The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) (4 page)

“Eighty thousand light years,” Verena said.

“What’s changed since then?” Brody finished.

“I assure you we have enough—” Heywood said.

The Huelel Simulation Room’s glass doors slid open, and the holograms fizzled, as if jolted with electrical surges.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Heywood said. “You may not enter unannounced!”

An early adolescent girl in a red cape darted around the room’s edge as if she were a ballerina.

Brody furrowed his brow, as did Verena and Nero.

“My gods,” Verena said, “a Courier of the Chancellor.”

The girl rushed down the white marble stairs to the recess where the team stood. Her hair fluttered, colorful and silky, like a peacock’s feathers.

“I carry an important message for the team,” she said, expressionless, breathing hard. Her name tag read VALENTINE.

“I would hope so,” Heywood said. Valentine crinkled her face. “Well, don’t you hold back now, show us what it is!”

The courier pulled out a z-disk and handed it to Heywood. He placed it on his workstation. His request failed. DNA MISMATCH appeared above his workstation in bright silver letters.

“The message is for the Barão Strike Team,” Valentine said. “Captain Barão can access it. He alone.”

Brody took the disk and transferred the information to the hologram-producing pad. It rotated as if around a sphere.

Verena stood still while Nero swore and Brody’s bronze face turned pale.

“You have been
warned
,” the courier said, “and now I must go.” Valentine floated up to the exit as gracefully as she’d entered.

Nero shook his head. “The nerve of that child.”

The nerve of Chancellor Masimovian
, Brody thought, his heart pounding in his chest. The courier’s visit, the impromptu mission, Heywood’s assertiveness—it all reeked of demotion.

“Captain,” Heywood said, “I know you’re capable of completing this mission—”

“To achieve significant conversion, you know that we’ll need more than that. We’ll need—”

“A piece of Vigna, perhaps,” Heywood said, too quickly for Brody’s liking. “Yes! Supreme Chancellor Atticus Masimovian wouldn’t deny that a species brought back from Vigna, an intelligent life from another world,
is
significant conversion.”

“I thought you said we lost contact with the Lorum?” Verena said.

“When were the board and ministry notified about this Warning, and why wasn’t I told?” Brody said.

“How can the Warning be issued to
us?
” Nero said.

More questions flew like arrows until Heywood shouted, “
HOLD IT!
” He sighed, blinked, and moved his head to the side. His hair slipped over his forehead. “Captain, the board didn’t know about the Warning and neither did I. If I had known, I wouldn’t have allowed this interruption.” He looked at Nero. “The chancellor may censure any and all who serve within Beimeni.” To Verena, he said, “Yes. We did lose contact with the Lorum, this I promise, but the recent presence of a higher being surely indicates the existence of lower beings, life forms that might prove useful to us, or not, I don’t know, I serve—”

“Chancellor Masimovian,” Verena said, “same as we, but this order is for a team of three in a single shuttle. On Vigna there could be many foes, seen and unseen—”

“You are transhuman. Your range of survivability is wide, and where your genes won’t protect you, the interstellar synsuits will, and if all else fails, your captain’s power in the zeropoint field will shield you.”

A new hologram formed upon the pad, one with crystalline cliffs and mossy stone. Trees as tall as mountains stretched into the clouds. The view zoomed past a clear river with what looked like sparks of electricity, down layers of waterfalls to a rock formation where the clear water mixed with a metallic fluid. The fluid flowed from a pool
up
a cutout in the stone and into the landmass, near geothermal vents. The fluid seemed artificial yet organic, a vivid combination of gold, scarlet, black, silver, and yellow; it weaved in a hypnotic pattern unnatural for its liquid composition.

Research into the Vigna system had advanced far beyond what Brody knew. “You’ve sent probes?”

“One probe,” Heywood said, “which took years to arrive at Vigna and sent but one transmission to Candor Chasma before we lost contact.”

“Then send another to discern the Lorum’s status,” Verena said.

“The chancellor,” Verena was about to interrupt, but Nero told her not to, “insists upon a landing.”

“What is this … liquid metal?” Brody said.

“Your striker is best fit for the high-altitude drop,” Heywood said. “Explore the mountain and jungle and the cliff formation among the clouds. Bring back a sample of this colorful liquid, and I assure you that the memory of your failed Jubilees will disappear faster than humanity did from the Earth’s surface.”

Research & Development Department (RDD)

Palaestra, Underground Northeast

2,500 meters deep

Damy observed the synisms fermenting before her, and those swishing side to side in tubes connected to silo vats. Beside the vats, robotics responded to Damy’s thoughts. She made adjustments, workstation to workstation, Granville sphere to Granville sphere, micromanipulator to micromanipulator. She would soon complete
E. convert,
a synthetic organism her team hoped would accelerate the process of transforming known genomes into those of extinct species based upon fossil remains—a unique challenge when compiling incomplete genetic material, but crucial to the completion of Project Silkscape, formerly known as Project Gemini.

“The purpose of Project Gemini,” Chancellor Masimovian had declared in 342 AR, “is to learn about the origins of life, to better understand evolution and the processes that influence Reassortment.”

Damy had nodded, though his comment lacked reason; where 95 percent of life on Earth consisted of just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus, Reassortment wasn’t natural. It was a mirror organism with eight nucleotides and thirty-nine amino acids and had mutated in ways unpredicted by science; where it had once lived solely off human neural and blood cells, it had learned to live off sunlight and nitrogen, a disastrous event historians called the Reassortment Atmospheric Anomaly, for it had spread rapidly in Earth’s atmosphere and soil.

“It is possible,” Masimovian added, “however unlikely, that an ancient form of man may possess resistance to Reassortment, a subtlety we might exploit.”

Damy’s team had constructed earlier forms of
Homo transition
including
Homo habilis,
a species more than a million and a half years old that stood nearly a meter tall with a round jawline and narrow teeth;
Homo rudolfensis,
over a million years old and no more than one and a half meters tall with a hard brain case, a long face, wide teeth, and on and on to
Homo ergaster
,
Homo erectus
, and
Homo heidelbergensis
; but it was
Homo neanderthalensis,
Neanderthal Man, a species well adapted to cold weather and intense physical activity, that Damy’s team fully reverse engineered from fossilized genetic materials and the transhuman genome (a genome better acclimated to the deep Earth’s heat and pressure and mind-body-cosmos connection than any ancestral hominid).

Damy and Brody had hoped that Neanderthal’s body—heavily muscled with larger heat-efficient brains—might react differently to Reassortment and yield insights that might further his research. Damy created the first synthetic protohumans, naming them Gemini, and at a conclave the discovery was deemed worthy of significant conversion. Damy still wore the Mark of Masimovian upon her neck. Though the Gemini succumbed as swiftly to Reassortment as the more evolved transhuman, the Mark gave Damy credibility within the supreme scientific board and provided Brody a viable, and in her opinion more humane source for clinical trials. Project Gemini evolved into Silkscape, an entertainment venture, with the Harsailles Menagerie: a garden for formerly extinct species, scheduled to open in the second trimester of 370 AR at the center of Silkscape City, Lovereal.

Now Damy telepathically sent orders to the workstations, and thousands of cylindrical microscopes moved up and down, magnifying the genetic materials, accommodating Damy’s adjustments. She coordinated with the bots and the micromanipulators and fed the materials into the central synism silo. Damy’s bot assistant, Joanna—molded from an alloy to look almost transhuman—moved simmering vials and beakers.

Damy blew out a big breath and swiped the sweat from her forehead. She dimmed the oval lighting overhead. Violet phosphorescent light filled the silo walls as she constructed the new genome, oligo by oligo.

The opaque entrance to the Nicola Facility’s Fermentation Center cleared.

Vernon Lebrizzi entered. Damy saw his reflection in the glass enclosure, his face looking like a rat’s, his hands in his transparent lab coat pockets. She exhaled.
Why, why, why does he
never
listen
, she thought.
He’ll ruin my momentum …

“You’re supposed to be on the surface,” Damy said. She clumped her hair in a fist.

Biomat suits protected Beimenians during surface excursions. Though they failed 5 to 10 percent of the time, killing many RDD scientists, neophytes, strike team captains, strikers, aeras, and strategists, Vernon always found his way back to the Beimeni zone. Damy sighed.

“Let the underlings collect specimens and die on the surface,” Verne said. “We’re too far behind.” He activated a workstation. “Why would you insist on my participation when we have so much to do, so close to opening day?”

“I heard you’re the most efficient researcher the Aeronian Trading Center ever knew,” Damy said. “Did your reputation exceed your potential?” She adjusted synconvert’s DNA, and the cylinders hissed up and down.

“I don’t know where you hear these rumors, Miss Damy,” Verne said.

Damy turned away, face flushed. She hated it when he addressed her formally.

“I’m your top researcher,” Verne added, “and this organism could be the breakthrough we’ve been searching for, accelerate our conversions, lead to—”

“You’re in my way,” Damy said.

“—the terrible beast you so desire.”

The beautiful beast,
Damy thought. The scientists who discovered
Deinotherium
Before Reassortment called it the “terrible beast” because of its huge size, odd appearance, short trunk, and unusual tusks, which looked like two massive fangs protruding from the lower jaw. Without viable genetic materials, resurrection of it had eluded Damy for many years. She didn’t need Vernon Lebrizzi to remind her of it. When she ignored him, Verne deactivated his workstation and requested water from Joanna, who brought him a glass.

The
balls
on this man
, Damy thought,
now using Joanna in the middle of a synbio experiment!

He slurped the water and dabbed perspiration from his face, then pulled back his transparent sleeve, glancing down. His armlet’s digital display showed information from the Aeronian Trading Center, colloquially known as “the pit.” Verne didn’t trade any longer, he assured Damy, but she knew he missed it like a lover. He still dressed like one of them, wearing button-down shirts, bow ties, and slacks held up by suspenders beneath his transparent lab coat. Damy despised the pit and the traders who operated there. She never would’ve taken Verne on her team if she’d known his origin. Never, never, never—

“We’re behind,” Verne said, still staring at the armlet, “and the chancellor’s office demands at least two hundred
living
species prior to opening day.”

“Opening day is two years off, Mister Verne.” Damy activated another seven workstations to coordinate the organism’s synthesis. “We’re right on schedule.” While opening day
was
two years away, the creation of life took time, Damy knew, and synisms used to accelerate growth in transhumans didn’t always translate well to the DNA of other species, particularly prehistoric ones.

Verne smiled. “Not for long, with that attitude.”

“You should go,” Damy said. “They’ll be expecting you in Area 55.”

“They can wait. I wanted to check on you, see how you’re doing … what with the mission …”

“What in Reassortment’s name are you talking about?” Damy swore. The ivory cylinders stopped, as did the flow of enzymes and genetic materials.

“You don’t know?”

Damy swiped for his armlet, but he held it away from her. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

She glared at him, wishing she could send him back to Navita City, with its sinuous underground streams that roved throughout the city’s layers, down the Great Falls into the Archimedes River.
A massive leech for a massive toilet bowl
, she thought.

Much of Navita City’s walls were covered with holograms, rather than Granville illusions, the sole city built this way. The renditions contained information on trade contracts, or images of the goods, services, and events represented by contracts, such as cloned livestock, synthesized raw materials, synbio products, the pricing for candidates in the Harpoon Auction. There were contracts on the odds of a Jubilee, on how long a Jubilee would last, on the probability of a death
anywhere
in the commonwealth, and in which territory a death would occur; contracts on the probability of a Reassortment cure discovery, on the direction Lady Isabelle would first sling her hair at her next commonwealth holiday celebration, and of course, the contracts for shares of consortiums that traded on the Beimeni Contract Exchange.