Hybrids np-3

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “You’re wonderful, Louise.”

  Louise smiled. “Nice of you to finally notice.”

  As soon as Ponter and Adikor returned from the hospital, Mary said they should go for lunch—hoping that Mrs. Wallace wouldn’t remark to Jock that this was the second time she’d supposedly gone out to lunch today. Once they were outdoors, Mary led them out to the back of the mansion, and they walked along the sandy beach, a cold wind coming across the gray choppiness of Lake Ontario.

  “Something is clearly upsetting you,” said Ponter. “What is it?”

  “Jock has created a biological weapon,” Mary said. “It’s a virus that determines if the host cell belongs to a Neanderthal. If it does, it invokes a hemorrhagic fever.”

  She heard Ponter’s and Adikor’s Companions bleep; not surprisingly, the subject of tropical diseases had not come up so far. “Hemorrhagic fevers are fatal,” said Mary. “Ebola is the classic example from my world; it causes blood to leak out of the eyes and other orifices. Such fevers are highly contagious and we don’t have a cure for them.”

  “Why would anyone make such a thing?” asked Ponter, his voice full of revulsion.

  “To wipe your world free of indigenous humans, so that my kind could claim your version of Earth—as a second home, maybe.”

  Ponter apparently could find no word in his own language to convey the sentiment he wanted to express. “Christ, ” said his untranslated voice.

  “I agree,” said Mary. “But I’m not sure how to stop Jock. I mean, he might be acting alone, or his government—and possibly mine, too—might be behind this.”

  “Have you told anyone besides us?” asked Ponter.

  “Louise. And I’ve asked her to tip off Reuben Montego, too.”

  Adikor said, “Are you sure they can be trusted?”

  But before Mary could answer, Ponter spoke. “I would trust those Gliksins with my life.”

  Mary nodded. “We can count on them. But we can’t be sure about anyone else.”

  “Well,” said Ponter, “not anyone else in this world. But everyone in my world stands to lose if Jock releases his virus. We should go there, and…”

  “And what?” said Mary.

  Ponter lifted his shoulders. “And shut down the portal. Sever the link. Protect our home.”

  “There are more than a dozen Barasts here, on this side of the portal,” said Mary.

  “We must get them home first, then,” said Ponter.

  “The reason they’re here is to keep the High Gray Council from closing the portal,” said Adikor. “It won’t be easy to convince them to return—and, regardless, who knows when we’ll be able to move Lonwis?”

  Ponter frowned. “Still, it’s too dangerous to let Jock have a way of transmitting his virus to our world.”

  “Maybe we’ve got it wrong,” said Adikor. “Maybe Jock just hates the fact that there are Barasts here, on this Earth. Maybe he intends to release his virus here.”

  “In which case,” said Ponter, “the first step is still to get all Barasts back to our side. But you heard what he said: ‘I get reports on all Neanderthal comings and goings.’ It would be easier for him to simply track down the handful of Barasts already here and kill us by more conventional means.”

  Adikor took a deep breath. “I guess you’re right.” He looked at Mary, then back at Ponter. “When you returned from your first visit to this world, I asked you whether the Gliksins were good people, whether we should try to re-establish contact with them.”

  Ponter nodded. “I know. This is my fault. It’s—”

  “No, ” said Mary emphatically. If there was one thing all the brochures Keisha had given her had taught her, it was that you can’t blame the victim. “No, it is not your fault, Ponter.”

  “You are kind,” said Ponter. “So, how should we proceed?”

  “I’m going to get back into Jock’s computer tonight, after he leaves,” said Mary, “and modify the viral design, so that it isn’t dangerous. Let’s just pray he hasn’t already output the actual virus.”

  “Mare…” said Ponter gently.

  “I know, I know. You don’t pray. But maybe you should start.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “Who would have thought that both destinies for Mars could be fulfilled? But, of course, now they can. We will travel to the Mars of this universe, the one that graces the night skies of the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, and, as has ever been our way, we will conquer this new frontier, making an additional home for Homo sapiens there…”

  When they returned to the mansion, Jock was waiting for them. Mary thought her heart was going to explode. “Adikor, Ponter,” said Jock. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave us.”

  “Why?” said Adikor.

  “The hospital called. Lonwis’s condition is deteriorating, and they don’t know what to do. He’s going to be rushed back to the Neanderthal world, so that he can be treated there. I’ve arranged for a U.S. Air Force plane to take him up to Sudbury, but he wants the two of you to accompany him. He says—I’m sorry, gentlemen, but he says he may not last much longer, and he needs to go over his quantum-computing ideas with the two of you.”

  Ponter looked at Mary. Mary lifted her eyebrows, wishing there were some alternative. “I’ll drive you to the airport,” she said.

  “Say, guys,” said Jock, “before you go, one question.”

  “Yes?” asked Ponter.

  “When does—what do you call it?—‘Two becoming One’? When does that happen next?”

  “Three days from now,” said Adikor. “Why?”

  “Oh, no special reason,” said Jock. “Just curious.”

  The codon writer remained in Jock’s safe, dammitall. Mary really wanted to take it with her when she and Louise fled to Canada, but that wasn’t going to be possible. Still, although the safe was apparently impregnable, Jock’s computer files were not. Louise had had no trouble compromising Jock’s password file—his password turned out to be “minimax,” a term Mary vaguely recognized as having something to do with game theory—and after everyone else had left for the evening, Mary slipped back into Jock’s office, while Louise returned to her own lab.

  Mary entered “minimax” at the password prompt, gaining access to the hidden files on the Synergy server. She then clicked on the Surfaris icon, and the USAMRIID Geneplex program opened, displaying the virus’s design. Mary set about modifying it.

  It was a heady experience. Despite her scientific training, despite everything Vissan had said, down deep, some part of Mary still thought there was something mystical about life; that, at its core, it was more than just chemistry. But of course it wasn’t; the geneticist in her knew that. Program the right sequence of nucleotides, and you’ll ultimately produce a series of proteins that will do precisely what you wish. Still, Mary could scarcely believe what she was doing. It was like back when she was married to Colm. He’d written poetry in his spare time, selling—in the poet’s sense of the word, meaning giving away in exchange for copies of the publication—dozens of poems to places like The Malahat Review, White Wall Review, and HazMat. Mary had always been astonished that he could sit down at his keyboard, pounding away in WordStar—would he ever give that program up?—and produce something beautiful, meaningful, and unique out of absolutely nothing.

  And now Mary was doing the same thing: specifying sequences that would eventually be output as an actual life-form—or, at least, as a virus—that had never existed before. Of course, she was really only modifying the existing Surfaris template that some other geneticist had created, but, still, the resulting virus would indeed be novel.

  And yet, the virus she was creating wouldn’t actually do anything. Whereas the original design would have aborted only if it was hosted in the cell of a Gliksin, rather than a Barast, Mary’s version would abort regardless of the input it received: it would do nothing no matter what sort of cell it was within. It was only the branching logic Mary was changing. She le
ft the code that would produce the hemorrhagic fever intact not out of any desire to see it ever invoked, but rather to make sure that, at a cursory glance at least, her sequence would look like the one Jock had intended the codon writer to produce.

  Mary wanted a name to mentally distinguish her version from Jock’s. She frowned, trying to think of something appropriate. Jock’s original had been named “Surfaris”—a word that even the on-line Oxford English Dictionary didn’t have in its database. But then it occurred to Mary that it might be a plural form, and so she tried what she guessed would be the singular, although that looked like it could be a plural in its own right: “surfari.”

  And there it was: a blending of “surfing” and “safari,” referring to the search surfers make for decent waves. Mary couldn’t see the relevance, so she typed the term, in the plural form Jock had used, into Google.

  Of course.

  The Surfaris. A rock group who in 1963 recorded what went on to be a standard on golden-oldie stations, “Wipeout.”

  Sweet Jesus, thought Mary. Wipeout.

  She shook her head in disgust.

  Well, what’s the opposite of “wipeout?”

  At thirty-nine, Mary was young enough—barely—to remember the heyday of vinyl 45-rpm records. Doubtless “Wipeout” had been released in that format. But what had been on—she still remembered the term—the flip side? Google to the rescue: “Surfer Joe,” written by Ron Wilson. Mary honestly couldn’t remember ever hearing that song, but then again, that was often the fate of B-sides.

  Regardless, it was as good a code name as any: she’d think of Jock’s original as the Wipeout virus, and her modified, do-nothing version as Surfer Joe. Of course, she saved Surfer Joe with the same filename Jock’s geneticist had used for the Wipeout version, but at least she could keep them straight in her mind now.

  Mary leaned back in her chair.

  It did feel like playing God.

  And, she had to admit, it felt good.

  She allowed herself a little chuckle, wondering what Neanderthals called megalomaniac thoughts. Surely not playing God. Maybe “pulling a Lonwis”…

  “Mary!”

  Mary’s heart jumped. She’d thought she was alone here. She looked up and—

  God, no.

  Cornelius Ruskin was standing in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” Mary said, her voice trembling. She grabbed a heavy malachite paperweight off the worktable.

  Cornelius held up a hand; in it was a brown leather wallet. “I forgot my wallet at my desk. I just came in to pick it up.”

  Suddenly it hit Mary. The other geneticist. The one Jock had been using to code this…this evil. It was Cornelius. It had to be.

  “What are you doing in Jock’s office?” asked Cornelius.

  Cornelius couldn’t see Jock’s LCD screen from the doorway. “Nothing. Just looking for a book.”

  “Well,” said Cornelius. “Mary, I—”

  “You’ve got your wallet. Get out.”

  “Mary, if you’d just—”

  Mary’s stomach was roiling. “Louise is upstairs, you know. I’ll scream.”

  Cornelius stood in the doorway, his expression weary. “I just want to say I’m sorry—”

  “Get out! Get the hell out of here!”

  Cornelius hesitated for a moment, then turned. Mary listened to his footfalls go down the corridor, and the sound of the heavy door to the mansion opening and closing.

  Her vision was blurry, and she felt nauseous. She took a deep breath, then another one, trying to calm herself. Her hands were slick with sweat, and there was a sour taste at the back of her throat. Damn him, damn him, damn him…

  The rape exploded in Mary’s mind again, with a vividness that she hadn’t felt for weeks. Cornelius Ruskin’s cold blue eyes visible behind the black ski mask, the stench of cigarettes on his breath, his arm pushing her back against that retaining wall.

  God damn Cornelius Ruskin.

  God damn Jock Krieger.

  Damn them both to hell.

  Damn men to hell.

  Only men would create something like the Wipeout virus. Only men would do something so heinous, so abominable.

  Mary snorted. There weren’t even proper words left for such evil. “Heinous” had been robbed of its power by Keanu Reeves using it in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and “abominable” was almost always followed by “snowman,” as if such evil could only exist in the realm of myth.

  She’d always associate such evil with this world, the world of Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot and Paul Bernardo and Osama bin Laden.

  And Jock Krieger.

  And Cornelius Ruskin.

  A world of men.

  No, not just of men. A very specific kind of man. Male Homo sapiens.

  Mary took a deep breath, calming herself. Not all men were evil. She knew that. She really did. There was her dad, and her brothers, and Reuben Montego, and Fathers Caldicott and Belfontaine.

  And Phil Donahue and Pierre Trudeau and Ralph Nader and Bill Cosby.

  And the Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Compassionate men, admirable men. Yes, there were some.

  Mary had no idea how to distinguish genetically between great men and evil ones, between visionaries and psychopaths. But there was one glaring genetic marker for male violence: the Y chromosome. Granted, not everyone who had a Y chromosome was an evil man; indeed, the vast majority weren’t. But every evil man, by definition, had to have a Y chromosome, the shortest of all Homo sapiens chromosomes and yet the one that had the biggest impact on psychology.

  And history.

  And the safety of women and children.

  Cornelius Ruskin had a Y.

  Jock Krieger likewise.

  Y.

  Why?

  No. No, it was too much. It really was too redolent of playing God.

  But she could do it. Oh, she’d never dream of unleashing such a thing here, in this world. She was no murderer—that much of her own personal code of ethics Mary was certain of, for the man she hated most, the man she most wanted to see punished, was Cornelius Ruskin, and when Ponter had proposed killing him, Mary had insisted he not do it.

  And, despite Adikor’s suggestion, Mary was sure Jock Krieger never meant for his Wipeout virus to be introduced to this version of Earth. It was doubtless intended for the other version, the Neanderthal world, a serpent for the un-spoiled Eden.

  Of course, if everything went as planned, if she managed to stop Jock, no virus would be released in the Neanderthal world.

  But if one was to be, well, hopefully it would be Mary’s Surfer Joe, either in the version she’d just produced, which did nothing, or…

  Or…

  She could make a more radical revision, producing a version that modified the original logic to act only if—

  It was simple, so simple.

  A version that would act only if the host cell the virus had invaded did not belong to a Neanderthal, and did contain a Y chromosome.

  If, and only if…

  Mary frowned. A revised Surfer Joe.

  A Mark II—just like the new Pope, taking it all one step further.

  She shook her head. It was madness. Sinful.

  Or was it? She’d be protecting an entire world from male Homo sapiens. After all, if she and the paleoanthropologists who shared her view were right, it had been male Homo sapiens —the hunters in the clan, not the gatherers, not the women—who had slaughtered their browridged cousins here until not a single one was left.

  And now, using the tools of the twenty-first century and technology borrowed from the Barasts themselves, male Homo sapiens were preparing to do again what male H. sap had done once before.

  Mary looked at Jock’s computer screen.

  It would be so simple. So very simple. The logic tree was already in place. She only needed to change the sequences being tested for, and which way the logic branched.

  T
esting for a Y chromosome was easy enough: just pick a gene from the Human Genome Project database that appeared only on that chromosome. Mary rummaged on Jock’s desk for pen and paper, then wrote out the logic in longhand on a yellow ruled pad:

  Step 1: Is a Y chromosome present?

  If yes, this is a male: go to Step 2

  If no, abort (this isn’t a male)

  Step 2: Is Gene ALPHA found next to a telomere?

  If yes, abort (this is a Neanderthal)

  If no, this is probably a Gliksin: go to Step 3

  Step 3: Is Gene BETA found next to a telomere?

  If yes, abort (this should never happen in a Gliksin)

  If no, this is definitely a Gliksin: go to Step 4

  Mary looked at what she’d written over and over again, but couldn’t find a flaw. There was no point at which the logic could get caught in an infinite loop, and there were not one but two checks to make sure she was really dealing with a Homo sapiens male and not a Homo neanderthalensis one.

  Of course, it was all moot—surely Jock would be stopped before he could release his virus. Modifying it now was just a safeguard, in case somehow it made it over to the other side.

  Mary shook her head and looked at her watch. It was well after midnight—the start of a new day.

  She should just go home now. Jock’s Wipeout virus had been defused; it would do nothing at all, assuming, as Mary fervently hoped, that he hadn’t yet used the codon writer to output the actual viral molecules. Surfer Joe would harm no one. That’s all she’d set out to accomplish, after all.

  That’s all that needed to be done.

  And yet…

  And yet.

  No one would have to get hurt. She’d find a way to disseminate the information, to make sure that everyone on this Earth knew that it was unsafe for male Gliksins to travel to the Neanderthal world. The Barast tuned-laser decontamination technology would make sure the Surfer Joe virus never got back across the portal to this world. Male Gliksins—the majority that were decent, and the horrible minority that did so very much harm—would be safe, just as long as they left Ponter’s world the hell alone.