Seed of Stars (23 page)

And Mia? He would probably never see her again, and perhaps it was best that way....

He drove on, a bloody sun sagging into the primitive horizon on his left, staining the sky of Kepler III with its dreadful omen of horror as yet unrealized. . . .

Commander Bruce was jolted awake by the urgent voice issuing from the loudspeaker at his bedside. He sat up, automatically thumbing the "send" button. "Do you know I've been in this bed only two hours?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I think you ought to come to the duty officer's room right away." Lee Ching's voice was firm.

"You
think,
Lieutenant?"

"I can't say any more over the intercom," said Lee Ching. "But this is an emergency." He broke contact.

Emergency . . . Bruce clawed out of bed, reaching for his zip suit, muttering to himself: "Emergency . . . I'll have his balls for gyros if it's anything less than an AAA distress. . . ."

By the time he reached the duty officer's room he was fully awake, the internal grumbling quieted, but what he found there puzzled him nevertheless. Lee Ching was standing by the desk, facing a man in the clothes of a Keplerian civilian. On the desk was a bundled zip bag, the presence of which brought about a sudden resurgence of Bruce's anger. If Lee Ching had got him out of bed to deal with a case of petty pilfering from ship's stores by some wretched civilian worker----

This train of thought was broken off abruptly as
both
men saluted. Acknowledging curtly, Bruce walked round the desk and turned to face the prisoner; a black-haired man with the eyes of an Asiatic, who was taller than the average Keplerian by about thirty centimeters.

"It's Lieutenant Huygens, sir," explained Lee Ching. "He insisted that he had to see you personally."

It was so long since Bruce had seen the defecting medical officer, and the man's appearance was so different, that he had difficulty in squaring the situation up in his mind. Yes ... it was Huygens, but the changes in this man were deeper than the mere cosmetic touches of coloring and eye-shape.

"All right, Huygens. So you've seen me. You've got yourself my undivided, personal attention." Bruce's voice was a quiet whiplash. "But before you say anything, anything at all, I'd advise you to think carefully." To Lee Ching, he said: "Get Maseba."

"Sir... my reasons ..."

"Tell them to the court martial."

"But, sir..."

"You snivelling, undisciplined son of a bitch! Do you imagine that I'm interested in hearing your reasons?"

"Sir, I didn't come back just to give myself up..."

Bruce's green eyes were hard as slate. "I don't want to hear it, Huygens. You're under close arrest, as of now, and when we're back in space you'll be court-martialed. Not here, on Kepler, where you might attract some misguided sympathy. And when we get back to Earth, you'll get a dishonorable discharge and then serve out your sentence in a civilian jail. I loathe and detest you for what you've done to the Corps, Huygens, and you're never going to be allowed to forget that crime..."

"Commander Bruce . . . sir!" It was a cry for help, but Bruce was too preoccupied with his righteous rage to recognize it as such.

Maseba came into the room, nodded to Lee, and stood listening.

Bruce continued, his voice harsh, uncompromising. "There are some people in this crew who have made excuses for you, Huygens, but I'm not one of them. They've adduced various so-called reasons for what you did. But as far as I'm concerned the facts speak for themselves. You're a disgrace ..."

"Sir! For God's sake!" Huygen's voice was a strangled shout. "Listen to me! I didn't have to come back. I could have stayed out there, and you would never have found me. But I did come back, and you've got to listen to me! Look at this!" Tension in the room increased, as he stepped forward and unzipped the bag. Lee Ching moved to restrain him, then stopped as Huygens removed the transparent plastic container and held it up in full view. "Look, damn you! Mia—my wife—
this is the thing she gave birth to!"

Bruce looked at the terrible, unhuman shape, the impetus of his rage faltering. "You mean your . . . Mizuno? Maseba said that a Comp. Ab.—"

Piet cried out in anguish. "I wish to God she'd had that Comp. Ab.! Anything, if she could have been spared this. I wish we'd never. . . ." He swayed for a moment, then choked back his sobs. "No, maybe I don't, because if I hadn't seen this one, then none of us would have been given the opportunity of seeing one of these . . . things. Sato covered up the whole affair, because he thought in his ignorance that they were due to the effects of Johannsen's disease—because, well-meaning fool that he was, he could see no further than the goal of Keplerian independence."

Maseba was looking at the creature closely, his eyes filled with alarm.

"But you recognize it, commander, don't you?" Huygens continued. "You should know better than any of us, if I remember my medical history. This is one of the things which the Kilroys were trying to make when they experimented with the colonists on Minos IV— the rejects which you shot out of mercy, all that long time ago, when I was just a little boy at school... the ones they showed pictures of at the
Athena
inquiry. We all know those pictures, those dissections, and what they represent..."

"Gods of all the tribes defend us!" Maseba spoke quietly; the brown-flecked whites of his eyes showing boldly as he bent forward. He slipped his pink palms

under the specimen and lifted it out of Huygen's grasp.

Bruce said: "What are you talking about? Those things I found on Minos IV were produced by surgery on adult humans."

"That's right, they were," agreed Huygens, "but now the Kilroys must have gone a stage further. Using Johannsen's disease, which we already know to have an affinity for human reproductive cells, they have restructured the virus, inserting specific episomes which are capable of altering the human genetic code and causing these creatures to be produced by human mothers. Kepler III is, in effect, an experimental farm."

Bruce looked towards Maseba. "This is possible?"

Maseba, still holding the terrible evidence in his hands, nodded. "Ruthless genetic engineering on a massive scale. Creatures of one species molded out of the living cells of another ... for the Kilroys, yes, this would be possible."

"But for what reason... ?"

"Can we even begin to understand the motivation of a completely nonhuman race, with whom we have never made direct contact?"

Brace's lean face was grave as he stared at the dreadful thing in Maseba's hands. "We may be reaching the crisis point of that situation too," he said.

Maseba frowned. "Commander?"

"I was thinking," said Bruce. "Assuming that this theory of Kepler III being an experimental farm is correct—then surely the Kilroys will be along some time soon to see how their crop is coming along?"

Maseba's office was darkened, and quiet save for the small whirring of the cooling fan on the projector which was being operated by Leela De Witt. Apart from the two medics, there were four people present; Charles

Magnus, his assistant Ichiwara, Bruce, and Helen Lindstrom. Seated next to her commander she felt a prickling down her spine as she looked at the black paper-doll things on the screen and considered the idea of a war whose battleground was the microscopic genetic inheritance of the human race.

Maseba touched the screen with his light pointer. "Here you see the karotype of a normal human chromosome pattern. Using the Denver Classification System, the chromosomes are lined up by size and shape into seven groups of autosomes and two gonosomes, which determine the sex of the embryo. When a sperm fertilizes an ovum, each supplies half the forty-six chromosomes for the combination of cells that will grow into a baby. To give you some idea of the complexity of this process, I should add that each of these chromosomes contains up to one thousand two hundred and fifty genes, and each of these genes determines some factor, or combination of factors, in the makeup of the individual. Despite the eugenics laws, which as you know require persons intending to breed to submit themselves for genetic examination, et cetera, in a growth disorder like Mongolism, something goes wrong with the process of cell division in the embryo and such patients are found to have forty-seven chromosomes instead of the normal forty-six. Another common abnormality is concerned with the gonosomes, where instead of splitting into two neat rows of twenty-three each, an extra X or Y chromosome is left in one row. If the supernumerary is an X, the baby has an XXY pattern. It will grow into a sterile, asthenic 'male,' usually with some breast enlargement and mental retardation—the condition known as Klinefelter's syndrome. If the extra chromosome is a Y, then the baby gets an XYY pattern and is unquestionably male, but over-aggressive and potentially criminal. Right, Leela."

In response to Maseba's command, another picture appeared on the screen beneath the first one.

"Now," he continued, "the abnormalities I have mentioned so far are already well-known to us. They have no direct bearing on our present problem, except as an illustration of the terrible effects that may occur as a result of the tiniest rearrangement of genetic material. The karotype you now see beneath our original has been produced from the white blood cells of Mia Mizuno's child. In this case we see that, instead of the normal three pairs of autosomes in the fourth group, there are in fact four pairs; additional to this, instead of there being one pair of gonosomes, either XY or XX, that is male or female, there are two pairs, XX and
XY. Thus, instead of the normal total of forty-six we have a being whose cell structure contains fifty chromosomes—the extra pair of autosomes in the fourth group, presumably governing the growth process which produces the physical abnormalities found in Mia's child, and the extra pair of gonosomes indicating that on maturity this creature would probably become a male/ female creature capable of fulfilling either function in the breeding process."

Magnus asked, "Is it your opinion that this kind of chromosome structure could have been produced by the accidental processes of mutation?"

"It
could
have been," replied Maseba. "But the odds against that happening are extremely high. In the past, radical mutations in the human species have been, mercifully, rare, and in most cases nonviable. This creature, on the other hand, appears to me to have been extremely well equipped for survival and would, in its adult state, have been more than a match for the normal human being in the physical sense. Even so, I might have been prepared to concede the possibility of such an accident, had it not been for the karotype of this third tissue sample which Lieutenant De Witt is about to show you."

The third slide appeared on the screen beneath the other two, as Maseba continued: "You are all aware of the postulation made in the first instance by Lieutenant Huygens that the birth of such children to human women could be due to the effects of some unknown strain of Johannsen's disease which is capable of modifying the structure of human reproductive cells. Initially there seemed to me to be a certain inconsistency in this theory, because for this to have happened in the case of Mia Mizuno, it implied that she should have suffered at some time during her pregnancy from this particular disease—a form which, as far as we know, only exists on Kepler III. And, you will recall, Mia Mizuno's pregnancy began some months before we arrived on this planet.

"I have not yet had the opportunity to examine Crewwoman Mizuno, but I suspect that when I do so, I shall find that she has never, in fact, suffered from Johannsen's disease. Lieutenant Huygens, on the other hand, was for some period of time in a situation where he could quite easily have contracted the disease, working with the cadavers and in company with personnel who were potential carriers of the virus."

"The
Wangituru!"
exclaimed Bruce.

"Precisely," agreed Maseba. "The crew of the
Wangituru,
only a few weeks out from Kepler III, are clearly our carriers, and it must have been from one of them that Huygens contracted Johannsen's disease. The symptoms of the disease are comparatively mild, and Huygens dismissed them as unimportant at the time, treating himself, and omitting to report the matter to me. The results of that omission you now see on the screen before you in a karotype of reproductive cells taken from Huygens. This, as comparison will show you, exhibits the same modifications of chromosome structure as the second sample, that from the body of the monstrous child. Thus proving that this altered genetic structure, transmitted by the sperm of Huygens into the ovum of Mia Mizuno, was capable of changing her normal human chromosome pattern, and imposing on it the aberrations which resulted in her bearing this nonhuman creature."

"I
¹
take it that implies that this mutation is a dominant one?" said Magnus.

"That is something I can only be sure of when I have had the opportunity of examining the chromosome structure of a reasonable sample of Keplerian men and women, but I would be inclined to agree with you," Maseba said.

"And you are in no doubt about the connection between Johannsen's disease and this mutation?" said Bruce.

"This particular strain of Johannsen's disease virus," Maseba corrected him precisely. "The idea of a virus tailored for a particular purpose is not, of course, a new one. It has been known for over two centuries that viruses are the ultimate parasites, consisting of little more than a protein shell enclosing a core of hereditary material which is discharged into the cell attacked by the virus. Here we are dealing with a type of super-virus which possesses an in-built tropism towards human reproductive cells. Unlike other viruses, it does not destroy those cells which it attacks, but merges with them, modifying their structure in accordance with its own chromosome pattern. The insertion of episomes, genetic instructions, in this manner is not entirely unknown. Our own scientists have experimented with the method of plant breeding, and there have been a number of laboratory experiments with animal tissue. The truly frightening things about the present situation are the unavoidable conclusion that whoever produced modified Johannsen's virus must have done so with the conscious purpose of inducing mutation in human beings, and the fact that to perform such a feat they must be possessed of genetic-engineering techniques so far ahead of our own as to make them appear quite primitive."