The Unearthing (37 page)

“I don’t understand. How could you not isolate DNA from the cells?” Bloom asked. “I thought all life was made from DNA.”

“On this planet that may be true,” Kodo replied. “But before now we’ve never encountered extraterrestrial life. We have no way of knowing for certain that DNA is the only combination of chemicals from which life can evolve. DNA is just a complex string of amino acids. But not all possible amino acids are used in DNA and even then some of those used in DNA serve no apparent function at all.”

“We subjected those tissue samples to extremes of heat and cold, burnt some, dissected others,” Cole supplied. “Except for those exposed to severe extremes, like super-frozen in liquid hydrogen or incinerated by propane flame, powerful acids or cellular dissection, the cells survived unscathed. They do fine in water, in vacuum, in toxic situations…it’s as though they’re made to be multienvironmental.”

“Then the only thing we can be absolutely sure of is that they were engineered,” Bloom said, “Because I can’t imagine an organism like that occurring in nature.”

“Well the evidence certainly seems to
suggest
that the organism was engineered,” Cole commented.

“The society that can engineer this hearty an organism,” Kodo said, “That
large
an organism,” he added with a sweeping gesture meant to indicate the Ship, “Makes Human gene therapists look like witch doctors.” There was that distinction, again. One that until not so long ago had been the domain of science fiction only: the distinction between Human and Alien. It was like a racial distinction, between White or Black, Chinese or Indian. Only it was clear that now there was a
real
distinction, like that between man and insect. And in Human versus Alien, Bloom had no doubt about who was the insect.

♦♦♦

James woke up in a blinding wave of terror, falling out of bed with a scream escaping his lips. His heart pounded in his chest, his eyes were wide with fear and the undisputable knowledge that he was going to die seared his mind.

“James!” Allison said, sitting up in bed, “What is it? What’s wrong?” It was the morning after their second night together. Allison knew about his panic attacks but she had never seen James in the grips of one. James flinched away from her as she reached out to touch his shoulder. He looked to her like a cornered animal; terrified and pathetic.

“I’m afraid…” he stammered, “I’m so afraid…” Allison crouched down, sitting on the floor in front of James. She reached out a hand. James took it, grasping it the way a drowning man might. He was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and his breathing was shallow and fast.

“James…there’s nothing to be afraid of,”

“Yes there is,” he sobbed, “I’m so afraid of dying!” Allison drew James into a tight embrace. The stink of fear-sweat on him was overwhelming.

“There’s no reason to be afraid of dying,” She said, “It’s an inevitability. All you’re doing is worrying over nothing.”

“I keep dreaming…I keep dreaming of the Prof’s death…of my death…I can’t stop thinking about it. And after what happened to Laura--”

“But Laura’s going to be fine,” Allison protested.

“But she almost died the
exact
same way her father did,” James replied, “All I keep thinking about are the people I love dying. All I keep thinking about is
this
.”

“James, you need to relax. Calm down, please. It’s okay.” James pushed himself free of Allison’s embrace, standing up.

“It’s not okay,” he said. “
I’m
not okay!” He left Allison’s bedroom without dressing, rushing to the living room where they had left the pack of joints they’d bought the night before. He shook one out of the pack, lighting it and smoking quickly and deeply, like a cigarette. Allison followed him into the living room.

“You have to do something about this James,” She said, leaning against him, “You have to see someone.”

“Yeah, I know,” James rasped, “I know.”

♦♦♦

The Minister read over the report from one of the Committee’s advisors, sipping from a large mug of tea by his side. The Republican Minority in the US was working to organize a campaign to shut down the Ship, as were the Liberals in England, the Social Reformists in Russia and the ruling Socialist party in France. Other cells of protest were making their voices known across the world, most especially in the nations that had been struck by Gabriel Ashe’s cultists’ suicidal rampage. The voices of reason didn’t seem to be as loud, though they were certainly as many. The media smelled sensation. It was just another example of the media influencing public opinion with selective coverage of the facts: the sort of thing that had allowed Carver Rose II to be re-elected President of the United States and continue a campaign of aggression that became known as War Three. And with the current crisis over the Ship even INN wasn’t immune to the sensation. Though it had some balancing news items on its grid spar, the stories in heavy rotation and the ones being linked to the most were the stories in favour of shutting down access to the Ship and turning the World Ship Preserve into an isolated spot on the planet’s surface.

Even within the Committee there was some debate about whether or not the SSE should be allowed to continue operations; the Committee and its subsidiaries would have fuller access to the Ship if it were closed off. They’d have clandestine access to it with impunity. As things were now they had to rely on more difficult methods of discovery and usually whatever they learned was learned first by the World Ship Summit and the World’s scientific communities. The Committee had some information that the World Council wasn’t privy to, but shutting down the Expedition would enable them to learn much, much more.

The Minister didn’t agree, because he was fond of the idea that the World could directly benefit from discoveries made in the Ship. Fortunately, the opinion that the World Council should be influenced by the Committee to shut down the Ship Survey Expedition was a minority one, held only by the Chairman Joint Chiefs, the Minister of Natural Resources and the British Defence Minister. Even MI-6 was opposed to the shutdown and oddly enough for many of the same reasons the Minister was. The question was whether or not the Committee had enough influence to stem the flow of public opinion as it was whispered into the ears of the members of the World Ship Summit and the World Council. Would the Committee have enough influence to convince these august bodies to keep the Ship open to the SSE?

The Minister already knew that the World Ship Summit’s decision to close the Site down while their investigators moved in was a largely theatrical one, designed to appease the agitated and the agitators who wanted the Preserve sealed. The investigators were little more than census-takers and surveyors, canvassing public opinion in and around the Site, getting witness testimony and the like so that they and their counterparts in all the hot zones created by the Night of Blood could sit in committee and create a convoluted recommendations paper that the World Ship Summit could study and debate while no doubt secretly waiting for final public opinion to decide their true course of action. It was so much like Canadian politics that the Minister found it almost unbelievable. The only difference was that the World Ship Summit didn’t have the lunatic fringe of the United Conservative Party sitting in opposition. The Minister only hoped that the Committee’s influence with the World Ship Summit would be of value to the Ship Survey Expedition. Otherwise the SSE would fall away to be replaced by a Committee-sponsored equivalent with the likes of Colonel Jude in charge. And speaking of Jude, nearly two full days had gone by without word from him or his troops, which meant the Colonel and Gabriel Ashe were still missing and presumably at large.

♦♦♦

Jude had stood at the front of the tramcar staring at the tunnel stretching ahead. Every so often he’d passed through a ring of blue energy banding the tunnel walls. Beyond that Jude had no notion of the distance he’d travelled or at what speed. The beacon he’d left behind at the transitway station had cut out the instant the tramcar had launched itself into the tram tunnel. With no sense of inertia within the car, Jude could only tell that he was moving because of the energy bands he shot through. He timed them initially at one every ten seconds. But now either the car was slowing or they were spreading further apart: he was now passing blue bands at twenty second intervals. An indistinct light was forming ahead and this was what had attracted Jude’s attention to the front of the tram car. It seemed he was reaching some sort of destination. The transit tube the car was traveling in suddenly became transparent and Jude could see into a chamber easily half a klick high, with level after level of platform stacked from floor to ceiling suspended on a lattice of honeycombs through which dozens, if not hundreds of transit tubes crisscrossed. The tubes all met at platforms; each platform opened onto another transit tube and in each tube sat a row of oval cars, waiting for passengers. Numerous lifts rose from the center of the platforms, giving access to every level. The scale of things staggered Jude’s imagination. Ashe could be anywhere now. Jude had no hope of finding him.

He stepped from his car onto the platform. The bank of lifts all stood open on this level, waiting. Jude dropped a beacon on the platform and approached the lifts. He took out the aerosol fingerprint detector and liberally sprayed the wall of the lift bank. Nothing showed up. Given the lead that Ashe had there was little chance of a thermal residue on the floor from the insane cultist’s footprints. Jude turned around, heading back for the lift car. He’d ride the circuit and return to the surface. There was nothing else he could—Jude froze in his tracks; his ears intent, his body almost completely still. He tried to listen over the thrumming noises of the Ship’s interior, his ears fighting against the echo of seventy million years of stillness. Had he heard voices? He couldn’t be sure. Jude was about to move on back towards the car when he heard it again. It seemed to be coming from above. A single word, the inflection questioning. Jude reached carefully into one of the cargo pockets of his uniform. There was an identifiable sound; something that didn’t belong to the background noise. From his pocket Jude pulled a small sound tracker and keyed it into the headset he still wore. He pointed the device straight up and cocked an ear. It only took the machine a moment to filter out the regular background. Then, he heard it again: It was definitely a voice; only there were too many levels of platform between Jude and the speaker for anything to be coherent. It sounded almost as though the speaker was having a conversation with someone, but that was impossible. They were alone down here. Jude replaced the device in his pocket and brought his weapon to bear. Three steps later he was inside a lift car. The doorway sealed seamlessly behind him, creating another perfectly transparent wall. However this lift was different from the one that ruled the Pyramid somewhere above him: This one had a control plate to the right of the door. But pushing the wrong button would send him in the wrong direction and possibly alert Ashe to his presence.

“Fuck,” Jude muttered. The numeric glyphs were all pretty self-evident once he took a good look at them. The only thing to determine was whether the first number was the highest floor or the lowest. Jude looked up over the door where in a traditional Human elevator the floor number would appear. Nothing. Then he noticed one glyph on the console was glowing, backlit ever so faintly. That had to be this floor. He’d noticed as he came in that there seemed to be fewer floors beneath him than above. There were fewer glyphs to the right of the lit one than to the left. Therefore, it was a good guess that the top left glyph denoted the highest floor. Jude pushed it and began watching both the glyphs and the transparent wall of the lift. The car rose; so far, so good. Jude watched intently as floor after deserted floor of platforms dropped away beneath him. His beacon still sounded below him, which was good. No sign of the owner of the voice he’d heard, although Jude had no doubt as to who he’d find when he caught up. Finally the car rose up through another level and there he saw Gabriel Ashe. The madman had his back turned to the lifts, but as Jude rose into view, he turned around to look straight into Jude’s eyes.

“Shit!” Jude cursed, stabbing the button for the floor he’d just shot by. The car kept climbing. Jude began punching at all the non-numeric buttons on the keypad. Finally he succeeded in stopping the car and returning it to the floor he’d spotted Ashe on. Once more, he was too late. Ashe was stepping into a transit car and speeding away. Jude dashed from the lift for the next tramcar in line waiting for use. He dropped another beacon to the deck just before climbing aboard. Moments later he was speeding off once more in pursuit of his prey.

♦♦♦

The heads of the Ship Survey Expedition were gathered together in Colonel Bloom’s office.

“The way things stand,” Bloom told them, repeating what the liaison from the World Ship Summit had told her, “We’re lucky that we can still continue with our activities here at base camp.”

“So, we’re stuck going over old data that’s already being looked at by the best minds on the planet,” Paulson said, “We’re the vanguard for the research into the Ship, Colonel. We’re supposed to be down there exploring.”

“We can’t move any farther towards understanding the Ship’s language until we go back to that language lab,” Aiziz added, “We’re at a standstill. We
have
to get back down there.” Bloom raised her hands and made a halting gesture.

“Look, I agree,” Bloom said, “Christ knows that I want to be back there too. But the World Ship Summit wants to make sure the Ship doesn’t cause another massacre. They’re afraid of global-scale panic.”