by K. Makansi
“If he did, he never told me,” Eli responds, looking around in awe at the vast variety of plants in this spacious room. Soren, by contrast, looks perfectly at ease in this bizarre space, so much so that I assume he’s been here several times before. “He always said it could be a scientific breakthrough if we could figure out the code.”
There is a pause, and Eli turns back to staring at the plants. Rhinehouse suddenly addresses me: “Remy, did you know I taught your mother when she was a student at the SRI?”
For a second I’m confounded that the old man is paying attention to me when he’s rarely so much as looked in my direction.
“I didn’t know that, no,” I respond. Rhinehouse’s one eye is boring into me.
“I used to teach at the university, and your mother was one of my students” he begins. “And I worked for the OAC. I was a botanical geneticist—let me show you this, come over here.” He leads me down one of three narrow aisles cutting through the length of the room. Eli and Soren follow in our wake. “Look at this one here,” Rhinehouse says. He keeps moving down the row until he stops and gestures to a grotesque vine with enormous black spiky thorns crawling up a wooden picket. “This is one of my creations. I call her Spinae. If you cross her path, she’ll shoot these thorns in defense. They’re as stiff and sharp as a blade. They’ll go straight through even thick clothing, and once they penetrate the skin, they hurt like hell to rip out.”
“How does it know when to shoot the thorns, and why isn’t it shooting at us?” I ask, feeling like I should be wearing armor.
“It senses light and shadow. I keep the attack plants in this section dormant unless I’m testing.”
“Dormant?”
“It just means altering the genetic code a bit to keep the gene sequence from activating,” he explains, as if it was no big thing—and indeed, Eli barely bats a lash. “And these thorns are special, because once they penetrate the skin, they release a venom that works to atrophy the muscles. You may get a few thorns, pull them out, and then an hour later not be able to stand up.”
“A botanical guard dog.” I step back from the plant and bump into Eli, standing right behind me, peering over my shoulder. “That’s terrifying.”
“Indeed.” His voice shrinks at the word, and his bushy eyebrows knit together as a brief flash of concern, or sadness, passes over his face. He quickly shakes it off, the wrinkles fade, and he turns back to me. “At least they’re not deadly. Now, of course you three know all too well the malevolent ways the OAC and the Sector Dieticians use genetically modified food. When this research was in infancy, the Sector’s goal was to nurse society back to health. To do that, we had to rebuild the population. No one knows how many died in the Wars and the Famines, but we had to start over again. Remy, your grandfather led much of this research. My specialty was in botany, not mammalian engineering like Kanaan, but when he retired, I took over for him temporarily. I taught two of the best scientists in the Sector, two people who became instrumental to the food engineering programs and who were much better at it than I was: your mother and Corine Orleán.”
Just when the story’s getting good, he turns now to a plant with brilliant golden petals. “Now, this one is a narcissus. In the old days, they called it a daffodil. Pretty. We’ve altered the DNA for this particular beauty so it blooms year-round, and when stepped on, it does more than immobilize. This one is designed to kill.”
“Wait. So you can use it as a weapon?” I sputter, entranced.
“Yes.”
“You build weapons from plants?”
Rhinehouse meets my gaze and holds it for what seems like a thousand years. “Yes. That was my job. But, now I spend most of my time trying to make sure we have effective antidotes.”
I stare at him. How could anyone do this? Bioweapons. Poison gas. Deadly flowers. Aren’t these the kinds of things that led to the devastation of the Religious Wars? Of the Famine Years? Wasn’t that what the Okarian Sector was founded to protect its people from? It comes as no surprise that there is violence in the Sector—that illusion of peace and prosperity was shattered for me when Tai died—but I had no idea that Rhinehouse and other scientists were creating the same kind of weapons that were used in the old world. But then, shouldn’t I have known? Am I still so naïve as to think that our society is immune to the temptation to destroy? I study his face: etched with wrinkles; a grey, stubbly beard; leathery skin; dark grey hair. He’d spent his life developing ways to kill people, until, like everyone else in the Resistance, he realized it was wrong. How does that feel—carrying around that guilt, regret, and responsibility? Then it dawns on me.
“We’re using these weapons against the Sector,” I whisper.
“Of course we are, Remy,” Soren snaps. I’d almost forgotten he was here. “Don’t be naïve. Just because we’re trying to avoid killing Sector soldiers doesn’t mean we don’t have to defend our own resources.”
“Follow me,” Rhinehouse says, interrupting our bickering. He beckons us down the row. We turn right and come across a workstation—a group of desks piled with equipment and computer screens. A stool on rollers sits alone in the middle of the mess, and Rhinehouse sits down on it and looks up at us. As though sensing some big revelation, Soren is suddenly at my side again.
“I brought you all here because I think I have a clue as to what your DNA contains.”
At my side, Eli sucks in his breath sharply, and I gawk at Rhinehouse.
“How do you know?” I stutter.
“I don’t. It’s just a clue.”
“So what’s the clue?” Eli asks excitedly.
Rhinehouse narrows his eye at Eli and frowns. “For such an intelligent young man, you are awfully slow to recognize when to keep your mouth shut. Now hush and let me explain.
“A year and a half before my friend Professor Aran Hawthorne was murdered, I received a very peculiar message—” Rhinehouse fixes his single eye on me—“from your grandfather, Kanaan. The message was encrypted using an algorithm that took me the better part of a month to solve, and inside was a riddle.”
I do a quick calculation in my head. “Wait, that would be right around when he died—”
“Yes,” he responds, cutting me off. “In fact, he died the day after I received this message.”
“But what did the riddle say?” Soren asks, his curiosity for once getting the better of him. Unlike Eli, though, Soren earns nothing but a raised eyebrow for speaking out of turn.
“One verse, four lines:
‘No other chain has the power to free
Nothing so dead gives rise to such life
Spiraling towers hide sacred flowers
Crystalline structures cut like a knife.’
That’s all the message contained.”
There is a long pause as Rhinehouse looks between the three of us, as if daring one of us to figure it out. I glance up at Eli, who has that same thoughtful look on his face that has become so prevalent in the last few weeks. Soren looks peaceful, as he always does when he’s not making sarcastic comments in my direction.
“But…” Eli starts, confused.
Then Rhinehouse asks me another question: “Remy, in his old age, your grandfather was always talking about something very particular. What was it?”
Obsessing, more like. I think back to the last year or two of Granddad Kanaan’s life. When he got old, he got really paranoid. In his moments of lucidity, though, Granddad would always talk about how he hoped one day we could go back to cultivating real seeds, seeds that had actually evolved in nature rather than just being created in a lab. He even talked about building a seed bank that only had real seeds—nothing engineered or artificial at all. He was always going on about genetic diversity, and how important it was to rediscover our roots as a species and get back to using those old world seeds.
“Old world seeds. That’s what he was always talking about.”
Soren mutters quietly, so quietly that I have to strain to hear him. “He was referring to the DNA. Wh
at a beautiful verse.…” He trails off, and when I look up at him, his eyes are glazed over.
To break Soren’s spiritual reverie, Rhinehouse speaks up, matter-of-factly as though he were telling us about the ingredients in one of his recipes.
“Here’s my theory. Your grandfather had some information about those old seeds that he wanted to share, but he knew how treacherous that information could be within the OAC. So before he died, he hid it so no one could find it. I think he sent that verse out to people he trusted—myself and Professor Hawthorne—right before he died, hoping that someone would solve his riddle and find the information he had been guarding.
“The first two lines, I think, are the clues to what that synthetic DNA codes for. No other chain has the power to free, nothing so dead gives rise to such life,” he recites. “That very clearly refers to DNA—a chain of molecules, an inorganic, ‘dead’ substance that is responsible for the reaction of life. But it also could be much more subtle than that. He could also have been referring to the possibility of freeing us from the OAC’s genetically engineered regime, and the resurrection of life, of real seeds, that would come from his artificial, completely nonfunctional DNA.”
A moment of awed silence spreads over our group as we contemplate this possibility. Then Eli pipes up.
“The second two lines must refer to wherever he hid the DNA. Spiraling towers hide sacred flowers—does that refer to the cyanobacteria Hawthorne found them in? But cyanobacteria aren’t at all related to flowers…”
“But flowers give birth to seeds,” Rhinehouse responds. “He could have been referring to the fact that he hid seeds—or, at least, their genetic codes—inside ‘spiraling towers’ of his artificially synthesized DNA.
“I’ve long suspected that parts of it referred to the genetic codes for some of the now-extinct species of plant that he was obsessed with. We may never know how and where Hawthorne found the DNA. He obviously solved that part of the puzzle before I did, and it no longer matters.” Suddenly he turns and corners Eli with his one-eyed stare. “You have a full copy of all the information available here?”
“Yeah, I brought it with me when we left the Sector.”
“Including the structural layout of the synthetic chromosomes?”
“Yep.”
“Show me.”
Eli pulls out a tiny tab of metal and hands it to Rhinehouse, who promptly turns to his network of computers, activates all the systems, and connects the hard drive. He begins downloading all the information onto his system, pausing every now and then to zoom in on a particular protein sequence as it loads. When the first full chromosome has loaded, he brings up a hologram and starts twisting and turning it, the same way I’ve been playing with it on my plasma. After a few minutes of looking over Rhinehouse’s shoulder as he works, I glance at Eli. Has Rhinehouse forgotten we’re even here? But just then he cuts in, without turning away from his computer.
“Did anyone else in the Sector know about this?”
“I don’t think so.” Eli’s voice has an edge to it, and I look up at him, surprised. Why isn’t he mentioning Corine? Soren’s looking askance at Eli as well, but both of us keep our mouths shut.
“All right,” Rhinehouse says, still staring at his monitor. “I’ll keep my word. You don’t have to worry about me telling the Director or anyone else. After all,” he mutters, sounding like he’s talking to himself, “I’ve kept Kanaan’s secret for four years. I can keep it a while longer.” He spins in his chair and turns back to us.
“Keep working on this in your spare time, as well. If I make any breakthroughs, I’ll come to you, and please, do the same for me. Otherwise, don’t bother me unless it’s absolutely necessary. Now, go to bed. Remy, I’ll see you at 06h00 for harvesting duties. Goodnight.”
With that, he turns away, and we’ve clearly been dismissed. Soren leads us through the tangle of plants and back out through the door.
“Why didn’t you tell him about Corine?” Soren hisses once we’re in the hallway, his big shoulders hunched over as he mutters in Eli’s ear. “He’s going to be furious when he finds out you lied to him.” I have to admit, it’s a teeny bit satisfying to see Soren turn his ire on someone other than me.
“I don’t want him to get the sense that this is really urgent,” Eli whispers back. “If he does, he might be tempted to break his word. I don’t want to give him any incentive to go running to the Director shouting, ‘Danger.’”
Soren opens his mouth, about to respond, but then thinks better of it and turns away. Instead, he mutters something about how Rhinehouse is going to find out eventually, but Eli just laughs.
“What’s he going to do to me? Feed me to the Director? I’m less worried about Rhinehouse’s rage than I am about Corine putting Vale on our scent.”
Hearing Vale’s name instantly brings his face swimming back before my eyes. I blink him away and shove him back into the darkness. I wrap one arm around Eli’s waist as we head back toward the dormitories, looking for the comfort of a strong, warm body to lean on. He puts his arm around me as we amble quietly through the hallways, and I know he’s thinking about the same things I am. It’s a good thing we have each other. It’s late enough that there aren’t many people out. Everyone’s either in bed or settled into their night-long workstations. By the time we’re at Soren’s bunk room, we’re all yawning. Jahnu is already in bed—thank goodness. Now I won’t have to worry about walking in on him and Kenzie in our shared quarters.
Eli volunteers to walk me to my bunk. It’s not far, and once we get there, he pulls me into an enormous hug, and his arms seem big enough to wrap around my whole body twice.
“Listen, kid. Remember our pact,” he says. “We’re going to get them back for what they did to Tai, Hawthorne, and all the others. We can’t bring them back, but we can make things better for everyone else.” He lets me go and grips my shoulders, staring at me with those brown eyes and dark lashes.
“We’re gonna make them pay. Just like we said.”
“Every last one of them.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Goodnight, little bird,” he says, pulling me in for one last quick hug. “Sleep tight. Come find me if you need help fighting any demons, okay?” He turns and marches off.
I open the door to my room and see that Kenzie is already asleep. I crawl up in bed, careful not to make any noise, and pull my blanket over my head. I curl up in a ball and shut my eyes tightly, steeling myself to wake up at 05h45 in the morning to be ready for harvest duties.
Now, though, all I can think about is that my granddad may have left us a message hidden inside that DNA, and it seems all the more important that we crack the code. The sunflower image I’ve been twirling and spinning for the last few weeks surfaces again in my head. Sunflowers were chosen by the Sector’s first Corporate Assembly to be the Sector emblem because they are compound flowers, they tower over other flowers, and they have a sort of powerful elegance about them. Also, through the process of phytoremediation, they are able to extract and store radioactive contaminants in their stems and leaves. Because of this, they symbolize growth and renewal in the wake of the destruction of the old world. But most importantly, with their seeds perfectly arranged according to the mathematical Fibonacci sequence, they are prized as examples of how orderly nature is and perfectly represented the Sector’s goals—to create order out of chaos. But what perplexes me about the whole damn thing is that my grandfather hated sunflowers. He was always going on about how obtrusive they are, tall enough to be barricades, to build up walls between people, and of course, how offensively yellow they are. Why would he have left this information, which he obviously thought was hugely important, in the form of something he hated?
It doesn’t make sense.
10 - VALE
Fall 75, Sector Annum 105, 08h00
Gregorian Calendar: December 4
“Valerian, wake up,” comes a gentle whisper in my ear. I comprehend her words, but barely. Are they
words of dreams or stuff more solid? My eyes flutter open and I register my arms, which have served as a pillow for the last few hours, my desk, and the soft light Demeter is allowing into the room to tell me it’s time to get up. “Valerian, it’s eight in the morning. You need to clean up before the meeting.”
“Five more minutes, Deme. Wake me up in five minutes,” I mutter. I close my eyes again and relish the blackness, the quietness. I hear her recorded, simulated sigh. Even in my groggy haze, I manage to wonder how the programmers made her disappointment sound so unbearably real.
“No, Valerian. It’s time now.” Her gentle voice is both consoling and reprimanding. I raise my head from my elbows reluctantly and blink the clouds away. Demeter slowly opens the windows to let in more light as my eyes adjust. I hear piano music in the background, slowly building in volume. For a moment, I can’t place the piece; that’s how tired I am. Then my fingers involuntarily begin to pick it out, and I realize it’s Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 3. How could she know this is one of my favorite pieces?
As the music wakes me up, I run a hand through my hair and realize it’s matted, sticking together at odd angles. I’m probably a wreck. I didn’t even bother to change clothes after yesterday’s workout. She’s right, I need to clean up. I can sleep later. I can sleep when I’m dead.
Demeter and I were working until almost six in the morning, analyzing topographical maps, studying aerial photographs, and scrutinizing classified documents for details about the Resistance and their most recent projects. In an hour, I’ll present details of the mission I’ve been planning to the generals of Aviation, Engineering, and Peacekeeping, the OAC Corporate Assembly, and the chancellor and his cabinet, the Board of Governors. After that, I’ll sleep. Probably for about eighteen hours. And then back to work again. Always back to work again.
“Demeter, double check that the slides are in the right order while I shower?” For a moment, I’m jealous of her ability to work without sleep, of her lack of physical needs. But seconds later, I remember that she needs me to exist, and I’m thankful that I exist in a more corporeal form than a series of electrical signals in the OAC databases. Especially now that I’m awake enough to look forward to a hot shower.