“Oh, they can find the problem,” Ghorbani corrected. “You didn’t know that?”

“N-no,” Herzer replied. “Uh ’ought ’ey couldn’ fi’ it.”

“Those are two entirely different things, son,” she said softly. “The problem is that fixing it the normal way would kill you.”

“Whuh? Whah?”

“The problem is in neurotransmitter regulation,” Daneh said. “To fix it would require changing your DNA and then changing out all of your regulatory proteins. Since while that’s going on, none of your neurotransmitters are going to work at all, that’s tantamount to killing you. We might as well pump you full of neurotoxin. That’s why the docs won’t treat it; they aren’t allowed to take any chances beyond a certain parameter.”

“ ’Ange?” he asked. “Or a ’ansfer?”

“Both have ramifications under the circumstances,” she replied with a lifted chin and a “tchuck” that signified “no.” “I think it was a Change sometime in your gene history that was the problem; the complex that is interfering with the neurotransmitter production is nearly co-located with the site for a gill protein. And I see you have mer-people about three generations back. Trying to do either a Transfer or a Change would be chancy. A Transfer assumes that your nerves, your brain cells not to put too fine a point on it, are acting normally. Yours aren’t. I’d put about a thirty percent likelihood that if we tried to Transfer you to a nannite entity or something similar you’d either lose significant sections of memory, or base-level processing ability, or both. Lose base-level process and you’re going to be a semifunctional mind in a nannite body you can’t control. Not a good choice either.”

“Muh ’ody’s go’g and muh brain ’oo,” the boy pointed out. “Don’ ha’ ’oo ma’y ’oices lef’, doc’or.”