In the Mouth of the Whale by Paul McAuley

kits. Creating maggots that did not pupate but continued to eat and grow; maggots that pupated but did not undergo aptosis and so were not able to develop further; maggots with metabolic kinks which meant that they processed food inefficiently and grew very slowly, some able to pupate, others not. The giant maggots and developmentally challenged pupae quickly died; only half-starved, slow-growing maggots lived significantly longer than ordinary flies. The Child couldn’t tinker with her own genetic make-up because the various tools she needed – tailored viruses and micro-RNAs, splicing protocols, telomere treatments, and so on – were strictly licensed by the government. And gene wizards and green saints jealously guarded their research, especially the secrets which had extended their lives. Although the Child had sent flattering messages to various gene wizards employed by the Peixoto family, only a few had replied, and those with benign vagueness that recognised the Child’s interest but did nothing to satisfy her thirst for knowledge. So she set about educating herself, soaking up gigabytes of old, unrestricted literature on human longevity, and when her work on maggots confirmed the work of certain early pioneers, she decided that she could take one positive step towards her goal, and began to cut down her food intake.
    It wasn’t easy to eat less with her ama clucking over her, but the Child discovered that she could make herself throw up after meals, with a finger down her throat at first, then, when that no longer worked because she’d lost her gag reflex, with soapy water. She didn’t do this every day. She had a strict plan, and the will to discipline herself. To take charge of her body and her destiny. She dosed herself with a complex mix of vitamins, mineral supplements and omega-3 oils spun by the hospital’s maker. She charted changes in her weight. She studied herself in the mirror every day, felt her ribs and the horns of her pelvis. She worked on her maggots and flies. She tried to devise a plan to trick Vidal Francisca into ordering splicing templates for human genes through the sugar-cane plantation’s laboratory, but she couldn’t work out how to get past the fearsome government licensing restrictions.
    It was her use of the hospital maker that gave her away. One of the technicians discovered the simple programs she’d written, and told her mother; her mother confronted her, and it all came out. The dieting and the ideas about tinkering with her own genome, her plan to remain a child for ever.
    Maria Hong-Owen blamed herself. For being too caught up in her work. For failing to spot her daughter’s obsession, for failing to realise that her skinniness was something more than a phase in her development. She talked with the Child about her experiments and tried to rationalise away her fears, but the Child was stubborn and refused to listen to reason, refused to accept that she was risking her health to no good purpose. They fought each other to unsatisfactory truces, the Child by turns sulky and shrill, Maria tired and headachy after working long hours in the hospital, where she spent more than half her time arguing with the hospital board about emergency measures, or with remote officials about essential supplies that had never been sent or had been lost somewhere in the supply chain, or had been hijacked by wildsiders or bandits. At last, alarmed by her daughter’s flat insistence that she knew better than anyone else about matters that she was far too young to properly understand, Maria said that she would receive some instruction from Father Caetano.
    Here is one whose life is not even written in water. One we must create from first principles. A violation of our rules, yes, but necessary if we are to achieve our aims. Besides, there was a church in the little town, and so there must have been a priest or two, and we imagine this one darkly handsome, vigorous and practical, able to navigate