Message from Gondwana

by David Wiley

CHAPTER 3

  The next few days went by quickly. Candece and Karl had run across several related species of plants along an upland bluff. The large number of samples had forced Lani to work closely with Kiet and Emma, the other two biochemists. Lani found herself warming to Kiet and at least tolerating Emma. So far, they had discovered three new molecules that might enhance the rejuvenation drugs that immensely increased lifespans throughout the Empire. The discoveries had the potential for huge profits for Alchemistica and large bonuses for the expedition. Mumson had tinkered with the electrical grid surrounding the pad around the lab. That stymied the aggressive plants for the time being. An increasing number of flutterbys, one of Gondwana's few large insect species, were spotted in vegetation surrounding the base. Their bright colors were a welcome relief from the washed-out greens and yellows of most of the vegetation on the planet. Juls had responded well to the QuikHeal, which meant he was back out in the field with Bax. Lani had to admit she missed having Bax's dark wavy hair, twinkling eyes, and perpetual grin drop in on her throughout the day.

  A few mornings later, Professor Jonze called everyone's attention to the huge mass of flutterbys that now covered the lab's flat roof, hiding the corporate logo painted there, a large stylized "A" surrounded by a circle of double helix. The flutterbys they had seen earlier must have called in all their friends. The flutterbys were about the size of a human hand and their gorgeous red, blue, violet, and orange hues reminded Lani of glowing jewels. All of them watched the pulsing wings on monitor screens as the camera on the communications mast slowly swiveled back and forth. Even Zach, the IT geek seemed enthralled. "Look, all those fluttering wings are even raising the temperature slightly," he pointed to the readout from their weather sensors, also mounted on the communications mast.

  "It must be some sort of migration," speculated Karl.

  "I saw something like this on Coccaburra once. Only it was a kind of flying slug," Chen said, passing around a bag of hoarded candy, his lips already stained black by the licorice.

  Lani passed with a shudder. Chen had insisted she try some a couple of days into their voyage here. Unsuspecting, she took a piece and barely avoided spitting it right back out. Chen had smiled and nodded, somehow misreading her expression. She nodded back and to avoid hurting his feelings did the only thing she could think of, she swallowed it whole. As Chen turned to offer the licorice to someone else, she started gagging. Fortunately, Candece was right there with a big bottle of water and some advice. "Live, learn, and don't accept candy from strange men," she said with a wink.

  For a change, Alice was not being used for a sampling run. Mumson took advantage of her inactivity to finish repairing the last of the damage that she had suffered from the seed pod incident. He was outside working in the shadows of the flitter's tail fins, avoiding the fierce blue-tinged sunlight but enjoying a slight breeze, when they spotted the first signs that something was wrong.

  "What do you think you're doing, Mumson? Mumson!" The voice of Zach broke over the general comm channel. The Geek sounded upset. Since he was paging Mumson over general, he must not have been able to raise him over Mumson's personal channel.

  Lani grinned at her workstation; it was just like Mumson to annoy the Geek. She told her monitor to display the feed from the camera mounted where Alice was parked. The flitter showed in stark relief in Draco's harsh glare. Lani squinted, but could see no sign of Mumson. She had the monitor switch to the overhead camera and spotted a figure running, no, dancing, in what looked like figure eights. It looked like he was pretending to be a flitter, swooping dangerously close to the edge of the slab. He wouldn't be harmed by the electrical grid, since Hoover, the AI, would monitor Mumson's implanted transponder, like any of theirs, and turn off the current under his dancing feet. However, that meant the grid would not have any juice to discourage the plants that lurked along the edges of the base. The redvines already seemed to be leaning in closer, undulating, following the manic movements.

  "What in Darwin's name is—" Lani thought, then shut her hanging jaw with a snap and bolted into the corridor. She barely beat Bax to the hatch, but at least he had thought to grab a flamethrower.

  "What is he doing?"

  "Don't know and don't care," Bax blurted out as he advanced across the glassy surface towards the figure at the edge of the slab, Lani close behind. Soren and Chen, also armed, had emerged from the building's hatch nearest to Alice. They were followed by Professor Jonze. Only now did it register with Lani that Zach's amplified voice, alternating stern commands with pleading, was still sounding from the speakers mounted at the corners of the building.

  Mumson abruptly collapsed into a sitting position, staring raptly at the redvines snaking towards him.

  "No!" Bax yelled and sprinted towards him, along with Soren and Chen, flames erupting from the throwers. Lani, unthinking, followed Bax. As the vines retreated from the flames she came close enough to grab Mumson and try to pull him back. She struggled, not because Mumson resisted, but rather, because he went limp. Jonze joined her seconds later. Between the two of them they dragged him back to where several others, just emerged, helped carry him inside.

  "Mumson! What's wrong? Talk to me! Mumson?" Lani kept shouting at him, while Jonze vented a steady stream of curses, including some pungent comments about wanting five minutes and a squad of Imperial marines alone with Alchemistica's pasty-assed accountants. After they had him inside, Jonze slumped against the wall, her wiry gray hair plastered to her scalp. "I'm getting too old for this," she muttered as she directed Zach to contact Karl and Candece who were at least an hour away, even at Bobbie's top speed.

  Candece, the self-professed tough bitch, was crying as she held Mumson, which made Lani feel even worse. Mumson was strapped down as he had started twitching and jerking uncontrollably shortly after they brought him into the common area. Now he was alternately mumbling, cursing, and screaming in pain, sometimes in different voices as though he was developing multiple personalities. The autodoc had not been able to pinpoint any one problem, although it had administered a blood thinner to combat what it had diagnosed as incipient ischemia. A sedative also had been administered, to limited effect.

  Kiet, the senior biochemist, had the most medical training. He was ordering the autodoc to perform additional tests, most of which Lani was convinced would prove useless. Professor Jonze had cleared out the rest of the team and now guarded the door. Lani thought she had been permitted to stay as Candece's friend to lend moral support to the distraught woman. Jonze was apparently more aware of her team's relationships than Lani had thought.

  Dammit! Uncomfortable with Candece's raw emotions, Lani wanted to be more than moral support. She cudgeled her brain cells, which seemed to have congealed into useless pudding. It appeared clear that the symptoms all were related to the nervous system, that she and the autodoc agreed on, but the autodoc had not spotted anything wrong with Mumson's blood sample. The autodoc was capable, much more capable than the minidoc common to most small spaceships. It had to be with all the unknowns on an alien planet, a much more hostile environment than shipboard, in some ways, and Gondwana seemed more hostile than most, with unknown plants and unknown chemicals, as Lani was well aware of from—

  "Autodoc? Can you reanalyze the results of the last blood sample?" Lani asked.

  "Why?" Kiet snapped. "It didn't spot any known toxins—except for stress chemicals. Just like the previous two blood draws. I don't know what you think you're doing."

  "I-I just was thinking that maybe—"

  "Let her run with it, Kiet!" Jonze ordered sharply from the door.

  Aware of Kiet's frustrated glare, Lani hesitated.

  "Lani, now would be good," Jonze prodded.

  "Autodoc, reanalyze for presence of all chemicals or compounds not normally found in the human body or those in unexpected concentration. Rank results based on greatest deviance from expected," Lani's voice quave
red, her heart agonizingly thumping in her chest. Jonze had moved away from the door to stand next to them. Candece looked up and met Lani's eyes, fearing to hope. Oh, Spirit, let me be right, Lani swallowed.

  The autodoc's speaker buzzed:

  "Rank number 1: cortisol, approximately 2.3 times expected concentration. Rank number 2: epinephrine, approxi—"

  Damn, she had worded that poorly. "Exclude stress hormones," she interrupted.

  "Excluding stress hormones. Rank number 1: unknown ester. Rank number 2—"

  "What known ester is number 1 similar to?"

  "Ester is unknown. Please rephrase—"

  Marx it! She needed more computing power on this. "Autodoc, send molecular configuration to Hoover, uh, the Hrvia H2700. Hoover?"

  "Yes, Lani?"

  "Compare unknown ester configuration to those known in human body."

  Lani's fists were so tightly clenched, her fingernails were drawing blood. The autodoc was so narrowly programmed—

  "Unknown ester is a close match to glutamate. Glutamate is a neurotransmitter, featuring prominently in central nervous system," the AI helpfully added.

  "Symptoms of glutamate imbalance?" Lani asked.

  "A wide variety of nervous system effects such as seizures, tremors, and hyperalgesia," intoned Hoover, "Including those characteristic of ischemia, addiction, autism, Parkinson's disease, Huntingdon's disease, and schizophrenia."

  Kiet took it from there, barking orders. "Hoover, instruct autodoc on counteragent for this glutamate-like ester. Autodoc, monitor levels of the same ester, in fact, reanalyze previous blood samples for concentrations of the ester and draw new blood samples every 15 minutes for analysis as well. Administer counteragent based on observed concentrations. Continue monitoring patient for signs of ischemia."

  Lani slumped, only Jonze's grip keeping her from collapsing onto the floor. Those blagging single-minded programs—her head spun. At least Kiet knew what he was doing. She would not have thought of analyzing the ester levels in previous samples.

  "Reanalysis indicate that ester levels have remained stable since the second blood draw," Hoover informed them.

  Kiet breathed a sigh of relief and turned towards them. "Good. It's the ischemia I'm most worried about now. If the concentrations are stable, then we should be able to come up with a counteragent before he has permanent brain damage."

  "Those dumb machines," Bax snarled, "Thank goodness you thought of the glute stuff. How'd you know to look for chemicals like that?" He poured more rum for them. Jonze had ordered their limited store of alcohol breached to help calm nerves. Most of the team took advantage of that. Lani did not normally drink, however, so Bax had suggested rum.

  Lani's hand shook as she reached for the glass he handed her. "I'm a biochemist, right? Neurotransmitters are a personal interest of mine—were an interest. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, though. He almost died. Mumson almost died."

  "But he didn't," Bax pointed out.

  "No, he didn't. That's the important part," Soren pointed out.

  "Isn't that the blaggin' truth," Juls raised his whiskey in salute.

  After they had all taken a drink, Kiet leaned close. "You've never had medical training, have you?"

  Her eyes still watering from the slug of rum, Lani shook her head.

  "Damn fine diagnosing," Kiet said. "Damn fine. What made you think of neurotransmitters in particular?"

  Lani hiccuped. "Well, the plants, the redvines especially, have gotten a lot higher levels of certain chemicals, that's what Bax got in trouble for getting me a sample to analyze. The ester-like compounds were sky-high, so I looked it up and the plants use it for a lot of things, including communication, you know, airborne chemicals, volatiles. So I was thinking that if there really were a lot of those being broadcast and Mumson was out there for quite a while, it was windy you know, that he might have been exposed and what esters did do in the body human, human body, I mean. That's really all I did the rest, Hoover did all the rest."

  Lani tilted her head. That had not come out quite like she intended.

  "Ah, but you at least knew the right questions to ask," Kiet smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He really was old, probably well past his first century. He must really like being out in the field. Lani missed the first part of his question. "—were thinking about—"

  "Oh shut up already. Enough business," Chen scolded Kiet. "Another toast to Lani, our red-headed hero of the moment."

  They all downed another shot. "Look, she's turning even redder," Juls teased her.

  Lani's face did feel warm, but so did the rest of her.

  "Stop it, Juls," Bax scolded, putting his arm around her. That felt nice. Lani leaned into him.

  "Anybody up for some cubes?" Soren, never far from his favorite six-sided vice, pulled a pair out of his pocket.

  "Not me. You cleaned me out of my previous month's wages last week," Juls protested. He noticed Lani's empty glass. "More rum, my hero?"

  Lani blinked. "No, no thanks. I'd better think I quit. I mean I—"

  The others chuckled, making her face flush even more.

  Bax stood and offered her his arm. "Come on, I'll walk you back to your hutch."

  A few friendly catcalls followed them as they left the common room. Lani wondered if it was the rum that made Bax's hand feel so warm on her arm. They ducked a little awkwardly through the hatch to the corridor running between the hutches. Bax stopped in front of her door. No one else was in sight.

  "Well, I'll say g—"

  She impulsively pulled his head down for a kiss. His lips felt much softer than she thought they would. She pressed her mouth against his as long as she dared, hoping she was not kissing like a drowning fish, like a previous, miserable excuse of a boyfriend had told her.

  Bax broke off the kiss. Oh Spirit, she did kiss like— "Lani, we don't have to do this, you know."

  "But I want to," she opened her door and dragged him after her before she stopped to think.

  "You're sure?"

  She swept a few items of clothing off her rumpled bed and went after his lips again. Funny, both the mess and the man would have bothered her before they arrived on Gondwana, but not anymore. Thank Goddard, Bax had the sense to close the door behind them as suddenly they could not get rid of their clothes fast enough.