Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition

by Gardner Dozois

  “We want no difficulty,” said the captain, and locked Moltas’s wrists behind him.

  “Don’t you understand, boy? If the world is a sphere, it may also be a star.”

  Written in Blood

  Chris Lawson

  Here’s an elegant and incisive look at some of the unexpected effects of high-tech bioscience, including a battle between science and faith that may reach all the way down to the very marrow of your bones.

  New writer Chris Lawson grew up in Papua New Guinea and now lives in Melbourne with his wife, Andrea. While studying medicine, he earned extra money as a computer programmer, and he has worked as a medical practitioner and as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. He’s made short fiction sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dreoming Down-Under, Eidolon, Event Horizon, and Spectrum SF, among other places. Some of these stories were gathered in his first collection, Written in Blood, in 2003.

  ###

  CTA TAA CAG TGT AGC GAC GAA TGT CTA CAG AAA CAA GAA TGT CAT GAG TGT CTA GAT CAT AAC CGA TGT AGC GAC GAA TGT CTA CAA GAA AGG AAT TAA GAG GGA TAC CGA TGT AGC GAC GAA TGT CTA AAT CAT CAA CAC AAA AGT AGT TAA CAT CAG AAA AGC GAA TGC TTC TTT

  In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

  These words open the Qur’an. They were written in my father’s blood. After Mother died, and Da recovered from his chemotherapy, we went on a pilgrimage together. In my usual eleven-year-old curious way, I asked him why we had to go to the Other End of the World to pray when we could do it just fine at home.

  “Zada,” he said, “there are only five pillars of faith. It is easier than any of the other pillars because you only need to do it once in a lifetime. Remember this during Ramadan, when you are hungry and you know you will be hungry again the next day, but your haj will be over.”

  Da would brook no further discussion, so we set off for the Holy Lands. At eleven, I was less than impressed. I expected to find Paradise filled with thousands of fountains and birds and orchards and blooms. Instead, we huddled in cloth tents with hundreds of thousands of sweaty pilgrims, most of whom spoke other languages, as we tramped across a cramped and dirty wasteland. I wondered why Allah had made his Holy Lands so dry and dusty, but I had the sense even then not to ask Da about it.

  Near Damascus, we heard about the bloodwriting. The pilgrims were all speaking about it. Half thought it blasphemous, the other half thought it a path to Heaven. Since Da was a biologist, the pilgrims in our troop asked him what he thought. He said he would have to go to the bloodwriters directly and find out.

  On a dusty Monday, after morning prayer, my father and I visited the bloodwriter’s stall. The canvas was a beautiful white, and the man at the stall smiled as Da approached. He spoke some Arabic, which I could not understand.

  “I speak English,” said my father.

  The stall attendant switched to English with the ease of a juggler changing hands. “Wonderful, sir! Many of our customers prefer English.”

  “I also speak biology. My pilgrim companions have asked me to review your product.” I thought it very forward of my father, but the stall attendant seemed unfazed. He exuded confidence about his product.

  “An expert!” he exclaimed. “Even better. Many pilgrims are distrustful of Western science. I do what I can to reassure them, but they see me as a salesman and not to be trusted. I welcome your endorsement.”

  “Then earn it.”

  The stall attendant wiped his mustache, and began his spiel. “Since the Dawn of Time, the Word of Allah has been read by mullahs . . .”

  “Stop!” said Da. “The Qur’an was revealed to Mohammed fifteen centuries ago; the Dawn of Time predates it by several billion years. I want answers, not portentous falsehoods.”

  Now the man was nervous. “Perhaps you should see my uncle. He invented the bloodwriting. I will fetch him.” Soon he returned with an older, infinitely more respectable man with gray whiskers in his mustache and hair.

  “Please forgive my nephew,” said the old man. “He has watched too much American television and thinks the best way to impress is to use dramatic words, wild gestures, and where possible, a toll-free number.” The nephew bowed his head and slunk to the back of the stall, chastened.

  “May I answer your questions?” the old man asked.

  “If you would be so kind,” said Da, gesturing for the man to continue.

  “Bloodwriting is a good word, and I owe my nephew a debt of gratitude for that. But the actual process is something altogether more mundane. I offer a virus, nothing more. I have taken a hypo-immunogenic strain of adeno-associated virus and added a special code to its DNA.”

  Da said, “The other pilgrims tell me that you can write the Qur’an into their blood.”

  “That I can, sir,” said the old man. “Long ago I learned a trick that would get the adeno-associated virus to write its code into bone marrow stem cells. It made me a rich man. Now I use my gift for Allah’s work. I consider it part of my zakât.”

  Da suppressed a wry smile. Zakât, charitable donation, was one of the five pillars. This old man was so blinded by avarice that he believed selling his invention for small profit was enough to fulfill his obligation to God.

  The old man smiled and raised a small ampoule of red liquid. He continued, “This, my friend, is the virus. I have stripped its core and put the entire text of the Qur’an into its DNA. If you inject it, the virus will write the Qur’an into your myeloid precursor cells, and then your white blood cells will carry the Word of Allah inside them.”

  I put my hand up to catch his attention. “Why not red blood cells?” I asked. “They carry all the oxygen.”

  The old man looked at me as if he noticed me for the first time. “Hello, little one. You are very smart. Red blood cells carry oxygen, but they have no DNA. They cannot carry the Word.”

  It all seemed too complicated to an eleven-year-old girl.

  My father was curious. “DNA codes for amino acid sequences. How can you write the Qur’an in DNA?”

  “DNA is just another alphabet,” said the old man. He handed my father a card. “Here is the crib sheet.”

  My father studied the card for several minutes, and I saw his face change from skeptical to awed. He passed the card to me. It was filled with Arabic squiggles, which I could not understand. The only thing I knew about Arabic was that it was written right-to-left, the reverse of English.

  “I can’t read it,” I said to the man. He made a little spinning gesture with his ringer, indicating that I should flip the card over. I flipped the card and saw the same crib sheet, only with Anglicized terms for each Arabic letter. Then he handed me another crib sheet, and said: “This is the sheet for English text.”

  “The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters. Each letter changes form depending on its position in the word. But the rules are rigid, so there is no need to put each variation in the crib sheet. It is enough to know that the letter is aliph or bi, and whether it is at the start, at the end, or in the middle of the word.

  “The {stop} commands are also left in their usual places. These are the body’s natural commands and they tell ribosomes when to stop making a protein. It only cost three spots and there were plenty to spare, so they stayed in.”

  My father asked, “Do you have an English translation?”

  “Your daughter is looking at the crib sheet for the English language,” the old man explained, “and there are other texts one can write, but not the Qur’an.”

  Thinking rapidly, Da said, “But you could write the Qur’an in English?”

  “If I wanted to pursue secular causes, I could do that,” the old man said. “But I have all the secular things I need. I have copyrighted crib sheets for all the common alphabets, and I make a profit on them. For the Qur’an, however, translations are not acceptable. Only the original words of Mohammed can be trusted. It is one thing for dhimmis to translate it for their own curiosity, but if you are a true believer you must read the word of God in its unsullied form.”

&
nbsp; Da stared at the man. The old man had just claimed that millions of Muslims were false believers because they could not read the original Qur’an. Da shook his head and let the matter go. There were plenty of imams who would agree with the old man.

  “What is the success rate of the inoculation?”

  “Ninety-five percent of my trial subjects had identifiable Qur’an text in their blood after two weeks, although I cannot guarantee that the entire text survived the insertion in all of those subjects. No peer-reviewed journal would accept the paper.” He handed my father a copy of an article from Modern Gene Techniques. “Not because the science is poor, as you will see for yourself, but because Islam scares them.”

  Da looked serious. “How much are you charging for this?”

  “Aha! The essential question. I would dearly love to give it away, but even a king would grow poor if he gave a grain of rice to every hungry man. I ask enough to cover my costs, and no haggling. It is a hundred US dollars or equivalent.”

  Da looked into the dusty sky, thinking. “I am puzzled,” he said at last. “The Qur’an has one hundred and fourteen suras, which comes to tens of thousands of words. Yet the adeno-associated virus is quite small. Surely it can’t all fit inside the viral coat?”

  At this the old man nodded. “I see you are truly a man of wisdom. It is a patented secret, but I suppose that someday a greedy industrialist will lay hands on my virus and sequence the genome. So, I will tell you on the condition that it goes no further than this stall.”

  Da gave his word.

  “The code is compressed. The original text has enormous redundancy, and with advanced compression, I can reduce the amount of DNA by over 80 percent. It is still a lot of code.”

  I remember Da’s jaw dropping. “That must mean the viral code is self-extracting. How on Earth do you commandeer the ribosomes?”

  “I think I have given away enough secrets for today,” said the old man.

  “Please forgive me,” said Da. “It was curiosity, not greed, that drove me to ask.” Da changed his mind about the bloodwriter. This truly was fair zakât. Such a wealth of invention for only a hundred US dollars.

  “And the safety?” asked my father.

  The old man handed him a number of papers, which my father read carefully, nodding his head periodically, and humming each time he was impressed by the data.

  “I’ll have a dose,” said Da. “Then no one can accuse me of being a slipshod reviewer.”

  “Sir, I would be honored to give a complimentary bloodwriting to you and your daughter.”

  “Thank you. I am delighted to accept your gift, but only for me. Not for my daughter. Not until she is of age and can make her own decision.” Da took a red ampoule in his hands and held it up to the light, as if he was looking through an envelope for the letters of the Qur’an. He shook his head at the marvel and handed it back to the old man, who drew it up in a syringe.

  ###

  That night, our fellow pilgrims made a fire and gathered around to hear my father talk. As he spoke, four translators whispered their own tongues to the crowd. The scene was like a great theater from the Arabian Nights. Scores of people wrapped in white robes leaned into my father’s words, drinking up his excitement. It could have been a meeting of princes.

  Whenever Da said something that amazed the gathered masses, you could hear the inbreath of the crowd, first from the English-speakers, and then in patches as the words came out in the other languages. He told them about DNA, and how it told our bodies how to live. He told them about introns, the long stretches of human DNA that are useless to our bodies, but that we carry still from viruses that invaded our distant progenitors, like ancestral scars. He told them about the DNA code, with its triplets of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, and he passed around copies of the bloodwriter’s crib sheet. He told them about blood, and the white cells that fought infection. He talked about the adeno-associated virus and how it injected its DNA into humans. He talked about the bloodwriter’s injection and the mild fever it had given him. He told them of the price.

  And he answered questions for an hour.

  The next day, as soon as the morning prayers were over, the bloodwriting stall was swamped with customers. The old man ran out of ampoules by mid-morning, and only avoided a riot by promising to bring more the following day.

  ###

  I had made friends with another girl. She was two years younger than I was, and we did not share a language, but we still found ways to play together to relieve the boredom.

  One day, I saw her giggling and whispering to her mother, who looked furtively at me and at Da. The mother waved over her companions, and spoke to them in solemn tones. Soon a very angry-looking phalanx of women descended on my unsuspecting father. They stood before him, hands on hips, and the one who spoke English pointed a finger at me.

  “Where is her mother?” asked the woman. She was taller than the others, a weather-beaten woman who looked like she was sixty, but must have been younger because she had a child only two years old. “This is no place for a young girl to be escorted by a man.”

  “Zada’s mother died in a car accident back home. I am her father, and I can escort her without help, thank you.”

  “I think not,” said the woman.

  “What right have you to say such a thing?” asked Da. “I am her father.”

  The woman pointed again. “Ala says she saw your daughter bathing, and she has not had the khitan. Is this true?”

  “It is none of your business,” said Da.

  The woman screamed at him. “I will not allow my daughter to play with harlots. Is it true?”

  “It is none of your business.”

  The woman lurched forward and pulled me by my arm. I squealed and twisted out of her grasp and ran behind my father for protection. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on tightly.

  “Show us,” demanded the woman. “Prove she is clean enough to travel with this camp.”

  Da refused, which made the woman lose her temper. She slapped him so hard she split his lip. He tasted the blood, but stood resolute. She reached around and tried to unlock my arms from Das waist. He pushed her away.

  “She is not fit to share our camp. She should be cut, or else she will be shamed in the sight of Allah,” the woman screamed. The other women were shouting and shaking their fists, but few of them knew English, so it was as much in confusion as anger.

  My father fixed the woman with a vicious glare. “You call my daughter shameful in the sight of Allah? I am a servant of Allah. Prove to me that Allah is shamed and I will do what I can to remove the shame. Fetch a mullah.”

  The woman scowled. “I will fetch a mullah, although I doubt your promise is worth as much as words in the sand.”

  “Make sure the mullah speaks English,” my father demanded as she slipped away. He turned to me and wiped away tears. “Don’t worry, Zada. No harm will come to you.”

  “Will I be allowed to play with Ala?”

  “No. Not with these old vultures hanging around.”

  By the evening, the women had found a mullah gullible enough to mediate the dispute. They tugged his sleeves as he walked toward our camp, hurrying him up. It was obvious that his distaste had grown with every minute in the company of the women, and now he was genuinely reluctant to speak on the matter.

  The weathered woman pointed us out to the mullah and spat some words at him that we did not understand.

  “Sir, I hear that your daughter is uncircumcised. Is this true?”

  “It is none of your business,” said Da.

  The mullah’s face dropped. You could almost see his heart sinking. “Did you not promise . . . ?”

  “I promised to discuss theology with you and that crone. My daughter’s anatomy is not your affair.”

  “Please, sir . . .”

  Da cut him off abruptly. “Mullah, in your considered opinion, is it necessary for a Muslim girl to be circumcised?”

  “It is t
he accepted practice,” said the mullah.

  “I do not care about the accepted practice. I ask what Mohammed says.”

  “Well, I’m sure that Mohammed says something on the matter,” said the mullah.

  “Show me where.”

  The mullah coughed, thinking of the fastest way to extract himself. “I did not bring my books with me,” he said.

  Da laughed, not believing that a mullah would travel so far to mediate a theological dispute without a book. “Here, have mine,” Da said as he passed the Qur’an to the mullah. “Show me where Mohammed says such a thing.”

  The mullah’s shoulders slumped. “You know I cannot. It is not in the Qur’an. But it is sunnah.”

  “Sunnah,” said Da, “is very clear on the matter. Circumcision is makrumah for women. It is honorable but not compulsory. There is no requirement for women to be circumcised.”

  “Sir, you are very learned. But there is more to Islam than a strict reading of the Qur’an and sunnah. There have even been occasions when the word of Mohammed has been overturned by later imams. Mohammed himself knew that he was not an expert on all things, and he said that it was the responsibility of future generations to rise above his imperfect knowledge.”

  “So, you are saying that even if it was recorded in the Qur’an, that would not make it compulsory.” Da gave a smile—the little quirk of his lips that he gave every time he had laid a logical trap for someone.

  The mullah looked grim. The trap had snapped shut on his leg, and he was not looking forward to extricating himself.

  “Tell these women so we can go back to our tents and sleep,” said Da.

  The mullah turned to the women and spoke to them. The weathered woman became agitated and started waving her hands wildly. Her voice was an overwrought screech. The mullah turned back to us.