Vale of Stars

by Sean O'Brien

  “Okay. Sort of tired,” Yallia said.

  “Not hurting?”

  “Nope.”

  “Great. I’m going to talk to your mommy now,” he said, silently signaling Kuarta with his eyes, “and then we’ll be right back.” He held the door open for Kuarta and followed her out.

  “We’ve analyzed the stuff she ate,” he said when the door had closed behind him. “Lots of animal matter, soil, microorganisms, you name it. Really bad.”

  Kuarta took a deep breath. “So what do we do?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. All the scans show that she’s fine. Not a trace of chlorine in her system.”

  Kuarta thought. “She couldn’t have vomited it all up. Some of it got into her. It had to. Her stomach acids must have broken down the chlorine and made chlorine gas. She should be in bad shape.”

  “Right. And not just from the chlorine. The microorganisms in the soil and the biomatter should be fighting with her immune system—she had panimmunity, right?” It was almost an unnecessary question, as all colonists received the vaccine at birth.

  “Of course.”

  “But still, that much native biomatter should really be hitting her hard. I have to admit, Doctor Verdafner, I’m baffled.”

  “Maybe she didn’t really eat any,” Dolen said weakly.

  Kuarta shook her head slowly. “I think she’s telling the truth.”

  “The scan did show a small amount of soil in her stomach, and she did throw up recently,” the doctor added.

  Kuarta nodded absently. She, too, was bringing her considerable medical knowledge to bear on the situation and was coming up short.

  “We should keep her here for tests, but….” The doctor shrugged.

  “You’re not sure why,” Kuarta finished his thought for him. She thought for a few more seconds, than turned to the doctor. She seemed to see him for the first time—a vaguely Slavic man, an argie, with a youthful face and what appeared to be perpetual stubble on his chin. She liked him somehow—perhaps it was his unabashedly earnest approach to her daughter’s case. She felt the urge to agree with him and keep Yallia here for more observation, but something felt wrong. Perhaps it was the conversation she had had with Dolen earlier, perhaps it was her suspicious Halfner personality, or more likely a combination of both, that made her say, “Well, I guess we’ll take her home. Thanks for everything, Doctor…?”

  “Wajanowitz.”

  “Thank you. I would like to invoke my privacy rights, though. No offense,” she said.

  “Oh, none at all, Doctor. I understand.” By invoking the Right to Medical Privacy, Doctor Wajanowitz could not submit any of the particulars of Yallia’s identity to anyone, including the medical database. He could, of course, submit a case study in such a way as to preserve the anonymity of the subject by withholding data that was not pertinent (in this case, that would most likely include gender, physical description, and certainly name), but such a study would be restricted to medical research purposes. It was a minor hindrance to research, one which Kuarta herself had run up against many times in her own work, but was essential to preserving the society at large. Genetic and medical prejudice in the social realm could easily wreck a colony such as theirs if measures were not taken to preserve medical and genetic privacy.

  Kuarta shook his hand and smiled. He left them and began the discharge process. A few authorizations later and the Verdafners were on their way home. Dolen and Kuarta could not help stealing glances at their daughter as they rode the wirebus, wondering just what had happened to her that day.

  Chapter 7

  “You realize, of course, the impossibility of your request,” Commissar-General Jalen Newfield said softly. He gazed out the window of his twentieth-story office, watching the activity below in Valhalla Dome. His office was set on the highest floor of the tallest building in the Dome, which itself was located (as all Domes were) twelve-hundred meters above sea level.

  The man who stood on the other side of the Commissar-General’s desk was small and mousy and did not fit the argie stereotype at all. Carll Tann was only thirty-one years old (calculated in N.E. years, the only way Carll Tann measured time), the same age as Jene Halfner, but had been showing the signs of baldness in his retreating hairline for at least five years. He could easily have corrected the minor aesthetic fault if he had wished, but he had found the distraction of such an obvious genetic weakness useful in misdirecting his political opponents.

  “I know it is…unusual, Commissar-General, but I think it is a necessary application of your emergency powers. The genedata must be turned over to us so that we may begin to analyze just what has happened. Unchecked, this could lead to an epidemic that could wipe out the whole colony.”

  Newfield smiled, his back still towards his advisor. “Save the alarmist rhetoric for your memoirs, Carll. We don’t have all the facts yet.”

  Tann lowered his voice. “Sir, it is possible that the immunization program set up twelve years ago when the Odyssey arrived is beginning to show flaws with the first generation of Ship-descended children.” That was a lie, he knew, but it was a lie that had the dual advantages of being plausible and ominous.

  Now Newfield turned around. He took pains to keep his good looks unobtrusive, just as Tann shoved his ugliness to the fore. Newfield was boyishly handsome; his broad, dark face softened easily when he wasn’t angry, as he was now. “But everyone receives the immunization series. Why should this generation of Odyssey children be any different from their parents?”

  “I do not fully understand it myself, sir, but I am told that the vaccines we use do have an effect on the genes of the recipient. It is possible that the shippie, excuse me, Odyssey-descended children were born…affected by the immunity series.”

  “This girl…Yallia Verdafner, right? She’s a hybrid child, isn’t she? Her father’s argie.”

  “I…believe so, sir,” Tann said with mock uncertainty. He knew more about Yallia Verdafner than he cared to admit to the Commissar-General.

  Newfield considered this for a moment. “You think the vaccinations compounded what may have been a preexisting genetic condition?”

  Tann shrugged and spread his hands. “Possibly. We don’t really know what has happened. We are operating in the dark. It is for that reason, sir, that I advise you unseal the genedata on the girl.”

  Newfield hesitated a long time before he responded. When he did, his voice came from far down in his throat. “Genedata is private information. The Commissar-General can’t just pry into a citizen’s medical records at will. No.” Newfield shook his head, but he averted his gaze from that of his advisor. Tann knew his eyes unnerved Newfield.

  “I know how you feel, Jalen,” Tann said, softly, ingratiatingly, moving a half-step closer to the leader of the planet, “and believe me, no one takes personal genetic privacy to heart more than I. I know that had my genedata been released prior to my birth…well, who knows,” he said, smiling away the tension. Both knew what he meant. Among argies, physical beauty was more than a pleasant side effect of wellness—it represented genetic strength. Had his parents been able to peer into Tann’s own embryonic DNA thirty-one years ago and presage the ugliness of face and body to come, it was not beyond comprehension that Carll Tann would never have existed.

  Newfield turned to look at Tann, interest and sympathy plain on his face. Naturally a warm-hearted man, Newfield was sensitive to the pain of others. Tann gleefully noted the softening of the Commissar-General’s face. He knew Newfield’s weakness for pathos and pressed his advantage. “This is a special circumstance. We have a genetic anomaly to deal with—something we have always feared would happen but which has until now remained only in the realm of speculation. The child deserves, even demands, scrutiny. You cannot discount the significance of the occurrence at her school in New Chicago.”

  Despite his sympathy, Newfield was still holding his own. “Can’t I? A secondhand report from a schoolteacher. The medical records were sealed by Kuarta Verda
fner—we have no idea what went on at the hospital.”

  “No, we don’t. But ask yourself this: why would Dr. Verdafner seal the records if there was nothing unusual in them? Surely, her invoking of the personal genetic privacy laws, drafted by her mother, is suspicious. It deserves our attention.” Tann fought to keep his voice level.

  “Sounds familiar”, Newfield mumbled.

  “Familiar? How?”

  Newfield sighed. “Back on old Earth, oh, about four hundred years ago—that’s O.E. years, of course—there was a man who used the same arguments you are using now. He was something of a demagogue.”

  Tann shrugged it off. “I doubt the circumstances were the same. Jalen, you know Dr. Onizaka is loyal. She won’t leak this data. If there is nothing to it, then we drop the whole thing and no one has to know. There will be no harm done. But what if there is something? Can we ignore the possibility that we have a mutant in our midst, perhaps the first of many? Citizens have an individual right to privacy, of course, but does that right extend to the potential ruin of the entire colony?”

  “The right to privacy, to medical privacy especially, is paramount in a society such as ours. The laws were written to protect the individual. They are wise laws.” Newfield said quietly. He appeared unmoved, but Tann knew better. The Commissar-General was weakening.

  “Sir, I agree. The privacy laws are paramount. But I must say that the safety of the whole colony comes first. When your predecessors drew up the privacy laws, they could not have predicted such a development as the Verdafner child. Laws are meant to change in order to best suit the times. The founders of this colony could not have predicted what you are facing now. But you are here, now, and you can see what must be done.”

  Tann watched the effect of his words on Newfield and considered the Commissar-General. Jalen Newfield was generally thought to be a good man. He had served the colony as Commissar-General for six years, having been appointed from his six-year position as Commissar of Valhalla Dome. He had been made a Commissar because of his fair-minded approach to government and his soft-spoken manner. But Carll Tann had learned, over the course of those twelve years, where the man’s strings were and how to pull them. It took skill and persistence, and Newfield rarely succumbed to his influence easily or quickly, but there was little doubt that when Tann wanted something, he could get it done or could get Newfield to do it for him.

  “You’re sure Onizaka is aware of the delicacy of the situation?” Newfield asked, and with the question, Tann knew he had won.

  “Perfectly. She will maintain complete confidentiality.”

  “All right. Do it. But Tann—”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ever ask me for anything like this again,” Newfield said, and Carll Tann allowed a look of somber respect to cross his face before he left.

  Carll Tann strode through the outer offices of the Commissar-General and noted the looks of barely disguised loathing the three clerks working there tried to hide. He knew how he was seen in the eyes of the rest of the colony—a genetic throwback that had little to offer the future. He was small, more than ten centimeters shorter than average argie height, and he was slight. Moreover, his facial features had been unfortunately arranged. No single aspect was particularly ugly, or even unhandsome, but the overall effect was one that elicited mild disgust in all who saw him.

  His physical appearance, as unattractive as it was, was not the true issue, however. The colony knew he had not produced offspring. Of the many achievements a man or woman could count as their own, Tann thought bitterly, nothing was more important to the public good than siring or bearing children. Many of them. Those who elected not to have children and who furthermore did not release their gametes to the public bank were held in low esteem, no matter their other works for the colony. They were almost pariahs, reviled and disregarded, persons for whom the future held no promise. “Tann made sure others knew he was a homosexual, and while that did not excuse him from donating his gametes, his perceived lack of procreative drive mitigated slightly the loathing others felt for him. In an odd way, it confused the other colonists—something he relished.”

  Tann smiled grimly. He could handle loathing. Despite his lack of a genetic investment in the future, he knew he was more concerned with the colony’s future than any other living man or woman. Difficult choices needed to be made, and he had not spent the last fifteen years idly.

  * * *

  Doctor Karin Onizaka was staring at a holo display of genetic material when Tann entered her office, a characteristic stylus in her mouth. She glanced at Tann and said absently, “Be with you in a minute.” It was a widely told joke that Dr. Onizaka could recognize a friend quicker by his or her DNA sequence than his or her face.

  Tann glanced at the holo. He was by no means a genetics expert, but he had worked with Onizaka for long enough to recognize some basic structures. She was examining a sample of one of the gengineered chlorine-breathers so vital to the terraforming project. The process was a slow one, of course, but over the last fifteen years Karin Onizaka had developed literally dozens of microscopic organisms capable of metabolizing the toxic chlorine in the atmosphere of Epsilon Eridani III and producing either carbon dioxide or oxygen.

  The men and women of the terraforming project had spread these organisms carefully across the globe and monitored their progress. Within one-hundred and twenty years, Onizaka had estimated, the atmosphere on Epsilon Eridani III would contain a low enough percentage of chlorine in its upper elevations as to be breathable by humans indefinitely. She had become the undisputed authority on gengineering as it pertained to terraforming and had even made more sophisticated animals, including mammals, though they were still little more than curiosities, even after fifteen years. Not only was their DNA far more complicated than that of a eukaryote or prokaryote, but they could simply not terraform the planet anywhere near as fast as the short-lived and fecund organisms already doing so. Still, Onizaka bred her lines of chlorine-breathing lambs and pigs and studied them, and no one dreamed of questioning her motives.

  It took considerably less than a minute for Onizaka to turn from the holo display suddenly, snapping her head around to look at Tann. She seemed to truly see him for the first time. “Carll! Did you—?”

  “I did. You have your authorization, Doctor.”

  Onizaka made no attempt to hide her elation. “Good! Very good! I’ll get to work as soon as we secure the data,” she said, already reaching for her intercom switch.

  Tann raised a hand. “Before you begin, I must tell you that this is all confidential. No one must know.”

  “Of course,” she said, blinking with surprise. “Did you think I’d—?”

  “I was obliged to remind you. Commissar-General Newfield is less than enthusiastic about this course of action.”

  Onizaka sighed. “I still don’t understand that, Carll. You’ve told him of the potential importance of the data? What we can do with it? Why else set the experiment in motion all those years ago? Surely, he—”

  “He does not share your…expertise, doctor, nor my…ah, decisiveness, perhaps.”

  “I still think that if I explained it to him, he’d agree wholeheartedly. You really ought to have let me do that when we first started this back in thirty-six. He doesn’t need to be worried.”

  “You forget, Doctor, that Jalen Newfield was not the Commissar-General in thirty-six. Well, no matter. He has consented.” But Tann was concerned. Onizaka was a brilliant scientist—there were none better in the field of gengineering in the entire colony—but she was woefully ignorant of the intricacies of politics. Tann would have it no other way, but at times, it led to inconveniences. He lowered his voice and leaned in to his confederate. “And, Doctor, there is, of course, no need to tell him of what really transpired twelve years ago. As far as he knows, all the government did was to immunize the incoming Odyssey immigrants. There is nothing to be gained by admission of your more…invasive involvement.”

 
; Onizaka looked away from Tann and turned to the holo display of the chlorine-eater. She whispered, “Do you really think it has happened, Carll?”

  Tann smiled. “That’s for you to tell me, Doctor. I shall leave you to your work. You will, of course, inform me when you have anything to report.”

  “Of course. Thank you, Carll,” Onizaka activated her intercom and said to the waiting computer switchboard, “New Chicago Dome, Central Genebank.”

  Tann left Onizaka’s office and strode down the halls to his own residence. For the first time in a long while, he did not notice the stares of loathing from all he passed.

  * * *

  “Doctor Verdafner?” said Auel Wasif-Mosaka, one of Kuarta’s promising young lab assistants. She waited patiently as Kuarta completed the delicate splicing work under the veescope. Wasif-Mosaka was herself Ship-descended and as such held Kuarta in a sort of semi-awe. Before Kuarta had put a stop to it, Wasif-Mosaka referred to herself as a “Gen Six” instead of a colonist. There was a considerable, but shrinking, number of shippies who had rekindled the old Ship designation against the advice of their elders.

  “Okay, seal that one off and hold,” Kuarta said to the computer-assisted DNA splicing machine and turned to Wasif-Mosaka. “What’s up, Auel?”

  The young woman hesitated, then said, “I have a friend who works as a clerk in the Central Genebank and he sent me…well, why don’t you take a look at it?” Wasif-Mosaka handed over the sheet of paper she had been holding nervously in her hand.

  Auel, it read, I got a weird bit of news for you. My argie boss actually executed a computer search on his own today instead of telling me or Bhoetin to do it and then watching over our shoulders, looking like he just farted oxygen. I watched him (in secret—he didn’t see me) do it because I thought he’d screw it up and I wanted to have a cool story to tell you. He did, a little, but he found what he wanted—genedata on Yallia Verdafner. And then he unlocked it! He actually overrode the privacy codes and sent the whole thing to Karin Onizaka over in Valhalla!