DNA

by Laurence Dahners

  There weren’t going to be any answers looking down on this world from orbit. I’m going to have to land as a waldo and get in amongst these… animals before I can decide whether they’re intelligent or not, she decided. To Allan she said, “Are the waldoes in orbit yet?”

  “It’ll be ten more days,” Allan responded.

  But I want to go down now! Ell grinned at her own impatience. To Allan, she said, “Okay, between now and then, please keep looking for any big assemblies of animals that might suggest intelligence. I know you’re relatively certain you haven’t seen any machines, so if they are intelligent their technological savvy must still be pretty primitive, but even primitives tend to have get-togethers.”

  Allan said, “Are you including assemblies of different kinds of animals?”

  “Yeah, any kinds of assemblies. I should at least look at them.”

  ***

  Vanessa looked up at a knock from the lab’s doorway. Zage and his handsome father were there. “Hi,” she said, eyes on Zage’s dad, “come on in. Did Zage tell you what he’s wanting to do?”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s pretty far out of my area of expertise,” Kinrais said with a grin. “Do you think what he’s proposing is at all reasonable?”

  Vanessa narrowed her eyes a little, “He told you that he wants to sequence the DNA in some of his cells, looking for genes that might have been left behind by an adenovirus?”

  Kinrais nodded, “And that he thinks those viral genes might be expressing peptides that are causing his obesity... Is that even possible?”

  Vanessa shrugged, “Crazier things have been hypothesized. Most of them don’t pan out though.”

  “No harm in his trying though, right?”

  “Um, it might harm your budget?”

  Kinrais blinked, then grinned again. He looked at his son, “How about if I set him up with a ‘grant’ of two thousand dollars to do some sequencing with.” He looked back up at Vanessa, “If he wants to spend more than that, he’ll need to write up a report on what he’s done so far.” Kinrais stared back down at his son, “In language I can understand.” He looked back at Vanessa, “Would that be okay? I can just send the money to your research account if you’ll give me the number.”

  Vanessa blinked. They must pay these math professors better than I thought if he’s so willing to lay out two grand for his son’s whims! she thought. “Um, and you’d still be paying me for… supervising him?”

  “Of course.”

  ***

  Jamieson leaned back in his chair to think. His AI had just finished showing him all the clips of people coming and going from the house to the south of Donsaii’s. His research had determined that the house was owned by a Shannon Kinrais and his wife Raquel. Interestingly enough, Kinrais had actually written a paper with Donsaii. Even more interesting, Raquel was the same height as Donsaii though she had darker coloring, brunette hair, and a slightly bigger nose.

  The bitch’s disguised herself, gotten married, moved into the house next door, and had a kid! And nobody seems to know about it!

  Jamieson told his AI to arrange a meeting with Wang.

  ***

  Wang sat on the bench in the park like he’d been told. He held his head still as if he was reading on his HUD, but actually his eyes were roaming the area around him. He frequently checked his HUD which was actually sending him the picture from a rear facing camera.

  Nonetheless, a shadow suddenly fell over him and a shiver ran down his spine. That damned Jamieson managed to sneak up on me again! He wondered why he found it so irritating. It was a sign of the man’s competence, which was what Wang’d hired Jamieson for. So far the piyan (asshole) had demanded $40,000 in two separate payments just to try to determine whether he thought the job could be done, so it was to be strongly hoped that he was competent. Wang kept wanting to tell his handlers that they should just bring over their own team to capture this Donsaii. However, since they’d lost three teams in years gone by while trying to do just that, he knew what the answer would be. Whoever was in charge back home had decided that they needed a competent native team. Someone who knew the ins and outs of America. Such a person could presumably do this job better, and in a more deniable fashion.

  Wang stood up, once again feeling a little intimidated by Jamieson’s large size and impressive musculature. Since the man had once been a Navy seal, Wang was fully aware of just how dangerous Jamieson could be if he wanted. They started walking casually along a trail in the park. Wang thought to himself that if anyone was actually watching them, they would find the pair, a large, sloppily-dressed Caucasian warrior and a dapper little Asian, unlikely.

  Jamieson said, “I’ve got a twofer for you.”

  “Twofer?”

  “‘Two for the price of one.’” Jamieson laughed, “but in your case it’ll be one and a half for the price of two.”

  Annoyed by the American’s irritating sense of humor, Wang grated out, “How much?”

  “Five million.”

  “Five million dollars?!”

  “Of course dollars.” Jamieson snorted, “Not yen for Chrissake.”

  Exasperated, Wang almost barked out that yen were Japanese, then realized that if this idiot thought he was Japanese that would be one more layer of anonymity protecting Wang’s country. “Five million dollars, far too much!”

  “Five million dollars is ridiculously cheap. I’m not only getting you Ell Donsaii, the most famous person in the world,” he lifted an eyebrow, “but I’m gonna get you her kid.”

  Wang drew back in startlement, “She not have kid!”

  Jamieson grinned at him, “Yes she does. And he’s exactly the lever you need to get her to do what you want. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want him.”

  “Where is this boy?”

  Jamieson laughed, “I’d have to be an idiot to tell you.”

  Wang’s mind raced. If Donsaii actually did have a child, capturing the child as well would be a coup! Nonetheless, he shook his head, “Five million still too much.”

  Jamieson shrugged, “Kidnapping’s a capital crime. Six million’s cheap.”

  Not understanding what Jamieson was trying to do, Wang said, “No! Six million not cheap. Five million not cheap. Four million not cheap. I pay you two million.”

  Jamieson snorted, “You don’t understand. I don’t want to do this. It’s too dangerous. If you want me to even consider it, your next bid needs to be seven million.” He laughed, “Or, you can try to lowball me again… then it’ll be eight million.”

  Finally grasping what Jamieson was doing, Wang paused to think. His country would be happy to pay a lot more than seven million—if they got Donsaii—Wang just didn’t want to give Jamieson that much. “Okaaay,” he said, dragging the word out, “one million now and six million on delivery.”

  Jamieson grinned at him, “Four million now and four million on delivery.”

  Wang closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, Eight million! “Okay,” he said resignedly.

  Jamieson clapped Wang on the shoulder. He said, “Nice negotiating with you. Three million in gold, and one million in hundred dollar bills. Let me know when you’ve got it. Oh, and I’ll also need these drugs.” He handed Wang a list and walked off into the woods, leaving the smaller man fuming on the trail.

  ***

  Ell said, “Allan, have you landed the little waldo on Virginis 3 yet?”

  “It’s descending now,” he responded.

  “Let’s call him ‘Virgwald.’ Give me a view out of his eyes. You’re bringing him down outside the city, correct?” Although Ell didn’t really care which city he brought it down outside of, she assumed that he was bringing it down near the one he’d first shown her surrounding a bay on the coast. That was the one they’d spent the most time looking at so far.

  The view that popped up on Ell’s HUD showed mostly green landscape, though she could see the blue of the ocean in the distance. Allan said, “We’re coming in at a low slant that sho
uld keep us below the horizon until we land about one kilometer from what appears to be the edge of the city.”

  As the view swung in closer, Ell could see that Allan appeared to be bringing the waldo down onto one of the paths that meandered from city to city. At present they were swinging over a large field, or at least what Ell thought looked like a field. It was covered with plants and Ell had the strange feeling that they were cultivated; however, they looked like there were many different types of plants growing in it. Back on earth, Ell was used to seeing fields where all the plants were of the same species, so seeing an area with many kinds of vegetation didn’t fit her expectation. In fact, the field was irregular in shape and undulating. The more Ell thought about it, the more she wondered why she even had the feeling that it was a farmer’s field.

  She decided the plants were too big to call it a meadow and, though not organized, didn’t seem disorganized enough to think of it as being “wild.”

  But, on the other hand, it didn’t seem orderly enough to have been cultivated by a farmer.

  Ell was almost all the way across the field when she realized that there were a couple of animals down there, both of which she thought were gazing curiously up at her. I couldn’t really see their eyes though, so I’m not sure why I thought they were looking at me. Even if they were looking at me, I don’t have any reason to think they appear “curious.”

  Allan brought the waldo down on the path and Ell decided that “path” was the correct word. It wasn’t paved, just a trail where little vegetation grew. At first Ell thought that the vegetation in the area of the path had just been worn away by the passage of many feet. But then she noticed that dirt wasn’t really showing through. She bent forward to get a closer look and realized that the surface was covered with the woody stems of thousands of tiny vines. They had a faint greenish color, but no leaves. She stepped to the edge of the path and saw that the slender little vines seem to merge with the leafy vegetation at the side of the trail. She got the distinct impression that the mini-vines had somehow been made to grow there to suppress erosion.

  After a quick glance around, Ell started walking the waldo toward the city. “Now that we’re on the ground,” she asked Allan, “what’s the gravity and atmospheric composition?”

  Allan said, “0.19 gravities. The atmosphere is composed of 28% oxygen, 61% nitrogen, 6% argon, 4% neon, and less than 1% other gases including carbon dioxide. The pressure is 4.1 atmospheres.”

  Delightedly, Ell said, “We could live here! And if I strapped on a couple of wings I could fly in gravity this low and atmosphere this thick!” Now if only it turns out that there really isn’t any intelligent life… Or since the grids make it look like they were built by something intelligent maybe there was intelligent life, but they all died out?

  Allen said, “Unfortunately, background radiation levels are high. Although this waldo does not have means for detecting it, I suspect this planet has a weak magnetosphere and that much of this radiation is from their star. The thick atmosphere is probably providing some protection because radiation levels aren’t quite as high as they are on Mars in our solar system, however it still wouldn’t be a very safe place to live long term.”

  Maybe radiation wiped out their civilization? Ell wondered as she walked along as Virgwald. Before she made it to the next turn in the path, an animal came around that bend toward her. A moment later, another one stepped out from amongst the vegetation along the right side. Though Ell initially thought they were animals, she quickly got the impression that they looked excited to see her. Then they began pointing. Damn! she thought, They sure look intelligent. Then a third alien flew in over the vegetation bordering the path and landed next to the first two.

  She wasn’t surprised that they were gesticulating toward her—after all, they’d probably heard the waldo’s jets bringing it down and had come around specifically to see what had made the noise. What surprised her was that the three aliens all looked quite different, as if they were separate species, yet they appeared to be communicating with one another. Could this world have several different intelligent species?!

  One had a splotchy fuzzy surface and was quite a bit larger than the other two. It had several large bundles of vegetation on its back and was walking on four limbs. Though the four legs appeared slender to Ell, they were significantly thicker and heavier than the legs on the other two aliens. Remembering that the gravity on this planet was less than one fifth that of Earth’s, Ell realized that this animal/alien fit in the “heavyset” category. If she hadn’t already decided that it was intelligent, the thick legs would have fit with her initial impression that it was a beast of burden, transporting the bundles of vegetation from one location to another. It had six limbs total, with two large limbs up front which reminded Ell somewhat of the tines on a forklift—except these tines ended in large graspers. Ell had the impression that those big limbs could have loaded the bundles of vegetation on its own back. Eyes—a structure that seemed fairly universal in appearance because of the physics of optics—were set on stubby stalks at the front of the body. She couldn’t see a mouth or breathing orifice.

  Although the other two animals seemed to be similar in size to one another, they still didn’t look like they were members of the same species. One of them had a wrinkly pale blue surface with a white geometric pattern on it. The pattern certainly didn’t look natural, so Ell thought it must be something like a tattoo. It was ambulating on two very slender legs and had four more limbs which looked like they were for manipulation. There were two small wings which had folded up so neatly as to become nearly invisible. It had two heavier outer arms and two very lightweight and delicate central arms with tiny digits. Even the thicker outer arms would have looked slender on earth. It also had three eyes, one of which was quite large and centrally located directly on the body; two more were delicate and widely mounted on long stalks.

  The second of the smaller animals had a smooth orangey brown skin without decorations. It reminded Ell of an ostrich with two long slender legs on a relatively small body and two small wings set high on its back. Though the wings were even smaller in proportion to its body than the wings on a flightless ostrich, the alien had flown quite well with them in this low gravity. It didn’t have the ostrich’s long neck, just two eyes on short stubby stalks. It had two arms for a total of four limbs. These arms were intermediate in size as compared to the blue alien, neither heavy-duty nor delicate.

  Could they all be mutants due to the radiation levels here? she wondered. After a moment’s thought she realized that they didn’t look deformed and crippled like mutants would—somehow they looked… functionally modified.

  If not for the appearance that they were communicating with one another, Ell’s initial reaction would have been that the big one and the ostrich-like one were animals while the third one with its geometric pattern was the intelligent one. But the recognition that they all had hands of a sort that they were using to point at Virgwald markedly upped her impression of their intelligence. They were also waving the arms around as if that added something to their conversation. Ell said, “Allan, make sure that Virgwald’s audio receptors are working. They look like they must be talking, but I’m not hearing anything.” Before Allan responded, she realized she actually was hearing wind noise, some rustling of leaves, and a strange whispering sound, so Virgwald’s microphones had to be functional.

  Allan responded, “They’re making a moderate amount of sound in the ultrasonic range, presumably speech. I will reduce its frequency into the range of human hearing, though it’s of course possible that its content requires the high frequencies to achieve sufficient information density.”

  The whispering sound disappeared and Ell began to hear something that reminded her of sticks rattling together. Damn, I’m going to need Dr. Piscova again, Ell thought, there’s no way I’m going to learn that language by myself.

  While Ell had been trying to take all this in, the three aliens had approached Vir
gwald with bouncy, bounding steps and began examining him excitedly. They weren’t actually touching the waldo, but were walking around and around, looking at him from all angles. Feeling fairly certain that these were intelligent beings, Ell lifted one hand and, feeling like she should have had something better prepared, said, “Hello… I come in peace.”

  The aliens sprang back when Ell lifted Virgwald’s hand, but responded with a great deal of clattering to the words she said, suggesting that they could hear the lower frequency range that Ell was speaking in. After a minute or two, Geo, as Ell had decided to name the one with the geometric patterns on its skin, reached out and gently touched Virgwald on the arm. Ell did nothing for a moment, not wanting to frighten them. Then she gently reached out with Virgwald’s hand and touched Geo on one of his thicker outer arms.

  Geo held still for this for a moment, then reached out and began touching and stroking Virgwald with three of the four fingers of one of the smaller more delicate central arms. When Virgwald didn’t object, the fourth finger began touching, then sweeping along his arm. That finger appeared to be different, prehensile, like an elephant’s trunk… or a tongue.

  Ell saw that the prehensile digit looked damp, at which point it immediately reminded her much more of a tongue than a finger.

  The clattering noise crescendoed shortly after Geo had tongued Virgwald’s surface, giving Ell the distinct impression that something about touching Virgwald with the damp tongue-like protuberance had created marked excitement. “Allan,” Ell asked, “do you have access to any of Dr. Piscova’s translation algorithms? And, if so, do you think you’d have any chance of translating what the Virgies are saying without her help?”