Wolf Time (Voice of the Whirlwind) by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online

RNA, and enzymes were complex and interrelated to the point where the artificial intelligence/biologist types had despaired of trying to control them with current technology.
    Alien genetics, it turned out, were simple compared to the human. Power DNA chains were much shorter, containing half the two hundred thousand genes in a human strand, without the thousands of repetitions and redundancies that filled human genes. Their means of reproducing DNA were similar, but similarly streamlined.
    And the Power method of DNA reproduction was compatible with human genetics. The transfer and message RNA were faster, cleaner, more controllable. Information transfer had a theoretically astounding speed— a human DNA strand, undergoing replication, unwound at 8000 RPM. Power RNA combined with human DNA made data transfers on thread look like slow motion.
    Once the control technology was developed, information could be targeted to specific areas of the DNA strand. The dominant genes could remain untouched; but the recessive genes could be altered to contain information. Nothing could be kept secret when any spy could code information in his own living genetic makeup. And no one could discover the spy unless they knew what code he was using and what they were looking for.
    The architecture of liberation. Risk-free transfer of data. It would be years before any of this was possible— Prince Station’s newly hired biologists would have to reconstruct all the station’s work and then develop it to the point where it was commercially viable. But Prince Station was going to have its new source of technology, and Reese a new source of income— she’d asked for a large down payment in advance of a small royalty that should nevertheless make her a billionaire in the next forty years. She’d asked for that, plus Prince’s help in disposing of a few other problems.
    *
    Reese looked down at her double, lying on a bed in a room that smelled of death. Her twin’s eyes were closed, her breasts rose and fell under a pale blue sheet. Bile rose in Reese’s throat.
    Reese was blond again, her nose a little straighter, her mouth a little wider. She had a new kidney, a new eardrum. New fingerprints, new blue irises. She liked the new look. The double looked good, too.
    Two bodies, a man and a woman, were sprawled at the foot of the bed: assassins, sent by Berger to kill her. They had followed a carefully laid trail to her location here on Prince, and when they came into her apartment they’d been shot dead by Prince’s security men firing from concealment in the wide bedroom closet. Reese had waited safely in the next room, her nerves burning with adrenaline fire while she clutched Ken’s hand; her nerves alert for the sound of gunfire, she watched her double breathe under its sheet.
    Then the security people came for the mannikin. They were going to kill it.
    The double was Reese’s clone. Her face had been restructured the same way Reese’s had, and her artificial eyes were blue. Her muscles had been exercised via electrode until they were as firm as Reese’s. There was even a metal pin in her ankle, a double of the one Reese carried. The clone was an idiot— her brain had never contained Reese’s mind.
    The idea was to make it appear that Reese and the assassins had killed each other. Reese looked down at her double and felt her mouth go dry. The security people were paddling around the room, trying to make appearances perfect. Hot anger blazed behind Reese’s eyes. Fuck this , she thought.
    She pried the pistol out of one of the assassins’ hands and raised it.
    She was a tunnel rat, she thought. An animal, a coward, disloyal. Sometimes she needed reminding.
    “It’s not murder,” Ken said, trying to help.
    “Yes it is,” Reese said. She raised the killer’s gun--an ideal assassin’s weapon, a compressed-air fletcher— and fired a silent dart into the mannikin’s thigh. Then she closed her eyes, not wanting to see the dying