Ell Donsaii 13: DNA (18 page)

Then the video went from amusing to stomach turning. Striper extended some sharp appearing claws from one of her medium-sized hands and used them to shear through her right eye-stalk just below the eyeball!

Horrified, Emma jerked back from the screen in reaction.

However, Striper showed no evidence of pain or dismay. The stump of the eye-stalk oozed a bit of blood, but that quickly stopped as if Striper had vascular control and could spasm off the vessels.

By this point, Striper was holding her amputated eye in front of her extra-large central eye and inspecting it closely. Again using the apparently razor-sharp claws on the medium-sized hand, Striper sliced through the eyeball longitudinally to expose a cut surface similar to the one in the diagram Virgwald had been displaying with his laser. Striper flipped the two halves over so she could look at both of them. Feeling a little green still, Emma nonetheless noted that the section of the alien eyeball looked surprisingly similar to the diagram of the human one. Optics working the way they did, she supposed that wasn’t too surprising. Emma turned to Ell, a revolted look still showing on her face, “Geez! That was disgusting!”

Ell shook her head sympathetically, “Allan and I managed to ask Striper what she would do without an eye and she seemed surprised. Apparently, she can grow another one in just a few days.” Ell waved at the screen, “Keep watching, it’s not over.”

Striper was now using her third pair of hands, the ones that were very dainty, to inspect the amputated eye. After a moment, Striper plucked the lens out of the eye. The eye hadn’t been transected perfectly in half, so Striper took the lens out of the larger section. She held it up and tried to peer through it, but it appeared to be filled with gelatinous material that was leaking out through the cut edge of the lens. Nonetheless, Striper appeared to be quite excited about whatever she did manage to see through the lens, clattering loudly at the other Virgies who’d gathered there for the session with Virgwald. A few minutes later, she clattered excitedly to one of the other Virgies and that one promptly reached up and snipped one of its own eyes off its eye-stalk! Emma wasn’t quite as horrified this time, but couldn’t keep from wondering if Striper had actually
ordered
a subordinate to cut off its own eye, or whether a colleague had
volunteered
to do so.

Moments later, they were plucking the intact lens out of this additional eye and excitedly passing it around so everyone could peer through it. In only a few minutes they had discovered that tugging or squeezing at the edges of it could change the magnification and focal length.

Emma looked up at Ell, “You just did that to watch me squirm, didn’t you?”

Ell said primly, “I only wanted you to be able to experience the depths of the Virgies’ scientific curiosity and the sacrifices they’re willing to make.” She ignored Emma’s snort and continued, “No matter how queasy that made you, Allan and I spent some time translating with them and it became evident that they thought we’d taught them something wonderful. Allan showed them diagrams of dual lens microscopes with objectives and eyepieces and it’s my impression that they’re going to try to grow something like that. It might be that they think they can grow lenses and mount them in some kind of tube, but I
think
they’re actually planning to grow them within their own bodies. We also tried to explain telescopes to them, but it wasn’t clear to me that they were able to understand that concept.”

Uncomfortably, Emma said, “Do they have any animals? I mean, I’ve seen all kinds of different Virgies… but everything I’ve seen looks intelligent except the plants. Well, and some of the little things like minnows and bugs.”

“Yeah, same here,” Ell said, “I get the impression from some things they’ve said—though my comprehension might have been mangled in translation—that they don’t see any reason to keep unintelligent large animals around.”

“They’ve wiped them out?!”

Ell pursed her lips, “I think it’s more like they incorporated them into their own genomes. I think the Virgies don’t think of species as important, they think of
DNA
as important. They try to preserve genes, not complete animals. So they took the genes from animals that they admired or thought were important and incorporated them into the Virgies’ own genomes. The Virgies represent not just their own species, but all of the significant species that have lived on their world. It also seems pretty certain that they’ve incorporated some animal genes into those nodules that form on the plants in the hexagons they live in. The nodules have edible animal type proteins in them.” Ell paused for a moment, then continued in a somewhat hushed voice, “I got the impression that they’d be
horrified
to find out that we
eat
animals. Maybe more horrified than you would be to find out they’d wiped out a species.”

“Oh,” Emma said, taken aback.

“So, what you were thinking, I suspect, was that they should grow their microscope in what would be their equivalent of a pig or something, right?”

Emma nodded, “But you’re going to tell me they’d probably think that was
sick,
whereas they feel the ethical thing to do is to grow it in their own body, yes?”

It was Ell’s turn to nod.

Emma said, “Are you still going to ask them about protecting against radiation damage to DNA?”

“Already did. As we suspected, it looks like they don’t try to protect the DNA from damage. In fact, they seem to be surprised that radiation damage would be a problem. Striper gave me a long speech that I believe was supposed to explain to me how DNA gets repaired after radiation does damage to it. Apparently the same mechanism repairs it after damage from other mutagens as well. I’ve made an appointment to talk to Dr. Hodges, a DNA guru at Duke University. Hopefully he’ll be able to confirm whether that’s what Striper was actually telling me or not.”

“Are you thinking that we’ll be able to safely import this mechanism for DNA correction from the Virgies?” Emma said, sounding a little apprehensive.

“I
surely
don’t know. That’s why I’m talking to an expert. It worries me a lot, just like it’s worrying you. I absolutely don’t want to import any
actual
DNA from there, but maybe it’ll be possible to understand their correction system and build its components from the underlying DNA code?” Ell shrugged, “I don’t know.”

***

“Yes!” Zage shouted.

Vanessa looked over his way curiously, then got up to go see what the excitement was all about. “What’s up?”

Zage looked around excitedly, “My HeLa cells bumped up their expression of Trim28 in response to the peptide!”

“Really?” Vanessa said doubtfully, nonetheless feeling sick astonishment once again. It had been surprising enough when the kid had designed a peptide, sequenced DNA for it, inserted the plasmid into E. coli, and then been able to purify the peptide he’d set out to make. Though, Vanessa told herself that by now she shouldn’t have been surprised. The kid had proven his technical expertise over and over. But, to have the peptide he’d designed actually do what he’d hoped… Holy crap! She hadn’t actually tried to follow his reasoning regarding how the peptide might be able to “flip the switch” on Trim28 expression, because she’d been so
sure
it couldn’t work. It was just a stab in the dark after all, wasn’t it?

If it were possible for a small peptide to do that, surely some big-name investigator in a major lab somewhere would have seen the possibility and carried out the experiment already. Wouldn’t they?

She suppressed the sigh that had nearly escaped and said, “Show me your data?”

Dr. Turner came through after Zage had left. Vanessa said, “Um, Dr. Turner?”

He stopped and looked her way questioningly.

“Zage’s peptide… Um, his cell line is expressing high levels of Trim28.”

Turner gave a small, frustrated shake of his head, then disconsolately said, “I’ll be dipped in shit!” He closed his eyes and tilted his face up toward the ceiling, “Why does that
infant
get the Midas touch?” Turner said, either rhetorically or to God, Vanessa wasn’t sure which.

Vanessa didn’t say anything, feeling a little worried that Turner might truly be angry.

Turner sighed and turned to look at Vanessa, “I’d imagine he wants to order those obese rats?”

Vanessa nodded…

***

Clarence Hodges stormed into his office, fury writ large on his face. “Alice! Cancel all my appointments! That idiot Rendell sent in his part of the grant application
two days
before it’s due at NIH, and of course, it’s a complete mess. I’m going to have to spend the entire day rewriting that pile of dog shit!”

“Um,” Alice said timidly, making an abortive little wave at the woman sitting on the other side of the office, “your 9 o’clock is already here!”

Remembering that he was supposed to talk to a reporter, Hodges glanced momentarily at the slender brunette woman. She was pretty, about 30, wearing a ball cap, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. PR was important to the University and for a moment it looked like Hodges might talk to her despite his mood, but then he turned back to Alice and barked, “No! Cancel
everything
. Maybe Barnes could talk to her.” He walked on into his office and slammed the door behind him.

Alice looked helplessly at their visitor who shrugged and said, “No problem. Who’s Barnes?”

“Dr. Barnes is one of the younger faculty. She also does a lot of DNA research and everybody says she’s really sharp. Um,” Alice’s eyes twitched towards Hodges office, then she continued quietly, “she’s also really nice.”

“Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me?” Ell asked, glancing up atIn his favorite topic, biology her HUD where Allan had already displayed data on Dr. Regina Barnes.

“I bet she would, would you like for me to check?”

Happy with what she’d seen, Ell nodded, “Thank you, I’d appreciate that.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Alice said before mumbling to her AI. A moment later, she said, “Dr. Barnes? Um, we have a reporter who came in for an appointment to talk to Dr. Hodges. Unfortunately, Dr. Hodges has had to cancel all of his appointments because of a problem with his grant application. Would you be able to talk to her?” After a moment, Alice looked up and said, “She says she can give you 15 minutes?”

Ell nodded, “That’d be great. Thank you.”

Standing, Alice said, “Dr. Barnes, I’ll bring her right down.” She motioned to Ell and they started around the pod of offices.

Barnes was staring at a 3-D model of a protein rotating on her big screen when a knock came at the door. She didn’t really want to take time away from her project, but knew that PR was important for the University. Hodges could be quite the curmudgeon and had gotten the department some really bad press in the past, so it often fell to Reggie to smooth things over. She stood and turned, taking in the slender brunette in the jeans and T-shirt. Putting out her hand, she said, “Hi, I’m Dr. Regina Barnes, though I prefer to go by ‘Reggie.’ I’m sorry that Dr. Hodges had to cancel his appointment with you. However, I do a lot of the same kind of DNA research as Dr. Hodges. I’d be happy to answer your questions though I’m afraid I don’t have very much time.”

As the young woman turned and said thank you to Alice and Alice turned to go, Reggie considered the fact that she felt surprised by the reporter’s casual dress. Although Reggie dressed casually for the office and especially for the lab, she’d somehow expected the reporter to be dressed a little more professionally. She waved the woman into a chair and said, “How can I help?”

“Well, first I have to admit that I’m not really a reporter. I’m hoping that we can help one another.”

A wave of irritation flashed over Reggie that Alice had let this woman dupe her way into Reggie’s office.
Probably has something to sell,
Reggie thought, starting to smolder.

But then the woman said, “Actually, I’m Raquel Blandon. I work out at D5R and we desperately need someone with DNA expertise. We’re hoping you’ll at least provide some consulting, and if you’re interested, perhaps to do some work with extraterrestrial DNA.” Electricity shot down Reggie’s spine and she almost missed Blandon’s next sentence, “Our consulting fees are quite generous.”

Reggie sank back in her chair, stunned.
Who cares about the consulting fees!
She thought,
She had me with
the opportunity to work with ET DNA!
Aloud, she said, “DNA from where? Alpha Centauri? Tau Ceti?”

Blandon shook her head, “Before we could talk about that, we’ve got to establish some confidentiality.”

Feeling like a bucket of ice had just been thrown on her, Reggie said unhappily, “Confidentiality?”

“Yes, we’d want you to refrain from publication for at least four years, essentially keeping what you’re doing a complete secret. It’s possible that we’d even ask you to keep it secret for longer than that but in that case you and the University would be very well compensated.”