by Jeff Carlson
Keeping it to herself went against Harmeet's nature, but Vonnie wasn't prepared to forgive her yet.
"When did you know?" she asked.
"After you saved O'Neal, we had new blood and tissue samples. They were... revealing. We found an influenza virus that would be wholly capable of infecting human beings. That frightened me. We proved our kinship with the sunfish before you established our first treaty with Top Clan Eight-Six."
"That soon?"
"Sweetheart, I wanted to tell you. There were so many clues, I thought the truth would come out even if we kept our labwork under wraps."
"But you told Peter."
"No. They would have ordered him to arrest us."
That meant Peter had been operating from the same ignorance and enthusiasm. I'm glad he didn't lie to me. If all of their conversations about the tribes' origins had been a diversion on his part, Vonnie would have hated him, and yet there was a worse thought to consider. "What about Ben?"
"Ben suspected. He asked me about similarities in our metabolism and similarities in our oxygen-transport and sugar-oxidizing proteins, but he was too busy with his other jobs to dig deeper. He didn't have access to our real findings. The AIs falsified our public datastreams. William and I sat on this information for months, and the Americans and the PSSC must have their own security protocols. The FNEE might not have reached the same conclusions. Even their biologists are more soldiers than scientists."
"Wait. As soon as he landed, Dawson wanted to get rich selling his research. He talked about military applications. He talked about new techniques in life extension. If you were ordered to keep your mouths shut, why did he try to make a deal with LifeNova?"
"Von, we couldn't hide the facts that the sunfish have red blood or breathe oxygen. Everyone knows we use animal DNA in cancer therapies and gene mods. Treating the sunfish like another resource was a perfectly normal thing to do. Licensing those rights allowed our government and the ESA to pay for our mission while earning political capital at the same time. You keep forgetting. Most people on Earth don't care about the sunfish. They care about their jobs, their families and their favorite shows on the net."
"Then why bother with the secrecy? Why not tell everybody that humans and sunfish are related?"
"Our economies are strapped. We can't beat the PSSC on Earth, let alone in space. We only scraped together your three-crew expedition with Bauman and Lam because China provided funds as a goodwill gesture. I don't think they expected anything to come from it. They were happy to let us fritter around on the ice while they built up their fleet and orbital stations, especially because they thought Lam would provide them with any valuable genetics."
"We keep circling back to Earth. Politics. Money."
"What else is there? Power and wealth are all that interests most people. A decision to suppress our data was made at the highest level. I'm sure Berlin coordinated with Washington and Tokyo because everyone maintained the lie that the sunfish are totally alien. Nontechnical bureaucrats probably didn't need much convincing. There are still people who refuse to believe we're related to chimpanzees. Genetics are complicated. It was easy to bury some of our results because we've generated such a massive amount of data."
"Did they not want you to say anything because your results are inconclusive?"
Harmeet shook her head. "Human DNA consists of almost three billion base pairs. Sunfish DNA has three and a half billion. Those are huge numbers, but I can list every single pair in a long, long line of unique markers. In both species, the majority of our genetic code is inactive. We don't use most of the genes we inherited in our evolutionary past. That's how can we share fifty-four percent of our DNA with a sea anemone even though it's a rudimentary little blob and people walk and talk. Von, we share twenty-four percent of our DNA with rice. We share eighteen percent with yeast. We're talking about stretches of code that can't be reproduced by happenstance. It's not a coincidence. These sequences are irrefutable."
"And we share sixty-seven percent with the sunfish? Is that both species?"
"Close enough. Sixty-seven point four with the smaller species. Sixty-six point eight with the larger. They diverged from each other very recently."
"Like us," Vonnie said. "We look at Africans and Caucasians as if we're different, but people are almost identical. Asians. Hispanics. For all intents and purposes we're the same even if our skin colors or the shapes of our eyes vary a bit."
"Obviously the differences between human beings and sunfish are more drastic, but you've been their loudest proponent. I know you've seen the parallels between us."
"Yes." Vonnie nodded and said it again. "Yes! We're so similar mentally. I thought that was because we're both sentient. That any intelligent race will be selfish and warlike."
"In another star system, maybe not." Harmeet smiled. "A truly alien ecology might be different. It's fascinating to consider alternatives to carbon-based DNA. Silicon-based lifeforms could be less potent, less diverse, less... cutthroat."
"But there are nonviolent creatures on Earth. Just because we’re carbon-based and breathe oxygen doesn't make us killers."
"William liked to remind me that we're no closer to the sunfish than we are to a chicken or a platypus. A dog is more human."
Vonnie smiled, too. "That sounds like him."
"But look at the sunfish and us. Both sentient races are high energy, high metabolism omnivores with voluminous brain matter. We're the dominant species on our worlds because we maximized specific attributes inherent in the code."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Our genetic code. Every living cell on Europa and on Earth, in any genealogical branch, stores hereditary information in the same four chemical bases -- adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. More than that, we all use hemoglobin or hemoglobin-like proteins, even protozoans, even tubeworms at the bottom of the Pacific, even plants. Both worlds have a shared lineage. We come from a common ancestor."
Vonnie nodded fiercely, needing this because it made her feel connected to Ben. "Then there was a technological civilization on Jupiter's moons. It must been a long time ago. Have you figured out when it vanished?"
"Oh, sweetheart." Harmeet took Vonnie's hand in both of hers. "I didn't mean to give you the wrong idea. There were never spaceships flying out of the Great Ocean or lifting off from the ice."
"But you said we have a common ancestor."
"We may find life on Ganymede or Callisto, but it will resemble what exists here. Bacterial mats. Fungi. Possibly bugs or sunfish, although I doubt it, and the sunfish have never lived on Io. They couldn't. It's inhospitable."
"But they're there! We've found remains!"
"You've mapped this system. How many violent collisions occurred during the formation of its moons? How many occur today?"
"If you're talking about every chunk of ice and rock, there were billions of impacts in the earliest days. There are millions now." A light opened in Vonnie's mind, but it was a black light, queer and ugly. "So you think life on Earth was an accident caused by inter-planetary collisions?"
"I don't think anything is an accident," Harmeet said.
"Goddammit!" Vonnie yanked her glove away, then reconsidered. She'd felt this same horrible anger when O'Neal explained the pact among the tribes and how many sunfish had been banished or killed.
It's the instinct to fight, she thought, marveling at herself. I'm hurt, so I lash out. I argued with O'Neal. Now I'm shouting at Harmeet.
Like many people, Vonnie resisted change. No wonder. Too many of the changes in her life had been violent. Bauman. Lam. Collinsworth. Pärnits. O'Neal. Henri. Ben. The FNEE battles with the tribes. The PSSC battles with the tribes.
Vonnie didn't want to feel like a one-note woman, so she brought herself under control. She rejoined her fingers with Harmeet's. She took a breath and said, "What about the stories in the Bible or ancient Indian writings about UFOs?"
Harmeet shrugged. "Poor interpretations of Indian and Egyptia
n history have been thoroughly debunked, and most of the Bible was written by men in low-tech patriarchal societies. That's why so many of their accounts deal with punishing anyone who goes against the tribe. Authority is personified as a big, petty strongman in the sky who enforces his leadership at any cost. For example, the book of Ezekiel was written near 500 B.C. Ezekiel's Wheel was either his description of a king's chariot and a king's throne or a fanciful account of how Ezekiel envisioned God as the king of all kings. He describes torches, not fusion jets. Certainly there's nothing in his writings to indicate spaceships."
"And many early writers may have been delusional. Our meds are effective now, but as recently as the twentieth century, more than ten percent of the world's population was clinically insane. Human beings suffer many types of psychosis. These disorders were even more common when we didn't understand the effects of nutrition, hygiene, and physical and sexual abuse. People heard voices. They hallucinated."
Like sunfish in the worst phase of their cycle, Vonnie thought. Our brains really are alike. Given a moment's peace, we grow. Under too much hardship, we crack. The tribes have adjusted to endless hardship. How many generations of peace will they need before they're permanently sane?
Harmeet said, "Then those stories were translated and retranslated. All of these later writers had their own limitations ranging from the lack of education to cultural baggage to religious or political agendas. I wouldn't put too much stock in what people said in our distant past."
"But you're a Christian."
"I believe in the loving God of Luke and John, not one who rules through the fear of prejudice or vengeance. The Bible contains as many faults and mistakes as the men who wrote it." Harmeet smiled again, patiently this time. "Sweetheart, I'm a scientist. I see the strengths -- and the weaknesses -- and the choices -- that God presents in us all."
Free will, temptation and sin, Vonnie thought, but they were getting off topic. "When you said panspermia, I thought you meant that an empire deliberately seeded our planet. Maybe they visited Earth and stocked it with fish or plants. Maybe they left colonies that died out but jump-started our evolution."
"You have a beautiful imagination. I would love to see your work if you went back to school as a genesmith. I think I can prove that Europa was the cradle of life in our solar system, but not in the way you've imagined. What happens when Europa is struck or when it ejects matter from its plumes?"
"Oh." Vonnie nodded glumly. There was a lot for her to learn.
Four and a half billion years ago during a cosmic event much closer to the sun than Jupiter, two protoplanets rammed into each other. One was a Mars-sized object named Theia. The other was Earth. Each protoplanet lost a portion of itself, and this material coalesced into Earth's moon.
Theia drifted away. Some astrophysicists believed her remnants made up the asteroid belt or contributed to the shell of debris beyond Pluto.
Earth and her moon were paired together.
Circling and tugging, the moon created tides in Earth's otherwise stagnant oceans. It stirred the witch's brew of minerals and organics curdling on Earth's shores, where sunlight provided energy. The stage was set.
At university, Vonnie's instructors said genesis began in this primeval broth. They could explain self-catalytic chemical reactions in detail... but even with modern genesmithing, no one had quite defined the next step of incarnation, a quandary that was touted by religious leaders to demonstrate that even modern science did not possess the answers.
What -- or who -- had been the prime mover?
In lab conditions, genesmiths could synthesize recombinant enzymes that evolved life-like properties such as self-replication, and yet no one had imbued these organic molecules with real life. Some ingredient was missing. Volcanic fire? Lightning? Or had the divine spark come from somewhere else?
Oh, Ben, she thought. She would have paid any price to make him live again, and she reflected on their many conversations in bed or during meals or beneath the ice.
I think I can prove Europa was the cradle of life in our solar system, Harmeet had said, but what had been special about Europa and not Earth?
In the earliest years of the solar system, we got our share of water and organics, Ben had said. But compared to Earth, the number of combinations that took place in the Jupiter system was higher -- much higher -- and the tempo was faster.
Impacts had been common throughout the solar system as the planets took shape. In the smaller collection of worlds surrounding Jupiter, the moons bumped and shattered, forming and reforming. Adding to the maelstrom, Jupiter's mass drew comets and rogue bodies from space. Far away, Earth was one potential wellspring for life, but Jupiter spun multiple worlds into existence. Each moon was a crucible, each with a divergent composition.
Cocooned in a shell of ice, Europa guarded her womb from radiation. Her insides baked with the heat of tidal squeezing, not too cold, not too hot.
The comets had deposited organic materials including carboxylic acids.
Single-cell organisms arose, then multicellular.
Meanwhile, Europa was pummeled by more asteroids and comets. She suffered collisions with larger objects. Her volcanoes spewed outward.
Europa's moving crust healed her wounds, yet even in the age of human history, she was marred by old ruptures and cleavings. Many impacts and eruptions sent ice into space. Some threw rock or mud. Others gushed gases, ashes, dusts.
The major strikes and eruptions cast ejecta into space like fertilized eggs. Most of her eggs were killed. They were flashfrozen in the vacuum, then cooked by radiation... most, but not all. Jupiter swallowed much of the debris. Some were swatted by other moons. A few drifted aimlessly into the cold depths of space.
Some fell toward the sun.
23.
"You think the sunfish on Io were thrown there by a blowout or an asteroid strike?" Vonnie asked.
"Yes."
"Other ejecta landed elsewhere?"
"Yes, older pieces. That's why Mars has methanogens and fossilized microbial mats.."
"Older pieces hit Earth, too?"
"Von, I've been working on this since we arrived. There are benchmarks in our molecular clocks, the mutation rate in our nucleotide sequences and amino acids. Every terrestrial lifeform is descended from a common ancestor on Europa."
"The first microbes on Earth appeared over three billion years ago. Are you saying that's what came from Europa? Microbes?"
"Bacteria and archaea, yes. There may also have been microbes that were terrestrial natives. The conditions were right. If so, they died out. There is only one line in existence today. The single-cell organisms that persevered on Earth are Europan."
"Three billion years. Isn't that too long for us to share sixty-seven percent of our DNA with the sunfish?"
"No. There were later strikes. I'm certain that the Cambrian explosion was caused by Europan ejecta. Europan organisms regularly contaminated our biosphere.
Five hundred and fifty million years ago, the Cambrian explosion resulted in the appearance of Earth's rich fossil record - illustrating an accelerated diversification of life into an astounding variety of body plans -- plants, insects, reptiles, mammals.
Until then, individual cells, rarely organized into colonies, had been the biggest thing going on Earth.
Harmeet said, "They jumpstarted everything for us. Then they kept kicking us in the pants. Some of our smaller extinction events were probably caused by new organisms, Europan organisms, upending less rigorous environments on Earth."
Vonnie leaned away from her and stood up. She needed room. She needed to walk. "You sound like you approve," she said. "Why are you glad they wiped us out?"
"They didn't. It was an assimilation. Sweetheart, our five major extinction events were caused by Ice Ages or asteroid strikes that had nothing to do with Europa. If there were smaller die-offs when their organisms landed on Earth, those changes made us better. This wasn't a matter of alien bugs chewing up our forests or
their monsters slaughtering everything in our oceans. Nothing that big could survive the trip. What reached us were meteors with new, stronger bacteria. Once in a very long while, a dead creature might have made it through our atmosphere with a virus inside. Possibly those sicknesses spread. For us, the most consequential events were infusions of Europan bacteria."
"Bacteria makes us sick, too."
"Sometimes. It also fuels our evolution. What do you know about horizontal gene transfer?"
Vonnie quit pacing. She wanted to throttle Harmeet. She wanted to leave. Instead, she tossed her head back and laughed too loud, disturbing the sunfish.
Angelica clacked her beak. Hans screeched and Tom rubbed her topside, each without waking.
"Ben would have had the greatest time with you," Vonnie blurted before she covered her stinging eyes. Don't cry, she thought. Don't cry.
Harmeet stood up and approached her. "Do you want a cup of tea?" She put her hand on Vonnie’s waist gently yet firmly, directing her to the bunk. "Let me finish. I promised Admiral Cornet not to keep you too long."
"Oh shit," Vonnie said. Somehow she'd forgotten she needed to talk to Cornet next. She needed to yell at him and denounce him. Because of Berlin and Cornet, Ben had been robbed of their most fantastic discoveries. Vonnie belonged on the Lewis. Ben should have stayed in camp with Harmeet, Dawson and Wester.
If Cornet ordered her to keep Harmeet's secrets, what would Ben have wanted her to do? That was an easy question. Trouble is my middle name, he'd said. I'm in love with you, aren't I?
First she'd pump Harmeet for as much data as possible. Her suit was recording their conversation to her mem files. Maybe she could gather more.
Maybe she could use it against Cornet.
They sat down together and Vonnie made a brave face. "Do you have sims?" she asked. "I'm starting to have trouble wrapping my head around so many twists and turns."