Flinx in Flux (14 page)

“When the oceans here on Longtunnel receded, exposing the limestone and creating the caverns, these ocean dwellers didn’t die out. Instead they became air-breathing land creatures, and food for others. Many of them occupy the same ecological niche underground that chlorophyllous plants do topside. We expected to find a simple food chain here, and instead we stumbled into something wondrous and complex. To top it all, the entire ecosystem is particularly amenable to gengineering.” She leaned back in her chair and regarded her guests speculatively.

“I’ll see to arranging some sort of suitable reward for you, young man.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“It really isn’t,” Clarity told her supervisor. “He’s not short of resources. He has his own ship.”

Vandervort’s expression was unreadable. Flinx noted that her eyebrows had been neatly and recently plucked, then dyed to match the rest of her hair.

“His own ship, you say? I am impressed. But we must give you something for returning our Clarity to us, young man. I suppose we could carpet a room or two on your vessel. You would be astonished to learn what our first rolls of Verdidion Weave sell for on places like Earth and New Riviera. It would be a suitable gift.”

“Thanks, but I like the floors on my ship just the way they are. If you’re going to insist, though, I wouldn’t mind having a few trays of that.” He nodded at the lustrous pseudoplasmodium.

Vandervort chuckled, picked up the tray, and returned it to the refrigeration unit concealed in the cabinet behind her desk. “As I mentioned, we’re not at the production stage yet. But I’ll talk to the lab and see what can be done. Feeding you doesn’t seem like much of a reward, but if that’s what interests you, we have a couple of other new ingestible bioproducts on the shelves that might tickle your taste buds. Clarity can show them to you. She’s already breached most of our security regulations, anyway.”

“He saved my life!” Clarity reminded her supervisor.

“Take it easy, dear. I was only teasing.” She smiled ingratiatingly at Flinx. She was very good at what she did, he knew. The “harmless kindly aunt” act was excellent. The feelings he felt emanating from her suggested someone a good deal more calculating and professional. As a connoisseur of emotions, he always applauded a skilled performance. She took his smile for indifference.

“You aren’t interested in our little industrial secrets, anyway. Are you, young man?”

“I’m a student, but not of those. Anything secret stays with me. I’m interested in knowledge for its own sake. Not for sale.”

“What a quaint notion. Well, if you’re good enough for our Clarity, you’re good enough for me.” She smiled and extracted the narcostick, which despite appearances was not permanently affixed to her lower lip.

“I leave it to Clarity to exercise proper judgment. Under her supervision you may have the run of our facility. It’s the least we can do. Just promise me you’re not wearing any concealed recording devices. How long do you plan to stay with us?”

“I don’t know how long I’m going to stay, and I’m not wearing anything except what you can see,” he replied, knowing full well he probably had been scanned for concealed instrumentation as soon as he’d emerged from the shuttle.

“Very, well, then. Enjoy your visit.” She was smiling an entirely different kind of smile as she glanced back at Clarity. “Do you think we can find suitable lodgings for our young man, my dear?”

“I think so,” Clarity managed to reply with a straight face.

Vandervort rose as she spoke. It was a gesture of dismissal. “Just remember, young man, that she has an unbreakable long-term contract here, and now that we have her back, I have no intention of letting her leave, voluntarily or otherwise.”

“I’ve no intention of interrupting my work here, Amee.”

“I’m glad to hear that, my dear. I am aware of other incentives to travel besides wealth and fame, and I’m not so old that I don’t remember how powerful they can be.”

Chapter Nine

The following day she formally checked in with her colleagues and fellow workers. When they heard her story, Flinx was battered by a barrage of friendly backslaps and congratulatory handshakes. Everyone was grateful to him for what he had done. He bore their gratitude patiently.

He tried to involve himself in their conversations, but the technical terms were outside his range of experience and study, though Clarity was obviously in her element. A short, swarthy, and perpetually nervous young man introduced himself as Maxim. He was not much older than Flinx. His lab was overflowing with an extraordinary array of chlorophyll-less growths. A few were quite mobile. Maxim clearly enjoyed the role of teacher and tour guide.

“We still aren’t sure whether the fungi derived from the algae or the protozoans, but there are genotypes on this world that blow most of our traditional theories all to hell.”

Flinx listened enthusiastically, as he did to every new piece of information that came his way. Nor was the tour only of labs and libraries. There was time and the means to relax as well. Individual food service, undated entertainment on disk and chip, even occasional live performances that made the rounds of the various company facilities. Everything, Flinx thought, to make life underground as pleasant and endurable as possible.

“Small compensation,” Clarity said, “when you realize we never get to see the sun or the sky. Coldstripe does its best, though. We’re the biggest research outfit on Longtunnel. The others are small and just getting started. Most of them are just doing pure research. We’re the only ones who’ve gone as far as developing a salable product. The House of Sometra is trying, but they have no real production facilities as yet. Once the Flavor Cubes join Verdidion Weave on the market, everyone will stop asking where Longtunnel is. The plan is to export directly through Thalia Major. But I don’t imagine you’re very interested in the economics of it.”

“I’m interested in everything,” he told her quietly.

It was fascinating to watch her in the lab. When working, she underwent a complete transformation. The smiles disappeared, laughter became muted, and she was all seriousness and attention to business when trying to analyze the genetic structure of some new fungus or sulfide eater.

She rarely worked with the actual lifeform. That was left to the surgeons and manipulators. Her career and work were bounded by the limits of a twenty-by-twenty infinite-screenfront Hydroden Custom Designer, with several billion megabytes of online storage in a supercoduct Markite Cylinder Tap. Without touching a living cell, she could take entire complex organisms apart and reassemble them on demand, could run an entire evolutionary schematic in a few hours. Only after a possible recombinant had been simulated and overchecked would it finally be tried in vivo.

It was mesmerizing and disquieting to watch—because it was too easy for him to empathize with the lowly creatures whose genetic codes were being played with like a child’s blocks, even if they were lifeforms as simple as fungi and slime molds. Because it was all too easy for him to imagine a cluster of faceless strangers bent over similar devices, moving molecules of DNA around with electronic probes, inserting proteins and removing genes. Because it was all too easy to envision the end product of their dispassionate and emotionless work as himself.

Clarity disquieted him in another fashion entirely. For someone who had recently vowed not to involve himself any further in the problems of a frivolous and uncaring humanity, he was powerfully attracted to the young gengineer. She had already willingly demonstrated how attracted she was to him.

He delighted in observing her with her colleagues. When working, she was no longer the frightened, exhausted woman he had hauled out of the Ingre jungle—she added a decade in maturity and self-confidence.

Their relationship had begun to settle. It was not as if she had turned cool toward him. If anything, she was more relaxed in his company than ever before. But with the return of her self-assurance had come a slight and welcome distancing. If he pressed the issue, he did not doubt that she would respond readily. That was plain to see in her eyes, unmistakable in her voice. It was simply that she was no longer dependent on him for her continued survival. Better this way, he told himself.

Unfortunately, her increased confidence and self-assurance in their relationship were marked by a steady decline in his own. While he was the intellectual equal or superior of any of her male acquaintances, in matters of social interaction he had less experience than the average nine teen-year-old.

Well, he had always been a loner, probably always would be. He tagged along as she made the rounds and performed her work, content with the moments in between when they could talk of other things.

Clarity was deeply involved with something called a Sued mold. It looked like a cross between a mushroom and a jelly. The mold itself was useless, but its mature spores smelled like fresh-mown clover. More important, when properly applied, the powder had the ability to mask human body odor completely. The effect lasted only a few hours.

If Clarity and her colleagues could reengineer the mold to produce spores whose odor-killing ability would last for at least twenty hours, or two or three days, they would have a new cosmetic product that could readily compete in Commonwealth markets. Tests showed the spores were harmless and had no side effects, being a natural product, whereas many deodorants contained metals that were potentially dangerous when absorbed by the human body. Clarity had tried it on herself, with no ill effects.

She turned away from the designer. “Not very glamorous, is it? Bringing all the resources of modern gengineering to bear on the problem of body odor. Amee say sometimes the products that make the most profit are the ones that address the simplest problems.

“Derek and Hing are working on another slime mold that exists in semiliquid form. It can metabolize toxic chemicals and turn them into useful fertilizer. If its natural metabolic rate can be speeded up and it can be raised cheaply enough and in sufficient quantity, we can spread it over half the restricted dumps in the Commonwealth. Imagine being able to literally transform poison into peaches. Sludge and stinks—that’s what we’re about down here.”

“Very money-oriented.”

“Does that upset you?”

He turned away. “I don’t know. I just have a lingering problem with altering the natural order of things purely for profit.”

“Now you sound like my kidnappers,” she said, chiding him gently. “Flinx, every business since the beginning of time has altered the natural order of things for profit. We just begin at the source. There’s no pollution here because we’re working within Longtunnel’s established ecosystem. We aren’t setting up smelly factories or dumping toxins down pristine tunnels. On the contrary, we’re working on products like the kind you’ve seen that are designed to reduce and clean up pollution on other worlds. A whole new industry is starting up here. If our plans pan out, this formerly useless world is going to become the source of a host of new purifying products. We’re working with one ecosystem to improve dozens of others.

“Until Vandervort and her backers decided to take a chance on Longtunnel, this world was nothing but a thin file in Commonwealth galographics. Now that we’re actually established here, we’re discovering dozens of new and exciting possibilities every day.”

“And who benefits ultimately?”

She blinked. “You mean besides the people who buy our products?”

“That’s right. Which big firm is going to be pulling money out of this world’s DNA?”

“No big firm.” She eyed him in surprise. “I thought you knew. Coldstripe is an independent self-contained setup. Amee has backers and runs the whole operation here. Maxim and Derek and myself and the others—we are Coldstripe. Each of us owns a piece of the company. Do you really think they could hire people of that quality to come and live in a place like this for just a salary? We’re here because we have a chance to make our fortune. We’re all dependent on each other’s work. That’s why I was missed so much.”

She put a hand on the shoulder opposite Pip, and he felt it burn into him. She had beautiful hands, with long graceful fingers and neatly trimmed nails. He did not try to shrug it away.

“You warned Ms. Vandervort about your abductors?”

“She’s taken steps. We were prepared to cope with industrial espionage, but ecofanatics don’t play by any rules but their own. They talked to me a lot when they weren’t asking questions. Trying to brainwash me, I guess. Their program, insofar as it could be called that, was to preserve the purity of all worlds ‘untouched’ by the Commonwealth. Whatever that means.”

“To some people,” Flinx murmured, “purity is an end in itself.”

“A dead end,” she said sharply. “Whether prodded by reasons of commerce or simply a desire to know, science always advances. If it stands still, then civilization dies. There’s no such thing as ecological purity on any world. Something’s always on top, socially and via the food chain. Oh, it’s not all one-sided. I’d be the first to agree with that. There are always the unscrupulous, who’d exterminate an entire species for a few million credits. We’re not like that here. Coldstripe is Church-certified. We’re not interested in damaging the natural order, only in using it. But we’re an easy target because we’re new and small.

“Keep in mind we’re not interfering with sentient or even semisentient creatures here on Longtunnel. We’re dealing with fungi and slime molds and very basic organisms. We have a chance to use them to benefit all mankind. Developed under proper supervision, the lifeforms of Longtunnel have much to offer civilization, and I’m not just saying that because I have a chance to make a great deal of money while doing so. We’re not just involved with the decorative arts. Coldstripe is much more than Verdidion Weave.” Her expression wrinkled.

“I guess some people can’t see that. They’d rather leave a world untouched, ravaged by an impossible climate, forever dark and unused. It’s the old story about the tree falling in the forest. If there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? I say that if no one’s here to study and learn from Longtunnel’s beauty, then that beauty doesn’t exist. The people who kidnapped me want all that beauty left locked up and unseen. I can’t understand an attitude like that. Our work hurts no one and nothing. Those organisms we modify thrive in their altered states.” She sighed sadly.

“The goal of these fanatics is to stop all research in our fields. They want to bring gengineering and its related disciplines to a dead halt. There are half a dozen branches of science they’d ban if they could. As for the ecological ‘purity’ they want to preserve, do they propose to ban evolution, too?

“If they can stop Coldstripe, they can stop development here. The private research groups will pull out fast. Universities don’t want their people involved in a shooting match.”

“What about requesting peaceforcer protection?”

She laughed, not at him but at the idea. “Longtunnel’s so small that the outpost here doesn’t even rate official recognition yet. There’s just not enough people or development to warrant that kind of expenditure. We’re trying. We’re expanding as fast as we can, even trying to bring other, nondirectly competitive firms in so we can attract some attention. Until that happens we’re on our own.”

“I can see why they’re so anxious to put a stop to your work here.”

She nodded. “If they can shut Coldstripe down and drive us out, then the other outfits here will follow. The Commonwealth won’t step in because there isn’t enough property and personnel to justify intervention. The fanatics will seal up the whole place. No one will try to reestablish. Eventually it’ll all be forgotten.” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“All this potential will be lost. No more Verdidion Weave. No Flavor Cubes, no toxin-eating fungi, nothing. The floats will drift back to the wild, only their population will fall off in this area because they’ll no longer have easy, protected access to food.” There was sadness and passion in her voice.

“Only a tiny portion of the caverns have been explored and charted. It takes so much time. This is the first world we’ve tried to settle where aerial surveys and mapping satellites are useless, because the only part of the planet we’re interested in is buried. Like a treasure chest. Even Cachalot could be mapped from orbit. You can’t do that with caverns. Some of the techniques the cartographers are having to use are thousands of years old. Longtunnel is Aladdin’s cave, Flinx, overflowing with biogold instead of coins. The jewels here are alive and mobile and need studying. We can’t let a bunch of madmen take that away from us. We won’t.”

“They got to you once before. They may try again.”

“We’ll be ready for them this time,” she said confidently. “You heard Amee. Security is in place. They won’t slip past port authority this time. Everyone coming in is to be triple-screened. Luggage is being hand searched. Now that the word’s out about what happened to me, everyone’s checking on everyone else. If the fanatics do have an operative working here, he or she won’t be able to go to the bathroom without being observed. They’re going to have to keep a low profile, or they’ll be noticed and brought in for questioning.” Her gaze rose to meet his.

“I just want to be sure you understand what it is we’re trying to do here, Flinx. You sounded unsure, or at least questioning. It’s not just a matter of making money; every week, every month we make a major discovery that adds to the general store of human knowledge. Not just in ecology or geology but in a whole range of sciences. Longtunnel is unique. There’s nothing else like it anywhere in the Commonwealth.

“Take the airway sensors. Nobody’s ever seen anything like them. The taxonomists are going crazy trying to decide if they need to create a whole new class to explain them. It’s tremendously exciting. Lifeforms living in ways we never suspected existed. That’s reason enough to fight to keep this installation functioning. We’re adding daily to humanx knowledge and humanx comfort. The thranx who are working here, they think they may have a line on a sulfide eater that can be gengineered to rebuild broken exoskeleton. You can’t regenerate chiton, but this stuff secretes it as a by-product. You plant the wound, wait, and it grows together like new.