped into a sealed storage facility. It was complicitous with the attack on the squaddies, we know that from the gas release. Our own forensic AS is taking it apart code line by code line to determine what kind of routines were hardwritten in. We suspect it was puppeting the aliens as well. I've also had wipehounds running through the plant's datapool to make sure there are no subroutine remnants lurking. But there's a lot of circuitry here, especially in the processing machinery; we should have an all-clear in another ten hours."

"And the Manhattan City AS?"

"Definitely part of the business. Wiping that is more difficult; it does supervise a lot of hardware functions in the city, including life support. So far I've settled for installing limiter and monitor programs in the datapool."

"Very well." They stopped in front of a heavy security door. There was an elaborate DNA lock panel on one side, but the slab of reinforced metal itself was retracted.

Inside the room, medical support equipment had been stacked into elaborate columns. Eight of them were spaced along the middle of the floor. Each one was topped with an opaque plastic sphere fifty centimeters in diameter. Wires and slim tubes wormed out of the equator to disappear into the stacks at various levels. Five of them were inert, while the remaining three hummed and whirred quietly, with small indicator lights winking above various components. A couple of Z-B technicians were busy taking apart one of the inert columns. Dr. Hendra silently signaled them out, and they left without a word.

Simon stood in front of the first active pillar, staring at the globe. "Your opinion on the procedure's viability, Doctor?'

"Oh, it's viable, all right. In fact, it's much more proficient than the kind of rejuvenation treatments that are employed on Earth."

"Really? I thought Earth led that particular field."

"Technically we do. But v-writing a whole human body is enormously complicated. You have to vector new genes into the individual cells of every organ and bone and blood vessel, not to mention skin. Those genes all have to be specific to their destination. The best we ever manage to revitalize in each organ is twenty to thirty-five percent of the gross. Enough to make a difference, but there are just too many cells for all of them to be revitalized. That's why there's no point in extending rejuvenation past the third treatment. You run smack bang into the law of diminishing returns."

"Depends how young you are when you have your first treatment," Simon murmured.

Dr. Hendra gave a complicit shrug. "As you say. But it's unusual for anyone to undergo the treatment before they reach sixty. These days it's far more effective to provide germline v-writing to inhibit the aging process. When you're only ten cells tall, all those shiny new improved genes can be vectored in without any room for error."

Simon smiled knowingly. "Of course." Dr. Hendra's file showed he was born of such a process, which, given the genetic engineering of the time, would give him a life expectancy of around 120 years. His parents had both been stakeholders in Z-B, middle-management level. In those days the company provided it for only the upper echelons. They'd been lucky to qualify. Now, of course, it was available to every stakeholder, regardless of the size of their stake. Another huge incentive to invest your life with Z-B, and one of the reasons they were one of the largest companies on Earth and beyond. "And yet you regard this particular procedure as effective."

"Indeed." Dr. Hendra gestured at the plastic sphere on top of the medical stack. "Isolate the brain, and you can repair at least eighty-five percent of the decayed neuron structure. As you don't have to worry about repairing anything else, it allows you to concentrate your resources most efficiently. After all, you are only rejuvenating one kind of cell, although admittedly there are many variants."

Simon used his DNI to activate the column's communication system. "Board Member Zawolijski, good morning."

"A good morning to you, Representative Roderick," the brain replied.

"That was most impolite of you to shoot at our squaddies."

"I apologize. My colleagues and I are somewhat set in our ways. Your platoon's incursion alarmed us. The corporal had discovered this tank. Ours is not an aspect of Board family life we wish to share with the rest of the civilized galaxy."