What made a smell? How was smell recognized? What did the brain do with it, and how did it decide which smells to funnel where, which to network, and which to disregard? Was there truly such a thing as odorless? A human being had six million smell receptors, compared to a dog’s two hundred and twenty mil. Would we be better off with a few more? A few less? Was there really a difference between women and men in smelling ability, and if so, how could this be exploited?
So much to learn. Such a core sensation. So primitive, and resistant to time’s corrosive effect.
She would never forget her father’s smell. He was the family cook. His fingertips were stained with turmeric and cumin. But stronger than that smell, more deeply ingrained in her, was the scent of his oiled hair, which made her forever partial to roses.
When it came to smell, everybody had a story.
But not everybody cared to unravel the story as much as Gunjita did. She had helped develop the OE vaccine, was at the forefront of OSN transplantation. There’d be no Watchdog Council without her, no ORA. No HUBIES, either.
She’d blamed Dash at first. Then herself, for training and mentoring him. Reasonable targets, but ridiculous. She might as well have blamed the Swiss for Swiss cheese. Or Albert, for the explosion.
He was a scientist, same as her. He took what he learned and ran with it. Not only that, he responded to a call. A loyal citizen of Earth. What better justification?
If only they looked different. Stranger, more alien, less human. If only they didn’t resemble young children so much.
How did he wrap his head around that?
She was glad that he’d come, despite herself. Of course it was awkward, but they were adults. They’d get past it. He was good for Cav, which meant good for her. Maybe he could talk him out of his madness.
She checked the time. The moment of truth was approaching. Mentally, she’d been preparing herself. She was looking forward to doing without her helmet and cumbersome suit. Had to be grateful to them for that. Gratitude was better than much of what she felt. It would be good to put a face on her nightmare at last.
* * *
A HUBIE was far superior to a canary: more sensitive, more reliable, more specific to humans. More humane to canaries, too, or would have been if floater panic hadn’t driven canaries to the brink of extinction. With more smell receptors than a dog, more smell genes than an elephant, a HUBIE responded to airborne toxins in one of two ways: swiftly, in the case of toxins originating from nonorganic material; marginally less swiftly in the case of toxins originating from organic material, such as living-or recently living things. Death in minutes as compared to hours, occasionally a full day. A bell-shaped curve.
They’d been functional and in place for nearly a full day.
Cav was champing at the bit.
“Let’s do this right,” Dash cautioned.
“We’re ten minutes shy. I say twenty-three hours, fifty minutes is enough. Help me out here, Gunjita.”
“I’m with Dash.”
“Dash’s being nitpicky.”
“Dash’s acting like a grown-up. He wouldn’t have to, if you weren’t being such a child.”
“You’re despots. Both of you.”
“Poor baby. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Repeat these words silently to yourself: time is an illusion. Time does not exist.”
“Eight,” said Dash. “Now less.”
* * *
Cav was the first one in. Gunjita followed him, with Dash taking up the rear. The three HUBIES were spaced equidistantly in a triangle around the asteroid and the Ooi, harnessed to the floor to keep them from drifting.
Pop-dolls, some people called them. Raggedy-Anns.
Cav went to each in turn, bowed his head, clasped his hands, and mouthed a prayer. To Gunjita, an empty gesture. To Dash, melodramatic and purposeless. But Cav was Cav.
The HUBIES, naturally, paid no attention. Their eyes protruded from their sockets, and appeared frozen in place: they looked too big for their faces, which looked too big for their heads. Silky brown hair fell over their narrow foreheads and partially hid the awful backward anencephalic slope of their skulls. Their noses were fleshy and free-moving, the nostrils hooded by a short, tubular fold of skin. Their lips were pink as peonies. Their arms dangled lifelessly by their sides. Their legs, also lifeless. They looked, on the whole, like bizarre, inflatable dolls.
Gunjita approached the nearest one. Her heart was hammering in her chest. It didn’t appear to notice her at first. A HUBIE had eyes but nowhere to put sight, no visual cortex, and was effectively blind. Had nowhere to put sound, either. But its nose was all-seeing, all-knowing, and was quick to respond.
It swept the air from side to side, sniffing, sampling, as though she were a cone of smell. Rapidly, it honed in on its target, and the tubular cowl of skin retracted to reveal two large, moist, saucer-shaped nostrils that looked like black moss. They quivered with activity. Moments later, the HUBIE’s eyes swiveled in unison until they were centered on her face.
It was purely reflexive. A HUBIE was blind. Not that it mattered: she felt transparent.
She’d seen photos, but this was her first face-to-face. Save for the repulsion, the pity and the guilt, it wasn’t that bad.
Actually, it was that bad.
She gagged, and nearly lost her lunch. It was like being poisoned, seeing it there, staring her in the face.
Noiselessly, Dash materialized beside her. The HUBIE’s nose twitched, as it picked up the new scent.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“How are you doing?”
“How do you think?”
“Shocked?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Not a good beginning. The HUBIE was burning a hole in her brain, but then it broke contact, and transferred its blind stare to Dash. She felt as if a weight had been lifted.
“They take some getting used to,” he said.
“I doubt that’s going to happen. I hope it won’t.”
She knew it would.
He glanced at her, looking concerned.
After a while she said, “I suppose it was inevitable. Once we started making better humans, we’d make lesser ones.”
“They’re not really human.”
“Human enough.”
“They’re not unhappy, Gunjita. They’re doing what they were meant to do. If anything, they’re happy for that. They’re certainly not uncomfortable. They don’t hurt. They feel no pain.”
She knew the song and dance. Had her own opinion.
“They have brains, don’t they?”
“Primitive. Extremely. No cortex. No awareness. If there is pain, they don’t know it. If they know it, they don’t care. It doesn’t bother them. They don’t suffer.”
“So you say.”
“It’s a fact.”
“We suffer,” she said.
He looked pained. “Do you? Really? Is that true?”
“Humanity suffers.”
“But you? Do you?”
“Why? Do you think I shouldn’t? I should be made of sterner stuff?”
“I thought you were.”
“I am.”
“Well then.”
“They were ill-conceived. They should never have been made. You could have designed something else. Anything else.”
He studied the HUBIE, considering this, searching for flaws. Blind, limp, imbecilic. Unable to speak. Unable to hear. Unable to think.
His creation.
He reached up and touched it, laid his hand on its chest, as he would a patient. Felt its lively, cheerful pulse.
“We could have done better,” he confessed. “If there’s ever a next time, we will.”
“You were pressured, no doubt.”
“Yes. Of course. But in the end we called the shots.”
“The team.”
“Yes.”
“You played a significant role?”
Not the time to boast. “I was there.
”
“Inner circle?”
He nodded, remembering the buzz. The excitement. The camaraderie.
He’d never thanked her. “I wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for you.”
“A dubious honor.”
“You could have hung me out to dry.”
“I was doing my job. You deserved to be in a lab. A good one. Tell me something. Their design. Was that aimed at me?”
“At you?”
“Out of spite. For revenge.” It felt good to finally get it off her chest. His response barely mattered.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t have time to be angry. We were too busy. I licked my wounds and moved on.”
She remembered things differently. A superficial licking maybe, but no healing. A chill whenever they were in the same room, which happened periodically over the years.
She felt it less now. “You vowed to get back at me.”
“Heat of the moment. Shoot from the hip.”
“I always wondered.”
“You can stop. I would never do something like that.”
True or false? Was it even important? People changed.
“They look like children,” she said.
“They’re tools, Gunjita. Instruments.”
“Damaged.”
“No. Not damaged. Preventers of damage. Shields. Don’t think of them as children, but as soldiers.”
“Protecting us.”
“Yes.”
“Sacrificing themselves.”
“If necessary.”
She tried to see it. Appreciated different perspectives, theoretically at least.
“They’re both,” she said.
“If you wish.”
“Either way, they’re ours. Yours and mine.”
“I’m proud of what they are.”
“I pity them.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
He wasn’t a bad man. Nothing like that. Better, in fact, than she expected. But better had limited appeal.
“I’m sorry you don’t.”
* * *
Cav, meanwhile, was bent over the Ooi, sucking in air, breathing audibly through his nose. In and out, in and out, sampling, just as the HUBIES did. Lacking a free-moving noodle, he moved his head side to side, up and down, a technique used by animals and taught to him by Gunjita, the expert. He closed his eyes and willed himself to take everything in.
Recognition could come and go in an instant. Alternately, it could take hours, weeks, years. This was the book on unknown forms of life, and seemed reasonable, though of course no one knew.
What he could say so far: the Ooi had a clean, faintly metallic scent. He sniffed several times in rapid succession, then inhaled deeply, filling his nostrils and lungs. Nearly impossible to distinguish it from the asteroid. Was this purposeful, a kind of camouflage? An adaptation?
Interesting.
He leaned in closer, until he was nearly touching it, breathed on it, moved his head back and forth, giving it the opportunity to smell him.
He was playing with fire, and he knew it. Gunjita thought he was crazy. Dash probably, too. Maybe he was. But maybe not. Plenty of people, if they knew, would have been in his corner, cheering him on. Crazy? Hardly. More like sanity itself. Just tell us when and where. We’re with you 100 percent.
Plenty believed it had already happened. A fait accompli. They were among us, and had been for years.
Some people said they were very nice.
Others, not so nice.
Some, that sex with one was the very best thing. Some said the worst. One man had reliable information that they had no genitals. He was met by a chorus of jeers: everyone knew they had sex organs everywhere. What was he, a prude?
Cav kept half an ear out for these people. They had their ideas. They weren’t scientific ideas. Most were predictably ridiculous. But every so often one would stand out.
A recent favorite: the One Alien Theory, which posited an enormous, invisible, oyster-shaped entity, embracing and nurturing the Earth as it would its own pearl. A sentient bivalve, it was dismayed to see what was happening to its precious creation. Dismayed and angry.
This explained the outbreaks of planetary fear, suspicion, and anxiety that happened now and again. Oysters weren’t known to lash out, but neither were they known to be especially forgiving. And this was a big one. No one knew what to expect.
Cav felt the same about the Ooi. No problem so far, but how would it react to being cut?
Which, having run out of options, was up next.
But first, a last chance. Dash had taken off his gloves.
Cav already had his hand on the Ooi, feeling its cool, hard surface. He moved aside, letting Dash take his place.
Dash repeated what he’d done before, resting his fingertips lightly at first, then pressing them down more firmly. Cav and Gunjita watched as the tension slowly built.
It wasn’t the sole source of tension. Cav was aware of the strain between him and Gunjita. He was responsible for it, and wished it didn’t exist. He would talk to her, try to smooth things out, though he wasn’t optimistic.
“I can’t be sure,” Dash said at last.
“You feel something?”
“Yes and no.”
“Which is it?”
“Movement. Maybe. Maybe a vibration. Very faint. It comes and goes. Maybe nothing.”
“Color?” asked Cav.
Dash threw up his hands.
“I smell roses,” said Gunjita.
She might have screamed “Fire!” at the top of her lungs the way the two of them looked at her.
“For real?” asked Dash.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s time to stop fooling around. We need a piece.”
Cav nodded, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Maybe it knows. Maybe roses is its SOS. The precatastrophe alarm you’ve been looking for. Forgive us,” he told the Ooi. Then to Dash, “Start with its edge. See if you can peel it back.”
They’d brought their instruments. Dash tried the spatulated knife first. Couldn’t separate the Ooi from the rock cleanly, in one piece. Looked to Cav for guidance.
Cav told him to proceed.
Using a scalpel this time, and not just any scalpel but one forged in the legendary foundry of Bethlehem, Brokkr & Doome, with a laser spine, an intercalated hypercrystalline edge, and oscillating nano-teeth. A tool preferred by professionals. Dash loved how it felt: alert, alive, like an extension of his own hand. He neatly shaved off the tip of one of the Ooi’s arms, continuing the cut into the underlying rock, removing both as a unit.
Cav winced, but bore witness. He was spellbound. The exposed surface did not ooze or bleed.
“Self-healing?” he wondered aloud. An attribute basic to all life. He glanced at Dash, who shook his head.
“Too fast.”
“To us,” said Cav.
“I’ve never seen it so rapidly.”
“No. Yes. That’s what makes it exciting.”
“Maybe it’s thicker-shelled than we thought.”
“It doesn’t have a shell,” said Gunjita.
“Or it wasn’t bothered. The amount you shaved off didn’t matter. It was like paring a fingernail.”
“I could make a bigger cut.”
“No, no. This is enough. More than enough.” He cradled the slender, crescent-shaped specimen in his palm, feeling like a guardian of the universe. It was weighty but weightless.
Carefully, he returned it to Dash, who sealed it in a bottle in preparation for microtomal slicing, fixation, and staining. Each a separate procedure, none of which, given Dash’s experience, or rather lack thereof, was guaranteed to succeed.
“Wish me luck,” he said.
“How about a helping hand?” Gunjita offered.
“Yes. Please. By all means.”
Cav felt a stab of jealousy. A stab of sadness. A stab of relief.
“Coming?” she asked.
“No. You go. I’ll stay for a while. I�
�m good.”
* * *
Once in the lab, Gunjita took charge. She knew where everything was, and Dash tried to stay out of her way. It brought back memories.
“Feels like old times,” he said.
She wasn’t interested in reminiscing. “So what do you think?”
“About Cav?”
“First the Ooi. Truthfully.”
“Truthfully? It looks like puke.”
“Is it alive? Could it have ever been?”
“Ever?”
“Forget ever. Living or not?”
“Cav thinks so.”
“Forget Cav.”
“I can’t. You shouldn’t, either.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s the reason I’m here. I couldn’t not come. He wants to die. The Ooi is keeping him alive.”
“You underestimate him, Dash. He’s keeping himself alive until he makes up his mind. So far he hasn’t decided. Our Ooi is a pretext. A placeholder. A sham.”
“Convenient that it arrived when it did.”
“Purely coincidence. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else.”
“He wants to live.”
“He doesn’t know what he wants.”
Uncharted territory for Dash. He felt as if he were being forced to watch something he shouldn’t have to. He felt paralyzed, hamstrung.
“I don’t understand. What’s so wrong about living? What’s so difficult? Is he sick? Is he hiding something?”
“He feels guilty.”
“Cav?” He swallowed a laugh.
“No joke. He’s been privileged all his life. That includes the privilege of being open-minded. The privilege of believing in fairness, and justice for all. Now it’s caught up with him. He sees the hypocrisy. If everyone can’t juve—and everyone can’t—then no one should.”
“Never going to happen.”
“Of course not. But he’s doing his part. Making his point. Staking the high ground.”
“Martyring himself,” said Dash.
“It eases his conscience.”
She was angry. And hurt. It helped to talk.
“I sound harsh.”
Dash was sympathetic. “He’s a handful.”
“A handful and a half. I love him very much. I’m proud that he has principles. I’m proud that he doesn’t settle for the easy way out, that he stands up for what he believes is right. In a way I’m proud of what he’s doing. Or what he’s thinking about doing. He makes it hard not to be.”
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