Ancestor

by Scott Sigler

  Blue-light special, two for the price of one.

  And the cows’ immune systems? No response. Nothing at all.

  Once upon a time, a man named Roger Bannister shocked the world by running a mile in less than four minutes—a feat that experts had declared “impossible.” Jian’s process was a biological equivalent of that feat, or would have been, if Roger had run his mile in thirty seconds flat.

  Less than twenty-four hours after the enucleated egg first fused with the artificially created DNA, gastrulation occurred. In human pregnancies, gastrulation does not occur for two weeks.

  Gastrulation is a fancy word that means that cells stop being copies of each other and start taking on the specialized functions of tissues and organs. From a ball of undifferentiated cells, three distinct cell layers form: the ectoderm, the endoderm, and the mesoderm.

  The mesoderm becomes the structure of the animal, including the muscles, bones, circulatory system and the reproductive system. The endoderm eventually grows into the digestive and respiratory systems. The ectoderm generates skin and the neural system—that includes the brain.

  While all three layers combined to create an ancestor, the ectoderm would turn out to be the real troublemaker.

  NOVEMBER 10: ROTTED SQUIRREL

  Implantation +1 Day

  COLDING STOOD ON the mansion’s front steps, shivering in the early-morning cold despite his thick down parka. He checked his watch. Seventeen minutes after eight. Sara stared at him. He tried to ignore her.

  “Hey, Colding,” she said. “Unless that watch is some kind of Star Wars teleporter, it’s not going to make Clayton get here any sooner.”

  “Star Trek had teleporters, not Star Wars.”

  “Oh, snap. Thank you for the nerd correction, fan boy.”

  “Give it a rest. Clayton’s late, okay?”

  She put both hands on her cheeks and affected an expression of shock. She looked out at the mansion’s snow-covered front lawn and the long curving driveway—both of which, of course, were completely empty. “Looks like we’re going to get all caught up in the morning-commute traffic jam. We’ll be late for the Trekkies convention!”

  That biting, sarcastic tone. It was really starting to get on his nerves. “Don’t you have other shit to do, Purinam? Or do I get another full day of your attitude.”

  “I cleared my calendar just for you, Peej.”

  The nickname again. It made him remember her naked, remember the cool smoothness of her freckled skin.

  Over three years ago, Jian had said. That’s a long time, Mister Colding.

  No. This wasn’t going to happen. Sara clearly despised him, and with good reason. Sometimes Colding wondered if he’d cornered the market on finding things to feel guilty about, but this was right up there with the best of them.

  “Look, Sara. I … I’m not normally … well, I don’t normally act like that. With women. The way I did with you, I mean.”

  “You don’t normally hump-and-dump?”

  “Uh … no.”

  “Oh, I see. Just with me, then. How nice it must be for all the other women you treat with respect and dignity.”

  Colding started to say there aren’t any other women, but he stopped. He was just sounding more and more like an idiot.

  The gurgle of a diesel engine saved him from further embarrassment. Sounded like a big truck. The trees past the curving driveway hid it from view for a few seconds. The sound grew a bit louder as the source cleared the trees and turned down the snow-covered drive.

  Sara laughed and clapped.

  Colding looked at the strange vehicle, then at Sara. “What the fuck is that?”

  “That has be the Nuge. How awesome.”

  Colding stared at the thing rolling toward them. A lumbering, two-part vehicle painted white—white, with black zebra stripes. The front half looked like a four-door metal box set on top of short tank treads, with room inside for front and back bench seats. A stubby down-slanting hood ended flat with heavy headlights and a metal-grate bumper. The roof had a hatch above the front passenger side, and a second above the entire rear seat.

  The rear section looked like a modified flatbed riding on its own set of squat tank treads. In that flatbed was a small aerial lift with a man-sized white plastic bucket (also painted with zebra stripes), like the kind on telephone repair or utility trucks. When extended, the arm might lift the bucket as high as twenty feet. An articulated joint connected the front and back halves of the vehicle.

  Clayton drove down the curved driveway and stopped in front of the wide stone steps. He leaned out the open driver’s-side window and smiled at Sara. “Hiya, doll.” He looked at Colding and the smile faded. “Let’s go, eh? I ain’t got all day.”

  “Clayton,” Colding said, “what the hell is this thing?”

  “It’s a Bv206. Magnus bought it surplus off da Swede military. I use it to mow da landing strip, groom da snowmobile trails and fix da phone lines when storms knock ’em down. Lot of ground to cover, eh? And most of that ground is either swampy, muddy or covered in six feet of snow.”

  “And you call it Ted Nugent, why?”

  Sara raised her hand like a kid in school. She jumped up and down and waved her arm. “Oh! Oh! Teacher, pick on me, pick on me!”

  “Miss Purinam,” Clayton said. “Please answer for da class.”

  “It’s called Ted Nugent because it can go down in the swamp. Just like Fred Bear.”

  Colding looked back and forth between them. “Who is Fred Bear? What the hell are you people talking about?”

  “It’s a song,” Sara said. “It’s a Michigan thing, you wouldn’t understand. Just get in.”

  Sara hopped into the back. Colding walked to the passenger-side seat and opened the door, pausing for a moment to run his hand over the black-striped surface. The armor looked thick enough to stop small-caliber fire. So Magnus had a Stinger, a platoon’s worth of weapons and a troop transport. Wonderful.

  Colding hopped in and shut the door. “You’re late, Clayton.”

  “I slept in. Da benefits of youth.” He put the vehicle in gear and pulled away from the mansion.

  “You know, Clayton,” Colding said. “You can call me doll, too. I might blush, though.”

  “Aw, fuck ya. Listen, I’ll take you up da northwest coast, show you da snowmobile trails. They’re mostly mud and swamp until everything freezes solid. Then I’ll swing you around to North Pointe and, if ya don’t mind, Sven would like a word.”

  Colding shrugged. Why not? He had to see the whole island anyway, even if it was freezing out. Colding started to roll up his window.

  “Oh, yah,” Clayton said. “Mind leaving that down? I ran over a squirrel a couple of days ago. Didn’t quite get all da guts out. It’ll stink in here something fierce if you close it.”

  How about that? Clayton actually asked nicely for something. No pissy tone this time. Maybe the old man was loosening up. Colding shrugged and rolled the window back down.

  They headed northwest. Much of the trail looked like an ancient road, now overgrown and pitted, some spots thick with two feet of black, stagnant water. The Bv rolled through all of it. One swamp looked a good twenty feet deep in the middle, but the Nuge proved to be fully amphibious—it rolled into the water and floated, moving across the surface until the tank treads dug into the mud on the far side. One hell of a machine, really.

  Through the thick trees, Colding saw the occasional collapsed house. Snow clumped on moss-covered roofs, and a few even had saplings growing up through the angled remnants.

  Sara leaned forward, preferring to look out the front window rather than the sides. “Looks like a lot of people used to live here.”

  “Yah,” Clayton said. “Some forty years back we had about three hundred year-round residents. Mostly copper mining, but also summer people, tourists.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We had … an incident. At da copper mine. Twenty-two people died. This trail goes right by it, I’ll
show ya.”

  He cranked the Nuge forward at a punishing twenty miles an hour. Branches scraped the vehicle’s sides and roof, but Clayton effortlessly avoided the tree trunks.

  They popped out at a clearing near the island’s high rocky spine. Colding saw a small shed made of bone-dry wood, bleached almost white from decades of sun. Like a set from an old silent movie, a barely discernible sign had the word DANGER written on it in faded, paintbrush-scrawled letters.

  “That’s da old mine,” Clayton said. “Used to be tons of copper across da whole U.P. Boomtowns rivaled anything from da gold rush days out West.”

  “Spooky,” Sara said. “Is that where the people died?”

  “Most of ’em,” Clayton said. “Those men are still in there, at least their bones. At night, when it’s quiet, you can hear them calling for help.”

  Colding would have mocked a woo-woo superstition like that, but Clayton’s memories clearly ran deep to a place of pain, maybe also of fear.

  “The cave-in kind of broke da town’s heart,” Clayton said. “People moved away over da years. There was only about fifty of us left when Danté came in and bought everyone out. He kept me and Sven. James and Stephanie are new, brought in to manage a backup herd. Enough of this shit. I don’t like this spot much.”

  Clayton put the Bv206 in gear and they drove back into the woods, the rough road jostling everyone inside. His mood seemed to lighten the farther they got from the mine. “I think I smell squirrel guts,” he said. “Your window down all da way, Colding?”

  “Yeah, you can see it is.”

  Clayton looked and nodded. “Okay, eh? Well, keep it down. I’m a little cold so I’m rolling mine up. You know us old guys can get chilly.” He cranked the handle to raise his window just as they broke out of the trees at the edge of a small farm. Colding recognized the barn with the roof shingles that spelled out Ballantine. This was where the island’s only working road started. Or ended, depending on how you looked at it.

  Clayton stopped in Sven’s driveway. He got out, then, inexplicably, stepped on the metal-grate bumper and hauled himself on top of the vehicle. Colding looked up at the roof for a moment, then leaned out the passenger window to ask Clayton just what the hell he was doing.

  As he leaned out, he caught a blur of movement coming from the right. He turned in time to see a wide-eyed black shape flying through the air, teeth flashing inside a gaping mouth. The assaulting animal sailed cleanly through the open passenger window and hit Colding full speed, knocking him flat on the seat.

  A dog. A wet dog. Colding’s adrenaline burst of panic dissipated as a tongue furiously licked at his face. He tried to push the dog away, but it dove at him as if its life depended on it. Despite the animal’s loud whines of joy, Colding heard Clayton’s loud, sandpaper laugh.

  “Oh my God,” Sara said from the backseat, “he’s adorable!”

  “She’s adorable,” another man called out. “Mookie! You get off that man and out of that car, eh?”

  The wide-eyed, black-furred cattle dog managed one last sloppy lick, then turned and dove back out the window as gracefully as a leaping gazelle.

  “What a little sweetheart,” Sara said.

  Colding sat up, using his jacket sleeve to wipe dog spit from his face. “Oh, for crying out loud. I’ve been slimed.”

  Sven Ballantine walked up and stopped about five feet from the Bv206. Mookie sat next to him, head forward and big eyes open wide, as motionless as a statue except for the long-haired tail that swish-swished quietly in the snow.

  Clayton was still standing on the hood, and still laughing.

  And then, Colding smelled it.

  “Oh God,” Sara said from the backseat. Her laugh gave her words a staccato sound. “What … stinks?”

  The horrible odor, it seemed, was coming from Colding’s hands and clothes. His nose wrinkled involuntarily.

  “You’ll want to clean up,” Sven said. “Mookie found something dead this morning. She likes to roll in stuff like that. Sorry.”

  Clayton’s laugh came even louder.

  “It’s okay,” Colding said. “Jesus, this stinks, what the hell is this?”

  “Dead … squir … rel!” Clayton called out from the roof. His laugh had turned into a hysterical, wheezing cough. “Gonna … piss myself … that’s why I was late. Found … dead … squirrel, knew that damn dog would roll in it … jump on you … so funny!”

  “Sorry,” Sven said. “Really sorry you stink so bad and all. Mookie has a knack for getting into trouble. She’s a real pain in da ass.”

  Colding noticed that despite Sven’s words, his big hand was absently scratching the black dog’s stinky head. Either Sven loved the dog unconditionally, or the old man couldn’t smell a thing. Mookie looked up at Sven with blissful reverence.

  Colding banged on the inside of the Bv’s roof. “Let’s go!” He managed a smile at Sven. Sven just nodded. Mookie’s mouth opened and her tongue hung out the side, the big smile of a happy dog.

  Clayton climbed down. No sooner had his feet hit the ground than Mookie took off like a shot. Damn, that dog could move. Clayton slid through the driver’s door with surprising agility, shutting the door just before the smelly dog could follow him in. Mookie jumped at the high window, showing amazing air-time. Her slobber streaked the glass. She barked and whined, desperate to say hello.

  “Not today, you stinky girl,” Clayton said, still chuckling lightly. “I’ll come see ya after your daddy gives you a bath, eh?”

  “Back to the mansion,” Colding said.

  Clayton laughed some more, a sound that would have been infectious if Colding weren’t the butt of the joke.

  “What’s da matter, doll?” Clayton said. “I thought you wanted to see da old town.”

  “Tomorrow,” Colding said. “You got me good, now get me back to the friggin’ mansion so I can shower and burn these clothes.”

  Clayton put the Nuge in gear, then headed back down the road. When Colding stepped out of the vehicle and walked up the mansion’s front steps, the old man was still laughing.

  NOVEMBER 11: TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

  Implantation +2 Days

  INSIDE THE C-5’S lower deck, Jian watched Tim move the handheld transducer across Cow 34’s belly. An overhead harness looped under the cow’s legs, hips and chest, holding her off the ground and supporting all of her weight.

  The transducer fed data into the portable ultrasound workstation positioned just outside Cow 34’s stall. Doctor Rhumkorrf sat in front of the workstation, his small behind parked on a wooden stool, his hands toying with buttons and absently caressing a black trackball.

  Above those controls sat a video monitor that showed nothing but a blue progress bar, just over half full, with words above it that read 52 PERCENT.

  In her career, Jian had seen ultrasound evolve from grainy, two-dimensional, black-and-white images to three-dimensional representations showing depth from a top-down perspective, then to what they had now: full, rotatable 3-D models with animated images showing the natural movements of an in utero animal.

  75 PERCENT

  No mistaking the electricity in the air, the satisfaction at seeing years of work move steadily closer to the final product.

  82 PERCENT

  “Let’s not get excited,” Rhumkorrf said, even though he was the only one talking. He absently swayed a bit from side to side as he waited for the image to process. “When Erika … I mean, when Doctor Hoel and I brought the quagga back from extinction, it took fifty-two implantation cycles before we corrected the genome enough to produce a live birth.”

  88 PERCENT

  Jian felt relieved, invigorated … even light. She’d lost some weight in the past few weeks, partly from forgetting to eat, partly from the haunting stress that kept her stomach pinched all the time. Just two days after implantation, a normal mammalian embryo would be nothing but a tiny red dot jutting from the uterine wall. Kind of like a big wet pimple. But according to her calculat
ions, and the astronomical growth rate they’d seen in the in vitro embryos, what lay inside Cow 34’s womb would be much bigger.

  94 PERCENT

  Tim’s hand continued to move the transducer across the suspended cow’s belly. He looked sleepy. Maybe a little drunk. Again. He hadn’t smiled since they had landed. Back on Baffin, Tim was always smiling.

  100 PERCENT … PROCESSING …

  The progress bar filled up, then a golden-hued image flared to life.

  She stared at the screen.

  Tim walked out of the stall, saw the screen and stopped cold. “Oh, fuck me running,” he said quietly.

  Jian slowly shook her head in disbelief. She’d known they would grow fast, she’d coded for it, but this?

  “Jian,” Rhumkorrf said. “You are even more talented than I imagined.”

  The ultrasound image revealed two fetuses pushed into a tight face-to-face embrace. Rhumkorrf slowly moved his right hand over the trackball, turning the 3-D image to examine the tiny fetal features. Oversized heads had already formed, each bigger than the rest of their respective bodies. Big black spots showed developing eyes. Tiny limb buds sprouted from the bodies. She saw the ghostly shape of forming internal organs.

  “Feely,” Rhumkorrf said. “How big would you say those embryos are?”

  “Umm … at least eight ounces.” Tim’s voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Maybe even a little more. Normal embryonic growth for a two-hundred-pound mammal should be less than a tenth of an ounce.”

  “Eighty times the normal growth rate,” Rhumkorrf said. “That’s even higher than you projected, Jian. Fantastic!”

  Fantastic. Was that the right word to describe it? No. It was not. From a single cell to half a pound in less than forty-eight hours. She should have felt elated. But instead, she felt afraid.