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."She stepped forward, arms aloft in the Goddess position."Great Goddess Vat, open unto us, thy children!" At her words the tank began to sink slowly into the flooring, revealing a stone and metal staircase which led downward.They entered the opening, the girls being careful not to jostle him or bump his body against the walls of the narrow passageway.Overhead he could hear the tank closing behind them with an echoing scrape of heavy stone.The stairs wound down into the darkness.The only light came from the lantern Drina carried.Soon the stairs came to an end, opening out into a maze of corridors cut into the bedrock of Bleydeaux."Did my father come up with this, too?" Andros did a rough reckoning of the work involved in the cutting of one corridor alone, and marvelled."No." Drina lifted her lantern to check some carved hieroglyphics at the entrance to one of the corridors."These were here long before your father's time.They're the tombs of the old city of Bleydeaux.Mathler got the idea of using them while searching the city's historical records.He said they were over four thousand years old, and go back to the time of the Old Ones of this planet.They died out long before there was even a Confederation." She led the way down the corridor and Andros' carriers followed.The corridor was dark for several meters and then after a turn in its direction it was dimly lighted by glowing panels leaning against the walls.Andros asked why more permanent lighting had not been installed."This place is an archeological treasure house.It must not be changed in any way." Drina moved closer to the walls, adding the light of her lantern to the dim panels.Suddenly the walls came alive with scenes of past glory.Shapes only dimly seen by the light of the panels took on a vivid color and became glowing pictures of the people, games, feasting and lives of those beings who had once lived on Mhalkeri."Do you see why we haven't torn this up to put in better lighting? Those paintings are beautiful.""And practical, too," Miranda added."We pose as a group of archeologists researching the Old Ones.Mathler keeps issuing exclusive-permits to us, and in return we've promised to do nothing to damage the structures of the tombs.Better us than a bunch of scribbling, littering tourists! Now, let's take you to see Thirty-Four.This way." Miranda moved down the corridor and the females carrying Andros obediently followed.Drina walked grimly beside them, letting Miranda find her way by the light of the panels."Lady Drina, who or what is Thirty-Four?" Andros asked."An android." Her answer was as sharp as it was short.Miranda called back from the front, "He deserves a better answer than that.""Then you come back here and give it to him.You were the one so set on bringing him here." Drina sounded even more grim in the echoing corridor."Thirty-Four," Miranda's voice came hollowly back to him, "was one of your father's attempts to create a Super, or a sort of Super.Anyway, this was before you were born.Your father was doing some research on Rostand's theory of the thirty-fourth cell division of the cerebral cortex, and he proved the theory correct.The result was Thirty-Four.""I'm afraid I don't understand.I wasn't trained as a biologist.What cell division do you mean?""Well," said Miranda, coming back to walk beside the smolderingly silent Drina, "during foetal development of the normal brain, the cells of the cerebral cortex divide thirty-three times on a pyramidal basis of one, two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on, until there are nine billion cerebral cells.After each cell has divided exactly thirty-three times the DNA shuts off the process and no more brain cells are produced during the lifetime of that individual."But with Thirty-Four, your father managed to force the cells to divide one more time—in effect doubling themselves to a total of eighteen billion cells.""But wait a minute," Andros said."That would mean this Thirty-Four would need a skull twice the size of anyone else—he'd be a freak!""Ha!" Drina's mocking laugh was as rough and cold as the stones in the walls."Well done, Andros.I didn't think you would grasp the crux of the problem so quickly.Rostand himself knew this product would be a monster, that's why he never tried his theory or brought it to completion.""He couldn't," protested Miranda."There were no womb membranes available to test the concept when he evolved the theory.Also Rostand was emphatic about the need for a larger brain case to hold the increase in cells; he knew the experiment would produce something different—but he never called it a freak [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]