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projections.
The same sort of modification has to your occipital orbits, ears, and fingers
been done. Everything carried out was before you were born, before your bones
time to set had.
"To insure that such work 'takes' without interfering with the natural process
of bone maturation and fusion requires skills we do not possess. Only one
species at bioengineering so clever is." He replaced the current sheet with a
new one.
"See here, your hands. Again the grafting points." Ranji stared without
comprehending.
"But ... if any of what you say is true, why?"
The Hivistahm's teeth clicked softly. "To give you the appearance of an
Ashregan. If one backward works to delete these points and their projected
effects, the result is a quite different skeleton." He hesitated and took a
step away from the prisoner. "Truly truly what one has is not a mutant
Ashregan, but a normal Human."
Ranji snorted derisively. "That's crazy."
First-of-Surgery slipped the pictures back into their protective envelope.
"The rest of your body-your muscular structure, density, organ placement and
function, sensitivity of sense, everything-comfortably within Human-normal
parameters sits. You grade out high-end Homo sapiens, not off-the-scale
Ashregan. You are as Human as the three others in this room.''
The prisoner's gaze darted reflexively to the Ashregan-fluent woman and her
squat male associate. They stared evenly back at him.
"This is more than aberrant; it's insane. No, it's more subtle than that.
You're all trying to trick me. You've got some ulterior purpose in mind and in
order to carry it through you need to confuse and trick me. You might as well
forget it.
I'm not so easily fooled."
"Perhaps not," said the short Human, "but you're not stupid, either. You
scored as high in intelligence as you did in everything else. Environmental
factors aside, scanner tridis aside, can't you tell just by looking at
yourself that you're more Human than Ashregan?" His companion took up the
refrain.
"No Ashregan ever grew bones as dense as yours, or had such median muscular
strength. No Ashregan ever had your reflexes or striking ability." The
emphasis on the elements of the ruse he expected and was prepared for, but not
the imploring tone in her voice.
Still he remained perfectly composed. "I concede that I may have been slightly
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altered to give me certain specific Human fighting characteristics and
abilities. That conclusion's inevitable and I no longer try to deny it."
Comments in different tongues filled the room. "Nor does it trouble me.
Obviously such information needs to be withheld from children and young adults
since they are not sufficiently mature to cope with it. Whereas as an adult I
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002%20-%20The%20False%20Mirror.txt can understand what was done and why. So
what if maybe I've been physically enhanced in order to better serve the
Purpose? I see nothing sinister in that."
"Truly it no wonder is how confused you are," First-of-Surgery said. "You
still do not see."
"See what?" Ranji snapped impatiently. He'd had about enough of this nonsense.
"That you are not an Ashregan to whom Human characteristics given have been,
but a Human into whom Ashregan features have been engineered. We have your
genome pattern scanned and found the alterations which will enable you to pass
on these features to your offspring. They into your genes have been induced.
The Amplitur the long view take.
"To the Amplitur you are a warrior only second, Ranji-aar, and breeding
material first."
Chapter Ten
He waited until he was sure he was still in complete control of himself before
responding. "If everything you claim is true, then how do you explain my
parents? My memories, my homeworld? The Houcilat outrage?"
"We've been doing some research, using as a starting point some of the things
you've told us." The woman's manner was far more soothing than anything Ranji
would ever have associated with a Human. "You and the friends you have spoken
of are indeed the survivors of a massacre of civilians."
"Ah," Ranji said.
The woman continued. "There was a colony. Not Houcilat. A world whose name is
now synonymous with mindless destruction. It was utterly obliterated a number
of years ago by an unsupervised, unanticipated Crigolit attack. Just the right
number of years ago, in fact, to place you and your age-group companions there
as fetuses, "Whole regions were incinerated. It was the only time within
modern memory that weapons of mass destruction have been utilized on a
planetary surface. The
Crigolit commanders who directed the attack were severely disciplined by their
own superiors and by the Arnplitur. Based on what we have learned from you we
have come to believe that this did not prevent the Amplitur, ever pragmatic,
from seeing the possibilities inherent in the situation.
"At the time it was thought that no one could have survived. The majority of
bodies were incinerated, carbonized. An accurate count of the dead could not
be made. Therefore it was not possible for those who came after to say whether
or not any children, men, women, or-" Her voice broke for the barest instant.
"-pregnant women had been taken prisoner. Considering the unprecedented scope
of destruction it was presumed not. Your presence vitiates a reappraisal." She
tried to go on, couldn't, and left it to her colleague to continue.
"You were taken by the Amplitur, not rescued," the man said curtly. "Of course
you have no memory of it. The abductions were carried out prior to your
birth."
"Many images of the devastation are available for scholarly study." The
elderly
Massood spoke for the first time. "The world in question is there for all to
see, a barren testimonial to war without rules."
"My parents." Ranji was mumbling. More than his self-assurance was under
assault now. The walls of himself were under attack, and he was frightened,
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terrified because he could feel them crumbling.
Too much. Too much to listen to at once, to try and absorb and dissect and
analyze. Too much to think about. Pictures and words, stories and facts.
Invention, invention! They were trying to drive him mad.
The woman was remorselessly gentle. "As soon as you were born you must have
been taken from your natural mother and placed with foster Ashregan parents.
The same would be true for your brother.'' She paused. ' 'We suspect that the
much younger sister of whom you have spoken is the result of in vitro
fertilization and subsequent implantation. With sufficient medical support an
Ashregan womb will support a Human fetus. Such action would contribute to
familial verisimilitude. The Amplitur are careful about details."
None of it could be true, he told himself numbly. Not a word of it. Because if
it were so then it meant that his real parents were dead, extinguished by the
Amplitur as soon as their usefulness had come to an end. It meant that the two
individuals on Cossuut he had all his life called mother and father were ao
more than Amplitur agents who had dedicated their lives to perpetuating a
monstrous
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002%20-%20The%20False%20Mirror.txt fraud on innocent children. It meant that
all his hard work, everything he had devoted his life to preserving and
fighting for, was no more than sham and shadow in the service of monstrous
eugenics.
"Deception." He was muttering under his breath now. "Tricks and lies. You're
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