‘I agree with Maura and Geoff,’ said Chen. ‘Please read papers.’
Kai put some more wood on the fire.
‘It’s possible for such a being to dominate humans,’ said Leona, urgently. ‘He can use them as slaves for his own purpose and gratification. Think, Kai, could that have happened to you?’
‘Thank you for your concern for my mental health,’ said Kai.
‘This is me, Leona, remember? Look at the evidence, please!’
‘If you will excuse me, I have urgent business,’ said Kai. Then he put on his thermal suit and stepped out into the ice field, leaving the transcripts behind.
Virus
Maura was sitting with her arm round Leona, who was periodically keening as if she was in mourning.
‘We just need to give him time to consider,’ said Geoff, but he knew his voice sounded hollow. He was convinced Kai knew about Shetani, but was not aware the evil Virtuon was a threat to him and the whole of humankind.
Chen had gone out to chop up more firewood, even though they already had a huge stockpile. On his return, Geoff asked him if he’d carried out formal funeral rites for Huang, in keeping with his status as a Khitan warrior. ‘Come and see,’ said Chen. They dressed in their boots and suits. Chen led them outside where the sun was still shining. They followed the perimeter track and entered a cave in a glacier, excavated by spring water. Sunlight, filtered green-blue by the translucent ice, illuminated the first few metres of the tunnel. But, as they went deeper into the darkness, they turned on their flashlights, dazzlingly bright in the confined space. Once their eyes had adjusted to the reflective glare they saw him – Huang encased in a block of ice. His Khitan armour was a tomb within a tomb; only his eyelids were visible through slits in his armoured face mask.
‘What will happen to him?’ Maura asked.
‘Ice cap is breaking,’ said Chen. ‘One day, tomb is part of iceberg. It melt and Huang sink to bottom. That is best.’
They took off their thermal hoods and stood bareheaded, until the cold forced them to return.
Next day, Leona visited the lab and found Maura setting up and testing equipment.
‘There’s some coffee left,’ said Maura. ‘Come and sit down with me.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Leona. ‘Thinking all night, actually. Yes, I’d love some coffee. I need it!’
‘I didn’t sleep too well, either. I don’t think it’s possible to force Kai to read the transcripts, is it?’
‘No, he’s rejected them without even looking at them. Now he’s nowhere to be seen and the rocket-sledge is missing. He must have gone somewhere.’
‘Where could he go?’ asked Maura.
‘Probably to Voorogg. He could have sent a robot vessel to pick him up. He could accommodate him, just as Mettravar did for us on Europa.’
‘Before the fight, Huang told us Thiosh would take over the Earth. They’d destroy all opposition and make us slaves.’ Maura waved her arms in agitation.’ I feel so powerless, for Chrissakes!’
Leona put her arm round her. ‘There’s something you could do – if you’re willing,’ she said softly.
‘Tell me. I’ll do anything.’
‘Well, I think we need to give Shetani a virus, something that will corrupt his software, big time – deliver a fatal error. I think Geoff might be able to design something like that.’
‘Yeah, he probably could. I love Geoff, but he’s a bit of a geek,’ said Maura, glancing heavenwards. ‘But how could we give Shetani a virus? How do we get to him?’
‘You know, before Euphrosyne I thought Kai and I would become lovers. I think I know how to get close to him again. If Shetani is addicted to sensual pleasure, he may want to infiltrate me as well.’
Maura crinkled her nose. ‘Leona, that’s not a good idea. How would it help? Shetani’s not going to let you corrupt his software.’
‘We’ll set a trap. You could put the virus in my brain. I know you can modify genetic code, and now you have a lab. Geoff will write the code, and you will embed it in my DNA.’
‘No, no, no!’ Maura shouted, slamming down her coffee cup. ‘Even if it were possible, no one could predict what it’d do to you. It’s far, far too dangerous.’
‘And let Shetani turn the whole human race into puppets? Isn’t that dangerous?’
‘I don’t want you to do it. Let me do it instead!’
Leona shook her head. ‘Geoff needs you, and you need Geoff. I have no one – except Kai.’
‘You would have made a great pair, I know, but Kai’s so different now. A come-on might have worked in the past, but now he’s obsessed by something. How are you going to make him amorous?’
‘I may have to pretend a little, but leave that to me. You just work out with Geoff how to do the GM. I hate this Shetani with every cell of my body. I love Kai, but he’s been perverted into a dehumanised slave. I’ll do anything to get my revenge.’
When they were alone in their cabin, Maura told Geoff about her conversation with Leona. He agreed with Maura about the risk, but he couldn’t help being excited by the challenge. ‘Actually, the virus is the easy part. At its most fundamental level, Shetani’s software comprises zeroes and ones. I could change all the ones to zeroes, or all the zeroes to ones. But we’d have to minimise the risk of him rebooting. The best chance would be to modify his code to random zeroes and ones.’
‘So what’s the hard part?’
‘It’s the brain–AI interface. Shetani is interpreting human brainwaves as expressions of feeling. We need to make Leona’s brain emit the viral code as brainwave pulses.’
‘Won’t that interfere with her normal functions?’
‘I think I could modulate her theta brainwaves to contain the virus information. They’re frequencies our brains generate as we wake or drift off to sleep. Leona should only be affected for a few minutes each day. Otherwise she’ll be completely normal. But the theta patterns also occur when we dream. I suspect Shetani will find them irresistible.’
‘Be very careful, please,’ said Maura.
Kai returned to the base but said nothing about where he’d been or what he was planning. He returned to his solitary style of living, eating and sleeping in a separate cabin, but Leona began to seek him out. She brought him special food and, while it was impossible for her to replicate Khitan specialities, she nevertheless managed to produce many appetising dishes. She commissioned Chen to catch fish, ducks and geese from the freshwater lakes and supplemented Kai’s usual diet of shrimps, dried krill and edible sea-weed. Then she started bringing meals for herself as well as Kai, so they could eat together.
‘I liked it when we could read each other’s thoughts,’ she said. ‘Do you think we could do that again?’
Kai smiled and took her hand in his. ‘I miss that time too, and it would be good to have someone to help me again. The Earth is entering a new era, and I have been focused on the changes we must make. I am sorry I have neglected you.’
‘We met when you came to the Unidome on Europa to rescue Geoff and Maura,’ said Leona, holding Kai’s gaze. ‘It was something I felt we had to do at the time, but do you think now it would have been better to let OPDEO keep them locked up? You must watch them carefully. They’ve killed Huang, and they want to stop you helping Voorogg. They may try to kill you too.’
‘I know. That is why I wanted Huang to take them to Voorogg. He would not have harmed them, just kept them somewhere safely on the seabed. He might even have let them do scientific research. But I underestimated Geoff. It is a tragedy he misused the power the Thiosh gave him.’
‘He overcame Huang with superhuman strength and killed him,’ said Leona, as she massaged Kai’s shoulders. ‘You should take your revenge.’
‘One day,’ said Kai between grunts of pleasure.
‘But what about these messages from Shetani? Was that who you were speaking to when we were on Euphrosyne?’
‘I knew him in the past. In his new form he contacted me b
ecause he wanted to stop humans destroying themselves. He had acquired enormous power but he wished to use it wisely. He tunnelled through space–time and made a wormhole for the Thiosh to come to Earth. He asked me to help them create a new world order.’
‘Geoff and Maura say Shetani is wicked, like an evil spirit,’ said Leona. ‘They claim he manipulates humans for his own pleasure. Let me take your shirt off, and I’ll rub you with some perfumed ambergris.’
She opened the lid of the container and began kneading the waxy liquid into Kai’s neck and shoulders. ‘I found it when we first arrived and thought it might be useful.’
‘Thank you. That is relaxing. It is very pleasant. Yes, you are right not to believe what Geoff and Maura tell you. They have been corrupted by the Thiosh leader, Atherlonne.’
‘She blames us humans for the death of her partner Mettravar, and she is trying to vilify Shetani,’ said Leona.
‘Yes, these “transcripts” Geoff and Maura took from the Oztralian are, no doubt, stories invented by her.’
‘But Chen said you knew Shetani when he was a human, and he poisoned the Abbot at your monastery. Is that true?’
‘No, I was wrong,’ said Kai. ‘It was something I had suspected, and I challenged Shetani to explain why he had grown castor-bean plants when he was the Prior. But I felt ashamed when he explained he had done it out of consideration for the Abbot. He had only made castor oil to ease the Abbot’s constipation. Hm, I love it when you do that.’
Geoff had created a nucleotide sequence to embody a fatal software virus. If something is just an artificial brain, would destroying it be murder? he wondered. But he knew, in any case, there was no way he could turn back. He joined Maura in the lab where she was working on the medication to target specific cells in Leona’s brain. They would plant the new code in a part of her DNA that didn’t serve as a pattern for protein sequences and should not interfere with the normal functioning of her body.
Yes, the word is ‘should’. There’s always an element of doubt. What’s the next step? Maura will have to add the encapsulated DNA to a sample of Leona’s cerebrospinal fluid, ready for re-injection.
‘The serum to implant the virus – is it a medicine or a poison?’ Geoff asked.
‘Both, I suppose,’ Maura replied. ‘But then that’s true for many substances. We have to hope it proves to be a remedy.’
The message Leona received from the sky wasn’t jumbled into a radio signal or delivered to her com-phone. It could have been, but this was more beautiful, more intriguing. It was embedded in the aurora australis. Leona saw it in a swirling backwash of colours that had no names. It was a contract, a transaction, a three-way reciprocal promise. An offer based on humankind’s most fundamental needs. If she gave her body to Kai, he would give his heart to her. They would seal their relationship by natural congress, and Shetani would endorse their union. She signalled her acceptance by holding a mirror to her window. The crystal ice flow crackled with spectral light as the incandescent heavens erupted.
Death Throes
Maura thought it was an earthquake. The bed she shared with Geoff had been lifted up and shoved violently against the cabin wall, the impact bringing down bookshelves and the wall-mounted viz-box screen. It was light outside, as it had been all night, but his com-phone indicated there was no power. She and Geoff extracted their thermal suits from an upturned locker and went outside, Geoff to the engine house and Maura to check if anyone was hurt.
Leona was lying on the floor of her cabin. Maura wondered if she’d been hit by debris, but she showed no sign of being injured. The lights flickered back on. She called Geoff. He came across to join her, and together they carried Leona back to their own hut. They made her as comfortable as possible, wrapped in synthetic furs. Maura stayed with her while Geoff went out to check the rest of the site.
Some of the structures on the ice flow at sea level had disappeared, including the whaling station jetty, boathouses, and the old processing plant. Other buildings had partially collapsed. There were even pools of seawater on top of the ice shelf. Evidently, Roosevelt Island had been hit by a tsunami. Fortunately the accommodation, the stores and the lab above the cliffs had survived. They had been constructed originally on the high plateau, presumably anticipating there would be a further rise in sea level due to global warming.
Geoff saw Chen outside and went over to check he was okay. He appeared shaken but otherwise alright. There was, however, no sign of Kai. The whale-bot had been secured in deep water but it was no longer sending any status signals. Geoff wondered if Kai had taken the craft to Voorogg.
Geoff entered the lab to check the equipment there. The seismograph was working and showed a sharp spike at the time the power had been lost. But the trace hadn’t recorded any of the preceding tremors Geoff would have expected if there’d been an earthquake. He checked the lab’s gravimeter. It was still functioning and showed a massive change in the gravitational field. The previous distortion around the wormhole’s subterranean exit had disappeared. He printed out the new gravitron grid and returned to their cabin.
‘You know, it looks to me as if the wormhole’s collapsed,’ he told Maura.
‘Oh God, it can’t be a coincidence. It must have been something to do with the virus. I think it’s caused Leona to lose consciousness. Whatever we did to Shetani, the serum shouldn’t have hurt her, but we need to see if anything’s changed. Can you analyse a sample with her current DNA? Use a saliva swab.’
Geoff called Maura from the lab to tell her he’d begun the analysis, but they’d have to wait at least until midnight to get the results. Maura explained she’d been sharing with Atherlonne, who was currently local to the hydrothermal vents near the Aleutian Islands.
‘What does she think happened?’ asked Geoff.
‘She said there was a major gravitational disturbance throughout the Solar System. Shetani was sucking gravity out of Jupiter when your virus got him. There was an uncontrollable power release, and it wrecked the wormhole. It looks as if your coding did its job.’
‘Yeah, Wally has confirmed it too. Once I’d set up the computer to crunch the numbers, I got through to Oztralia using the 8105 code. Wally says he received Shetani’s last ever transmission. His signal became more and more garbled, and then stopped altogether, right at the time the gravity spike passed through. Shetani is now officially dead, once and for all.’
‘Thank Jaysis.’
‘Right. But Voorogg has begun to attack anyway. Wally uses a telescope set up on the Moon to monitor what’s happening on Earth. He said that rockets have been launched from the sea and they’ve put satellites in orbit. One of them fired a gamma burst that destroyed the Hesperian bunkers in the Mohave desert. Actually, Wally was pretty angry. He said we’d told him the aliens were our friends.’
It was the early hours of the morning, CHT, and Geoff and Maura were back in the lab.
‘This doesn’t look good,’ said Geoff. ‘Something’s happened to Leona’s DNA.’
Before Maura could answer, Kai staggered into the lab, caught hold of a bench to steady himself, but then slumped onto the floor. Maura rushed to him and, seeing his distorted expression, fetched him a glass of water.
Kai drank and swallowed. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.
‘Oh, Kai, what’s happened to you?’ asked Maura.
‘We must save Leona,’ said Kai. ‘Do you know how to do it?’
And so began another period of intense activity for Geoff and Maura, working to reverse the changes they’d made to Leona’s DNA. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Geoff. ‘I thought we’d planted the code so it wouldn’t affect her bodily functions.’
‘We did,’ said Maura, ‘though we still don’t know the purpose of all the nucleotide sequences that exist. But I think something happened when Shetani caught the virus. Perhaps he fought back in some way.’
Kai barely ate or drank. He stayed for hours by Leona’s bedside, sometimes meditating, sometimes chanting Khitan prayers.
Maura devised a new drug designed to cut out the code they’d added to her genetic instructions. But it became apparent that other changes had occurred. It looked as if Shetani’s software had defended itself by reflecting the random programming back into Leona’s DNA. Each of her chromosomes comprised hundreds of millions of the base pairs that formed the building blocks of the structure. It was taking too long to unravel all the changes and devise resequencing code to enable her to recover, even with Geoff’s programming skills.
The day she finally faded away, Maura asked Kai what arrangements they should make for Leona’s funeral.
‘You have seen Huang’s ice tomb?’ asked Kai. Geoff nodded.
‘Leona was sympathetic to the Khitan cause, and a warrior too, in her own way,’ said Kai. ‘She should have the same funeral as Huang.’
With Chen’s help, Kai prepared Leona’s body. He dressed her in a white gown in keeping with Khitan tradition, and placed her on a canvas stretcher decorated with prayer flags. Using cooking pot lids as cymbals and drums they’d made from oil barrels, Kai invited the remaining company to make as much noise as possible. Chen lit a fire on the snow outside the cave where Huang was entombed, and then threw in a bag of powder. It flared up, sending bright green flames high in the sky. Kai chanted and scattered drops of fragrant oil on Leona’s body from head to toe. He bent down, whispered inaudibly and gently kissed her lips. They carried the body inside the sepulchre and immersed her carefully in a tank of warm water. Chen removed the heating element and they stood, their palms pressed together in silent respect. Kai signalled Chen to cover the tank, and they filed slowly out of the cave, each deep in thought.
They congregated in the communal lounge. Geoff was puzzled. Kai was standing up but seemed reduced in height.
The Hesperian Dilemma Page 16
