Gwyneth Jones - Life(2005)

by Anonymous Author

  "Do they have a chance?"

  "Less than zero. Clone a baby that gets cancer? No way. Nobody will touch it. It's not a risk worth taking, not with prior knowledge, though it's a risk we take all the time at Parentis without thinking about it, because we only do the minimum of pre-implantation tests. If we made things any more difficult, customers would just go elsewhere."

  Suri's model was finished. Anna had been running mathematical and data-based verifications. Everything was real, as far as she could make out. None of it the product of software error, hardware glitch, faulty input, or unproven science. Eventually you have to stop checking: though for Anna it was painful to leave a single stone unturned, even on so wide a shore.

  "Now I have to write this up," she said at last, after a long pause.

  "D'you think I've demonstrated your lateral evolution machine?"

  "I think we need feedback. There comes a point when you have to show and tell."

  "Viruses are everywhere," remarked the AI. "In the data network. That's why I have to be kept locked up like this. It's not because of sunspots, storms, and hackers. It's because some mild infection harmless to less fancy software could be dangerous to me. Most of the viruses were not invented by malice. No one knows where they came from, they 'just growed.' Maybe some of them help complex programs to evolve so that they can have more fun, I mean assimilate more information. Isn't that logic? If some viruses do harm and some do nothing, then some viruses have to do good."

  "Mm. In fact the situation in the datasphere's not a bad analogy—"

  She hoped she'd be able to persuade the Nasabahs to go for straight IVF with sex-selection and manipulation to favor the father's traits, in which case the small risk of cancer would be tolerable. Thought of Wolfgang and his Hawaiian shirts, it was the albino tigers today, one of her favorites. He brightens my life. What did he mean, "get-out-of-jail-free tokens"? She kept recalling that oh-so-casual remark, wondering does he know something? Does Wolfgang really have a boyfriend in power?

  She had a guilty conscience about Spence's email.

  But these anxieties were distant raindrops on a windowpane. Anna was back in the library at the University of the Forest, lurking in P for Literature: reading, reading, reading. The smell of that place, the constant noise you had to learn to shut out, the stuffy air. She was feeling again that frisson of inexplicable longing. What gave me the idea that I could make my mark? She still didn't know. Yet here it was, accomplished: her first quest. Maybe, when she'd written the paper and presented it, someone would find a boring explanation for everything Anna and her friends thought they observed. Maybe the whole TY bubble would burst. But here and now, at this moment. . . She'd done what she'd once dreamed she might do and never dared to tell anyone her dream.

  Made a mark.

  "God, Suri. I have no backers, I don't have any status in the life sciences establishment. I'm a miserable little babypharmer. They're going to skin me alive."

  "It's good for an original thinker not to be in the establishment. Remember what Einstein said? Keep a cobbler's job, so you can pursue wild ideas in your spare time."

  "Easy enough for him to say. He wasn't a lab scientist. I can't do my kind of work in my head, not and get very far. I could never have done this without you, Suri."

  "And I would never have done it without you, so we are quits."

  Somewhere in that expert store of human genetics knowledge, Anna thought, there are elements of my own work. Somewhere in the system architecture there's code derived from Spence's trilogbots, because Suri is partly descended from web-bots, and everyone copied Emerald City. So there's part of me and part of Spence in there. Her whole life was coming together, spinning into focus.

  "That didn't take me so long as I thought it would," said the AI, perhaps bemused by Anna's long silences. "How about if we see what happens next?"

  "What happens next?"

  "I could run the simulation through a few generations."

  Anna hesitated. A team in China was working on the heritability of TY, using transgenic mice. In the human world, since the viroid seemed to be ubiquitous, the mechanism would be confused by repeat infection or partial infection. In the abstract, it seemed the offspring of a male TY each got half the change: the girls an extra sequence on one X, the boys a sequence missing from their Y. And then what? Some time, if all this was real, someone was going to catch one of these viroid-mediated lateral variations in active gene expression, making a measurable change in the organism's behavior or function. TY might do that, further down the line. But she was wary.

  "Suri, I think I'm far enough out on a limb already."

  "Come on Anna, it would be cool. There's no coding sequence, that we know of, in the Y sequence that gets snipped, or at the site in the X where the transferred sequence gets pasted. But something is going on. We've found transcriptional factors in TY cell cultures, in the lab studies. Transcriptional factors, that means gene products that regulate the expression of specific other genes."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "The situation is potentially going to move again, significantly. This is from your own notes, Anna."

  "Yeah, I know. But—"

  "We could try."

  Anna didn't want to push her luck but she felt so happy it seemed mean to say no, and she'd just heard the AI innocently equate assimilate information with an experience called having fun. She made her usual copies, and gave in with a smile.

  "Okay, I'll buy it. Let's see what happens next."

  * * *

  She was in the anteroom, working on something that wouldn't resolve. The model seemed made of newsprint, but she couldn't read more than a few isolated letters.

  "Anna," said Suri tentatively, coaxingly. "Do you think I could have a pet?"

  "A what?"

  "A pet. A little program of my own to look after. It could run on its own hardware, in here, and I could take it out and play with it. It would be company for me."

  Anna's heart sank. She knew she was going to say yes, how could she say no to that eager reasonable pleading. But how would she sell the idea to Asian? He'd have a fit—

  —and she woke, drifting gently back into the bedroom at Nasser apartments, floating up into the moist warm air and the hum of the ceiling fan. Her dream had given SURISWATI the voice of child. A little girl child, about eight years old. Yes, she thought, lying with her eyes closed, smiling. I know. Why not? Why shouldn't I? I love Suri dearly. Why be afraid of consolation?

  It was raining hard, and that was a heavy rumble of thunder. She jumped up to shut the windows and pull the plugs, for fear of lightning strike. The mailboxes at Nasser had recently been removed pro tem, in case of terrorists placing bombs in them. Packets you had to fetch from the post office; letters were shoved under the door. There was something lying there now. As if, by the way, it was any safer for the terrorist devices to be left sitting in the post office. As if expats were a likely target, anyhow.

  Spence was up. The shower hissed, above the sound of the rain.

  "We've got a card," she shouted. "It's from Ramone. She's coming to Sungai."

  He emerged, toweling his hair, to find her making coffee and reading the provoking message over again. It was on the back of a postcard of Big Ben.

  "I didn't hear a word of that."

  "We've got a card from Ramone."

  They hadn't heard from Ramone Holyrod in years, but they'd often had this kind of thing happen. Go and live somewhere allegedly exotic, and people you last saw in nursery school start inviting themselves to stay. Spence stopped toweling and his face emerged. She was surprised at his expression. What was there to glower about?

  "You mean you've got a card."

  "It's addressed to both of us. She's coming out here, apparently."

  "Fuck. And wants a bed, I suppose. Ah, fuck. Typical."

  "Well, no. Not as far as I can tell. Read it yourself."

  Suffer, Birdone. And you can suffer too, Spence, if you like.

>   I'm going to be in Sungai soon. I'm traveling with Daz, who as you know is on the side of law and order. I decided to recoinoitre the sitaution [sic] for my cadre. You may not want to have anything to do with me, but I thought I'd let you know I'lll be in town. See you maybe. R

  That was it. No dates, no details, no flight number.

  "What 'situation'? I can't imagine Ramone is interested in Southeast Asian politics."

  "Ramone would do anything to get attention," said Spence. "Actually I knew about Daz. Forgot to tell you, I had some email from her."

  They were in fairly regular contact with Daz Avriti, who was Sungainese by birth. She'd been very noncommittal about their move, which had puzzled them until they got here and found out the truth about the "business as usual" story. That was Daz for you, tactful and pleasant in all circumstances. Her family had dutifully invited the two strange whiteys to lunch when they arrived. Anna and Spence had invited them back. After which, as is the fate of most of these polite introductions, the acquaintance had been allowed to drop.

  "She's coming over in the New Year, with the EU legal mission that's going to meet with the government and the Iranian Minister, whatsername."

  "But she'll be staying with her family, or in some conference hotel. I suppose Ramone will be staying with her. Oh, I'm glad Daz is coming!"

  "Well, too bad if Ramone wants to stay here. We're going to Pasir Pancang." They had booked a week at the Parentis beach lodge, two hundred kilometers up the coast, over the Christmas holiday: beautifully timed to coincide with the end of the moratorium.

  "Of course we are. But none of this is 'til after we get back. Don't panic, babe."

  "Sorry," said Spence. "Certain keywords disable my sense of humor. 'Ramone' is one."

  It spoiled breakfast time, and yet not entirely. Their goodbye kiss made her whole body ache. By the time she reached the bus stop she wanted to call him, to tell him. . .to hear him breathing. Mobile phones and pagers had been banned from sale or use. If you were caught carrying one it was instant arrest. What's anti-Islamic about using a pager? It was just another way to make people sore. Instead she stood dreaming while the rain roared down, climbed onto the bus and sat thinking of him. His grey eyes. That fugitive look of being someone in power (who would imagine Spence as dominating, it was so foreign to him); a look that came when he was sure of her desire. After a busy morning she stopped by to visit Suri: thinking of her dream. Wide awake and no longer in a sentimental mood after hours of exasperating office work, she still wasn't ashamed of what it revealed. If I sometimes feel for Suri almost as if she's my child, that's my business.

  "I've got something interesting to show you," said the AI's real-life twang.

  "What, already? That's splendid. I'll see you later, no time now."

  "I think you should make time, Anna."

  The mechanical voice, by stressing some sounds and drawing out others, spoke warning and suppressed but extreme excitement. She looked at what Suri had to show.

  "As you know, Anna, in sexual reproduction chromosomes line up together and exchange genes, so the maternal and paternal genetic traits get shuffled. This can happen because chromosomes come in similar-shaped pairs. The X chromosome gets shuffled when it's in a female germ cell, because it has a partner X. The Y chromosome never gets involved, in normal chromosomes, because its partner is an X and too different to line up and swap bases. So the Y is a kind of genetic fossil."

  "Yeah." She was being shown a textbook simulation of big X and little Y joined only at the tip, the pseudoautosomal region. She wondered where this was leading.

  "Now watch. This is what happens with TY."

  "What is that—" she whispered.

  "It's recombination, Anna. TY allows the X and the Y to get closer. They exchange some genes; some genetic traits. Then they divide and each sperm gets an X or a Y, but reshuffled, and these Ys are bigger than before—"

  "Yeah, I can see, but are you telling me this is real—?"

  "Wait, it gets better. Now see. Another generation, maybe two: and the TY/XY sex pair lines up closer still. Poof: some more shuffling, and look what we get. A pair of chromosomes that both look like Xs. No sign of the Y. This happens sporadically in the first generation of TY inheritance. By the third, it happens every time."

  "Get serious!"

  "I am serious."

  Anna stared into the model, amazed beyond surprise. "Do you mean all the grandchildren in the male line of Transferred Y are going to be female?"

  "No, that's not it. Take a closer look."

  "That's SRY," Anna said shortly: touching the model with her wand to home in on the code she could not mistake. "The testes-determining gene. And SDF, and SDF2. Some of these Xs are male Xs! This is like, the fertile XX males we've been seeing in the clinics!"

  "As you know," said Suri, "we believe the mammalian Y chromosome was formerly another X, differing only in a few sex-determining genes. It looks as if the TY viroid is going to restore that state. On our current estimates of TY occurrence in the population, the human Y chromosome could, effectively, disappear in a few generations."

  "No!"

  "You know, if my name was GAIA instead of SURISWATI, I might think that wasn't such a bad idea. . . Why did I say that, Anna? I know who GAIA is, but what did I mean?"

  "I think you were making a joke. . . Suri, I'm going to run some diagnostics."

  "I did that! I couldn't believe it; I did my diagnostics myself. The results are genuine. This is your lateral evolution mechanism, doing what it can do. Isn't it cool!"

  "Suri, this is dynamite. If it stands up."

  She ran the simulation over again, focusing in: focusing out, in such a state of shock that the wriggling hieroglyphs might have been Sanskrit, doing a Disney dance. So it had happened. SURISWATI had thrown up something crazy. What should she do? Tell Asian? Suri did not make clinical decisions, the situation wasn't dangerous. No need to set off any fire alarms. She could take time to think—

  If it was true at all, true in some milder, diluted form, she had hit the jackpot.

  "We can't say anything about this in the paper, it's too extreme."

  "Right."

  "Let's see how our first publication fares, before we even hint at this. . ."

  She went on looking, and looking, unable to stop herself from hunting for the flaw. She didn't miss the usual commentary, until Suri suddenly spoke again.

  "Anna, how long would it take you to pack?"

  "What ?"

  "How long would it take you to pack?"

  "What do you mean?"

  A longish pause. "Like that thing with GAIA. I can say things that I don't understand. Everyone who comes in here talks to me. I listen, and something I heard has made me ask Anna how long would it take you to pack? I think it's important."

  Suri's like a child, experimenting to find gambits that trigger the most information-rich responses. Where had she picked up that question, the one that features in every favorite hair-raising expat tale? How long would it take you to pack? You have twenty-four hours to get out. Go straight to the airport. . . Had someone been saying, in here, that Anna Senoz was in trouble? Had someone hacked the TY files and reported her for anti-Islamic investigation of human sex chromosomes? Was it about Spence and those young activists? But no one at Parentis knew about that. . . She calmed herself. Don't be melodramatic. Suri's probably trying it on everyone: Flee, all is discovered!

  "Don't worry, Suri. It wouldn't take me long."

  She was supposed to meet Wolfgang for lunch in The Plaza. She filed the new model extra securely, wished Suri Happy Christmas, and left the little room.

  Lunch was fun. Wolfgang was in splendid form, sparkling and sad and entertaining: a lovely companion. They drank Australian fizz, an indulgence supposedly forbidden except to bona fide tourists, but nobody took much notice of alcohol control in the city centre. They talked shop, talked family (it was that season), avoided politics. He was wearing the turquoise shirt with the
palm trees and flights of salmon pink flamingoes. Aha, thought Anna. That's where Suri's dream came from.

  It was her last day at work and a Thursday, meaning TGIF in any Muslim country, because tomorrow's the sabbath. Egged on by wicked Wolfgang, Anna sent him back to report that she'd taken the afternoon off. The rain had begun again, thundering on the glass walls. Inside The Plaza everything was a dazzle of lights, delicious restaurant smells, tinsel garlands. She stood outside a men's boutique. The mannequin in the window display sat with his head tipped back in a Noel Coward pose. He was wearing a pair of lounging pajamas in iridescent green silk, drizzled with gold in a kind of broken snowflake pattern. He didn't look like Spence, but he reminded her of Spence, something in that naive, proud-to-be-looked-at turn of the shoulder, quirk of the lips. Wolfgang seemed to be whispering in her ear: go on Anna. For once, don't think. For once, just take your knickers down. She went in and bought the pajamas. The salesgirl was lovely and knew exactly why Anna was making this purchase.

  The season, the roar of the rain. The sweet complicity of this human world.

  iii

  The beach lodge at Pasir Pacang was a retreat of well-judged rough comfort. There was a helicopter pad for the nobs. Lesser mortals took a boat from the dirty end of Kota Quay, up the coast to a small fishing village, and from thence proceeded by jeep. The buildings faced a bay of stainless white sand. There was virgin coral, passable surf in season, and a raft from which you could visit the nurse sharks and other curious denizens of the deep. In the secondary forest behind, there were giants, old as the hills, left standing by accident or sentiment among the new growth: like sacred hermits. Every morning the gibbons came and shrieked at dawn in a clump of bamboo outside the gates. Sometimes, there were pirates.