He Without Sin

by Hyde, Ed

  Notwithstanding this restless night, I am getting used to these incredibly short sleep/wake cycles. A good long rest at base camp is in order however, as soon as I get back.

  We finish doing what we can on this visit, re-dock the ore cart and return to base without further incident. Mark is nowhere to be found. Porter helps us deliver the ore and is scheduled to take off with the transport next. Dylan thanks me for the help. He hopes I enjoyed being out in the ‘real world’ and heads off on some other business.

  Porter asks me, “Do you want to come with? I have to run out and swap an empty tub for a full. It’s a great ride, over an ocean and all.” He waits patiently while I think how to answer, unsure if I want another adventure so soon. “How about a cup of burnin’ fire while we wait for Mark to return and empty the tub?” he offers with a grin. “It’s the latest discovery—here, I’ll get us both one. You’ve got to try it.”

  I follow this eager and friendly young ‘kid’ to the mess hall and sit. I say ‘young kid’ but it’s only in response to his demeanor. I suspect he is a bit older than me. He prepares and brings a couple cups of a steaming brown liquid, his cup having a lid for travel. “Doc approved and David blessed. Careful, it’s hot.” His curly hair and near-constant smile add to my positive image of him. Porter is one of the very few people who have opted for external vision correction and his glasses, wire framed and slightly askew, fit his personality exactly.

  “Burnin’ fire, eh?” I say, as I tentatively take a sip. I notice I have several messages and need to address them; one is from David. “Who do you work for? Mark?” I ask.

  “Everybody. What do you need?” he responds happily. “I have several bosses and like it that way. They can fight out for their priorities and let me know who wins. No sweat, no strain. Right now, Mark wins and I have to git.” He takes another sip, heads for the flyer, shouts something to Craig across the way, and departs.

  David’s message is an ambiguous query. Something about a separate private and personal channel, but linked into Brachus’ group. Great, another one. I check via my genie that he is free at the moment and contact him; he picks up. “Private channel, linked to the Resource Group?” I begin.

  “Yes, please, as soon as you can get around to it. Wesley is working with me down here and I need to be able to communicate with him directly but not publicly with both voice and data.” I can see the Academy’s ‘open and clear communication’ mantra is going to take another hit.

  “Alright. I can do it, should have it ready by tomorrow. You’ll receive a message from me with your access ID and instructions on how to initiate and make it your own.”

  “One more thing…”

  “Yes?” I ask, after a few moments of silence.

  “I want a separate way to keep notes for myself only—not public or official or shared in any way.” I don’t need to hear the reason for this, after all, he is the boss, but he offers one anyway. “A lot my documentation will be indecipherable to anyone but me. I need a way to make quick entries without taking the time to formulate and clarify them. I will go back later and enter the relevant info into the official record. It will make more sense than the raw notes will. You follow me?”

  Oh, I follow. I don’t like it, but I follow.

  “Yes, sir. I can set this up and send you a second message with everything you need.”

  We disconnect. This request is not a big deal technically; after all, the last part of it is essentially the same thing I have done for my little diary. But he is the commander, and, as he said, he wants to keep his raw notes private and off the official record until he can massage and enter them. What the heck is he doing down there? Isn’t the sequencing and logging of the genome and variants a straightforward task? Can this be about the ‘more extensive work’ he referred to on my visit to the bio site?

  ______

  Dylan never answered my question about working for Wes. I wonder what he can tell me? Porter—he has the right idea. Mind your own business. Get a task, work on it. Get another one, work on it. Certainly less stressful that way. He seems happy, this Porter.

  I’m off to Gleshert to see if I did any damage to myself out there at the mining site, and I better ask what this stuff is I’m drinking while I’m at it.

  “Sorry, mate, just leavin’. How are ya keepin’?” says Grigor as I make my way into the med reception area. I get the expected wink from Vanessa.

  “Grigor! No problem. I am good. You?”

  “The GlassMan says I’ll live to fight another day.” He shows me a nasty abrasion on his right arm. “It’s a lucky thing I have two of these.” Meaning his arms.

  “What happened? What do you have on it?”

  “Just a scratch, just a scratch. Doc has some new goo that he used to cover and heal. Touch it.”

  I decline. “You get this down here? I saw you when I took off with Dylan. When was that—today? No, the other day. I’ve been losing track of time lately.”

  “Yes, I hear you there. I did some mountain climbing; my own fault. Well, no worries, I’ll leave you to more important business. See ya Doc. See ya doll.”

  “Hey, wait, and you too Doc, what is this concoction I just had over at the kitchen? It’s coffee-like. You’ve had it? It’s a little bitter but what is it? Actually, I don’t care what it is. Is it safe, is the question.”

  “It’s a Weasely Brachus thing. I won’t touch it and you shouldn’t either,” says Grigor as he pauses momentarily before heading out.

  “Doc, what do you say? Have you tried it or tested it?”

  “Come in and sit down. You’ve been out at one of the remote sites?” I nod as he looks me over and begins what seems to me to be a routine checkout. “Give me your card.” He takes it, inserts the card, mumbles to himself, and then turns to me. His cowlick is still right where it’s always been. “Drink the stuff if you like it. One of the Resource team found animals eating some berries. They were bitter and inedible to him, but someone in his party, in their apparently abundant spare time,” he added with obvious distaste, “figured out they can make an interesting beverage if boiled or processed somehow with water. I don’t know the details. I believe Aileen could tell you more of how it’s done.” Distracted from this train of thought for a moment by the results from my card reading he says, “The card shows negative, same for the other tests. You are clear until your next t-session.” Meaning the telomere treatment with which we have all grown so familiar.

  “So, it’s safe?”

  “I told you, drink it if you want. It produces mild physiological effects but no serious long term concerns that I can detect.” With this, the doc indicates clearly but non-verbally that it’s time for me to go, and turns to other business in his small, ground-based lab.

  I take a stab and say, “I haven’t seen David around base much lately. He’s doing OK as far as you know?”

  Gleshert nods without turning. “Oh, he’s around. He was here recently and practically cleaned me out of reagents.”

  Time is passing quickly now that I’m into a routine. The local years are flying by, it seems. I’ve visited a few more of the remote sites. Some are truly spectacular to behold. We see less and less of David and Wesley. Both seem to have dug in for the long haul—Brachus somewhere out in the field, and David splitting his time between the bio camp and sequestered in his makeshift lab in his quarters here at base. Brachus is occasionally seen teetering about base camp on his spindly legs with a big grin on his face. I heard from Craig (confirmed by Porter) that he’s fashioned—Brachus, that is—his own “headquarters” out in the wild somewhere mostly out of native materials along with some construction and connection pieces from Mark. He uses the transport unit to cart the pieces to the site and then when the flyer returns, it is loaded with ore or whatever other raw materials he has located for Mark. Ok, I have to hand it to him, that is a clever arrangement.

  I try to spend as much time as I can with Carol. Her setup for linking to the astrophysics equipment up t
op, on the Hobbe, is very cool indeed. I make excuses to visit her as much as possible and pretend to adjust and tweak the electronics. She’s on to me of course. The good news is, she doesn’t seem to mind at all. She is really good to talk to and I found out she has a background in botany of all things. Who knew? Well, this must be a paradise for studying new and exotic plants. This entire planet would be the textbook definition of ‘new and exotic’ wouldn’t it? I keep vowing to collect and bring her some that look especially interesting.

  I know there is something Carol is holding back about Brachus, but I have been making an effort lately to concentrate on other things. Everyone has their own responsibilities and I have mine; so be it. I don’t like the private channel business, but I keep getting periodic official reports submitted by him and his team (their reports are filtered through Brachus, which I also don’t like, but nobody cares what I like) and that’s enough.

  I also have been spending some time with David. He’s reviewed my background and he quizzes me about it and my other interests. You can never predict his mood though. As Grigor quipped, you don’t know if you are going to get David or Mr. Means from one moment to the next so it’s like walking on eggs around him.

  He’s been working on his “specimens” now for some time and I get the feeling that something is not right but he hasn’t opened up enough for me to confirm it. I confided to him that the idea of treating the natives like lab animals doesn’t sit well with me but he countered with the notion that they are already in essence being tested in their natural environment and evaluated for survival by evolution; we are just trying to speed things up a little and make sure we nudge the process in the right direction. That was the word he used, nudge. I guess by comparison Dylan’s interaction with the natives is mild and benign.

  The Big Picture

  The team has been on the ground for more than 50 local years. I should just say plain old ‘years’ and get used to it. The native animal and most plant populations are on a very high metabolic rate, compared to us. Dex is long gone, but Dex’s descendants are around and Dylan continues to interact with them and the natives. He thinks more highly of their current state of development than does David. He, Dylan, has learned the basic languages for the areas he routinely visits.

  Carol and I have opted out of the ‘medical relief program’ (yes, that’s right!) and now spend more time together than ever before. This is going to be a good trip, no matter what else happens!

  I had a big flurry of activity recently after a major solar storm impinged on this world. Carol had warning via her shipboard sensors but it still caused havoc. I had to return to orbit and look after my responsibilities there, not to mention a short list of items to check for every crew member. Everything is restored now. The good news is that a repeat is unlikely. A direct hit like that from a solar storm is a low probability event.

  The flurry over, I collect my thoughts. I am surprised at how the ship seems to me now. It is sterile, but not entirely lifeless; it lives the ‘life’ of a complex, life-sustaining machine, constantly humming and occasionally clicking and clacking. It has a sound and feel and smell all its own. There is some comfort of security in its close surroundings; my work and bunk area, with its sprinkling of personal artifacts, evinces a feeling of calm and familiarity. But compared to the world below… There is no comparison to the fresh expanses of a brand new world.

  I return to base camp and to Carol to hear the troubling news that David has indeed begun experimentation with his selected subjects. Not just documenting, but experimenting. Gleshert has reluctantly admitted that one native in particular has been deemed ‘the right one’ by David and has been receiving t-session treatments. David’s reasoning: if we prolong the reproductive stage, the more offspring there will be; the more offspring, the wider the distribution of the selected genetics. By inference, I assume he believes that the descendants of his starting stock will become the dominant variant on the planet.

  “They’ve got too much time on their hands. We all do.” I know who Carol means when she says ‘they.’ She means David and Wesley. “Idle hands and all that,” she continues. We’re sitting at our favorite table in the mess hall. “You saw the timeline. We have barely begun our stay. Mark laid it all out. It’s a complicated process to refit for our departure. You should talk to him, by the way. I can tell he’s not happy about something but as usual, he’s being Mark about it.”

  “What do you think about the overall mission now, the big picture again? Should we be here, and elsewhere, interfering not with just bio systems, but with intelligent beings like we are doing? What I mean is this: do you buy into the whole program of expansion and survivability? I know that you said you were OK with it before, but now, in the middle of the actuality, do you still agree with it?”

  “Jason, I do. Maybe I spend too much time looking out into space and the vastness of it, but in the really big picture we are small potatoes. Sure, we’ve visited and affected any number of worlds but there are, without any possibility of doubt, many many more that we haven’t visited or affected. Those worlds will, if conditions are right, and, again, there can be no doubt that conditions will be right on some percentage of them, develop life on their own. And let’s say intelligent life. And let’s say aggressive intelligent life. And let’s say these beings are very successful and begin their own campaign of expansion. Now, even if we assume that the basic building blocks, the amino acids for example, are much the same as ours, we must assume that the genetic code is not. That is, the letters that form the language of inheritance must almost certainly be different from ours, since they are, at the core, a random assignment. And what if they are incompatible? What if, upon the meeting of our two civilizations, this alternate structure and composition is fatal to one or both? What if a basic incompatibility—it doesn’t matter what it is: virus, germ, protein—exists?”

  “That’s a stretch, Carol,” I respond. “I know you are right in your chain of thought, and I know it agrees with what we were taught, but it’s still a stretch. May never happen. Probably won’t happen.”

  “But should we risk an entire civilization along with its history and achievements when we have the technology to try to prevent it? Even though we are a very small part of the universe as a whole…”

  “Small potatoes as you say…”

  “… yes, it’s true. But even so, our civilization as a whole has amounted to something. All the achievements, discoveries, inventions, ideas… These, I believe, are bigger than us. I think they’re worth trying to save and protect. And if that means saving and protecting our civilization as a whole, I’m in.”

  “Ok, let’s go with that, just as you describe. Why not be satisfied with simple seeding? Why go to the extent that we do? We seed the possible planets with compatible starter materials, ensure that basic code is the same, and let it be?”

  “That plan would work only up to a point. It works only for those worlds that are barren when seeded. And sometimes things go awry even with successful seeding. You told me you are researching histories of previous missions. Evolution is unpredictable in its details. Sometimes a planet becomes dominated by a non-intelligent species and in such a way that an intelligent one is never likely to arise, at least not in the foreseeable future. In a case like that, it’s best to start over, unless we just give up and write that one off as a loss.”

  “But David—what he is doing—what do you think about that?” I ask, having earlier confided in her about my qualms regarding his searching for and finding an ‘ideal specimen’ and what I think that means. “Can’t we just leave these people alone? Let’s finish with our business and move along.”

  “Alright, but are you sure you really know what he’s doing down there? I mean, it’s just rumor.”

  “Good point. But I hear the source is Doc and he’s not one to spread unfounded rumors. Something is happening beyond just recording data.”

  “Ok, maybe so then. That’s tougher for me to take as well
but look at it this way: we’ve already been here. What you see around you is partly our doing. We’re already deeply in the game. You do like it here, right?”

  “Alright, that’s a good point, we’re already in deep. But it just pushes the question farther back to the previous intervention, and so on, back to the first step of the program.”

  “Ah, but wait, now I have you!” she says with a sparkle in her eye. “I keep coming back to my garden example. Let’s say you paddle out into the ocean back home and find an unknown uninhabited island. It’s teeming with plants and animals, some poisonous and dangerous. What do you do? Assume you are going to be stuck there for a while— years—maybe forever.”

  “I would order in some food on my new genie model Gni-M and scout out a place to camp right near the beach.”

  “You goof. You know what I mean; no communication devices,” she says, taking a breath. “Here’s what a normal person would do. Once you’d figured out that you will survive—the food and water problem solved—you would begin eliminating the poisonous plants and dangerous animals. You know you would. Over the years, not as some evil and dastardly scheme, but as the normal course of events, you would change your environment to be more and more compatible with yourself and your survival. It’s normal; it’s what you would do. Start with a small garden and expand it to cover the entire island if necessary.”

  I see where she’s going, but simply nod and keep quiet.