Free Pirates of the Thunder by Jack L. Chalker

System. Everyone, even the freebooters themselves, might be our enemy. The captain is correct. If we are to be pirates, we must have a place to study and bury our loot. We will eventually require more people, perhaps as allies. And, finally, these confines are no place to raise children, and we will have children, won’t we, China?”
    She nodded somberly. “Yes. Star Eagle was checking out the transmuter system and eventually required a human. It—tickles. All over. Nothing more. You are not even aware that it is done until it is over. In so doing, he also had to make a molecule-by-molecule memory map of me in order to reconstruct me. I was aware that a transmuter was used upon me by Clayben’s staff on Melchior. I was not aware until now of the extent.” Her voice was dry, hollow, as if that tough exterior was about to fragment into a million pieces.
    Star Eagle broke in. “She has been thoroughly transmuted,” the computer pilot reported, “although the changes are not so obvious. I had hoped to be able to restore her to some semblance of normalcy with my devices, but that is impossible. Perhaps Master System could restore her, but I cannot. There is a certain—instability—inherent in a full transmutation. I knew that just from the small transmuters on the old ship. There are some minor losses each time something is actually changed—no loss if absolutely reconstructed. That was why a separate core was needed to transmute the human cargo of this ship. There is literally no tolerance for errors. The losses she suffered at the hands of Melchior are negligible, but to do it again would compound those losses. Reassembly might well kill or cripple her. There is some indication that this is actually built into the system when dealing with complex organic life forms. Master System wanted to make certain that none of those it created could change themselves back. It wanted permanency, and it designed it into the system.”
    “I was—am—a genetic experiment,” China explained. “My father worked to create me. My extreme beauty—I am not saying that to be egotistical—and my very high intelligence were part of it. I was part of a larger project to breed a race of superior intellects, intellects that might do more than simply cheat on the system. I was but stage one, however; that race was to be bred, and it was my purpose to be one of those who would bear the next generation that might be the rebels. It was to escape this life as a breeding factory that I fled. I saw my father as unfeeling, as even evil, and I ran into the hands of Clayben, who was far more unfeeling and evil than my father ever dreamed of being. Melchior was Clayben’s playpen, possibly the only place in the known universe where such vast knowledge and power could be wielded without restraint by human beings. He examined me, discovered my background, and decided my father was correct.”
    “But you escaped from him, as well,” Chow Dai noted.
    “Not soon enough. They analyzed what my father’s geneticists and biochemists had done and made improvements on it in computer models, but as you know such modifications would not be inheritable if induced, unlike my father’s more direct approach with laboratory eggs and sperm. They were also aware of all that I had accomplished in escaping my father, Center, and even Earth. They wanted my mind and my body—in that, at least, their ideas were better than my father’s—but they wanted me secure, particularly if I was to work with their best computers and data bases. Melchior was originally established as a research station by Master System to create the Martians. It has a small but very workable transmitter. They use it for many experiments. Captain Koll’s tail is a good example.”
    “I’m more familiar with it than you know, dearie,” Koll said enigmatically.
    “At any rate, they modified me. All of me. Incorporated their genetic changes to be inheritable, building on my father’s work.