Robert Wilson - Bios

“Same genome,” Hayes said. “Same organism.”

“Same genome, but it’s expressing itself in a radically different way.

“So it’s environmentally sensitive.”

“At the very least. Might as well say it’s trying to pry open the station and come inside.”

Dieter was Gamma Stone Clan, given to overstatement. “If they’re growing, it’s because we’re feeding them.”

“They’re dying as fast as they grow.”

True enough. Hayes had spent his share of time in excursion gear, scrubbing decayed bacterial mats from the station’s exposed surfaces. Kamikaze bacteria? “I don’t think they literally want to kill us, Dieter.”

“That might be a dangerous assumption to make.”

Hayes was famous for the hours he kept. People said he never slept.

Lately that had been all too true. He had personally supervised much of Zoe’s ongoing excursion, not to mention coordinating the seal repairs and a complete changeover on one of the big filter stacks. He was averaging four or five hours of sleep per night and was often grateful to get that much. Sleep deprivation had left him testy and hypersensitive. For the first time in his life, he envied the Terrestrial hands who wore thymostats. He had to make do with caffeinated drinks and willpower, the poor man’s equivalent.

It was late when he left Dieter Franklin’s laboratory. Almost everyone but the graveyard shift had retired for the night. At night, the station seemed both too large and too small—the echo of his footsteps came back to him as if from a vast space, but the sound was flat, contained: a dosed space. Every avenue a dead end.

Yambuku had never seemed so fragile.

His research notes lay untouched in his cabin. He was tempted to go there now, but a last task awaited him, one he had been putting off. This Terrestrial D P kacho was due down in the morning and would need fresh quarters. But there was only one vacancy at Yambuku, and that was the cabin Elam Mather had occupied.

Cleaning it out for Avrion Theophilus was a simple enough chore. No one on Isis owned anything substantial. The joke was, you came to Isis the way you came into the world: naked and afraid. And left: the same way.

Elam had left rather differently, but she had taken nothing with her. Still, the sheets needed to be laundered and the wall screens cleared of personal displays.

Small work, but not work he relished. Nor could it be delegated. When a hand died, the station manager always cleared the cabin. He had done the same thing for Mac Feya. Any old hand would; it was one of the few customs the Isis Project had developed.

He let himself into the cabin with his master key.

Elam’s desk light winked on as he stepped inside, then so did the wall screen—a live image of Isis relayed from orbit. Was this how Elam had liked to imagine herself, out of the toxic bios, above it all? Or had she simply preferred to take the long view?

He switched off the screen and dumped Elam’s preferences back into the station pool. Then he collected and folded her sheets and took the issue garments from her shelves. All were of the uniform ultralight charcoal-colored cloth imported from Earth. He put them outside the door for a tractible robot to pick up. Elam’s laundry would cycle interchangeably through the Yambuku housekeeping system; in a day or two, he might be sleeping on one of these same sheets.

Last, he used his scroll to open Elam’s personal memory cache in Yambuku’s core memory. Mac had left his filestack full of random notes to himself, letters home, indecipherable notes. Elam was tidier than that; likely all that remained to be cleared would be lists, schedules, and access numbers.

But when he asked for a global delete, one item came up red-tagged.

It was a message, unfinished, and it was addressed to him.

Tam,

Currently skimming over the ocean on the way to meet Freeman Li. Realized we hadn’t had an opportunity to talk lately. Can we get together as soon as I’m back? Until then, some thoughts.

No doubt you remember when I told you to steer clear of Zoe Fisher. Maybe I was wrong. (Shows how much my motherly advice is worth, I guess.) There is something special about that girl, I agree, but you have to understand, Tam— her specialness makes her dangerous. Maybe very dangerous.

And yes, I know she’s innocent of any personal scheming. Just as obviously, though, she’s a tool in some complicated Devices and Personnel power play. This is bad news for her, God knows, and might be trouble for you too, given the interest you’ve taken in her. Please don’t be naive! The Trust uses people like Zoe Fisher the way you and I use toilet paper. The only thing that protects us here is distance, and even that might not protect us much longer. Isis isn’t a republic; it’s a Trust property. Never forget that.

This Avrion Theophilus is suddenly on a cargo manifest from Earth. Part of a plan—or worse, a plan gone wrong. Watch out for him, Tam. Trust Families don’t send a fancy cousin like that on such a dangerous journey unless the stakes are very, very high. Maybe he only wants to make sure Zoe succeeds — that the excursion gear functions as promised—but even if that’s so, it means there must be equally powerful people who want her to fail.

But here is the truly troublesome news: I think Zoe’s bloodware has been tampered with.

Last night I found her in the cargo hold, about an hour after midnight. She thought she was alone, and she was crying. Quiet, helpless baby tears—you know the kind I mean. When I asked her what was wrong, she blushed and mumbled something about a nightmare. What struck me was the way she said it, trying to sound casual, obviously attempting to brush me off, but weirdly sincere, too, as if a nightmare was a completely novel experience, something she had only read about in books. Which it might well be, given her D P background.

Ask yourself, Tam: Why should a highly regulated bottle baby like Zoe Fisher suddenly suffer from nightmares? (Or fall in love, come to that!)

After I calmed down Zoe and chased her back to bed, I woke up Shel Kyne. Shel is a competent physician but he’s irredeemably Terrestrial. He didn’t even wonder why I was asking all these questions about Zoe’s bloodware—-just trotted out her charts, miffed at the hour but happy to be consulted. (I don’t know about you Red Thorns, but among Rider Clan the unwarranted sharing of medical information is grounds for summary disenfranchisement. Earthlings!)

I asked, first, whether emotional instability might be a sign of a failing thymostat.

Yes, Shel tells me, that’s certainly possible, though thymostatic disequilibrium can be subtle at the beginning; emotional volubility doesn’t usually show up until some weeks or even months after the thymostat switches off.

So I asked him. Is there anything wrong with Zoe’s regulator?

He smiled and said he didn’t know.

Apparently Zoe is loaded with novel bloodware, most of it in germed gland sacs clustered around the abdominal aorta. These devices are so newfangled that Shel’s instruments won’t read them, and D P didn’t send blueprints. The most Shel can do is monitor her metabolites for the major neurotransmitters and regulatory chemistry. Zoe’s serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and Substance P do look a little odd, apparently, and she’s negative for most of the common reuptake inhibitors. But her regulatory bloodware is so unusual that Shel can’t decide if this is appropriate functioning or a major malfunction.

Shel suggested we ask Avrion Theophilus about it when he arrives. (I lied and said I would; I also advised Shel to keep quiet about it until I spoke to him again. You might want to edit his reports to the IOS in the next little while.)