Anderson by Earthman Beware & others

Author:Earthman, Beware & others [Earthman, Beware & others]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

STAR BEAST

The rebirth technician thought he had heard everything in the course of some three centuries. But he was astonished now.

“My dear fellow—” he said. “Did you say a tiger—”

“That's right,” said Harol. “You can do it, can't you?”

“Well—I suppose so. I'd have to study the problem first, of course. Nobody has ever wanted a rebirth that far from human. But offhand I'd say it was possible.” The technician's eyes lit with a gleam which had not been there for many decades. “It would at least be—interesting!”

“I think you already have a record of a tiger,” said Harol.

“Oh, we must have. We have records of every animal still extant when the technique was invented, and I'm sure there must still have been a few tigers around then. But it's a problem of modification. A human mind just can't exist in a nervous system that different. We'd have to change the record enough—larger brain with more convolutions, of course, and so on.... Even then it'd be far from perfect, but your basic mentality should be stable for a year or two, barring accidents. That's all the time you'd want anyway, isn't it?”

“I so,” said Harol.

“Rebirth in animal forms is getting fashionable these days,” admitted the technician. “But so far they've only wanted animals with easily modified systems. Anthropoid apes, now—you don't even have to change a chimpanzee's brain at all for it to hold a stable human mentality for years. Elephants are good too. But—a tiger—” He shook his head. “I suppose it can be done, after a fashion. But why not a gorilla?”

“I want a carnivore,” said Harol.

“Your psychiatrist, I suppose—” hinted the technician.

Harol nodded curtly. The technician sighed and gave up the hope of juicy confessions. A worker at Rebirth Station heard a lot of strange stories, but this fellow wasn't giving. Oh, well, the mere fact of his demand would furnish gossip for days.

“When can it be ready?” asked Harol.

The technician scratched his head thoughtfully. “It'll take a while,” he said. “We have to get the record scanned, you know, and work out a basic neural pattern that'll hold the human mind. It's more than a simple memory-superimposition. The genes control an organism all through its lifespan, dictating, within the limits of environment, even the time and speed of aging. You can't have an animal with an ontogeny entirely opposed to its basic phylogeny—it wouldn't be viable. So we'll have to modify the very molecules of the cells, as well as the gross anatomy of the nervous system.”

“In short,” smiled Harol, “this intelligent tiger will breed true.”

“If it found a similar tigress,” answered the technician. “Not a real one—there aren't any left, and besides, the heredity would be too different. But maybe you want female body for someone?”

“No, only want a body for myself,” Briefly, Harol thought of Avi and tried to imagine her incarnated in the supple, deadly grace of the huge cat. But no, she wasn't the type. And solitude was part of the therapy anyway.

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