Ell Donsaii 13: DNA (29 page)

Jamieson twisted wildly in his chair. He wasn’t wearing an AI, or headphones, and there certainly wasn’t anyone else in the room with him. Wondering if he’d just had a hallucination, Jamieson said, “We could tell…”

Jamieson heard Donsaii in his ear again, “Mr. Jamieson, surely by now you realize that I know exactly what you’re doing at
all
times? No one would have even blinked if I’d just killed you when I was escaping. You could
still
die.”

Jamieson’s head whirled again, but he could see no way for Donsaii to be speaking to him. He rubbed his ear, sticking his finger in it to check for hidden earbuds.

His attorney said, “We could tell who… what?”

Am I goin’ crazy?
Jamieson wondered, but he only said, “Nothin’. We can turn state’s evidence against Wang.
I
think he works for China.”

Steve looked at Ell through narrowed eyes. They’d been meeting to talk about the bigger security team when Allan had interrupted to tell Ell what Jamieson was doing. “You’re talking to Jamieson?”

She nodded.

“How?”

Ell explained about the port she’d installed in Jamieson’s skull.

Steve grimaced, “Installing something in someone’s body without their permission, even if they’re a criminal…” he trailed off with a shake of his head.

“I know,” Ell said distractedly. “Just one of the many reasons I don’t want anyone else to have some of this technology. Too much temptation to use it for…” she trailed off, but then shrugged and continued, “To use it like I just did.” She sighed, “Lots of times I wish
I
didn’t know how to do it either.” She shrugged, “Of course, then we wouldn’t be able to reach the stars…”

Frowning Steve said, “Could you really kill him still?”

“Sure. Toxin through the port.”

“Well, no matter how loathsome I find that guy, I’d advise you
not
to kill him now. ‘Premeditated’ and all that. They probably couldn’t catch you, but if they did…”

“Yeah, no, I won’t be killing him. I’m just hoping a little threat might keep him from destroying any chance we have of retaining the Kinrais’ anonymity.”

***

Vanessa looked up when the lab door opened.
Zage is back!
She thought, feeling a little relieved. “Where have you been?! Missing Monday and Tuesday… plus the weekend! That’s not like you.”

“Sick. I got hurt, but not seriously. I’m okay now,” Zage said quickly, putting his stuff down.

Vanessa got the impression from the way he’d spit it out that he didn’t really want to talk about it.

This was confirmed when he continued, “How’d your experiment go?”

From the way Zage was fidgeting, Vanessa felt pretty sure he wanted to look at his own results rather than hearing about hers, but she briefly updated him on what she’d found with their latest experiment on changes in the gut flora with diet. Knowing he wanted to move on, she asked, “Did you look at what’s been happening with your rats’ weights yet?”

“Um, yeah. About half of them have lost weight, but, of course, I don’t really know if they’re the ones getting the peptide.”

Vanessa grinned at him, “What do you
think
?”

He gave her a sly grin in return, “Well, since rats usually gain weight unless they’re sick, I
think
it’s the peptide. But I’d like to go see if they look like they might be sick instead.”

Vanessa gave him a sly smile, “And are you hoping
someone
might take you down there?” The animal care people had objected to a
child
being down in their facilities without supervision, especially since he wasn’t an official University student. Therefore, Zage wasn’t supposed to go down to look at his rats without Vanessa or Dr. Turner to accompany him.

Zage nodded solemnly, “It’s kind of mean of you to make me beg, you know?”

She snorted as she got up, “You shouldn’t call people ‘mean’ when you’re asking them for a favor… you know?”

When they got down to the animal care facility, Zage’s rats all looked healthy. Some of them though… looked sleeker. In fact, though they still looked big, the sleek ones looked more like normal rats than the big fat ones in the adjoining cages.
Damn!
Vanessa thought,
This kid might actually have
done
it.

Carol spoke to her AI, “Connect me to Phil… Phil, have you badgered those people into letting you come back to Mars yet?”

There was a moment’s pause for Phil to accept the call, then the screen in front of her lit up with his image. He said, “Hey Carol, no such luck yet. You needin’ the thrill… the thrill of Phil?”

Carol snorted, “You, my man, are gonna be in peril. In peril, of Carol!”

“Well, your prayers are getting closer to being answered. As near as they can tell from their tests yesterday, I’m
no longer
any stupider than I was before I went through the port. It might not be too much longer before I convince them that, since I’ve taken all these tests to give them a baseline, that I’m the prime candidate to be sent through the port again, then re-evaluated. Besides,” he grinned, “I’ve convinced them that
your
emotional well-being requires my presence.”

Carol frowned, ignoring his statement about her well-being. “So, have they decided that it really
did
affect your intelligence, at least for a while?”

Phil sighed, “Yeah, they really can’t tell how my mental function compares to what it was before I went through the port because they just didn’t have good enough data from before the transfer. However, I do test a little bit smarter now than right after I was ported. They think that means that my smarts
were
knocked down for a while.” He winked, “I’m trying to convince them that going through the port actually
boosted my
intelligence, it just took a while.” He shrugged, “Not that they seem to be buying it.”

Uncertainly, Carol said, “Maybe we shouldn’t push it then.”

“Not you too?!”

Carol gave him a mischievous look, “It’s not like you had any brain cells to spare, you know?”

Phil put his hand on his chest and gave her his most wounded look, “E tu brute!” he said, pronouncing it “brute” like a savage, rather than “Brute” like Caesar’s friend. After a moment’s pause, he said seriously, “I want to get back out to Mars, so if they’ll let me, I’m
going
to be back out there to rub your back again.” He shrugged unhappily, “However, if they won’t let me, there won’t be a whole lot you or I can do about it.”

Still looking very thoughtful, Carol said, “I guess…” Then she brightened, “Hey, we’ve got the latest results from the dome. The cyanobacteria are really cranking out the oxygen now. Lindy thinks they’ve mutated to generate a strain that tolerates the really high CO
2
better than the original ones the dome was populated with. It’s starting to look really promising.”

Phil said, “I’ve been doing some calculations. Rather than trying to create an atmosphere for the entire planet, I’m thinking we should start by just doming over the Valles Marineris.”

Carol tilted her head curiously, “What?”

“I’m picturing that we cover that huge valley with a graphene sheet that holds the new atmosphere inside of it instead of letting the air escape to the rest of the planet. The Valles has an area of about a quarter of a million square miles, close to the size of Texas. That’s huge, but it’s still only about an eighth of a percent of the size of
all
of Mars.” At Carol’s stunned look, he said, “I know… The dome’s going to leak, but the leaks will just be a start on the terraforming of the rest of Mars. Meanwhile, we can make sure things are actually going to work on that little piece of Mars.” He shrugged, “Kind of like a bigger version of Lindy’s current test dome.”

Carol said, “And we’d have a place where we could live now,
while
we’re waiting for the rest of Mars to have an atmosphere.”

Phil lifted an eyebrow, “Yeah, and we’d want the graphene cover over the Valles to have several layers as insurance against punctures. Once we had some air pressure underneath it, we could start filling the space between the layers with some water. The air pressure would hold it up, even against the weight of the water. And the water would protect us from radiation. Even a meter of water would result in a huge reduction in solar particles.”

“Oh! Phil, I think going through a port
must
have increased your IQ, just like you were saying…”

***

Zage stood with his dad and Amy in the big reception area full of men in tuxedos and women in exotic gowns. Even the circulating wait-staff were dressed in formal clothing. Dr. Pace and his pretty wife Viveka from Allosci were talking quietly to Zage’s dad. Zage was listening to their conversation with one ear.

Though he hadn’t seen her, Zage’s mom was supposed to be coming as Ell Donsaii which seemed so weird to him. Since that night that he’d learned who his mother really was, he hadn’t seen her as Ell Donsaii again. And, in public, like here at the Nobel Prize reception, he was supposed to pretend that he didn’t actually know her, which was…
so
bizarre. He understood why, but it still felt unreal.

Zage could feel people’s eyes on him. His dad had had to be fairly forceful when requesting permission for Zage to attend. Most Nobel Prize recipients were old enough that they didn’t have children Zage’s age. The people in charge of the function were not happy about having a five year old child at their elegant event. Despite Zage’s tuxedo and calm behavior, the guests eyed him uncomfortably as if they expected him to burst into a tantrum at any moment.

Amy had stopped a pretty blonde woman carrying a tray of appetizers and asked her to bend down and show them to Zage. The woman was explaining the different treats on her tray to Zage and he was trying to dredge up the willpower to avoid taking one.

He realized that a silence had fallen over the room.

Zage looked around, thinking that perhaps the king of Sweden had arrived at the reception. All eyes in the room had turned in one direction, so it was easy for him to determine that they were focused on the entrance. In the opening, Zage saw a breathtakingly-beautiful, slender, strawberry-blond woman in a long-sleeved, simple black gown with scarlet edging at the neck, cuffs, and hem. A narrow scarlet belt and a simple necklace with a brilliant ruby pendant were her only adornments.

Yet all the other guests looked tawdry by comparison.

Stunned by his own mother’s beauty, Zage looked up to see if his father had noticed his mother entering the room. Shan was staring with the rest and his throat worked a little. His father’s hand slipped on to Zage’s shoulder. To Zage’s surprise, he saw that Viveka, and Dr. Pace’s eyes both trembled with unshed tears.

Somewhere in the room, someone began to clap.

Moments later, the room was filled with thunderous applause, not just for the first person to hold four Nobel Prizes, but also for the person who’d saved their world and themselves.

***

Reggie Barnes walked into D5R and the receptionist waved her on toward the huge room where a lot of the physics research was done. As she headed down toward the left end of the large space, she saw Ell Donsaii coming toward her accompanied by a tall man with unruly hair.

Once Donsaii had given her an enthusiastic greeting and introduced her to Roger Emmerit, they made their way again to one of the small conference rooms. As soon as they stepped inside Donsaii asked, “You’ve inserted that DNA sequence in some cells?” Reggie nodded, “Yes, though markedly different, that sequence had
some
similarities to some of the error correction proteins in Earth species. It only coded for a single protein so it seemed unlikely that it carried any great risks, still we synthesized and inserted it in the Level 4 lab as you requested.”

“What kind of cells?” Emmerit asked.

“Yeast, they’re eukaryotic like our cells but divide rapidly so radiation induced mutations become evident pretty quickly.”

“Have you been able to evaluate mutation rates yet?” Donsaii asked eagerly.

Reggie gave another nod, wondering if they had any idea just how much time she’d been investing in this project. “It’s freaking amazing… I think, though I certainly can’t be sure at this point, that it’s able to repair even double-strand breaks almost perfectly every time. With current Earth species, single strand breaks are readily repaired by copying the intact strand back onto the broken strand. But in Earth organisms double-strand breaks are usually repaired by just patching the two ends back together, often with missing nucleotides which results in mutation of the gene that stretch of DNA coded. What I suspect the Virgies’ protein is doing is somehow finding some of the RNA generated from that segment of damaged DNA and using the RNA as a template for repair.” She shook her head, “If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said that wasn’t possible!”

“So,” Roger asked, “would this protein enable repair of the kinds of radiation damage we’d expect to encounter on Mars?”

“No doubt. Radiation levels there are about 50 times what they are here, but the Virgies’ DNA repair system might be as much as 100 times better than ours.”

Ell and Roger gave each other a high five, “That’s awesome, we’re going to
Mars
!”

“Mars would be cool,” Reggie said, “but I think a lot bigger deal than radiation protection is the fact that this would keep people from getting cancer. A lot of cancers are due to transcription errors.” Reggie shrugged, “However it’s a little early to get too excited about it. We’d have to get the DNA for this protein into every cell in your body before it could protect them all from radiation. We don’t know how to do that.”

Ell raised an eyebrow, “But the Virgies do…”

***

A few days after Christmas, Zage went up to his room and wiped the top of the vial with alcohol. He punctured its rubber stopper with the tiny needle on the insulin syringe and drew up a tenth of a milliliter of his peptide solution.

He used the alcohol swab to wipe a small spot on his stomach, then picked up the syringe with a sigh. For a moment he wondered if he could actually do it, then he reminded himself just how badly he hated being overweight. Calling to mind the sleek, slender rats in his treatment group, Zage gritted his teeth, stuck the tiny needle into his skin and depressed the plunger.

He blinked, it hadn’t hurt nearly as much as he’d expected.

Well, it was a tiny dose. Perhaps when he had to inject more—assuming that this tiny dose didn’t cause a problem—it might hurt more.

But, mostly he’d been worried about the needle puncturing his skin, and he’d hardly felt
that
.

Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as he’d feared.

As long as his mother didn’t find out what he was doing…