by MadMaxAU
Saul breathed rapidly as he looked at the culminating formula. He could feel his own pulse pound.
“I’m sorry I interfered without asking permission, Saul. But you were stomping all through the data system by the time I noticed. Sooner or later you were bound to set of alarms.”
Saul found his voice.
“That’s all right, Virginia. I . . . I’m grateful for the help “
There was a brief pause. Then a holo-unit display to his left came alight and Virginia Herbert’s face wavered and smoothed, a replica in rich color that still hinted of salt breezes and tropical sun. Her long black hair flowed over her shoulders, slightly puffed, as if it had been hurriedly brushed just moments ago.
“I’m glad you’re not angry with me for butting in. “
“Angry!” Saul laughed. “You saved one of us, either me or this obdurate machine!”
Virginia smiled. “Well, it’s a relief to know I did the right thing. Actually, that’s pretty complicated stuff you’re dealing with there, Saul. I can’t pretend to understand any of it. I’m just a glorified numbers jockey.”
“I disagree.” Saul shook his head firmly. “You are an artist.”
Virginia’s olive skin darkened perceptibly. Her “Thank you” was barely audible. Saul shared a long smile with her.
Virginia’s eyes darted. “Um, if you ‘d like, you could come on down here and we’ll put JonVon to work on your problem. He’s a stochastic processor, you know. And I happen to believe that makes him a lot more applicable to the kind of problem you’ve got there than these old parallel precision machines.
“I’m sure we can whip up a simulation to make that one there look like a stick figure cartoon.”
Saul nodded. “Only if you let me bring a bottle, Virginia. I have a feeling we’re going to need it.”
“Done!” she said gladly.
As Saul was getting up though, a stretched image of Virginia’s arm reached out across his desk—like an India-rubber man—to tap with one finger at the glowing, throbbing line of gold lettering at the top of the tall pyramid of data.
“What is that anyway, Saul? Is it something special?”
He shrugged. “Well. I guess you could say so, Virginia. It’s the chemical symbol for something called a purine base. A rather simple one, really, called adenine.”
Virginia withdrew her ghostly, representative hand. “Well, I hope it’s important. But whether it is or not, I’ll bet we’ll be taking this a whole lot farther. I have a feeling for these things, you know.”
She smiled brilliantly.
“See you down here in a few minutes, Saul. VKH out.” Her image vanished.
Saul stood still for a moment. “Yes, dear,” he said at last to the presence she seemed to have left behind. “I do believe we are going to take it quite a bit farther.”
VIRGINIA
MOLECULAR STRANDS, LIKE MULTICOLORED STAIRCASES…LIGHTING FLASHING IN THE DARKNESS…
At the simulation’s finest scale, the molecule was little more than a stylized ladder put together from standard pieces—bright, slivers of blue, green, and red—amino acids, phosphates, and simple sugars linked like ill-sorted parts of an intricate jigsaw puzzle.
The chain seemed to twist and writhe as it tumbled in a churning stream. A tracery of silvery lines stitched out electric currents, crackling unevenly through the salty fluid.
Shiny golden radicals smacked into the growing polymer. Most bounced off again in sudden flashes of light. Occasionally one knocked a fragment loose into the flow, diminishing the molecule, leaving a hanging, ragged corner. A little more often, the colliding chunk found a niche with the right shape, and stuck.
As the polymer grew, the scale of the scene enlarged, as if a camera were drawing back. A new strand joined the first, then another, twining together in a jumbled mass. The cluster fell toward a great ocher wall that loomed from below, a rusty plain pocked with jagged holes.
The edge of one of the black openings caught the molecular skein, one end draping into the gap. The cluster tipped for a few seconds, then toppled inside.
“It’s a clay . . . something like montmorillonite, I believe. Notice how the chain slips right into the open latticework. Only a few of the shapes being synthesized in the open stream will be able to enter this way.
“It’s an early step in the long process of selection. Some theories say it happened this way on Earth lone ago. At last the molecules are sheltered from the tumbling give-and-take of the electrified stream. Only certain radicals can get at them in there . . . and the shape of the cavity aligns the molecules just so. The buildup—slow and chaotic beforehand—begins now in earnest.
“Funny it being a clay, though. I would have expected it to be .something like iron oxide. But see how the peptides actually seem to catalyze the growth of new clay layers? Amazing. I’d forgotten about that!”
Virginia let Saul ramble on, sharing his excitement but too busy to reply unless he asked a direct question. Right now it was a challenge just integrating all the diverse elements in his complicated program.
She was used to bright pictures and vivid simulations anyway. No, what impressed her was the intricacy of this world of molecules and currents, of clashing atoms and chiming balance. It was a maelstrom of tiny tugs and pulls computed in a eleven-dimensional matrix space, and still the diversity of forms amazed her.
The screen showed only the most superficial part of it—the averaged sampling of JonVon’s stochastic correlator. It was the math, down below, that really kept Virginia occupied. Only occasionally did she look up to see how the images were coming along.
Right now the simulation was following the developing molecules down into their new home. They nestled into crannies in the complex clay latticework, leaving a central passage through which fresh material entered from the outside. New pieces were added, and old ones discarded as dross to float away. The shape of the still-growing chain kept changing, now as a simple helix, elsewhere doubling back on itself, switching handedness left and right.
Saul commented again.
“I’m cheating a bit, here, for the sake of speed. We’ve set up initial conditions and are letting huge numbers of simulated molecules ‘evolve,’ leaving it to your wonderful machine to pick out the most successful line out of billions . . . coaxing the most promising to do the best it can under these conditions.
“We’ll see if a nudge here and there can take this primitive thing and give us . . .”
Virginia found her job growing easier, now that JonVon’s expert system was picking up the basic rules of this game.
Or was it because Saul was getting better at his end?
They lay next to each other on a broad, web-hammock in her laboratory, each linked by cable to the intricate hardware/software unit. For Virginia it was a familiar experience, wearing a delicate induction tap and playing her fingers lightly like a pianist on the pattern keys. Saul, on the other hand, was more awkward with his controls. The bulky cortex helmet he wore lacked the compact deftness of her specially designed link.
Yet, he was getting over his clumsiness quickly. And his excitement was contagious. His subvocalised thoughts arrived directly along her, acoustic nerve.
“This is wonderful, Virginia! Far; far more than a mere simulation program, this construct of yours explores possibilities!”
“JonVon’s processor is bio-organic, Saul. A matrix of pseudo-proteins in a filament mesh. Back home they dropped that approach years ago, because its point-error rate is pretty high. In fact, you’re treated like some sort of nut if you even talk about it, today.” She hoped none of her bitterness carried over into her words.
“Hmmm. More point errors, sure. But you can pack so many circuits into a tiny area that it doesn’t matter, does it?
Virginia felt a thrill. He understands.
“That’s right, Saul. A stochastic processor works with probabilities, not discrete yes-or-no answers.”
“It’s like the way Kunie describ
es the operation of the human preconscious! Have you read any of Kunie’s work?”
Virginia laughed. Aloud it was a soft chuckle. In their heads, the sound of bells.
“Of course I have! I couldn’t have gotten this far without that man’s ideas on the creative process. But I’m surprised you’ve heard of him, Saul. Conceptual heuristics isn’t anywhere near molecular biology on the library shelves.”
There was a pause as Saul’s attention returned to the simulation. He nudged a particularly large molecular cluster out of one of the gaping clay tunnels before it could jam the flow of fresh material, a minor interference for the sake of this early trial.
“I knew Kunie, Virginia. His family gave me a place to stay after the Expulsion . . . .”
The “walls” of the simulated latticework throbbed slightly, and Virginia moved gently to stabilize the model against further interference by Saul’s emotions. Without letting on, she created another pathway for his feelings—away from the model and into a small side nexus where they might be buffered, studied . . . touched.
“Was that when you started working with Simon Percell?” she asked. History had never been her specialty. And Virginia knew that there had been more than one “Expulsion” from the land called Israel.
“Good lord, no.” This time it was Saul’s turn to laugh. The tone resonated in the little buffer like low cello strings.
“The Levites were still a small fanatic Jewish fringe in the Judean hills, and their Salawite friends were nothing more than a bunch of seething Syrian exiles, back when I worked with Simon in Birmingham.”
While JonVon kept the simulation going, Virginia was attempting to trace the tendrils of Saul’s pain, more vivid than anything she had ever experienced in a human-to-human link before. But then Saul changed the subject again.
“We sure could have used tools like these, back when Simon and I were working on the gamete-separation problem,” he subvocalised. “All we had then were kilobit parallel processors, gigabyte memories, and inferential sequencers that took days to analyze a single chromosome.
“But they were good times.”
Virginia felt moved by his intensity, even as she focused in on it, enlarging the channel capacity and sensitivity of the link. Saul was easier to probe than any subject she had had before. Except, maybe, for the littlest children.
And for some reason it was not unpleasantly disorienting, this time. To the contrary, it was pleasant, if a little frightening. The man was . . . well, strong.
“Go on, Saul. The simulation’s running well. I’d like to hear more about those days. You started telling Carl and me about your early work on cures for sickle cell and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome and lupus.”
“Cures!” Saul laughed, and the cellos were joined by a bitter choir of cymbals. “Yeah, I did. Fortunately, most of our later efforts worked better. Some of the early `successes’ were only partial.”
Virginia knew that. She had already gone into the expedition’s records and expunged all trace of her own infirmity. Of course, it couldn’t affect her duties in any way—in fact the authorities would likely approve of it. But she had erased the data anyway. It just wasn’t anyone else’s damn business.
Virginia smoothed down her own emotions and concentrated on solving the mystery of this oddly open channel to Saul’s subsurface feelings. I’m learning more today than I did in a year, back home, she thought.
She felt JonVon’s central presence pull up alongside, imitating her actions, learning by “watching” how she played the channels, adjusted resonances. Smoothly, at her command, her machine surrogate slipped in to take over. Soon she was able to pull back for a minute and check the biology simulation, their ostensible reason for being here.
It surged on, piling intricacy onto complexity. Now the scale had zoomed back again to enclose an entire field of lattice openings, each with its own fringe of huge, blue-white molecules waving out into the electric stream, like cilia around gaping mouths.
She tried to keep the conversation going. “But you weren’t with Percell when . . .”
“When he made his fatal error? Those poor monstrosities? No. Perhaps I should have been. I might have done more good than I did by going back to Haifa to join the struggle. By then it was too late, of course. The old Sabras and the kibbutzim had risen, and been crushed by the Levites and their ‘peacekeeping’ mercenaries. Miriam and the little ones…”
The sudden wash of feelings was overpowering and direct. Virginia’s eyes fluttered and teared as she remembered scenes of grisly horror…seemed almost to see burning settlements, forests in flame . . . felt the thalamic surge of anguish and guilt.
Furious, she commanded JonVon to stop creating these images. The machine had no business interfering like this!
I am only enhancing, Virginia,
JonVon announced coolly over their private channel, dryly delivering news that stunned her even more than the glittering scene of a temple rising on an ancient hill. Virginia’s mouth was suddenly dry. But . . .
I am not interpolating or simulating any of this. Amplified, these are direct images from the subject.
Her hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, forcing the machine to automatically disable her fingertip controls. Her breath came in ragged, audible gasps as the truth struck hard.
“He nalulu ehaeha!”
Distantly, she felt the waldo gloves being pulled from her hands, her shoulders lifted in strong arms.
“Are you all right, Virginia?” Saul was speaking aloud. “I didn’t mean to come on so strong. I thought you did this sort of thing all the time.”
She blinked, looking up at his concerned face. “Y-you knew what I was up to?”
He laughed. “Who wouldn’t, with you and your cybernetic familiar skulking around at the edges of my mind, poking and probing?”
He shook his head. “Honestly, Virginia, what you’ve done here is astonishing. It felt . . . direct! I Thought-to-thought contact. It’s been in so many stories and films, even after Margan supposedly proved it impossible, years ago, but . . .”
Virginia was still numb. “It is. It’s supposed to be . . . impossible, I mean. I use JonVon to mediate, to guess and pattern, to simulate. But I never expected . . .”
Now Saul’s expression was serious. “You mean that was your first time?”
Virginia had to smile. “Yes, my first. But don’t worry, Saul. You were a perfect gentleman.”
That did it. He rocked back and howled, and she joined in. They laughed together. The tension seemed to evaporate and for a long moment neither of them seemed to take any notice of the fact that he was still holding her.
This feels so good, she thought at last.
“Hmmm?” he said, tapping his helmet. “I only got a little of that, but I’m pretty sure I agree with whatever it was.”
She looked up at him. “Oh, Saul. I’d known you had a sad life. But it’s different feeling it, almost remembering it myself.”
Yet another image flickered at the edge of vision, a woman. She was no great beauty, certainly—mousy dark hair framing an ordinary face—but her smile was warm, and there was a brimming glow. Behind her were two smaller faces, a boy and a girl.
Miriam? Your children?
Yes. A pain softened by time. Love undiminished.
And in her own heart, another pain, still fierce. Love unanswerable.
“You don’t hate me . . . for what the gene treatments did to you?” Saul asked.
Virginia looked up quickly and met his eyes. She shook her head. “I did, long ago. You and Simon Percell. Then I met some of the other Percells . . . those for whom your lupus cure worked completely.
“I studied. I learned that without the treatments I would have been stillborn or horribly crippled . . . not merely—lacking. It was just the luck of the draw that I . . .”
“It’s all right.” Saul drew her near and she closed her eyes. “We both still have our work now. Good work. And that does give us a piece of the fu
ture too, Virginia.”
“Yes, our work. . . and maybe a little more.” She felt warm. Virginia lifted her face to him. Saul had to push aside the wires of his helmet in order to kiss her.
I’ve never done anything like this while linked, before. She thought amid the tidal swell of feeling. I wonder what Jon Von will make of it.
Above them, unheeded, the simulation had panned back again, taking in a wall of clay and a salty, electric-bright current.
Bright shapes had begun emerging from the rust-colored crevices. They flitted about in the hot stream—now coated and armored against the battering molecules—and set out into a multicolored world, consuming one another, growing, and making little replicas of themselves.
CARL
At first he thought it was nothing important.
Carl wiped the green and brown gunk off the distillation pipes and moved on. The gas-gathering zone of Shaft 3 was a long dark tunnel, its phosphors giving everything a lime-green cast.
The plumbing looked okay—magnetic motors humming, pipes gurgling, a smell of rotten eggs from the sulfur compounds. Excess vapors were condensed here from the miles of tunnels now threading Halley Core. Bioinventory showed a surplus of useful fluids and was talking about storing it. The boiloff would probably lessen as the more-volatile ices were used up, and also there would be less heat-making activity during the long cruise out. Everything looked pretty damn good.
But there was brown sticky stuff in the filters. Shit. It’s everywhere. Carl cleaned them carefully with a water jet and flushed his covered bucket into the outbound tube—one-way flash vaporization that dumped directly into free space.
This odd-looking mess wasn’t supposed to be here. Prefilters should take out the big stuff and sift it for useful solids. These backup filters should catch impurities and crystallize them.
Maybe there was something special about this particular sticky stuff. He filled a sample bottle—the bio types nagged him incessantly for traces of anything odd—and kicked off toward sleep slot 1. Malenkov should have a look at this.