Ell Donsaii 13: DNA Read online

  “Um,” Alice said timidly, making an abortive little wave at the woman sitting on the other side of the office, “your 9 o’clock is already here!”

  Remembering that he was supposed to talk to a reporter, Hodges glanced momentarily at the slender brunette woman. She was pretty, about 30, wearing a ball cap, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. PR was important to the University and for a moment it looked like Hodges might talk to her despite his mood, but then he turned back to Alice and barked, “No! Cancel everything. Maybe Barnes could talk to her.” He walked on into his office and slammed the door behind him.

  Alice looked helplessly at their visitor who shrugged and said, “No problem. Who’s Barnes?”

  “Dr. Barnes is one of the younger faculty. She also does a lot of DNA research and everybody says she’s really sharp. Um,” Alice’s eyes twitched towards Hodges office, then she continued quietly, “she’s also really nice.”

  “Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me?” Ell asked, glancing up atIn his favorite topic, biology her HUD where Allan had already displayed data on Dr. Regina Barnes.

  “I bet she would, would you like for me to check?”

  Happy with what she’d seen, Ell nodded, “Thank you, I’d appreciate that.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” Alice said before mumbling to her AI. A moment later, she said, “Dr. Barnes? Um, we have a reporter who came in for an appointment to talk to Dr. Hodges. Unfortunately, Dr. Hodges has had to cancel all of his appointments because of a problem with his grant application. Would you be able to talk to her?” After a moment, Alice looked up and said, “She says she can give you 15 minutes?”

  Ell nodded, “That’d be great. Thank you.”

  Standing, Alice said, “Dr. Barnes, I’ll bring her right down.” She motioned to Ell and they started around the pod of offices.

  Barnes was staring at a 3-D model of a protein rotating on her big screen when a knock came at the door. She didn’t really want to take time away from her project, but knew that PR was important for the University. Hodges could be quite the curmudgeon and had gotten the department some really bad press in the past, so it often fell to Reggie to smooth things over. She stood and turned, taking in the slender brunette in the jeans and T-shirt. Putting out her hand, she said, “Hi, I’m Dr. Regina Barnes, though I prefer to go by ‘Reggie.’ I’m sorry that Dr. Hodges had to cancel his appointment with you. However, I do a lot of the same kind of DNA research as Dr. Hodges. I’d be happy to answer your questions though I’m afraid I don’t have very much time.”

  As the young woman turned and said thank you to Alice and Alice turned to go, Reggie considered the fact that she felt surprised by the reporter’s casual dress. Although Reggie dressed casually for the office and especially for the lab, she’d somehow expected the reporter to be dressed a little more professionally. She waved the woman into a chair and said, “How can I help?”

  “Well, first I have to admit that I’m not really a reporter. I’m hoping that we can help one another.”

  A wave of irritation flashed over Reggie that Alice had let this woman dupe her way into Reggie’s office. Probably has something to sell, Reggie thought, starting to smolder.

  But then the woman said, “Actually, I’m Raquel Blandon. I work out at D5R and we desperately need someone with DNA expertise. We’re hoping you’ll at least provide some consulting, and if you’re interested, perhaps to do some work with extraterrestrial DNA.” Electricity shot down Reggie’s spine and she almost missed Blandon’s next sentence, “Our consulting fees are quite generous.”

  Reggie sank back in her chair, stunned. Who cares about the consulting fees! She thought, She had me with the opportunity to work with ET DNA! Aloud, she said, “DNA from where? Alpha Centauri? Tau Ceti?”

  Blandon shook her head, “Before we could talk about that, we’ve got to establish some confidentiality.”

  Feeling like a bucket of ice had just been thrown on her, Reggie said unhappily, “Confidentiality?”

  “Yes, we’d want you to refrain from publication for at least four years, essentially keeping what you’re doing a complete secret. It’s possible that we’d even ask you to keep it secret for longer than that but in that case you and the University would be very well compensated.”

  Shaking her head, Reggie said, “We must have the academic freedom to publish.”

  “I agree,” Blandon said, “but some things…”

  “No!” Reggie interjected, “The freedom to publish is integral. If you want to control publishing you’d just as well hire yourself some drone to work in your own lab.”

  Blandon pursed her lips, looking disappointed. “Could you suggest someone to us?”

  Suddenly Reggie realized that the opportunity of a lifetime might be slipping through her fingers. Extraterrestrial DNA! Who knows what could be learned! She sighed, hoping she wasn’t about to compromise her own principles, “Wait, you say that we could publish after four years?”

  Slowly nodding, Blandon said, “Yes, unless what we find is so dangerous that we deem it to be a substantial threat to the human race. Then, you’d be well compensated, but we’d insist that it remain a secret.”

  “Oh, come on. Are you thinking that some alien virus might decimate the Earth? Viruses have evolved over millions of years to be able to attack the lifeforms here. The chances that an alien virus would, by some astonishing coincidence, be able to infect earth organisms is so remote that you’d be better off worrying about another asteroid impact!”

  Blandon frowned, “Nonetheless, we have reason to believe that there may be substantial danger. Though we appreciate your ethics, if you don’t feel you can agree to the confidentiality clause, we’ll just have to look elsewhere.”

  Horrified that this incredible opportunity might be slipping away, but still angry that someone’s capricious decision might keep her from publishing her findings, Reggie asked, “Who the hell decides whether it’s too dangerous?!”

  “Ell Donsaii.”

  “Oh…” Reggie said, taken aback. That puts a different complexion on things. “Okay, let me see the agreement.”

  ***

  Dr. Hodges stepped into Regina Barnes’ lab, “Where the hell is Reggie?” he asked the grad student over by the centrifuge.

  The student looked up apprehensively, worried about Hodges legendary temper. “Um, she had an appointment out at D5R this morning.”

  Hodges blinked in surprise, thinking, “D5R?” I thought they did physics? he thought. “What the hell is she doing out there?!”

  Reminding himself that Hodges wasn’t actually Barnes’ boss, no matter how much he acted like it and seemed to believe he was, the student took a little pleasure in saying, “She has a meeting with Ell Donsaii.”

  “What?!” Hodges said, looking a little stunned. Then apparently deciding the student wouldn’t have any answers, he said, “Oh, never mind!”

  Hodges vacated the doorway and started back down the hallway.

  When Reggie Barnes arrived back in the department, Alice quietly said, “Dr. Hodges has been looking for you.”

  Wincing internally, Reggie said, “Do you know what he wants?”

  Alice just shook her head slowly, but the sympathetic look on her face let Reggie know that Hodges was in one of his moods. Though he wasn’t her supervisor or department chairman, he was a senior professor in the department and could cause her some trouble.

  Sure enough, Reggie had barely settled into her chair when Hodges appeared, “What were you doing out at D5R?”

  “Consulting,” Reggie said, keeping to the one word answer because, as usual, she didn’t like Hodges’ attitude.

  “What?! They do physics! Why would they be consulting you?”

  Reggie suspected that the real question wasn’t why they were consulting a DNA expert, but why, if they were consulting a DNA expert, they weren’t consulting him. Taking a little malicious delight in the answer, she said, “Extraterrestrial DNA.”

  Hodges eyes
widened, “From Tau Ceti or Alpha Centauri? They announced that they’d decided it was too dangerous to bring back DNA!” He didn’t say anything about how he’d unsuccessfully badgered them to bring back some DNA a few years back.

  “Confidential,” Reggie said.

  “What?!” Hodges said in a dangerous tone.

  “It’s all confidential. Where the DNA comes from, how they’re getting it, what they want me to do with it. Everything’s confidential.” She hoped that she’d kept any evidence of the triumph she felt out of her voice.

  Shaking his head slowly, Hodges said, “The Department and the University legal people aren’t going to be very happy about you taking on a confidential consulting role.”

  Reggie said, “Already ran it by them. They’re very happy.”

  “What? Why would they be happy? It’s taking you away from your duties and…”

  “The consulting fees are enormous,” Reggie interrupted, still trying to keep the grin off her face.

  “What?! How much?!”

  “Also confidential.”

  Querulously, Hodges said, “Why… How did they get hooked up with you?”

  Hearing the “why not me” subtext, Reggie carefully controlled her face as she answered, “It was that appointment you canceled the day you had to rewrite Rendell’s contribution to your grant. You told Alice to have her talk to me because you were too busy.”

  If Hodges could have slammed Reggie’s door on his way out, she thought he would have.

  After Hodges was gone, Reggie settled back to reflect on her meeting with Donsaii. Reggie’d felt awestruck to meet her. Intellectually, she had a feeling that she shouldn’t feel so much reverence for someone seven years younger than she was. Emotionally however, she almost wanted to kneel or bow before the woman who’d saved her world and therefore Reggie herself. If Donsaii recognized how charged the moment of their meeting was for Reggie, she blithely ignored it. A young woman named Bridget had guided Reggie through D5R’s building, but didn’t get very far before Donsaii actually came to meet them. Wearing khakis and a polo shirt, Donsaii seemed casual yet Reggie could tell almost everyone in the big room had significant awareness focused on the young woman.

  “Hello Dr. Barnes!” Donsaii had greeted her almost effusively, thanking Bridget and starting to lead Reggie back across D5R. “Thank you so much for coming out here to talk to me. I would have been happy to come to you if not for the sensitive nature of the information we’re going to discuss.”

  Feeling boggled at the very possibility that Donsaii would’ve come to her rather than vice versa, Reggie said, “It’s no problem; I was happy to come. I must say that it’s hard to believe that extraterrestrial DNA could pose much of a danger, but I’m happy to listen to your viewpoint.”

  “In here,” Donsaii said, opening a door and ushering Reggie into a small conference room with several very large screens on the walls. After making sure that Reggie understood and agreed to the confidentiality clauses, Donsaii had explained that they weren’t talking about Tau Ceti or Alpha Centauri. Rather, they’d reached another world, though Donsaii wouldn’t even specify which star it was orbiting much less which world. When at first Donsaii had said that the inhabitants of this world manipulated DNA, Reggie had expected to learn about a world with a highly advanced science.

  When Reggie found out they were talking about a world with primitive if any technology, Reggie wanted to laugh at the very idea that they might controllably alter DNA. Then Donsaii started showing her video. Strange aliens with bizarre, and bizarrely, different body plans. Big eyes, little eyes, multiple legs, multiple arms, arms obviously designed for delicate manipulation and others for powerlifting. Beings with wings, beings with fins, and all of them looking and acting intelligent.

  Reggie would have believed that she was being shown the crossroads of some interstellar civilization, except there was essentially no technology! There was no way for all these different aliens to have arrived at the same location!

  Then Donsaii showed her vegetation that grew just as much as the aliens wanted and no more. Plants that produced nodules for food that almost certainly weren’t seeds. Farm fields populated with many different kinds of plants that weren’t trying to choke each other out and whose products were collected by farmers who’d grown specialized arms just for such harvesting.

  Donsaii produced a translated conversation with a zebra striped alien who apparently served as the closest thing the aliens had to a scientist. In it, Donsaii asked the alien, known as “Striper” about reproduction. Although Reggie just had to wonder whether the translation could possibly be correct, Striper had apparently told them that when a Virgie wanted to reproduce, she purposefully grew an organ similar to the uterus, thus leading the D5R team to decide to designate all the Virgies as female. Then the Virgie selected the DNA for the features she wanted in her offspring and inserted it in a cell. She activated a set of genes to send the cell back to an embryonic state, implanted the resulting blastula in the uterus and grew the offspring she’d personally designed. There was no sex. No random mixing of genes. Just a child, joyously formed according to the intelligent design of the single parent.

  If the child wasn’t happy with the design her parent had come up with, she just set about modifying herself! The Virgies had an organ that let them examine DNA—Reggie couldn’t help but think of it as “smelling” the DNA—that would tell them with fairly good accuracy what that DNA would actually do! When they weren’t sure, they would insert the DNA sequence in some cells in an isolated spot in their body and see what happened. If they didn’t like it, they’d dispose of the resulting cells. A big section of most Virgie markets was devoted to the trading of DNA strings that would let a Virgie modify herself in various ways.

  Just as Reggie was thinking that she simply didn’t believe the Virgies could possibly modify their bodies as had been described to her, Donsaii showed her a series of pictures of Striper cutting off one of her own eyeballs in order to dissect it, then beginning to grow a new eyeball in its place!

  Reggie could not imagine why they hadn’t developed technology. She wondered if they were just so focused on manipulating DNA that they found mechanical devices uninteresting or, whether they simply found it easier to manipulate their own bodies to do the various things a mechanical device might be able to do for them. If they wanted to fly a long distance, they grew bigger wings. When they’d wanted shelter, they modified the DNA of the plants so that they developed into hexagonal homes. Hexagonal homes that could tighten the weave of their walls to insulate or loosen it to let air blow through. Homes whose vegetative walls could apparently generate heat when it was cold and exude moisture for evaporative cooling when it was hot.

  When Donsaii showed Reggie that Striper appeared to be growing a compound microscope just below her large central eye, Reggie decided in favor of the hypothesis that manipulating their own bodies was easier for them than building devices.

  Feeling dazed by the entire presentation, and humbled by the Virgies’ ability to manipulate DNA in ways she couldn’t fathom, Reggie had finally said, “And… what is it exactly… that you want me to do?”

  “Well Dr. Barnes, I’m both excited about the possibility that the Virgies may be able to teach us some wonderful things that DNA can do, and I’m worried about the fact that I believe DNA represents a kind of von Neumann machine.”

  “Von Neumann machine?”

  “Yes, von Neumann proposed that an advanced civilization could send out small robotic probes to other worlds that would then reproduce themselves and move on to other worlds. The idea was that they would eventually spread to every world in the galaxy and do immeasurable damage…”

  “Yes, yes,” Reggie said, a little impatiently, “I’m familiar with von Neumann’s concept. But, DNA?!”

  “Every world we’ve been to so far, Dr. Barnes, has been populated by DNA-based life forms. DNA is much smaller than the kind of machines von Neumann was thinking about, but it ce
rtainly seems to have spread itself throughout the galaxy and taken over world after world, reproducing itself and modifying those worlds along the way.”

  “Oh…” Reggie said, stunned by the concept. “But, still, DNA is us! It’s not like it’s some foreign von Neumann machine here to destroy us.”

  “Agreed, but DNA is always battling for the supremacy of its own particular nucleotide strand. I don’t want to take a chance that we might import some complex DNA system that’s capable of taking over and dominating our world. However,” Donsaii looked a little uncertain, “I believe we would like to be able to import bits of DNA that can improve our lives.”

  Reggie shook her head, “How can you do one without the other?”

  Donsaii said, “That’s where you come in. I have an idea, but of course it needs an expert like you to vet it.”

  Reggie motioned for Donsaii to continue, thinking that Donsaii’s proposition would probably be full of holes.

  “So, Donsaii said, “our first principle is that we never import actual DNA of any kind for fear that some bad DNA might be mixed in with it. In fact, so far, in all of our interstellar exploration we have been extremely careful to allow nothing to return from those other worlds for fear it might carry some DNA.”

  “But… if we can’t bring any DNA back, how are we going to…?!”

  Donsaii put up a halting hand, “We’ll only bring back the code for the DNA. Short stretches, capable of making single proteins. That way no other DNA can accidentally or purposefully be mixed into any specimen we bring back here. You examine the code to make sure it looks like it’s reasonable that it might make the particular protein or other molecule we want. If you’re fairly satisfied, you still only actually synthesize that strand of DNA and insert it in an appropriate cell line inside the University’s Level 4 Biosafety lab. You evaluate the protein it produces to be sure it’s non-toxic and does what it supposed to do. And of course, that it does nothing else.”