Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

“All right,” Sean said. “It’ll take a while to organize.”

“No problem, but I want it started this afternoon. We’ll take a look ourselves in a little while.”

“I’d like something to eat, please,” Charlotte said.

“Good idea,” Greg said. “We’ll get changed, have a bite.” He checked his watch. “Meet back here in an hour, half-past three. OK?”

“Yes, thank you.” Charlotte gave him a quick courteous smile.

“I’ll have the cook rustle something up for you,” Sean said.

“Send Melvyn Ambler and Lloyd McDonald straight in when they arrive,” Greg said. “And Charlotte.” She looked round, eyes wide and sad. “Don’t go anywhere without your hardline guard. You’re the single most important person on New London right now.”

He got a brief flustered nod.

“I’ll show you your room,” Michele Waddington said, opening the door.

Suzi winked. “I’ll stick with her till the hardliners arrive.”

“Fine, thanks Suzi.” He ran his hands back through his hair, it was sweaty and tangled after four hours of that tightfitting cap.

The jacuzzi came on at his voice command, and he began to take off the hot shipsuit.

As soon as Royan shimmered through the protective programs Julia had thrown round her processor implant she could tell he was excited, face all tight and bright.

Snowy, how’s it going?

Not good. I’ve got you mucking about with microbes. Event Horizon is under threat from superior technology. My hold over the New Consetvatives is slipping. Greg’s off chasing after an alien. And Victor’s furious with you for hiding this personality package in Kiley’s ‘ware. He had to go out to the Farm in person.

Some of his infuriating bonhomie faded, the image turning translucent for an instant as the features reshaped themselves into a more serious attitude. His sympathetic expression offered concern.

That was him all the way through, knowing exactly which buttons to press. And she always bloody let him.

I’m sorry, Snowy. Truth to tell, I’m surprised you needed to access this package at all. It’s been going so well, really. I was right about the microbes, they are the greatest discovery since America, since… the wheel. God, Snowy, they’re magnificent. Truly. They’re going to make you mine again, Snowy. They’ll bring us back together. Equals and lovers. He gave her a lopsided smile. Fated, it’s written in the stars.

Once he’d been able to make her smile and dance and blush with his romanticism. Fifteen years ago, when the peace of a beachside bungalow and whole days spent making love were more important than anything. When just the touch of him lit a fire in her blood.

The only thing I see in the stars these days is how much New London has cost me, in red figures a thousand kilometres high. And only mental cripples leading Mild lives believe in astrology, as you so often told me. Now what the bloody hell have you been doing? Have you stitched that space plant together yet?

There was no movement in the pixels that composed his face, no show of hurt, which just made it worse. Julia responded with her own front of stubbornness, refusing to be bullied.

I discovered something about the microbe genetics, Royan said. Did my earlier recordings tell you about the inner toroid shells being inert?

Yes.

Well, I did a bit more work on them. A second project, alongside my asteroid dissemination plant. I was curious that only the outer shell contained active gene toroids; so I removed the outer shell from one sphere, and used the remainder as the basis of a clone.

You did what?

Cloned it.

His image dissolved. The cell which replaced him was a sac of white shadows, foggy inside. It reminded her of a flaccid jellyfish. The nucleus was a dark ovoid core at the centre, surrounded by a snowstorm of white organdies.

Her perception point drifted through the cell wall, carrying her up to the nucleus. She stopped just outside, observing the internal structure through a smoky membrane which gave everything a rusty tint. At the heart of the nucleus was the sphere of alien chromosomes. She felt like a small child pressed up against a shop window, complacent and dreamy.

I used an ordinary moss cell as a base, Royan said. I removed its terrestrial DNA, and replaced it with the modified alien gene sphere. I studied the sphere’s reproduction process, it’s very similar to DNA replication. Cell division starts with a generation of ring-like threads, chromonemata equivalents, which anneal to the toroids, facilitating duplication; then the two sets of toroids are split apart and regroup at separate ends of the cell, ready for the fusion.

Chrome-black rings tumbled through the nucleus, swooping towards the toroid sphere. They began to cluster over the surface, dropping down sharply to mate with a toroid. A fuzz of molecules began to build round each one. The outer shell of the gene sphere split into thirteen crescent segments, and opened like a flower. Rings started to fall in towards the second shell. The process was repeated with each of the shells, accelerating with each layer. As the shell segments continued to unfold the nucleus membrane dissolved, allowing them to spread through the cell like the wings of a dark bird.

Julia could see the duplicate toroids building, swelling out of the rings which had latched on to the originals. The last shell opened to expose a single molecular globe at the core, individual atoms arranged in what resembled a geodesic framework. Then all the twinned toroids were peeling apart. Two complete sets of the unfolded genes were now diffused throughout the cell. She thought it looked as if the membrane had been filled with a pair of crumpled oil stains, unable to merge, slithering endlessly round each other. Then they began to contract. It was the unfolding in reverse, shell segments recombining with bewildering speed, weaving round each other in a perfectly synchronized dance, snapping shut.

She let it all happen without protest, absorbed by the complexity and dynamics. Life reduced to fundamentals, its fabric more grandiose than any human cathedral. Royan was right, it was hard to believe nature, chance, could produce this chemical mechanism unaided.

When it was finished there were two gene spheres with nucleus membranes gradually thickening around them. The cell began to elongate, the separate nuclei pulling apart. A pinch began halfway between them. Then there were two cells, just touching.

Fascinating, isn’t it? Royan asked; he used a hollow tone.

I’ve seen terrestrial cell duplication. This is no different Evolution obviously results in the simplest solution to the problem each time. A galactic constant. She observed the two cells; their organelles seemed firmer now, more compact. Black rings were beginning to flood each nucleus again.

You’ve grown very cynical, said Royan. The point of all this is that the second shell pattern is a viable one. I only initiated the first division; as you can see the reproduction mechanism carried on.

And it grew into a plant, she said. One that looked like a cross between a fern and a cactus.

How did you know?

You carried it with you when you left the North Sea Farm.

Oh.Trust Victor to find that out. He’s keen, that one.

What’s all this supposed to prove? she asked.

Come on, Snowy! The second shell was a completely new species. Doesn’t that strike you as being incredibly neat? The alien genes are arranged in a numerical sequence. Since when has mathematics governed nature?

Life is chemistry, she said. Everything can be reduced to numbers and formulae in the end. That’s what genes are, ultimately, chemical numbers. The microbe’s genetic structure is neater than ours; that’s only to be expected in something a couple of billion years more advanced than we are. The second shell plant is probably the form the microbe evolved from. Human DNA contains all sorts of vestigial codes-tails, pelts-and we still haven’t got rid of our appendix.