Lightpaths

by Howard V. Hendrix

  Sighing, she opened her backpack and took out the Mumford text Atsuko Cortland had given her—the copy Roger had read and decorated with his marginalia. No time for the blues, Marissa thought. She had work to do. The thought that she would be reading Roger’s private notes made the task more interesting, perhaps even made her heart beat a little faster. Certainly he was handsome and brilliant in his own quirky way, but she was growing fonder of him than even those features would merit. She tried to tell herself that it was because they seemed to complement each other well: laser-like Roger with his sharp but narrow focus, and herself, more like a flashlight, illuminating a broader range, a polymath, a Renaissance woman....

  * * * * * * *

  Atsuko Cortland was hot. Toweling off the perspiration she’d raised on her body during the aikido class, she wondered for the hundredth time if these refresher courses in civilian-based defense—required of all habitat citizens—were really all that necessary. The non-violent direct resistance (NVDR) program was, even down to its acronym, based on the premise that someday the habitat citizenry might have to face an invader—an eventuality Atsuko considered highly unlikely.

  In the colony council she had initially opposed the NVDR program, fearing that the training might well bring on the invasion it was, hypothetically, supposed to resist. Even after it was made clear to her that the sort of defense arts that were to be taught would be thoroughly “local” and had no real offensive component—that they were only a small part of a much larger overall program intended not so much to directly oppose an invader as to make it difficult for the occupying force to maintain its hold on the colony—even after all that, she still had qualms. Once the council came to consensus in support of NVDR, though—and it became as close to “law” as was to be found up here—Atsuko had dutifully joined in the trainings. They were good exercise at the very least.

  Slipping back into her street clothes, the datasleeve of her blouse began to ping softly, announcing that she had an incoming message. Dressed, she took a quick look at herself in the dressing room mirror, then swept out of the building beneath the Archive playfields, still trying to determine whether she wanted to deal with “the world” just yet. Finding herself in a fairly private situation as she strode along over the fields, she decided to take the message as she walked.

  “Message recorded for Atsuko Cortland, from Global Trade Authority,” her Personal Data Assistant said quietly. Atsuko grimaced. She knew she should never have agreed to accept the post of Colony Council liaison to the GTA—an organization which she always thought of privately as the Global Trade Autocracy. Descendant of the GATTs and G7s and WTOs of the last century, the international trade-coordinating body had grown into quite the behemoth. She should have known better than to “liaise”. She had, after all, formulated one of the primary laws of political life in the habitat, the Principal of Reciprocity: Those who accept the responsibility also must accept the power, and those who accept the power must also accept the responsibility. Serving as GTA liaison meant having more power and more responsibility than she really wanted just now.

  “Abstract and condense it for me, please,” she told the PDA, thinking once again of what her husband (ex and late) had told her—how that acronym had meant something quite a bit different when he was a teenager. She sighed inwardly for a moment, remembering a long-ago snatch of warm human contact, then returned to the present, thinking that any number of acronyms had meant different things at different times. CD had meant everything from Certificate of Deposit to Compact Disc to Civil Disobedience. Maybe it should also mean Context Dependent.

  While she was thinking her PDA was busily working. For a pocket artificial intelligence it was fairly smart and soon had GTA’s undoubtedly long bureaucratic text distilled to its most relevant points.

  “How many key points?” Atsuko asked.

  “Two.”

  “Give them to me one at a time,” she said, not breaking her stride as she continued her usual post-aikido cool-down walk all the way to her residence.

  “First, the GTA is concerned by the unauthorized design, manufacture, and distribution of a trideo game called ‘Building the Ruins’,” the PDA said levelly. “It is being made by a number of micromachine flash manufactories in several countries. GTA has traced the original design, manufacture, sales, and distribution structure to the orbital habitat, specifically to the Variform Autonomous Joint Reasoning Activity, the net coordinating intelligence. The individual trideo game units are capable of two-way communication with the habitat VAJRA. Said coordinating intelligence appears to send upgrades to the trideo software on a regular basis. GTA wishes to remind the Colony Council that the manufacture, sale and distribution of this product violates numerous trade agreements. GTA demands that the High Orbital Manufacturing Enterprise cease and desist from further production of this item.”

  Atsuko frowned. This was strange news indeed. She’d have to contact whoever was currently in charge of the habitat’s net coordinator and get some background on this before she took it to the Council.

  “What’s the other key point?” she asked the PDA.

  “Second, the GTA requests information concerning the reasons for deployment of several small satellites of previously unknown description. These objects originate in the vicinity of the orbital habitat and are currently headed toward Earth orbit. The GTA wishes to remind the Colony Council that the orbital habitat has no contract or authorization for the production and deployment of these satellites. Their unauthorized deployment is a serious breach of international and interorbital law.”

  Atsuko walked in thoughtful silence for longer than she would have expected. The unauthorized trideos were bad enough, but these satellites or whatever they were—those could actually be a much more significant problem. She had lived on Earth long enough and learned enough history to know that there were many people down there—particularly those of a military bent—who considered space the ultimate high ground. Hadn’t that been a big part of the motor that drove the first space race to the moon? These people would not do well with the prospect of unidentified satellites deploying to Earth orbit from the habitat. She needed to talk to someone in powersat production, and soon.

  “Hope it’s just the usual space junk,” she said, aloud but to herself. Looking around, she realized that she was already in her yard. Glancing up at the other side of the ensphered world of the habitat arcing far above her, she wondered with a shudder if the scenario underlying the NVDR program might not be so far-fetched after all.

  * * * * * * *

  “I still can’t figure out exactly how those glitches might have arisen in the net coordinator,” Lakshmi said to Lev as they worked to transfer the Möbius Cadúceus skysign into the memory of a photorefractive holographic projector—one of Lev’s most prized stage-pyrotechnic devices. “The keyword mention, though, particularly ‘schizos’, that has to have something to do with Jiro Yamaguchi’s connection to all this.”

  “Whatever floats your boat,” Lev said with a shrug, not wanting to get into it. “At least we’ve got all the corrupted code out of my shobots. I’m sure Aleister’s having a great time with it.”

  “Looks like the skysign’s all loaded,” Lakshmi said, checking a display screen and turning her hoverchair toward where Lev’s special effect projector would soon be projecting. “Set it free.”

  Lev spoke a machine command, sotto voce. The Möbius Cadúceus symbol leapt into the warehouse space before them, giant-sized, a rainbow redesigned by a mad topologist, a Rorschach skyscape.

  “Oh yeah,” Lev said, unable to take his eyes from it. Lakshmi remained silent, staring, the beautiful complexity of the thing forming a singularity from which her words could not escape.

  Chapter Six

  “Here again so early, Marissa?” Roger said, joining her in the Cybergene virtuality. “Already at work, too. You spend much more time here and we’re going to start ca
lling you ‘The Girl with the DNA Eyes.’”

  Marissa laughed. She was, after all, dealing with DNA, and when she had her virtual wraparounds on, anyone looking at her would see two images of that molecule where her eyes were supposed to be.

  “I’d consider that an honorable title,” Marissa said, shagging back her red hair. “You were right about this being a user-friendly toy. Got right into it. I’m dealing with the dynamics of reverse transcriptase and with a well-known location on Human Chromosome One, so there’s a good deal of prepackaged graphics material available on those.”

  “What’re you doing with them?” Roger asked in her implants. “I thought you were working on longevity’s link to lowered mortality and delayed senescence in naked mole-rats.”

  “I am, but I’ve broadened it beyond just mole-rats,” Marissa said, initiating a graphic sequence. “Here, I’ll show you.” She switched on the large scale display and the two of them moved within it, interacting with the submicroscopic world.

  “Let’s move down into The Notch,” she said, causing an area of chromosomal surface to grow into canyon around them. Via feedback, they “felt” their way among the forces acting on the molecular landscape through which they moved.

  “There it is,” she continued, “the part of Chromosome One where aging and death are. This is the genescape my viral vector will have to target and modify.”

  “What exactly are you trying to do?” Roger asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “Well,” Marissa began, taking a deep breath, wanting to impress Roger and hoping he wouldn’t shoot her idea down from the start, “my research with your mole-rats indicates it should be possible to design viral vectors to speed up the evolutionary pace of the immune system, supercharge its rate of reactivity. At the same time, it should also be possible to use reverse transcriptase’s ability to translate viral RNA into host-cell DNA—as a means by which to vector into the genome the immortalizing capability from teratoma tumors. A non-carcinogenic telomere alteration. These immortalizing vectors can then be targeted at, among other places, Human Chromosome One—particularly at the gene series on that chromosome which programs senescence and allows death to occur.”

  Roger was silent a moment. Marissa hoped that merely meant he was thinking carefully about what she’d said.

  “You want to take traits from the so-called ‘immortalized cancer cells’ of teratocarcinomas and use them against aging?” he asked.

  Marissa nodded mutely. Perhaps he felt her nod, but at any rate he went on.

  “Well, I don’t think you can overcome aging and death quite that easily,” he said, “but it would be a step in that direction, certainly. Using engineered viral vectors to transfer the immortalizing trait from teratoma sources into the human genome—that’s quite a novel approach. Potentially dangerous too, though, even if you do beat the cancer factor. If human longevity were to be greatly increased, but without any corresponding decrease in birth rate or the rate of survival to sexual maturity—just think how that would ratchet up the population problem! That’s a consequence you might want to consider carefully.”

  Marissa smiled, for in Roger’s voice she could hear that he was indeed impressed—almost despite himself—and was taking her work quite seriously.

  “I’m nowhere close to developing the vector yet,” Marissa said. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of unleashing an Immortality Plague upon humanity.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Roger said with a laugh. “My own work may be a little closer to fruition, though.”

  “Show me,” Marissa said eagerly.

  Without further delay Roger quickly logged them out of Marissa’s Cybergene graphics sequence and into his own. They moved along another chromosome, watched and felt it grow into canyonland around them, then stopped along a particular length of it. Roger quickly overlay the site with all pertinent chemical information concerning it.

  “What’s here?” Marissa asked.

  “A gene that gives rise to important receptor molecules in the vomeronasal nerve,” Roger said proudly, “maybe even in the brain itself, of the naked mole-rat. I’ve always believed that behavioral and physical controls are inadequate to account for the level of reproductive suppression in the mole-rat. There must be a chemical component, a pheromone. The receptor molecules this gene leads to are exactly what the mole-rat pheromones would have to bind to. Using gene machines like this one, I’m generating thousands of hypotheticals, ‘scenario-compounds,’ and testing them. Speeded-up mutation, as it were. With the receptor cloned or even just simulated, we can test those compounds quickly to select the appropriate active ones. Mutation and selection: all we basically need for directed artificial evolution.”

  Now it was Marissa’s turn to be impressed. They clicked out of the virtuality and exited the CAMD facility for the main lab, busily exchanging insights into each other’s work. They were still thus caught up when they walked into the lab.

  “Good morning, Roger. Hello, Marissa.”

  They looked up to see Atsuko Cortland standing in the doorway of Roger’s lab office.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said with a grimace. “What brings you to my lab?”

  “Nothing in particular,” Atsuko said, fingering absently the end of a thin braid that floated amidst the rest of her flowing hair like a rope in a waterfall. “I heard you had returned from Earth. Not that you’d tell me yourself, of course.” She paused as if awaiting some response. Roger only clicked off the terminal he’d just turned on and stared at her. “I also heard your funding hunt didn’t go so well.”

  “‘Hearing things’ is a sign of deteriorating mental health,” Roger said, standing abruptly and walking stiffly past his mother. “You should really have that checked into, Mother.”

  “Ah, that’s more like the Roger I know!” Atsuko Cortland said, walking out of the office, following Roger into the center of the lab. Her gaze lighted on squirming naked mole rats in their glass-walled colony. “You’re still working with these little grotesques, hm? Whatever do you see in them?”

  Roger began to talk about self-regulating populations and feedback loops and the only mammal with insectoid eusocial organization—

  “No, no. I’ve heard all that. What is it, really? You’ve been obsessed with them for years. It’s even less healthy than my ‘hearing things’.”

  Roger said nothing, merely fiddled with genome map graphics and pretended not to have heard.

  “Oh, very well,” Atsuko sighed. “Then at least you can tell me what direction your research is going to take, can’t you? Now that you’ve lost most of your funding?”

  “I haven’t lost most of my funding,” Cortland said in exasperation, turning to monitor the output of an automatic nucleic acid synthesizer that hummed and clicked in an alcove of the lab. “I just didn’t get the new funding I wanted. We’re restructuring our researches.”

  “How?”

  Roger summarized the gene/receptor molecule/pheromone binding scenario he’d just given Marissa.

  “Seems like an awful lot of work,” his mother remarked with a shrug when he was done, “just to find out what turns on or turns off some obscure endangered sand rats.”

  “It would be—if that were where I intended to stop,” Roger said quickly, pride creeping into his voice once more. “But I don’t. I have a strong suspicion that the pheromone active in mole rats will be a strong structural analog of one active in humans too.”

  “Oh, I see what you’re getting at!” his mother said, turning her gaze from the rat burrow. “You’re going into the perfume business, just like your father did before he branched out.”

  Roger glanced down at the floor of the lab.

  “I hadn’t thought of it in exactly those terms, but yes, I guess you could say that.”

  “A word to the wise then, dear. Making sweet smells is a dirty business. Your mole-rat pheromon
e—where do you think it comes from?”

  Marissa sensed that Roger already knew where she was headed but was going to answer anyway.

  “Urine, scent secretions on the skin, fecal matter—”

  “See?”

  Roger shook his head in frustration.

  “So? Ambergris is whale puke. Civet is cat stink—”

  “My point precisely. A dirty business. Good luck, but try to keep your nose clean. So to speak.” With a burst of her shattering windchime laughter she breezed toward the exit door of the lab. “Good-bye,” she called as she left. “See you later, Marissa.”

  Beside her, Roger stood cracking his knuckles nervously, until he realized he was doing so. Then he stopped. Somehow, Marissa felt sorry for both of them, wondering what it was that could ever have driven mother and son into such an antagonistic relationship.

  * * * * * * *

  Atsuko Cortland knew she hadn’t been at her best with Roger. She had really intended to console, not to taunt, but the moment they saw each other, that expression on his face—as if he blamed her for everything that had ever gone less than perfectly in his life! It was maddening!

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough to worry about already—what with the illegal trideos and space junk satellites souring the relations between the colony and Earth. She just really didn’t need Roger giving her further cause for alarm right now.

  She needed some time to herself to think. Some time when she could be someone other than the respected and recognized Atsuko Cortland, someone anonymous and seemingly new to life up here, someone through whose eyes she could look without having to pass everything through the distorting filter of Atsuko Cortland’s reputation.