‘Now, the transformation to Flight is a complex sequence of procedures and starts with screening, of course, and I need hardly tell you that with children they must not know they’re being tested. We observe them at play, at sporting events, examine a detailed medical and genetic history, that sort of thing. If they fail—that’s not the right word but that’s how they feel—imagine it. Being offered the opportunity to fly and then it’s taken away. Because you’re not good enough. That has to be avoided.’
I had tensed up and realised I was holding my breath. I didn’t like the sound of what Ruokonen described. It sounded as if I’d have to be screened too. I’d hated the stressful series of tests I’d had to go through to qualify for health insurance before starting in the police force and now it sounded as if I might have to go through something similar again.
Ruokonen was still talking. I had to pay attention but my mind was reeling with the strangeness of what she was explaining. Ruokonen’s words were making me feel a little foolish. Like most non-fliers, I’d assumed the transition to Flight was merely (merely!) a process of adding wings. But now I was realising how deeply ignorant I was about the complexity of Flight, more ignorant even than my own great- grandfather had been, who’d at least had the experience of flying in aeroplanes. I hadn’t even done that. The true extent of the transformation appalled me. But I had to push aside my feelings and listen; this was my one real chance before the whole process began to try to understand what would happen to Thomas.
‘Then, if the subject is suitable, there’s infusion of the right DNA, both to the subject and to a culture of their cells from which we will grow their wings. For an older child or young adult, where we have to grow the wings separately, we culture them from the subject’s own cells, and program them to develop as needed, as bone, feathers and so on, and we grow them, just as we grow skin for burn victims, for example. At this stage the person can choose what colour and pattern they want for their wings—’
‘Why feathers?’ I interrupted. ‘We’re not birds.’
Ruokonen frowned. ‘No, we’re not birds but feathers are the best adaptation imaginable for their function. I think you’d find universal agreement that no-one wants wings of naked skin, like bats. Besides being ugly, they’re far less practical. Has it occurred to you why bats are nocturnal, Mr Fowler?’
I shook my head.
‘Try leaving a bat out in the sun and see what happens to its wings. The sunburn and subsequent scarring will leave it unable to fly. Feathers have other advantages as an airfoil; besides their exceptional lightness and stiffness and variety of colour and pattern, they have the advantage of being able to separate.’
Ruokonen pressed a button and a picture of an eagle in soaring flight appeared on her slick. ‘Look at the ends of her wings—see how the great primaries separate like fingers? Big birds do this and so do we. This cuts drag, increases lift and so reduces the energy requirements of Flight. You can’t slot like that with skin wings, which is just one reason why bats tend to be small. I don’t mean to imply that bats are poor fliers. They are superb fliers. It’s just that they are limited in their options by the materials they’ve had to work with.’
Ruokonen stretched, rolling her shoulders, shaking and settling her own wings briefly. ‘Before we grow the wings, decisions have to be made about wing size and shape. All creatures that fly are subject to the laws of aerodynamics. Flying ability and the types of Flight a flier is most suited for are determined by, among other things, the following four factors: wing area, aspect ratio, wing loading and wing shape.’
‘Slow down,’ I begged. ‘Aspect ratio, wing loading?’
Ruokonen waved her hand. ‘I’ll explain those terms as we go. Let’s start with take-off, the most demanding aspect of Flight. The ability to take off is, mostly, governed by the ratio of the flight muscles to total body weight. Ideally, if you are to take off from the ground, your flight muscles should make up about twenty-five percent of your body weight. We’ve been able to pare that back to around nineteen percent because of the greater explosive power of the Flight muscle fibres we’ve developed. We’re very proud that we’ve engineered the modifications so that people are able to take off directly from the ground. The earliest fliers couldn’t do that and had to dive off buildings and cliffs and so on. We are now into our second generation of fliers, Mr Fowler, and we are refining our techniques on each new cohort coming through. You still need to get a bit of a run-up though, to generate enough lift to get off the ground. You have to get at least just above your stalling speed.’
‘I’ve noticed that fliers still tend to take off from buildings and cliffs when they can,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ said Ruokonen. ‘Taking off from the ground is the most physically demanding activity there is.’
‘And the other factors?’ I said. ‘Wing shape and, what was it, aspect ratio?’
‘Think of a hawk. Its wings are short and broad, perfect for manoeuvring in tricky situations and catching prey. It has a low aspect ratio. An albatross has long narrow wings, perfect for soaring and fast, low-energy-demand flight. It has a high aspect ratio.’
Ruokonen ran her fingers over the model of a flier skeleton on her desk. It was about half a metre tall. All the bones were precisely detailed and articulated. She stroked the outstretched wing bones. ‘See, it’s like having an extra pair of arms, but modified. Here’s the humerus and this middle section is formed of the radius, ulna and wrist bones. This is the longest segment of the wing. This final part here is made up of the fused metacarpals—like the bones in the palm of your hand. The feathers anchor along the leading edge of the wing, here, and are free at the trailing edge, just like a bird, and that’s where they can separate. As you can see, most of the wing is made up of feathers—this skeleton doesn’t tell you much about the shape of the wings themselves.’
Looking at the model, this modified skeleton integrated with the wing bones, I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. I was seeing a hybrid creature, neither bird nor human, but something different. Other. A mammal shouldn’t have arms and legs and then a whole other set of limbs. Three pairs. Like an insect. What was it? What were they? I stared at Ruokonen. What were we becoming?
‘Now we come to the critical figures,’ said Ruokonen. ‘The numbers that really matter: wing loading. Wing loading is the ratio describing the mass that has to be borne up by the lift generated by each square centimetre of wing area. A low wing-loading ratio is around half a gram per centimetre squared of wing area. Birds with a low wing loading can take off easily and are good at soaring. Lammergeiers, for example. A high wing loading is around one point eight grams per centimetre squared and will give you a fast, powerful flier with great stamina, like a duck, which, however, will have some difficulty at take-off and be less manoeuvrable in the air. It’s been suggested that a loading of two point five grams per centimetre may be the threshold at which flight is no longer possible.’
I nodded but the figures did not mean much to me. I could see they animated Ruokonen though; her cheeks had flushed slightly and her eyes glittered. This was the part of the talk that really excited her.
‘Now listen to this,’ she continued. ‘With individual wing measurements of, say, two metres by one metre, a fifty-kilo human has a wing loading of one point two-five grams per square centimetre. Eminently suitable for Flight. Not that I’m saying you’d necessarily go with that shape. You need to tweak the shape depending on what type of flying you want to do. By paring down weight loads and augmenting muscle power, we’ve been able to reduce wing size and still have some room to move with regards to Flight specs—to alter dimensions for different kinds of Flight, without losing a favourable wing-loading ratio.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘How on earth do you choose?’
‘Well,’ said Ruokonen, ‘we tend to offer City fliers a compromise shape that gives them a fair amount of manoeuvrabili
ty but with the ability to do some soaring and endurance flying.’ Here the slick showed an image of a flier with wings outstretched. ‘They don’t have the stamina of an albatross or the agility of a goshawk but then they don’t have to migrate across the ocean or catch their food on the wing. For general purpose and pleasure flying it’s a good shape. Bird wing shapes have evolved because their owners need them to survive. We have the luxury of adding wings on—we pay for the energy expense of Flight, if you like. Birds have to make it all count. We don’t.’
I tried to picture what the Raptor might be capable of. ‘If wing loading is so crucial,’ I said, ‘then how is it some fliers can carry another person?’
‘You’ll find there’s at least one of several factors,’ said Ruokonen. ‘First, think of an eagle taking a lamb. The eagle is diving and already has enormous forward thrust and power. If a flier picks someone up they would usually be swooping down from on high. Second, you might have several fliers doing the carrying, such as in air rescue. Lastly, such a flight would always be very short, one way or the other. If you see what I mean.’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘Now, when the wings are grown, we attach them surgically and the sites they’re attached to are already primed to knit together with the wings. There aren’t any rejection problems because the cells are mostly your own DNA, even though they’re modified, and your body recognises the additional genetic material as your own also. The treatments I’ve just described are somatic cell manipulation, of course. Somatic cells are all the cells of the body that do not pass on DNA to the next generation. With germline engineering—if we make changes in the germ cells, that is, the eggs and sperm of the parents—then the new children will just grow wings, and all the other necessary alterations, as they grow the rest of their bodies.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Now you’re talking alterations that will be passed on. Forever. Not just adding DNA to an individual human but altering the blueprint itself.’
‘Yes,’ Ruokonen said. ‘For some of the new children. There aren’t many. Yet. Flight modifications progress much more easily that way, though. And it’s far more elegant to grow the wings than attach them.’
From what Peri had said, the Chesshyres were expecting Hugo to grow wings. As an architect Peter would desire the elegance Ruokonen was talking about. So, had one or both of them had germline engineering for Hugo’s sake? I thought of Eliseev. Did he have the know-how for that? Well, Diomedea was one of the few outfits with the capacity, the sheer brute power of money, machines and expertise, for that kind of work, and Eliseev worked in their building, though that didn’t necessarily imply a connection between them.
‘Maybe growing wings is more elegant but how can you?’ What I meant was how dare you? I struggled for an even tone as I said, ‘It’s one thing for an individual to choose all these things. It’s something else to decide that their descendants forevermore will also be altered.’
‘There are many who feel as you do. That hasn’t stopped germline therapy to eliminate a number of medical conditions. I don’t notice much agitation to stop that.’
‘What about Origins?’
Ruokonen shrugged, as if it was beneath her even to acknowledge such fanatics.
‘But those are not decisions we have the right to make. It’s not just their descendants. It’s the rest of us. You’re splitting us off, into two species. Or more. God knows how many! Elegance is not a good enough reason.’ I stopped, unable to express the strength of my feelings.
‘You have the right to your opinion, of course,’ Ruokonen said. I guessed she was used to dealing with the conflicting emotions Flight aroused in non-flier parents. She had to construct a convincing case for Flight to snare parents into agreeing to turn their offspring into fledglings.
Soberly, she continued, ‘You have asked me to describe what happens, and I am telling you. Now if your son were to have the treatments there’s no germline engineering involved, although later it could be done, if he wanted his children to fly more easily.’
‘And if a baby of two fliers doesn’t become a fledgling? Can the treatments still be carried out?’ In other words, could a child like Hugo still become a flier like his parents?
Ruokonen thought. ‘Well, as I’ve already indicated, fliers will not spontaneously have a fledgling unless they’ve had germline engineering themselves. It’s a controversial area. There’s not much information yet but available figures suggest that up to twenty percent of infants with flier parents who’ve been given germline therapy will still not fledge spontaneously. Standard practice has been not to attempt further treatments in those cases. That may be too cautious an approach but you should know that the treatments do fail in about fifteen to twenty percent of all other cases, and so it’s been assumed that these babies are not good candidates. Personally I’m not convinced of that. There’s not enough evidence one way or the other, there are still so few of them.’
Twenty percent of treatments failed. That was after the rigorous selection procedures. A high failure rate, especially considering the spectacular investment required just to give it a go.
Ruokonen was still speaking. ‘The wings grow or are attached, the genetic material is added and there is also a medication regime. For a child the DNA therapy includes the timing of the development of Flight, which becomes as programmed as the drive to walk. It also includes avian navigational abilities.
‘For older children and adults the medication regime is calibrated differentially, based on age, and part of its function is to give you the neural plasticity you need to incorporate such a vast retooling of your physical skills and even of your self-concept and your proprioception, which alters dramatically. You’d be surprised at the changes needed in brain-functioning, not just from the spatial demands of Flight, but from the expanded sensory input from the extra surface area of the body provided by the wings themselves.’
‘Is Zefiryn part of the drug regime?’ I said.
Ruokonen stood up from her desk and walked to a transparent wall to look out over the trees. She didn’t seem surprised I’d heard of the drug. Well, it had featured prominently in the articles I’d skimmed, as it was one of the more lurid angles a journalist sending back dispatches from the wild frontier of Flight could tackle.
‘Yes, Zefiryn is part of the medication regime. It’s remarkably useful, particularly for finetuning sensory input needed in Flight, but like any medication, it should only be taken under medical supervision. In practice, all fliers take it. Zefiryn is not illegal, you know. Its status is in limbo; there are as yet no official guidelines for its use. I’m on one of the committees looking at those issues.’ She came back to her desk and sat down.
‘Some people say it’s addictive,’ I said.
Ruokonen rolled her eyes. ‘It’s possible to abuse any pharmacologically active substance,’ she said. ‘Any substance, really. Of course some become habituated.’
‘Side effects?’
‘You’ve looked it up, I take it.’
‘Well, I read about the usual,’ I said. ‘Sweats. Weight loss. Tremors. Loss of affect. It’s the rumours that interest me, that it’s implicated in disappearances—’
‘Rumours,’ said Ruokonen, ‘are just that, Mr Fowler. Rumours. Not data. Not evidence. I’m sure you can appreciate the importance of evidence. Now, other aspects of the regime involve ongoing assistance to the body in adjusting to the changing metabolism needed for the demands of Flight.’
‘So their metabolism speeds up,’ I said.
‘In crude terms, yes, it does speed up. A flier extracts oxygen from the air with twice the efficiency that you do. They do it in some of the same ways as birds do, through air sacs inside their bones. The air sacs are connected to the lungs. These sacs also aid with thermoregulation, helping fliers dissipate excess heat generated in Flight. It’s remarkably elegant because the wings themselves a
ct as a bellows; as they move in flight they force huge amounts of air into these sacs and into the lungs.’ She shook her head in admiration at the economy of the mechanism.
‘So does the faster metabolism mean fliers don’t live as long?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Ruokonen.
‘Surely you don’t know that yet,’ I said. ‘Are there any figures?’
‘There are no data that I am aware of.’
‘So you just don’t know the long-term effects of all this yet?’
‘I said we were into the second generation of real fliers though there have been odd prototypes around for some time. But first- generation fliers haven’t reached old age yet.’
‘Are there any side effects? There must be.’
‘Well, I don’t have recent figures but it’s no secret that fertility is something of a casualty of the treatments.’
‘Fertility,’ I repeated. ‘For how many?’
‘Possibly up to twenty percent of fliers will have difficulty.’
‘What? What does that mean?’
‘The figures are based on both partners being fliers. Rates are better if the woman is not a flier. Individually fliers are still fertile—women have viable eggs, men have active sperm. But they don’t result in babies at the rate we’d like.’
‘That’s a high price to pay,’ I said. ‘So what do you think is going wrong?’
‘It’s not my specialty but I think conception is not the problem. I would be investigating implantation if it were my area. Perhaps the woman is not sustaining the pregnancy. Body-fat levels may be too low; hormone levels may not be right. Also, to be honest, many fliers don’t want to get pregnant.’
Women fliers don’t like that, being grounded. Sometimes they never get back in the air, they say.
So the Chesshyres got Peri to have their baby for them before she was allowed to get her wings. That fitted what I knew about her membership of Flight Gym and Hugo’s age.
When We Have Wings Page 18