A cheshire steals across the patio, breaking Kanya's thoughts. It leaps into the doctor's lap. Kanya steps back, disgusted, as the man scratches behind the cheshire's ears. It molts, legs and body changing hue, taking on the colors of the old man's quilt.
The doctor smiles. "Don't cling too tightly to what is natural, Captain. Here, look," he bends forward, makes cooing noises. The shimmer of the cheshire cranes toward his face, mewling. Its tortoiseshell fur glimmers. It licks tentatively at his chin. "A hungry little beast," he says. "A good thing, that. If it's hungry enough, it will succeed us entirely, unless we design a better predator. Something that hungers for it, in turn."
"We've run the analysis of that," Kanya says. "The food web only unravels more completely. Another super-predator won't solve the damage already done."
Gibbons snorts. "The ecosystem unravelled when man first went a-seafaring. When we first lit fires on the broad savannas of Africa. We have only accelerated the phenomenon. The food web you talk about is nostalgia, nothing more. Nature." He makes a disgusted face. "We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it."
"Like AgriGen? Like U Texas? Like RedStar HiGro?" Kanya shakes her head. "How many of us are dead because of their potential unleashed? Your calorie masters showed us what happens. People die."
"Everyone dies." The doctor waves a dismissal. "But you die now because you cling to the past. We should all be windups by now. It's easier to build a person impervious to blister rust than to protect an earlier version of the human creature. A generation from now, we could be well-suited for our new environment. Your children could be the beneficiaries. Yet you people refuse to adapt. You cling to some idea of a humanity that evolved in concert with your environment over millennia, and which you now, perversely, refuse to remain in lockstep with.
"Blister rust is our environment. Cibiscosis. Genehack weevil. Cheshires. They have adapted. Quibble as you like about whether they evolved naturally or not. Our environment has changed. If we wish to remain at the top of our food chain, we will evolve. Or we will refuse, and go the way of the dinosaurs and Felis domesticus. Evolve or die. It has always been nature's guiding principle, and yet you white shirts seek to stand in the way of inevitable change." He leans forward. "I want to shake you sometimes. If you would just let me, I could be your god and shape you to the Eden that beckons us."
"I'm Buddhist."
"And we all know windups have no souls." Gibbons grins. "No rebirth for them. They will have to find their own gods to protect them. Their own gods to pray for their dead." His grin widens. "Perhaps I will be that one, and your windup children will pray to me for salvation." His eyes twinkle. "I would like a few more worshippers, I must admit. Jaidee was like you. Always such a doubter. Not as bad as Grahamites, but still, not particularly satisfactory for a god."
Kanya makes a face. "When you die, we will burn you to ash and bury you in chlorine and lye and no one will remember you."
The doctor shrugs, unconcerned. "All gods must suffer." He leans back in his chair, smiling slyly. "So, would you like to burn me at the stake now? Or would you like to prostrate yourself before me, and worship my intelligence once again?"
Kanya hides her disgust at the man. Pulls out the bundle of papers and hands them across. The doctor takes them, but doesn't do anything else. Doesn't open them. Barely glances at them.
"Yes?"
"It's all in there," she says.
"You haven't knelt yet. You give more respect to your father, I'm sure. To the city pillar, for certain."
"My father is dead."
"And Bangkok will drown. It doesn't mean you shouldn't show respect."
Kanya fights the urge to take out her baton and club him.
Gibbons smiles at her resistance. "Shall we chat awhile then, first?" he asks. "Jaidee always liked to talk. No? I can see from your expression you despise me. You think I'm some murderer, perhaps? Some killer of children? You won't break bread with one such as me?"
"You are a killer."
"Your killer. Your tool entirely. What does that make you?" He watches her, amused. It feels to Kanya as if