Ell Donsaii 13: DNA

by Laurence Dahners

  Allan said, “I do have access to her work and her publications regarding translation of the Teecees. However, I will almost certainly require human intuition to determine what they mean when they make certain sounds. Something similar to what you did with the Sigmas to obtain their words for a starter set of numbers, nouns, and verbs etcetera.”

  Ell sighed at the daunting task, then made Virgwald point at himself. “Virgwald,” she said, then pointed at Geo.

  Geo didn’t seem to get it. He continued waving his arms at his companions, sometimes looking at Virgwald and sometimes looking at the other Virgies. Disconcertingly, sometimes he looked at Virgwald with one eye-stalk and at the other aliens with the other eye.

  Ell tried again, first waving Virgwald’s hand back and forth to get their attention and then having his hand point at himself and say, “Virgwald,” once again. The three aliens stopped clattering to one another and this time they were all looking at Virgwald when he pointed at himself and said his name.

  For a moment, the silence continued, then the clattering resumed. Because ultrasound is quite directional and Virgwald had binaural hearing, Ell had begun to recognize when each of the different aliens clattered even though she couldn’t see a mouth moving. Then Geo waved its hands for a moment, either imitating Virgwald, or trying to gain its companions attention, and pointed at himself. A moment later a brief clatter emanated from Geo. In Ell’s ear, Allan said, “I would assume that sound is the alien’s name.”

  Ell said, “Yeah, in my mind I’m calling him Geo for the geometric pattern on his skin. If you could translate that clatter to ‘Geo,’ that’d be great.” To herself, she thought despairingly about how long it was going to take to build up a translation vocabulary and how much she wanted to talk to them right now. Well, I’ve got a few hours, she thought doggedly, I’d just as well get started. She had Virgwald hold up one finger, saying, “One.” She held up two fingers and said, “Two.” She held up three fingers and said, “Three.”

  She would have sworn that Geo’s eyes brightened. Then it turned to each of its companions and clattered for a bit. To Ell’s surprise, the big one turned and ambled off on the path away from the city. The ostrich-like one turned toward the city and flapped into the air in that direction. Then Geo took a few steps toward the city, turned to Virgwald and waved for Virgwald to come along. As soon as Ell started Virgwald walking in that direction, Geo held up one digit. He made a clatter, then held up two digits…

  ***

  Dr. Turner stepped into the lab, “Vanessa?” He didn’t see her.

  A little kid’s head poked around the DNA sequencer. “Oh, hi Dr. Turner,” the kid said, stepping out from behind the machine. “She just went out the door a few seconds ago... um, I think she went to the bathroom.”

  It had to be the Kinrais boy. To Turner’s surprise the kid was seriously overweight. Probably why he’s interested in obesity I guess. I suppose I really should go talk to him since he’s working in here. Turner walked that way, “Hi yourself. You must be Zane Kinrais?”

  The boy nodded, “Zage.”

  “Huh?”

  “Zage. My name is Zage, not Zane.”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought I should meet you now that you’re actually doing a research project in the lab. What is it that you’re working on?”

  “Um, well, the last time I was in I ran my own DNA through the sequencer. It turns out that I have several genes present in at least some cells that match genes from HA-36. That fits my hypothesis that I’m obese because I’m expressing some of those viral genes. However, after I found those genes in my own DNA I checked and realized that, of course, some of those genes are present in pretty much every genome, including humans. Once I excluded those conserved genes, at least some of my cells still had two genes in common with HA-36 that aren’t in most people. Now I’m running my Mom and Dad’s DNA through the sequencer to see whether I inherited those genes or whether maybe they got left behind during an infection.”

  Turner didn’t say anything for a moment. He was coming to grips with the fact that the kid actually was as smart as Vanessa said he was. He’d accepted that concept rationally when he’d been talking to Vanessa, but realized that he still hadn’t really believed it deep down inside. Finally he said, “So you’re thinking one of those genes is the reason you’re overweight?”

  The kid nodded, a serious expression on his face.

  “And then you’re, what, going to try to get somebody to come up with a cure?”

  The boy frowned, “I’d like to think somebody would. But I’m afraid it wouldn’t happen. There are a lot of promising areas to study in the treatment of obesity and very few scientists actually pursuing them.” He shrugged, “Easier to blame it on us fat people for being slothful and gluttonous.”

  “Um, we’ve been working on the intestinal microbiome in obesity.”

  “I know, you’re one of the few. That’s why I asked my dad to see if you’d let me visit your lab in the first place.”

  “Okay…” Turner realized he didn’t have anything else to talk to the kid about. At least not until he’d read up on HA-36 so he wouldn’t sound like an idiot. “I’ll let you get back to it then. I look forward to hearing what you find.”

  Chapter Four

  Emma and Roger stepped into Ell’s office, finding Ell mounted on the saddle of the waldo controller she kept there. Ell didn’t dismount, she just said, “Can you go ahead and close the door?”

  Emma’s eyes widened a little, Another closed door session? she thought wonderingly. What’s it going to be this time?

  Roger had closed the door, but Ell just stared at them for a moment, looking uncertain. Eventually, Roger said, “What’s up?”

  Ell shrugged, “I need help looking over another planet. Would you guys be up for it?”

  Both Roger and Emma looked a little bit startled, Emma saying, “So soon?”

  Ell nodded.

  “Something like we did for BC4,” Roger asked, “looking around to be sure we don’t see any intelligent life?”

  Ell looked uncomfortable, “No, this time there’s no doubt that they are intelligent. They have language and numbers.”

  Excitedly, Roger and Emma spoke at the same time, Emma saying, “Like the Sigmas?!” while Roger said, “Primitive or advanced?”

  Ell took a deep breath, “So far, they look primitive. No machines that I’ve seen. But…” she trailed off.

  “But what?! If they don’t have machines, they can’t be very advanced.”

  “Yeah, but I still have this impression… You’ll just have to see them. But I’d want you to promise that you’ll keep them secret until we’re sure they’re no risk to the human race.”

  Emma and Roger quickly agreed, Roger impatiently—his tone expressing just how dubious he felt regarding the possibility that a society without machines could be advanced and dangerous. In a low tone, he said, “Personally, I don’t think ‘advanced’ means sitting around contemplating your navel with great intelligence, perception, and sophistication—you’ve got to accomplish things.”

  “Allan…” Ell said, “bring up imaging of the first three Virgies we encountered.” She continued as Geo and the other two aliens came up on the screen, “As you can see, it looks like we have three different species here, all on the same planet at the same location. At first I thought it was an intelligent alien and two animals, but you can see they’re apparently communicating with one another. Two of them have six limbs and one of them only four! They may also all have wings, if the big one’s wings are hidden beneath those bundles of vegetation. They all have eyes on stalks, but you’ll notice that one has two eyes on stalks and a third large central eye mounted directly on the body. The skin, the feet, the hands, are all different from alien to alien!” She gave an exasperated sounding sigh, “It’s hard to believe that the first three aliens Virgwald encountered all appear to be from different species. Could this planet have evolved three different intelligent species that al
l got along well enough that they didn’t wipe one another out? Or, did some of them come from other planets? None of the other planets in the system look like they could support life, so if they did come from another planet they would’ve had to make an interstellar journey!”

  “Which system is this?” Emma asked, “107 Piscium, 61 Virginis, Eta Cassiopeiae?” She paused, looking as if a light had gone on, “Wait, if you’re calling them Virgies, I would imagine we’re on 61 Virginis, right?”

  “Yep,” Ell grinning at her friend.

  Emma glanced back at the screen. She said, “I think I could believe three separate intelligent species. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals both populated Europe at the same time—though, I guess they weren’t really separate species since they seem to have interbred. However, I find it a little harder to believe that both four limbed and six limbed species evolved to an advanced state on the same planet. You’d think that one body plan would have outcompeted the other at some point.”

  Ell said, “Here on earth we have four limbed, six limbed, eight limbed, ten limbed, and many limbed all at…”

  Emma interrupted, “Yeah, but all except the four limbed are little animals. They all have exoskeletons and…” she trailed off as if thinking for a moment, then resumed with more confidence, “When you’re talking large endoskeletal animals here on earth, you’re limited to the four limbed variety.” She blinked, “Well, and the no-limbed.”

  Ell said, “But, I’d be surprised if that was a universal law. If little animals with different numbers of limbs can evolve, why not larger ones?”

  Emma grinned, “Let’s call Dr. Wheat. He’s the expert.”

  Looking a little frustrated, Ell said, “Not yet. I don’t want too many people knowing about it until we’re relatively certain that it’s safe.”

  “But…”

  This time Roger interrupted, “They could all be six limbed and one pair of limbs just atrophied on that ostrich looking one,” he said dismissively. “However, if they’re interstellar, surely you’d be able to see machinery. Interstellar travel would require a major industrial infrastructure!”

  Ell tilted her head curiously, “Roger, we travel from one star to another using little machines. They might have a port to another star hidden in a small building!”

  Roger barked an embarrassed laugh, “Oh, yeah… Sorry, I’m an idiot! Still thinking about the sci-fi I read when I was a kid.”

  Emma said, “Buildings? So you’ve actually been to one of their houses?”

  “Well, I’ve seen them,” Ell said with an exasperated little laugh. “Maybe I should fill you in on some more info before you give me too much more feedback. Geo, that’s the name I gave the one with the geometric pattern on his skin, walked me into their nearest city. I assume he walked because he didn’t see any wings on Virgwald, perhaps suggesting that he’s familiar with wingless creatures that are intelligent. The other two took off in different directions and I had the impression that Geo instructed them to do so. Allan, show them an overhead view of the city.”

  Once an image of the green city with its mostly hexagonal organization had popped up on the screen, Ell continued, “Here’s an overview of the city. You can see that it’s mostly organized into hexagonal cells, with some of the hexagons looking like they might be divided up into six triangles and some into three diamonds. A few avenues are cleared out of some rows of the hexagons and pass through the city at sixty degree angles to one another, but I suspect they mostly fly in and out. I’m thinking that the avenues are just for the occasional transportation of heavy things. Here and there you see small areas that are arranged rectangularly, but they’re uncommon. The green fuzzy appearance you’re seeing is because everything’s overgrown with vegetation. Allan, show them some ground-level views of the structures after Virgwald got into the city.”

  The view on the screen switched to show them a view from Virgwald’s eye level. Ell continued, “In this image, you’re looking at the wall of one of those hexagons from an avenue. Either the wall is completely overgrown with vegetation or… maybe it actually grew there. Notice the leaves overlap like shingles.”

  Emma said, “You’re thinking they grow their buildings?! Train vegetation into place like topiary or bonsai?”

  Ell shrugged, “Maybe? Why don’t you watch as Virgwald goes on down the street with Geo?” The image on the screen started moving down the avenue, “You’re gonna see some more aliens,” Ell said with a giggle that sounded like it was something between amused and a tiny bit hysterical.

  An alien appeared from between two of the hexagons. Two more flew in and landed next to them. All three looked markedly different from one another. They had different coloration and ranged from relatively squat and low for this low gravity environment, with relatively strong appearing arms, to tall and gracile with four substantial wings. The one with four wings had only four slender limbs. Another had two legs and four arms. Two of the arms were at the back of the alien. The low centered one had two arms and six legs, plus wings! They all appeared to be excited to see Virgwald and began moving that direction. Geo moved to intercept them, Roger said, “Wait a minute! That geometric pattern on Geo’s skin is fading!”

  “Yeah,” Ell said, with an exasperated little laugh, “I named him for his skin pattern, but it disappeared over the first couple of hours. Originally he was blue and white, but the blue turned silvery and so did the white.” She turned to stare at Emma and Roger with wide eyes, “Now his skin, I swear, is almost the same color as the waldo’s magnesium.”

  Roger drew back in surprise, “You’re kidding!”

  Ell just shook her head and turned her eyes back to the screen, “Geo and I had been working on learning some of each other’s words,” she laughed, “well, actually getting Geo to say the words so Allan could learn them for me. Geo’s language is some kind of ultrasonic rattle. I not only can’t make those sounds with my vocal chords, but I also can’t seem to distinguish one rattle from another. Allan does great though, parroting rattles back to them as needed.” She turned back to the screen with its additional variety of strange beings. “Anyway, at this point he introduced me to all these new aliens. I spent some time trying to figure out whether he was telling me their individual names or their species’ names.” Ell turned and raised an eyebrow, “He couldn’t seem to grasp what I was asking.”

  “Well, that would be a pretty complex concept to get across when you only know a few words of the other person’s language.”

  Ell shrugged, “Yeah. I thought I’d made myself clear, but maybe not. I used Virgwald’s laser to draw a bunch of waldoes, giving each of them individual names, then waving at all of them and calling them ‘waldoes.’ The aliens were excited enough about the laser picture that it was hard to get them to pay attention to my question. When they did finally invest some time in understanding the question, my impression was they were astonished that there might be more than one waldo. When I had Allan draw several pictures of Geo with Virgwald’s laser, they gave them all the same name.”

  Roger shrugged, “Still, translation from one alien species to another must be extremely problematic.”

  Ell said, “Yeah, but one of the possibilities that keeps going through my mind is that all those wildly different aliens,” she waved at the screen, “actually belong to the same species.”

  Roger and Emma both turned to the screen, Emma saying, “Come on! They’re too different from one another! Creatures with completely different body plans can’t belong to the same species! Occam’s razor says this is some kind of meeting world for different species.”

  “Well, it’s interesting you’d say that,” Ell said. “This is the first extraterrestrial world we’ve encountered where humans could actually live.” Ell said, “Well, maybe not, there may be toxins or killer microbes or something else that would keep us from living there. The radiation levels are high, but it has an atmosphere we could breathe.”

  Roger gave her an excited look, “It’s not
too dense?!”

  “It’s dense all right, but only 4.1 atmospheres, about the same as a hundred-thirty foot deep scuba dive. If you suddenly came from there to here you’d get the bends, but with a gradual transition you’d be okay.” Ell frowned, “But, back to the atmosphere we could breathe issue. For a species to live on another planet there sure seems to be a lot of requirements beyond the oxygen atmosphere and liquid water issues that most people consider. Too much CO2 is toxic. In fact the concentration in the Virgies’ atmosphere, at about a half a percent, would kill some animals, though humans will tolerate it, at least for short periods. Too high a pressure or too low a pressure is un-survivable. We talk about the liquid water range, but the upper end of it, above about a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit, would be fatal to most earth species. Though we can live below freezing, the plants we depend on for food don’t thrive long term even down close to freezing. This is to say nothing of other possible toxins in the atmosphere which the current denizens might have developed resistance to… or the prospect of inimical biota.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Roger said, “we get it. Worlds where we can live comfortably are going to be few and far between but…”

  “Taking that as a given,” Ell interrupted, lifting her chin interrogatively, “what do you think the chances are that all these different species, coming from so many different worlds, can all live here in this one environment?”

  Roger looked flummoxed. “I… see what you mean. So, either this one world evolved a whole lot of different intelligent species, or maybe they’re only superficially different?”

  Ell lifted an eyebrow, “Yeah, and if they didn’t come from a bunch of different interstellar destinations, they might not be advanced. Anyway, that’s what I’m hoping you’ll help me figure out. Right now it’s nighttime there and Geo seems to be sleeping, or at least torpid. Otherwise, when I can’t be controlling Virgwald, I’ve had Allan walking him around with Geo, recording everything he sees and trying to save little clips of things Allan thinks might be interesting for us to look at. But, you know that even a highly advanced AI like Allan sometimes misses the obvious. I’m going to have a terrible time going over everything all by myself, so I need some people I really trust to watch some of it for me and pick out the things they think are actual highlights. Also, Allan’s really not very good at choosing items to be named for addition to our vocabulary. He’s great at remembering them once we’ve chosen them, but one of us needs to interact with the Virgies in order to get words from them.”