Message from Gondwana

by David Wiley

CHAPTER 2

  Lani put down the last sample plate. The corkscrew molecule did not seem promising after all. Yesterday she had Alfie synthesize enough of the molecule to run against the usual accelerated test modules—the ones for human tissue, vegetative pests, and mammalian diseases—but the molecule's corkscrew proved too regular, there were no protrusions to latch onto any human hormones or mammalian or plant receptors. Lani wondered what the molecule did here on Gondwana, probably something minor like make a leaf curl or uncurl depending upon water stress. She shrugged and moved on to the other samples.

  She picked up a case containing multistemmed twigs with red leaves then put it down. Instead, the sample containing a couple of swirled brown and yellow leaves seemed more intriguing. She opened the plastic sample case, and, on impulse, crushed a bit of leaf between her gloved thumb and finger. A vaguely familiar minty smell tickled her nose. She crushed the rest of the leaf and dropped it in Alfie's waiting mouth. A few minutes later she scanned the chromatograph analysis. Methyl salicylate, another ester, was listed towards the top. Its common name was oil of wintergreen. No wonder it smelled familiar. Well, rediscovering wintergreen was not going to earn any revenues for Alchemistica or any pats on the back for Lani.

  She started Alfie working on the next sample; then called up the chemical analysis results of her last dozen or so samples. All of them contained fairly high levels of esters. Not surprising since esters were pretty common and came in a wide variety of configurations, many with strong smells. She had Hoover, the base AI, run a compilation of all of the samples that had been run since they had landed, including those analyzed by the other two biochemists. Almost all of them contained esters, sometimes singly, sometimes in complex combinations. Each plant species seemed to emit a unique combination of esters. In a couple of cases, they had ended up analyzing samples that looked different, but had turned out to be from different life stages or merely from a different plant of the same species, the esters differing only slightly.

  Lani shrugged; maybe the different esters were a form of ID for the plants. She imagined a plant sending up shoots next to another one and squirting a bunch of esters out to introduce itself. She could not help grinning at the thought. This was definitely not why Alchemistica was honoring her with a paycheck, as they had put it when they first offered her the job.

  Lani tagged a possible insect digestive inhibitor, the only decent result out of a full day's work. A low-pitched gong sounded, meaning Team Three was back from their prospecting trip in Alice. Lani stretched with an audible crack sounding from her back. She had sat hunched over for too long again. She hoped Soren and Chen had something interesting to analyze. If it was true that you had to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince, then doing pharma prospecting was like having to kiss a whole pond of tadpoles. She waited impatiently until the hatch opened at the end of the corridor.

  Chen was the senior field tech, which he kept reminding everyone of with his stories, which Lani, unfortunately was too polite to interrupt. He came through the hatch first, a grin spreading across his weathered face as he spotted her. "Getting a little bored, are we, Lani?" He held up his sample kit, "You know, this can probably wait for Emma if you're too—"

  "Oh, shut up and hand it over," Lani growled.

  Soren had to duck to come through behind Chen, though even bent over his bleached hair still brushed the top of the hatch. He chuckled as Lani grabbed the samples out of Chen's hand. "Told you she was going to mug you." Lani stuck her tongue out at them as she retreated back to her lab bench with her potential treasures. "I'll have you know we had to weather an aerial assault to get those samples for you," Soren added.

  "What?" Lani was only half listening as she started to sort the samples.

  "Well, it was more like an artillery barrage," Chen amended. "We were coming back from our collection site and were a few klicks east of the base, when a grove of trees opened fire. It sounded like machine-gun fire on the hull—"

  "Hail," corrected Soren.

  Chen ignored the interruption, waving his hands. "The entire grove decided to shoot all of their seeds into the air at the same time. Those babies were moving at a good fraction of Mach 1. Fortunately, I was piloting or we would probably have crashed." Soren rolled his eyeballs at Lani, who had to stifle a giggle, but Chen did not appear to notice. "It reminded me of that time on Canopus—"

  "C'mon, old-timer, Lani has work to do, and we have to hunt down Mumson. We need him to take a look at Alice to make sure your killer barrage didn't do too much damage to the old girl's turbines."

  Chen coughed. "Don't forget we need to mark the grove on the guidance system as a hazard."

  Soren chuckled. "Sure, how about we mark it as 'Chen's Last Stand?'"

  "I like your new decoration," Bax grinned, pointing to the snake posed threateningly above Lani's workstation.

  Lani smile came readily. "It seemed a shame to waste such a work of art. Besides, I was hoping it would scare away distractions. Obviously it failed miserably at that."

  Lani turned away, cringing. Did I just say that? After a short silence, she asked how Juls was doing.

  "Judging by the amount of complaining, he should be back on his feet by tomorrow," Bax said of his field partner. "He's pretty tough for a mazhory."

  "A what?"

  "A mazhory. A spoiled brat from a privileged family. His parents are actually company officers in Alchemistica. But they wanted to make their only son work his way up from the bottom, so they're starting him out on prospecting trips."

  Lani's jaw dropped, "But he seems so normal, so nice."

  Bax grinned. "I'll tell him you said that. He'll take that as a big compliment. He is a nice guy." Bax propped himself on the stool in the corner.

  Lani fed Alfie another sample. "Uh, did you hear what happened to Chen and Soren?"

  "You mean the seed release?" Bax nodded. "Of course, by now Chen is claiming the trees purposely waited until they were at their most vulnerable before letting loose. Claims he also saw a few vines reaching up for them. And I thought I had a vivid imagination."

  Lani snorted, thinking of Candece's comment last night. She looked up to see Bax looking at her strangely. She hesitated, biting her lip. "Still, it seems more than coincidence with that vine sneaking up on Juls yesterday."At least Bax did not laugh as she had feared. "No, but coincidences do happen," he said.

  "Um, I do have a favor to ask, though," Lani avoided looking directly at Bax. "Could you get me a sample from the plant that got Juls?"

  "What? We already sampled that plant. It was one of the first we did. Why would—oh, just like Chen you suspect them of evil plotting, don't you?" his tone was teasing.

  "Please?" Lani finally met his sparkling blue eyes. She quickly realized that was a mistake as a grin spread across his face.

  He stood up, practically touching her. Then he did touch her, leaning over and planting a kiss on her forehead. "Sure, Lani, anything for my favorite biochemist." He started down the corridor.

  "Be careful," she called out to his muscular back, her face feeling flushed. Oh Goddard, she thought as he acknowledged her comment with a wave, did that sound pathetic or what?

  Bax managed to cajole Candece and Karl into helping him before they headed out on their own shift. He presented Lani with the requested sample a short time later. "Marx, if I wasn't glad to have them with me, too. It was almost like the redvines knew I was coming for a sample. Once I got close, the tendrils twitched away, and I followed them, nearly getting clobbered by a clump of spike snares lying in wait." He gestured dramatically.

  Lani's eyes widened. The spike snare was one of the nastier denizens of the local flora. The plant's shoots lay on the ground until disturbed by footsteps or heat, they were not sure, when they whipped up and impaled whatever had disturbed them. Bax continued, "Fortunately, Candece seems to have the reaction speed of a Jilin mongoose and her machete caught
the vine in midstrike."

  "But you're—"

  "Yeah, I'm fine."

  "Maybe I should have had you get a sample of the spike snares too," Lani made a wry face.

  "Somehow I knew you were going to ask that," Bax grinned, producing a second sample bag from behind his back. "Courtesy of Candece."

  "You're wonderful," Lani impulsively gave him a quick hug.

  "I know," he said from over her shoulder.

  "I compared the chemical makeup of the redvines now to a sample we took when we first landed," Lani explained to Professor Jonze in the communications center, the closest space they had to an office. The Professor had ousted Zach, their IT/comm specialist, or according to ancient tradition, the "Geek," from his lair. Jonze now sat in the cushioned chair in front of the comm console, her fingers steepled before her, with a look of intense concentration upon her mahogany features. Lani, who had requested this meeting, sat in one of the two small plastic folding chairs in the room. All around them, cables were strung between sections of Hoover; the quantum AI humming with thoughts too deep for mortals like Lani. The professor sat silently, waiting on the most junior member of her prospecting team.

  Lani swallowed and started babbling. "Several chemicals have changed in frequency, mostly those related to composition of the plant's cellular walls, you know, increasing the thickness of the tendrils through enhanced polymerization of some of the esters. In addition, the proportion of fast-twitch twining chemicals—at least that's what I call them though they're really, anyway—their proportion has increased, along with certain compounds that seem related to aggressiveness." She paused.

  "Let me get this straight," the professor leaned forward, a twinkle in her eye. "You're telling me that the redvines are becoming nastier, with faster, groping tendrils, and now they are wearing polyester?"

  Any irony was lost on Lani. She nodded her head vigorously. "The spike snares have even higher concentrations of similar molecules, not to mention that there weren't any spike snares here when we landed. It wouldn't have made any sense ecologically. As far as we know, there are no large animals on Gondwana. The snares showed up suddenly two weeks after we landed. It makes me wonder if there used to be large animals here on this planet. Anyway, Bax said they've gotten even more aggressive. He nearly got impaled by one, getting these samples for me, but Candece nailed it."

  Professor Jonze's eyes flashed. "He what?!"

  Lani had a sudden, sinking feeling. She frantically racked her brain for the least threatening terms as she explained. As she finished under Jonze's stony expression, she added, "I asked him to collect the samples for me, so it's my fault if he did something wrong."

  If the professor's expression softened slightly, Lani was too nervous to notice. "Next time you come to me before you start sending my field techs out on unplanned sampling trips. It would not be good for your career if something had happened, understand?"

  Lani nodded miserably.

  "It is not unusual that plants respond to our pharma prospecting. Anyone who has been in the field any length of time can tell you that. Science has long known that plants are able to communicate after a fashion, but they do not actively plot against us. I am afraid Chen, Juls, Bax, and the others have a tendency to personify what they observe in the plants. I understand that this is your first pharma prospecting trip, but take what they say with a grain of salt. I have been on dozens and dozens of these expeditions. Stick to the facts and everybody will be better off."

  Here she was trying to make a good impression on her first trip and the Professor thought she was a recessive, a double set of genes for incompetence, or worse. Lani fervently wished the ground would open up and swallow her, but the composite floor and three-meter thick fused foundation made that unlikely. Professor Jonze sighed. "Look, Lani, there was no permanent harm done. I am not telling you to stop pursuing your hunches. After all, we hired you because you have a very good brain. I want you to be careful about how you use it, though." She then surprised Lani with a smile. "I never told you about my first prospecting trip, did I? It was a disaster..."

  "Heard the Professor really laid into you," Candece sympathized.

  "Oh you did, did you?" Lani asked. Mumson and Bax, seated next to them at the dining table, nodded. Lani closed her mouth as she noticed the sudden silence from what had been a lively argument over sports at the other end of the table between Soren, Chen, and Kiet. She fussed with her meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and mixed vegetables, not her favorite combination, until the volume on the sports argument ratcheted up again.

  Taking her prolonged silence for assent, Bax chivalrously leaped into the breach. "Well, I thought it was a good idea."

  Mumson leaned in close. "And Alice's turbines really did get dinged up pretty good."

  Lani smiled, pitching her voice low. "Thanks, but the Professor honestly was pretty nice about it. Although she did say something about certain people's overactive imaginations."

  Candece rolled her eyes, "Who us? Naw."