The Exiles Trilogy

by Ben Bova

  Lou nodded. “All I’ve got to do is run through the programs and de-bug them. Then we’ll be ready for the first experiments. Take me a few weeks, at most.”

  “This is critically important to us,” Marcus said. “I don’t want you to rush it. I want it done right.”

  Feeling a little irritated, Lou said, “It’s almost finished. In a few weeks, we’ll be ready.”

  “You’ll be able to scan the zygote’s genetic structure, spot any defects, plot out the proper corrective steps, and predict the results?”

  “To twenty decimal places,” Lou insisted. “And it’ll all be done in in less than a minute of computer time.”

  “If you can do that…”

  ” When we can do that,” Lou corrected, “we’ll be able to mend any genetic defects in the zygote and make each embryo genetically perfect. Ultimately, we’ll be able to produce a race of people with no physical defects and an intelligence level way beyond the genius class.”

  “Yes,” Marcus said. “Ultimately.”

  Lou sat back, Marcus smiled pleasantly and sipped his drink. Then Lou noticed, through the chirping of the songbirds, the drone of a jet high overhead. Marcus heard it too. He looked up at the silvery speck with its pencil-thin line of white contrail speeding along behind it.

  Glancing down at his wristwatch, Marcus said, “That’s our next supply shipment. Your programmer friend should be on that plane.”

  “Bonnie?”

  Marcus nodded. “I understand she’s quite a lovely girl.” He grinned at Lou.

  Pushing his chair from the table, Lou got up. “I’ll go down to meet her at the landing pad.”

  “Sure, go right ahead. Her quarters are in the same building as yours. She’s on the second floor.”

  “Okay. Fine.” Lou started toward the front of the house. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be bothered by Marcus or anyone else. He just wanted to see Bonnie.

  “I’m afraid the car’s already down there,” Marcus said, trailing along behind Lou. “You’ll have to walk it.”

  “That’s okay. See you later.”

  He left Marcus standing in front of the house and started down the dirt road toward the harbor area. The jet sounded closer now, and Lou could see it circling, stilt pretty high out over the sea.

  F.rom behind him he heard the whine of another turbowagon. Turning, he saw Kori jouncing in the back seat as the wagon worked slowly down the rutted road toward the harbor. Lou waved and Kori yelled for the driver to stop. They lurched off together toward the landing pad.

  “Going to meet the plane?” Lou asked.

  “Yes. They’re bringing some equipment in for me. And some data tapes from Slarfarer that came in just before I was arrested.”

  “The interstellar probe?”

  The road leveled out and they picked up speed. Light and shadows flickered across Kori’s face as they drove past a stand of tall palms.

  “Yes. If everything was working right, these tapes might have close-up pictures of Alpha Centauri on them.”

  “Really? But I didn’t see anything in the newscasts about it___”

  The road wound along the edge of the harbor now, and the driver pushed the turbine to top speed. There was no other traffic. The wind tore at Kori and Lou in the back seat.

  “The government kept it quiet,” Kori hollered back. “Remember what ICobryn said, back in Sicily? Alpha Centauri is a threat to the stability of the world,” Kori laughed bitterly.

  The car screeched to a halt alongside the landing pad. Billowing dust enveloped them for a moment. Blinking and coughing, Lou jumped out of the car and walked clear of the slowly-settling dust cloud. Kori came up beside him, walking in a slow gangling gait.

  “Are you going to be working on the probe data? Is that what Marcus wants you to do?”

  Kori made a little shrug. “He said I can work on analyzing the data But what he really wants me to do is to make some nuclear explosives for him.”

  “Explosives? You mean bombs?”

  “No, no, nothing so big,” Kon answered, grinning. “Just little things, toys, really. The kind that engineers use on construction jobs Why, if you exploded one of them in a city, it would hardly take out a building.”

  The plane was circling low now, its jets roaring in their ears. Lou watched as its wings spread straight out for landing and the jet pods swiveled to the vertical position. Slowly the plane settled on its screaming exhaust of hot gases, flattening the grass beneath it Through shimmering heat waves Lou saw the plane’s wheels touch the ground and the weight of the jet settle on them. Then the turbine’s bellowing whine died off, like some supernatural demon melting away.

  Lou took his hands down from his ears; they were ringing slightly.

  The hatch of the jet popped open, and a three-step metal ladder slid to the ground. A broad-shouldered young man stepped out first, then turned around and reached up to help the next passenger It was Bonnie.

  She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless blouse. Her hair was pinned up the way she usually wore it at work. Her face looked grave, utterly serious, perhaps a little scared.

  Lou felt something jump inside of him, and then he was running toward her, calling to her.

  “Bonnie! Bonnie!”

  She looked up, saw him, and smiled. Lou ran up to her, past the guy who had helped her down the steps. He wrapped her in his arms and swung her around off her feet.

  “Am I glad to see you! You came! You did come.”

  She looked surprised and happy and worried, all at the same time “Lou .. you’re all right. They didn’t hurt you or anything …”

  “I’m fine, now that you’re here “

  Without ever letting go of her arm, Lou took Bonnie’s one travel bag from the Chinese guard who was unloading the baggage and started walking her back toward the car. Kori was still standing beside the wagon, so Lou introduced them.

  Kori said, “Why don’t you two drive back to the dormitory?

  I’m sure you’ll want to get unpacked and settled in your room, Miss Sterne It’ll be some time before all my junk is unloaded from the plane. Lou, if you’ll just send the car back here . .”

  “Fine, fine, I’ll do that.” Lou was grinning broadly as he helped Bonnie into the back seat of the car and got in beside her.

  She was very quiet as they drove away from the pad and the harbor Lou chattered about what a beautiful island it was, and how good it was to see her again. All Bonnie did was to nod once in a while By the time Lou had carried her travel bag up to the door of her room, his own joy at being with her had simmered down to the point where he could see that something was wrong.

  There were no locks on the dormitory doors, only latches that could be pushed home from the inside So Lou opened her door and gestured her into the room.

  Bonnie walked in and looked around.

  “This will be my room?”

  “Right. It’s not much, I know, but…”

  She went to the window and looked out. Turning back to him, she asked, “And your room is in the same building?”

  “Downstairs “

  “How many other women are in this building?”

  Lou shrugged. “This whole second floor is for women, I think And there are a few married couples living on the island. They’ve got their own houses, though.”

  “I see.”

  “Look, Bonnie, you’re not sore about what I said when those Federal marshals arrested me, are you? I was scared, and surprised .. “

  Her face softened a little. “No, it’s not that, Lou.”

  He walked over to her. “Then what’s wrong? Why’d you come if you didn’t . “

  “Why’d I come?” She almost laughed at him “I didn’t get much choice Two men picked me up at the office where I had just started working and packed me off. That was it No questions, no explanations. Just enough time to pack one bag. That’s all.”

  “They didn’t tell you….”

  “Nothing In fact, I’m still not sure of
what’s going on “

  Lou sank down into the nearest chair. “But Bernard must have…”

  Bonnie knelt down beside htm and put her hands in his.

  “Lou, I’m sorry. When I saw you there by the plane, all of a sudden I thought it was you that had me kidnapped.”

  “You haven’t been kidnapped!”

  “I haven’t been invited to the prince’s ball.”

  He laughed at her.

  “Lou, what’s going on? Is everything going crazy?”

  Shaking his head, he tried to explain it as carefully as he could. The exile. M inister Bernard’s offer to help. The work that was going to be done on this island.

  Finally, she understood. “You mean we’re going to stay here… indefinitely? As long as they want us to? We can’t get off?”

  He looked into her pearl gray eyes and really didn’t care about politics or exilements or science or anything else. But he forced him self to answer, “We stay until we’ve finished the work that was going on at the Institute. When we show the world that genetic engineering can be done, then there’s no more point in keeping Kaufman and the others in exile.”

  “But that could take years,” Bonnie said.

  “It won’t take that long.”

  She looked away from him, off toward the window, like a prisoner who’s suddenly realized that the outside world is forever barred away.

  “I shouldn’t have asked them to bring you here,” Lou said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Bonnie… if you had known… if they told you that you’d have to live on this island until the project is finished … with me… would you have come?”

  She turned back to look at him, and there were tears in her eyes. “I don’t know, Lou. I just don’t know.”

  (13)

  There are more than three hundred trillion cells in the human body. Counting ten cells per second, it would take more than a million years to count them all. In each cell there are forty-six chromosomes; under the microscope they look long and threadlike, and they’ve often been described as “strings of beads.” Each “bead” is an individual gene, and altogether there are some forty thousand genes in any human cell.

  The zygote—the fertilized egg cell that develops into an embryo and within nine months into a baby—contains about forty thousand genes, just like any human cell. Half of this number come from each parent. Each individual gene is a complex molecular factory built of deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA), ribonucleic acids (RNA), and proteins. All the physical characteristics of the resulting baby are determined by the genes. Eye color, tooth structure, basic metabolic rate, chemical balance, size of brain, shape of nose—everything is controlled by the genes in the zygote.

  Lou’s work seemed simple and straightforward to him. He was training Ramo, the computer, to look over the detailed structure of each gene in a zygote and compare it to the structure of a healthy, undamaged gene.

  Ramo, being a computer, knew only what his human co-workers told him. But he had two advantages that no human possessed. First, he had absolutely perfect memory. Once the “map” of a healthy gene was stored in the microcosmic magnetic patterns of his memory bank, he would never forget it, never blur or warp it, never let any emotional conditions prevent him from seeing it exactly as it was given to him. Second, Ramo could work at the speed oflight, rather than the tediously slower pace of the human nervous system Ramo could scan dozens of genes and spot the imperfections in their molecular structure in the time it took Lou to count to ten.

  Lou often thought of himself as a teacher His job was to teach an extremely clever youngster—Ramo—how to do a very complicated job A job that no human could do because it would take him too long, and his memory wasn’t good enough Just before the Institute had been closed, Lou had taught Ramo all the patterns of healthy gene structures Ramo knew what healthy genes looked like on a molecular level Now Lou had to teach him how to compare a real set of genes with the healthy structures he already knew how to spot the things that might be wrong with real genes, and how to show these imperfections in his viewscreens Once this was done, Lou would begin to teach Ramo the biochemists’ remedies for fixing faulty genes And once that was done, the immense task was finished The work of genetic engineering could begin.

  But, sitting at the master control desk of the computer, Lou was much less than happy The desk was a huge collection of control panels and viewscreens that reached around his padded chair in a semicircle Within the reach of his fingers were controls that touched every part of Ramo’s enormous electronic mind.

  Lou was frowning as he slouched in the chair. He could see his own reflection in one of the dead viewscreens. He looked the way he felt It was mid-morning, according to the clock, but here inside the computer building it was hard to tell .There were no windows The building was frigidly air conditioned and heavily soundproofed Time meant very little to the computer.

  Two weeks had gone by since Lou had come to the island. Two weeks, and Bonnie was still as cold and distant as she had been that first day. She worked for Lou, she did her job well. She had lunch with him most days and dinner a few times, in the tiny overcrowded cafeteria that Marcus had put up near the lab complex. She even mended a hole in his pants pocket. But she still acted more like a wary employee than a friend.

  I should have never made them bring her here, Lou told himself for the millionth time that morning, She’ll never forgive me for it

  The phone beside him buzzed He punched the ANSWER button Marcus’ untanned, bland-looking face appeared on the main viewscreen.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

  Nodding, Lou said, “Some of the biochemists have been asking me to help them program Ramo to handle their work I don’t mind helping them, but it’s going to take time, and I thought you wanted me to plug ahead on the basic genetic mapping as fast as I can “

  “The biochemists?” Marcus put on a worried frown “Why do they need special computer programming?”

  “They’re working on something to do with drugs that affect the chemistry in the chromosomes, or something like “

  Marcus’ eyes widened for a flash second Then, he quickly regained his self-control “No, you’re quite right You shouldn’t be pulled off what you’re doing to help with that Let some of the other programmers help them “

  Lou said, “Okay, fine I’d be glad to help them if they need it”

  “No,” Marcus snapped “Urn, that is, they shouldn’t interfere with your work many way I’lltakecareof it If they come to you again, tell them to see me “

  “Okay thanks” Thanks “

  Marcus nodded and cut off the connection The viewscreen went blank, leaving Lou to look at his own frowning reflection again

  He worked at the control desk the rest of the morning, then around noontime phoned Bonnie She was working with a trio of Chinese girls on the other side of the building.

  “I’m afraid I can’t go to lunch with you, Lou,” she said without smiling “The girls and I are eating right here at our desks, we’ve got mountains of work to do “

  Lou punched the OFF button, and this time turned his gaze away from the viewscreen.

  It was well past six o’clock when the phone buzzed again. It pulled Lou out of his total immersion in the work of teaching genetics to Ramo. He suddenly realized that he was bone tired his back ached, his head was throbbing, his eyes burned. But on the main viewscreen Ramo was displaying a detailed enlarged map of the molecular structure of a single gene. And part of the map—the area of the gene that was flawed—was outlined in red Lou typed on the master input keyboard, GOOD WORK RAMO.

  PERFECT, he muttered the words to himself as the phone kept buzzing.

  THANK YOU, Ramo flashed on the viewscreen.

  Lou reached out and touched the phone button Ramo’s words disappeared from the screen and Anton Kori’s lean angular face took form on it He was grinning hugely, showing big white teeth with spaces between them that made them look like a ce
metery to Lou.

  “Can you have dinner with me?” Kori asked “I have a lot to talk about, a lot to show you “

  “Well, I don’t know,” Lou said “I’m kind of beat ”

  “Oh ” Ron’s smile faded, but only a little “Maybe Bonnie can you have no objection”

  “I’ve got to show these pictures to someone!”

  “Bonnie?” Lou felt his nerves flash a warning “Hum, look, Anton—I’ll give Bonnie a call and we’ll both drop over to your place Okay?”

  Kori bobbed his head up and down “Wonderful Come to my lab Next to the instrument repair shop Bonnie knows where it is “

  I’ve got no right to be sore at her, Lou told himslf as he angrily punched out Bonnie’s phone number She wasn’t in her room Glancing at the clock, Lou tried her office phone Her face filled the screen and his anger melted “Oh, hello, Lou I was just leaving for dinner” Keeping his voice flat calm, “Kori just called He’s very excited about something, wants us to eat with him Can you make it?”