Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen R. Donaldson

makes piracy look like philanthropy.”
    While Morn stared at him, he returned stiffly to his seat. With his mug in front of him, he faced her, smiling and mild, like a man who knew nothing about anger. “Let me tell you a story.”
    Reeling inwardly, she nodded. She’d been shocked by the bare concept of UMCP complicity in Angus’ false arrest; but the step from betraying a pirate to being “the most corrupt organization there is” was a large one. If it were true, it made lies out of her own reasons for becoming a cop. It stained her father, whom she considered the most incorruptible man she’d ever known; it transformed her mother’s death into something foolish, pitiful. If it were true—
    She listened to Vector Shaheed as if—for the time being, at least—every other question or consideration had ceased to exist.
    “You may not realize,” he said evenly, “that piracy is an unusual vocation for a man like me. I’m not violent. I’m not rebellious—or even larcenous. The truth is, I’m not even a particularly good engineer. If you’d had time to think about such things, you might have wondered what I’m doing here.
    “I’ll tell you.
    “By training, anyway, I’m a geneticist, not an engineer. Engineering is something I picked up later, after I decided to change careers. Before that, I worked for Intertech. In genetics.
    “Actually, that’s where I met Orn. He was the computer expert for our section. He was prone to accidents even then, and some of his surgical reconstructions were more successful than others, but he was in better shape then than he is now. At first I didn’t care for him. He was too—too unscrupulous for my taste. We used to say he’d fuck a snake if it just opened its mouth wide enough. But he was a wizard with computers, and we all depended on him.
    “Anyway, I was a geneticist, and as soon as I proved I was good enough I got assigned to some top-priority research. The kind of research where they check the gaps between your teeth and the slush in your bowels to make sure you don’t take anything classified home with you when you leave work. Intertech was always twitchy about security—you’ve probably read about the trouble they were in years ago, the riots and so on—and they were getting worse all the time.”
    He paused to drink some of his coffee. Morn may have done the same: she was concentrating too hard to notice.
    “From our point of view, that was understandable. Intertech’s charter forbids genetic tampering. You probably know that.” Morn nodded. “It’s a universal prohibition. Even the United Mining Companies charter says the same thing. Intertech could have been dismantled if the things our section did were looked at the wrong way.
    “We were working,” he said as if the statement had no special significance, “on a defense against genetic warfare. An immunization for RNA mutation.”
    Morn’s throat closed in shock; she almost stopped breathing. An immunization for RNA mutation. She may have been only a UMCP ensign, but no space-going man or woman could have failed to recognize the implications. A defense against genetic warfare. If that were achieved, it would be the most important single discovery since Juanita Estevez stumbled on the gap drive. It would transform human space. It would defuse—and conceivably resolve—the peril of forbidden space. It might even end the problem of piracy, if the pirates were deprived of what was by far their largest market.
    No wonder Intertech was “twitchy about security.” The patents alone on such a discovery might make the company rich enough to buy out the UMC.
    But Vector was still talking. While she struggled to catch up with him, he went on, “As you can imagine, we had to be pretty good at tampering ourselves before we could find a way to protect genetic coding against alteration. And we were good. The truth is, we were close. We were so close I used to dream about it at night. It was like climbing