I left a note in the hall for Gina and walked up to Epping to get myself inoculated for the journey ahead. Scientists on Stateless broadcast local “weather reports” – both meteorological and epidemiological – into the net, and despite all the other bizarre acts of political ostracism, the relevant UN bodies treated this data just as if it had emerged from a sanctified member state. As it turned out, neither pneumonia nor malaria shots were indicated – but there’d been recent outbreaks of several new strains of adenovirus – none of them life-threatening, but all of them potentially debilitating enough to ruin my stay. Alice Tomasz, my GP, downloaded sequences for some small peptides which mimicked appropriate viral surface proteins, synthesized their RNA, and then spliced the fragments into a tailored – harmless – adenovirus. The whole process took about ten minutes.

As I inhaled the live vaccine, Alice said, “I liked Gender Scrutiny Overload .”

“Thank you.”

“That part at the end, though … Elaine Ho on gender and evolution. Did you honestly believe that?”

Ho had pointed out that humans had spent the last few million years reversing the ancient mammalian extremes of gender dimorphism and behavioral differences. We’d gradually evolved biochemical quirks which actively interfered with ancient genetic programs for gender-specific neural pathways; the separate blueprints were still inherited, but hormonal effects in the womb kept them from being fully enacted – essentially “masculinizing” the brain of every female embryo, and “feminizing” the brain of every male. (Homosexuality resulted when the process went – very slightly – further than normal.) In the long term – even if we took an Edenite stand and refused all genetic engineering – the sexes were already converging. Whether or not we tampered with nature, nature was tampering with itself.

“It seemed like a good way to end the program. And everything she said was true, wasn’t it?”

Alice was noncommittal. “So what are you working on these days?”

I couldn’t bring myself to own up to Junk DNA … but I was just as afraid to mention Violet Mosala, in case my own doctor turned out to know more about Mosala’s TOE-in-progress than I did. It wasn’t an idle fear; Alice was obscenely well-read on everything.

I said, “Nothing, really. I’m on holidays.”

She glanced again at my notes on her desk screen – which would have included data from my pharm. “Good for you. Just don’t relax too hard.”