One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (21 page)

Tek’tek snorted. “Yeah, right, a real angel,” he laughed.

“
Watch it,” Sarah warned him.

“
You are still speaking too shrill and fast,” Xi told them.

Tek’tek stepped forward. The Original did not raise his book this time. Instead, he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin. Tek’tek suddenly liked him. It took guts to stand up to someone twice your size. Tek’tek spoke slowly from the bottom of his barrel chest. “Sorry to disappoint you, but she’s no angel. She’s plain old human. Like me.” He got slower and deeper, seeing the Original’s face remained blank. “Tek’tek. Sara. Friends,” he said, cavernously.

The Original smiled at last, a smile that illuminated his solemn face. “Enoch. Friends.”

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The next few weeks were rather busy. Sara and Tek’tek got accustomed to Enoch’s speech, and he got used to theirs. It was easier for them. They had eyeview to translate. He had to learn from scratch. They remained Enoch’s primary contacts. Tek’tek tried taking Enoch to a party, but it was not a success. Enoch looked furiously uncomfortable amid the giant, tentacled, fanged, horned and feathered, tattooed and chiton-plated crowd, and he was really unable to deal with the exchange student, rKrKrK, a sentient clay conglomerate. He disappeared midway through the evening and Tek’tek found him on the lawn curled up in a foetal position. It was clear that although Enoch was bravely accepting as much as he could, there were limits to his world view that it would be best not to test. They had enough trouble hiding Professor Xi, who was always lurking hopefully in the background, pining for an introduction.

Enoch’s suitcase contained a change of clothes and odd items of black worked metal. “A tooth for a plough share,” he explained. “A candle holder,” was another, which looked like a flower. “I made them,” he said, with a smile. Then he carefully lifted a soft package from the suitcase and unfolded it. It was a beautiful piece of cloth, white and translucent.

“
It’s soft, and so fine,” Sara squealed with delight as she stroked it.

“
Lace,” Enoch explained. “My sister knitted it.” He folded it up carefully and put it away.

“
He must have brought them as gifts,” Sara guessed, later, but Enoch did not distribute them. Perhaps he realised that they had no use for them. They had a hard time persuading him to accept the new clothes they bought him. Sara spent hours searching through the children’s sections, the only size that would fit, for clothing that didn’t glow, sparkle, mutate or automatically attend to bruises and scrapes.

“
Modern first aid is genome based. We mustn’t affect his DNA in any way,” Xi explained.

Sara and Tek’tek told Enoch about genome technology, that spikes were permanent and patches temporary. “Like, I’ve got krakoid hindquarters and shoulder eyes,” Tek’tek explained, krakoid being the gene form his ancestors spiked to handle the heavy gravity and cyclones of his home planet. “The krakoid is permanent but the eyes’ll disappear in a year or so.”

Enoch taught them about his Bible, his old book. Sara was in agonies over it. “It should be in a museum,” she protested. It was three centuries old and all about this God, with Enoch’s family tree written in the margins. Sara insisted they wear gloves when handling it.

Enoch had drawbacks. He prayed at every opportunity. He had a passion for preaching, and could go on for hours. Tek’tek sat through these speeches only on stern threat of a Fail. The one good thing was at the end of each preaching session Enoch handed around the Bible, then insisted on a group hug. Group hugs with Sara made the whole situation bearable.

“
I think he’s trying to save our souls,” Sara said after a long lecture on original sin that Tek’tek didn’t understand at all. Once again he made a mental note to actually do some reading.

“
He can try all he likes,” he said, amiably.

Besides, it turned out Enoch hadn’t come down the mountain to have a fun summer vacation. His community faced a calamity so severe that eventually, reluctantly, the elders had lifted their generations-old ban on travel. They were being destroyed by a horrible disease. Children were born looking normal but their muscles slowly weakened until they were unable to breathe. They died before they were nine years old. In the last few generations the disease had spread. Of children born in the last decade four out of ten had died. Was there anything that could be done to save them?

The Medical faculty were intrigued but they had to step carefully. Most doctors had cephalopod hands, much better than clumsy human fingers, but everyone realised Enoch would view them with suspicion. They nominated one doctor as the primary contact. Unfortunately Dr Gregog had a cephalopod head as well. The donut-shaped brain and copper-based blood of cephalopods were highly prized in worlds where oxygen was not a viable percentage of the atmosphere. Dr Gregog was cheerful, bluff and competent, trailing clouds of interns. But she was undeniably tentacled. Enoch refused to let her get near him.

“
Never mind, I’ll win him over,” Dr Gregog chuckled, writhing her tentacles together. “This is fascinating. We’ve got our interns delving into it. Each of them has to give a talk on ancient disorders.”

Her interns pulled wry faces. “Yeah, any time you want to learn about Cystic Fibrosis just let us know,” they muttered. They just couldn’t see the applications, when modern medicine had eliminated all genetic disorders centuries ago.

The interns took a blood sample from Enoch then ran some tests. They had to comb through ancient databases, but they came up with the answer. The children were dying from Brown-Vialetto-Van Laere syndrome. “Known as Brown’s Syndrome for short,” Dr Gregog explained. “A simple spike will fix it.”

The tests confirmed that Enoch was a carrier of Brown’s Syndrome as well.

Enoch refused the spike. He got upset at the suggestion. He tried to explain. The soul was immortal, the body transient. A spike was a temptation of the Devil.

Fortunately for Tek’tek, Sara had done the reading. “The Devil is the enemy of God,” she explained. The Devil worked to damn mankind, and one of his lures was spikes and patches.

Enoch refused to destroy their children’s souls just to save their lives.

Tek’tek just didn’t get it. “It’s all in his imagination. The kids are dying for real. Why don’t we give him the spike without telling him?” he suggested.

“
We are dealing with a serious medical ethics issue. We don’t treat without consent,” Dr Greggog said, flat. “There might be some non-genome based ways.” She sent her interns back to trawl through the ancient databases.

“
We can’t give him a modern spike anyway,” Sara pointed out. “Our genome is all cleaned up. His genome is original, except the Brown’s Syndrome ruins it. Somewhere along the line we unfortunately forgot to keep track of an original human genome sample. Still, if we can’t do it the normal way, we’ll try the old fashioned way. It’s a recessive gene after all. Let’s look at the genealogy, and see if there are any people in Enoch’s community who can intermarry.”

With Enoch’s help she scoured his Bible, worked out the family trees and marked the deaths of children. There were only one hundred and forty-seven people anyway, which even Tek’tek knew could no longer provide a viable genetic pool. Afterwards Sara crept away and cried on Tek’tek’s shoulder. Brown’s syndrome had spread through the entire Original community.

Meanwhile the interns reported failure. “Once modern technology cured genetic disorders the knowledge about them was lost. We need older information, maybe stuff that’s not on even on any databases,” they said.

Sara looked resigned. “The Old Stacks,” she said.

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The Old Stacks had been built long ago as a protected library in case of war. Above ground only a fortified metal entrance to the lifts was visible. Below lay twenty levels. The highest was the one Sara had already explored, two kilometres below ground.

Tek’tek volunteered to go. Sara said she’d go too, and Enoch wanted to accompany them. “I would love to collect books for my people,” he said, eagerly. “As long as they are godly works.”

“
We’d better stick to pre-twenty-first century,” Sara said. “They’re on level fifteen.”

Tek’tek took a large trolley with them to collect their loot. Enoch and Sara had to stand on it in order for them all to fit into the elevator. They went straight down to the fifteenth level, three clicks below ground.

The doors opened. The lights were not working. The Old Stacks were cold and dark and filled with the musty, dusty, rotted smell of paper and leather. Sara shivered, rubbed her shoulders, and hunched her wings.

“
I can see in the dark,” Tek’tek volunteered. He switched to shoulder vision, and pushed the trolley out. The lift doors hissed shut behind him.

“
You might be able to, but I can’t,” Sara’s voice jumped. Like the avians her spike came from, she was night blind. “This is really not my thing,” she said, in a very small voice.

“
Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me,” Enoch took Sara’s hand.

Tek’tek looked around at the bookshelves stretching away on all sides. He examined the elevator wall behind them. “Ta-da!” He flicked a primitive light switch.

Every second or third light was out, and the remainder were dim and yellow. He sniffed suspiciously, wondering if any air was actually circulating. He thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, up near the ceiling. When he looked it was gone. Eyeview scanned the surroundings, but reported no identifiable life forms.

Tek’tek steered the trolley to the medical section, where Sara and Enoch scrambled down. “Gloves everybody,” Sara reminded them, spraying them on. Tek’tek scanned a crumbling volume. “Hey, it says here that weasels give birth through their ears,” he reported.

“
Not helping,” said Sara. She and Enoch worked together in the mid-section.

Tek’tek studied the lights again. They were covered with webbing. “What could do that?” he muttered to himself.

“
Silverfish eat mould and other organic matter found in badly maintained books,” eyeview suggested, helpfully. The picture of the silverfish that flashed up was nowhere near big enough for these webs. He walked along the rows. Level fifteen ended in a sealed door, a temperature controlled vault. He returned to Enoch and Sara. “Hey guys,” he started. “Oh gross,” he finished.

Something had tunnelled through the books, leaving the same sticky web that covered the light fittings. The holes varied from the size of his fist, to the size of his head. “Shit,” he said, sympathetically.

“
A lot of the books are useless.” Sara was ready to cry.

“
Our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete.” Enoch tried to see the bright side.

“
We need pest exterminators real bad,” Tek’tek said. “Come and have a look at this.”

Sara forgot her disappointment when she saw the vault. “It’s an old genome store,” she said, fascinated.

Enoch looked disapproving. “God created man to His own image,” he said. He headed back to the shelves.

“
I’ve always wondered about these,” Sara said. The door led into a long, narrow chamber lined with cases. The store was still viable. Inside it was freezing. Sara shuddered and screwed up her eyes, then hugged her wings close to her body and stooped in.

“
Hold the door open or I will kill you,” she said. She ran her hands rapidly along the rows, muttering taxonomic names to herself. She was about halfway down when the lights clicked out. Noise came from the stacks, a sucking splatter followed by a loud, prolonged clatter that was the trolley tipping over.

“
Enoch, you alright?” Tek’tek called.

No answer.

The bookshelves were too far away to see what was happening. He switched to shoulder vision. Movement flickered on the ceiling, definite movement of something long and flat. To his astonishment two green lines streamed out from his shoulder eyes and met on the movement.

“
Weird,” he said. His shoulder eyes had never done that before. Perhaps he should have read the fine print before he accepted the patch. The movement squeezed into a crack in the wall and vanished. The green tracers flicked out.

Eyeview scrolled red. “Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate,” it read.

“
Enoch, we’re coming!” he shouted. “Sara!” he turned back just as Sara scrambled out blind. She ran right into him. He held her to steady her. She was much lighter than any human frame could achieve unspiked. Her bones were hollow, another adaption for flight. He loosened his grip, concerned she might break.

She shuddered. Her wings convulsed, rising in response to freedom, whisking overhead in the dark. “Why do we need to leave?” she asked. Her breath was short and harsh. If she panicked her instinctive reaction was flight. Straight into the ceiling, most like.

Dim emergency lighting flicked on. He saw she clutched an insulated, round container in her hands. “Get on my back,” he said.

“
Don’t go all protective male on me,” she said.

“
If eyeview says to go, we go. I don’t need to do the reading to know that,” he said. She scrambled on without further argument. He charged to the shelves. “Enoch!” he bellowed.

He was relieved to see Enoch standing with his back to them, facing the fallen trolley. His hands were raised. “Enoch,” he said.

Lying half on and half off the trolley was an enormous puddle of ooze, the colour and texture of vomit. Cilia twitched from its surface, straining towards Enoch’s hands.