Page 57 of From the Noblest Motives
Cyril both was and was not as he seemed.
Before Damien left, he couldn't help picking up the shoes Shudder had kicked off in the middle of the floor and aligning them with the wall. Nor could he leave the pants Shudder had shucked in a heap, so he folded them precisely and set them on the chair. Another lover would have questioned him or perhaps said something scathing. Shudder simply let him do it without comment.
At least Damien had the advantage of not having to search for Cyril. He followed his father's most recent trail from the back door to his office and tapped on the doorframe.
"Damien!" Cyril's frown of concentration melted into a smile when he glanced up from his screens. "What can I do for you?"
"Max Noisette." Damien hovered in the doorway, less than comfortable about how this might go.
The frown returned. "Are you asking if I know him?"
"No." Damien fidgeted with the seam of his pocket. "I know that you are him."
The flinch was so small, just a tightening around the eyes, that Damien would've missed it if he hadn't been watching for a reaction. The smile never faltered, though. "You're as good as everyone says. Yes. That's a name I use."
"Do you use another name for a government job? Department of Science contractor?"
Cyril shook his head. "I don't work directlyforthe government any longer in any capacity. It's tempting to infiltrate, but not worth the risk. There are several different names I use with my contacts inside federal departments, though."
The pieces kept sliding together inescapably, and Damien knew anyone other than himself would have a good way of bringing it up, but there was no putting it off. He blurted out, "You're a patternist."
He'd expected denial or at least a shutting down of any friendly expression. Patternists were exceedingly rare and considered too dangerous to allow loose in society by certain government factions for as long as there had been variants. The combination of hyperdeductive reasoning and grounded apophenia—seeing connections between what should have been disparate things—supposedly made them unstable. Instead of growing angry, though, Cyril's smile only grew a bit wistful.
"All the projects, all the identities," Damien forged on. "All the little, seemingly disconnected bits you track. And it's not random. It can't be. You're too driven. Every bit of…" He waved a hand at the holoscreens and the house in general. "This. It's all toward a specific end game."
The smile hadn't vanished, not entirely, but now Cyril stared down at his clasped hands. "I'll always regret not contacting you sooner, though my reasons for that are still sound. Your mother knew. She was as perceptive as you. To the rest of the world, in the registry, I was listed as a multi-hyperfocus variant. It seems a small distinction, but a variant who can concentrate effectively on more than one task isuseful, while one who holds in their mind plans for multiple, branching stratagems for multiple outcomes isdangerous."
Damien took another step into the room and leaned against one of the shelves. "Being useful isn't safe, either."
"No," Cyril said quietly. "Ultimately, it is not."
"The final goal?"
"With everything else you've deduced, you must have some idea." Cyril raised his head, something hungry in his eyes—a plea, a want—Damien wasn't certain.
Variant equality? No, that's what Shudder wants in his goodhearted, optimistic way. This is something more extreme. "Variant control of the government."
"That's certainly part of it." Cyril's eyes had defocused, presumably gazing on internal landscapes. "Variants placed in every important position of power. Not the token representation we have in the legislature but in cabinet positions, holding a majority on the floor, heads of state here and abroad, running major manufacturing and distribution firms. Not merely variants but cognitive and psychoactive variants like us. Oh, physical variants will be useful, of course. Shudder will make an excellent senator someday, with his natural charm and his instinct for pathos. But we are the future. The next step, Damien. Variants of the mind."
Why does it sound as if he's talking about eugenics?Several questions occurred to Damien, his brain spinning them over and through each other. What he managed to blurt out was, "How?"
"No one else in my organization has access to all the pieces, and it's best that you don't, either. Safer for everyone involved." Cyril placed his clasped hands on the desk and refocused on Damien. "In a broad sense, there are three central projects. The first—the discrediting and, when possible, criminalization of variaphobe elements—you've already seen."
"Shudder's given you extra munitions."
"Yes. Better than I could've hoped." Cyril flashed him a crooked smile.
Useful. Damien nearly choked on the growl climbing his throat. "The second piece. The women staying here."
Cyril nodded. "One of the surest ways to see cognitive variants in power is to place theminthe houses of power. My people in hospitals and birth facilities make certain the right babies get to the right families."
"How…?" Damien hesitated, his discomfort growing by the moment. "Random children would be… any DNA test…"
Cyril's bushy eyebrows crept toward the ceiling. "Nothing about this is random. I promise. With people in the right places, gametes of the wealthy and powerful are absurdly easy to come by. They bank them on a regular basis, insurance against accident, infertility, whatever else they're imaginations conjure, since their lineages are more important than ordinary people's."
The last was said with a sneer bitter enough to make Damien twitch. "All right. Their own children. Switched with one of their own in the hospital. But cognitive variants? There's no guarantee."No guarantee they'd be variants at all.
"This is where the third project intertwines with the second." Cyril cracked his neck, the first sign of agitation Damien had seen from him. "I won't bore you with all the details, but it involves an altered vector virus to carry specifically coded variant sequences. These carefully engineered vectors are introduced in utero. Since there are only a few surrogates, we've begun trying the gene therapy during regular inoculation schedules at the hospitals with original, unswitched infants." He tipped a hand back and forth. "Those have had more mixed results."
