Schemes of the Unknown Unknown Ch. 19

Then there were other people associated with the mission, particularly those in positions of high authority such as Permanent Secretary Alfredo Miskiewicz. As a man who was always on the outside of society looking in, both as a homosexual and as a man whose genes were not quite determined by evolution alone, Brigadier Svenssen was more than normally sensitive to subtle signs of nonconformity in the people he encountered. Very often it was because they too had an ancestry that involved artificially enhanced genes, but he was also aware that if a community of people like his could survive mostly unremarked in the expanse of the Solar System then there was space for other mould-breaking variations. Perhaps the mystery associated with Alexander Iliescu was in some way also associated with Ms Korolyov's hypotheses.

The brigadier was already persuaded that an alien intelligence had taken a keen interest in the mission and infiltrated the mission at every level. What he wasn't able to do was determine just what this alien intelligence could possibly be.

And, what was worse, he had no way of knowing whether this intelligence was good either for the mission or for the interests of the Interplanetary Union that he so loyally served.