They owned their own company, controlled their own destiny, and that had been a thrilling feeling. Unfortunately, drops in shipping demands worldwide caught them unprepared. They quickly fell behind on payments and were in danger of losing everything.
Then P. J. Colding had come a’calling. Her knight in shining armor. If Sara and her crew agreed to help rebuild Genada’s Frankenstein C-5, the company would pay off the 747 completely and give each of them a six-figure salary just to be on retainer. All she and her three closest friends had to do was keep the C-5 in top condition and be ready to fly on a moment’s notice.
“We made a deal, guys,” Sara said. “We took Genada’s money. A lot of it. It’s not like the Paglione brothers can open the Yellow Pages and just go find another crew for this bird.”
“The Pagliones?” Alonzo said. “You sure you don’t mean Colding? We’re not blind, Sara. We’ve seen you hook up with guys before, but you had a major shine-on for that big geek.”
“Fuck you,” Sara said. “I screwed up once. No way I’m hitting that again, and even if I do, you know goddamn well that wouldn’t influence my decision. Bottom line is we can’t be replaced. If we quit, we’re leaving Genada in the lurch.”
“I know that, boss,” Miller said. “But people are willing to kill for this shit.”
“Yeah,” Cappy said. “Willing to kill. And the freakin’ U.S. government? Military, maybe? Who is this Colonel Fischer cat, anyway?”
“And how about that burning body?” Alonzo asked. “That kind of thing ain’t our business.”
She put her fingers on her temples and rubbed. Alonzo was right. They were all right, but they were also fresh out of options. “Guys, this situation sucks for us, but if we just stay cool and finish the job, we own our 747 free and clear. I’m willing to take risks to make that happen. If we bail, we lose everything we’ve struggled for. Me? To be blunt, I’d rather die first. But if you guys want out, say the word and we walk as soon as we land.”
She stared at each of them in turn. It had to be a group decision. She couldn’t coerce them one way or another, nor would she. These men were her family, the brothers she’d never had.
They all looked at the ground, the equipment, anywhere but at Sara. None of them wanted to work for someone else ever again. But how far were they willing to go for that?
She leaned out of her seat and stared hard at Alonzo. “Well? I can’t decide this for you. Make a decision.”
Alonzo seemed to shrink into his seat. He hated to be put on the spot. “I like being my own boss. But you have to promise us that if it gets crazy, that this whole burning body thing was anything other than a onetime fluke, then we’re out. Deal?”
Sara nodded.
“Well then, fuck it,” Alonzo said. “We all look out for each other. We finish the job. I’m in.”
Sara turned to stare at the Twins, but she already knew their answer.
“I agree with ’Zo,” Miller said. “Fuck it, I’m in.”
Cappy gave a thumbs-up. “Me too. I’ll even throw in a mandatory fuck it just so I can swear like all the cool kids.”
Sara laughed. “Okay, now that we have that cleared up, let’s do our jobs. I’m going to check on Jian and Rhumkorrf. ’Zo, you keep flying. Cappy and Miller, go check on that drunk-ass Tim Feely. If he’s still out, just leave him in the crash chair.”
Sara followed Cappy and Miller out of the cockpit. They descended the fore ladder to the lower deck while Sara walked to the upper-deck lab.
THE TIGER ARM and the baby arm simultaneously reached up, toward her face. Bent sewing needles sprouted from the finger/paw tips.
“No,” Jian whimpered. “No, please no …”
Needles sank into her shoulders. The wide mouth opened and leaned in toward her face.
Breath like a puppy’s.
Long teeth wet with saliva.
Jian lost her grip on the stuffed monstrosity. The creature fell to the grass. It landed on all fours and started to scramble toward her, hissing in anger, black eyes narrow with hatred and hunger.
Finally, all her pain and suffering would end …
SARA ENTERED THE lab to find Jian asleep on her computer desk, head and arms lying heavily to the left of a computer keyboard. Her glossy hair seemed to melt right into the desk’s black surface. She was asleep, but not motionless—the woman twitched and whimpered.
Rhumkorrf was sitting at a terminal across the lab, either ignoring Jian’s nightmare or oblivious to it.
“Doctor Rhumkorrf?” Sara said. “Is she okay?”
He looked up from his computer, then looked at Jian. He waved a hand dismissively. “She does that all the time.” He bent back to his work.
What an asshole. Sara gently shook Jian’s shoulders. The woman snapped up and awake, looked at Sara and flinched away as if Sara were some creature straight from the nightmare.
“Take it easy,” Sara said in a soothing voice. “It’s okay.”
Jian blinked, took a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a long, slow exhale. This chick was a total mess. Must have been a humdinger of a dream. Jian’s eyes suddenly darted to the right, to her multiple computer screens, then she twisted her body to look under the desk.
“Jian, what is it?”
“Did you see it?”
“See what?”
Jian looked around the lab quickly, eyes hunting. “I thought I saw one of them.”
“One of what, honey?”
The woman jammed her fists into her eyes and rubbed. “I thought I saw something. But nothing is there.”
Sara reached out and stroked Jian’s long black hair. “Just take a breath, kiddo. You had a nightmare, that’s all.”
Jian stared back with haunted, hollow eyes. “That all,” she said with a whisper, then laughed quietly. It was a high-pitched laugh. Had it been louder Sara might have mistaken it for a scream.
Jian turned to her computer, shoulders hunched, hair hanging in front of her face. She had the carriage of a woman who’d been beaten by her husband or boyfriend. And still, Rhumkorrf was oblivious. Total asshole.
“Miss Purinam, may I ask a question?”
“Don’t call me Miss,” Sara said, and smiled. “I work for a living. You call me Sara.”
Jian shook her head. “I use respectful terms only.”
“Okay, then, Sara it is.” Sara put a finger under Jian’s chin and gently lifted, tilting the woman’s head back. Bright red splotches dotted Jian’s neck, precursors to the already-forming dark bruises. “We need to get some ice on your neck.”
“I am fine, Miss Purinam.”
“Sara. And when I get the ice, you will put it on. Now, what’s your question?”
“Where did you get such a plane? This is a flying lab, everything we need. It is amazing.”
“It’s a C-5B that once upon a time crash-landed at Dover Air Force Base,” Sara said. “Most of the plane was sold for scrap, which Colding bought up through one of Genada’s dummy corporations. We got parts from two other crashes and new engines from a quiet contract with Boeing. Colding went to Baffin with you; my crew and I oversaw the reassembly project in Brazil. Pour in money, shake well, Genada has its own hot-rodded, big-ass flying lab.”
“You put pieces together to make a new whole,” Jian said, then nodded. “That is like what I do for Genada, but I do it inside the computer.”
“But you guys chop up cells and DNA, stuff like that,” Sara said. “You can’t do that on a computer, can you?”
Jian hopped up and waddled to a white machine. She looked relieved to have something to talk about, or maybe someone to talk to. She gestured at the machine like an auto-show model displaying a new concept car.
“This is our oligo synthesizer. When I make genomes in the computer, this machine creates DNA one nucleotide at a time, the same way you would build chain links, only on a much smaller scale.”
The device didn’t look that dramatic to Sara—waist high, mostly off-white plastic, bristli
ng with orderly tubes and hoses and plastic jars. It didn’t look that sci-fi, but what Jian was saying … well, that was just beyond sci-fi.
“I don’t think I get it,” Sara said. “You’re telling me this is like a biological inkjet printer? It can make, I don’t know … hot-rodded DNA?”
Jian nodded. “This is the most advanced machine of its kind in the world. It can build full, custom chromosomes that we create and test inside the computer.”
“Holy shit. That’s amazing. Imagine the brain that came up with that one.”
“That brain is mine,” Jian said. She smiled proudly, an expression that seemed to crack a hidden reserve of beauty Sara hadn’t seen before. “I invented it. I call my computer the God Machine, so this oligo machine is like the hand of God. Isn’t that funny?”
No. It wasn’t funny. In fact, the name sent a chill down Sara’s spine. The God Machine. And right smack-dab in the middle of her plane.
Sara didn’t like it. Not one damn bit.
“Let me get some ice for your neck,” Sara said. “I’ll be right back.”
NOVEMBER 8: GOD MACHINES
SARA GENTLY WRAPPED gauze around Jian’s neck. The gauze held a small ice pack in place over darkening bruises. Jian tilted her head to accommodate, but she never stopped typing. Her eyes flicked across her half hemisphere of screens. Sara couldn’t understand what the woman was doing—the only thing on the screens was an endless list of four letters: C, G, T and A.
“I know you’re smart and all,” Sara said, “but doesn’t the computer handle that coding stuff?”
Jian shrugged. “Sometimes I see things that give me idea. I tweak genome here, tweak genome there. I am hoping I can reload our latest research from the drive I brought onboard.” As if to punctuate her point, Jian called up a new window, typed in a few lines of code, then returned to the endlessly scrolling list of A, G, T and C.
The computer gave off a loud, single beep. Jian took in a sharp breath and held it. She stared at the screen with a spooky intensity. Jian reminded Sara of a hard-core gambler waiting for the dice to stop tumbling.
Jian clicked the mouse, and Sara saw actual words appear on the screen.
RESTORE FROM BACKUP: COMPLETE
GENOME A17: LOADED
VIABILITY PROBABILITY: 95.0567%
BEGIN SYNTHESIS? YES/NO
Rhumkorrf’s head popped out from behind his terminal.
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes, Doctor Rhumkorrf,” Jian said.
He ran over. Scurried was a better word, because the fidgety man reminded Sara of a rat with glasses.
“Sara,” he said, “please go wake up Mister Feely. Tell him we need to prepare and run the immune response test, immediately.”
Sara saw Jian’s right hand move the mouse. On the screen, the pointer hovered over YES. Jian’s left hand stayed flat on the desktop—she actually crossed her fingers, then clicked the mouse.
A mechanical humming sound came from the oligo machine. The hand of God. Sara quickly left the lab, partly to wake up Feely, and partly because she didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing.
NOVEMBER 8: RHUMKORRF SAVES THE DAY
THE C-5’S INCESSANT in-flight hum filled the lab’s stillness, but Claus barely noticed it. All of his attention rested on the bulkhead monitor, as did that of Jian and Tim.
Once again, the grid of 150 squares. Black filled only nineteen of them.
131/150
They all kept checking watches, looking at the time counter on the monitor, even scanning for other clocks in the room. It had never gone this long—usually this far into the test, there were fewer than ten eggs left.
Another panel went black.
130/150
Three people held their breath, waiting for the inevitable cascade of black squares. A cascade that did not appear.
“Mister Feely,” Claus said. “Give me the time.” He could have gone by the clock on the screen, but he couldn’t let himself believe it. There had to be a mistake. Tim had the official time and that was what Claus wanted. Erika had kept the official time before, but she was no longer part of the project. Now her duties—all of them—fell to Tim.
“Twenty-four minutes, thirteen seconds,” Tim said.
Claus felt a flicker of hope. Maybe … maybe. He watched, waited. No more black squares appeared. The embryos vibrated as their cells split and split again, taking them well into the morula stage. In some of the squares, the lethal macrophages actually sat side by side with the morulas.
But no more attacks.
No one spoke. Claus suddenly noticed that the jet-engine hum was the only sound in the lab.
“Time?”
Tim started to talk, then gagged and covered his mouth. Erika had not only been the superior intellect, she also, apparently, could hold her liquor better.
“Twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds,” Tim said, recovering. “Mark.”
In square thirty-eight, an egg quivered: another successful mitosis. The macrophages moved around aimlessly.
Claus had done it. He had beaten the immune response.
His strategy had been risky—shorting Jian’s meds brought on her manic/depressive symptoms, but it also freed up her mind. Her most creative solutions had always come when she was on the edge of madness. Soon, perhaps, he could get her to her normal medication level, but not now, not when he needed her at her best. The implantation process came next. If that brought more problems, they would need fast solutions. They were on the run from world governments, for God’s sake—speed was of the essence.
Besides, Jian’s nightmares were getting worse but her hallucinations had only started recently. He probably had a week or so before she got suicidal. Maybe less. But that was the kind of gamble you took when immortality was on the line.
He counted off sixty more seconds, just to be sure.
No more black squares.
“It is a success,” he said. “We need to prepare the eggs for implantation.”
He wished Erika could have been here for this. Despite her horrible actions, she was a brilliant scientist. Oh well, she’d just have to read about it in the journals. Maybe he’d even leave her name on some of the lesser research papers.
Jian, however, would get full secondary credit. She’d earned it. He saw her fingering the bandage around her neck, the bandage covering the bruises Erika had given her. Women. They were all crazy.
“Jian, what changed?” Claus said. “What did you do?”
“The four new samples helped, Doctor Rhumkorrf, but I also had an idea, very simple, that we had not thought. We want internal organs, and we’ve coded to make those compatible with humans. The rest of the body, we were going piecemeal, replacing small groups of proteins at a time, trying to find the missing piece of the compatibility puzzle. Mister Feely gave me an idea.”
“I did?” Feely said.
“Yes. I realized that there was one organ unnecessary to our needs. I told the computer to swap out all DNA for that organ, then perform a hundred thousand generations of test evolution. It seems the DNA associated with that organ was the final immune response trigger.”
“But which organ …” Claus said, his voice trailing off. No. It couldn’t be that simple. Could it? He had asked them to step back, think differently. Jian had done exactly that and found something they all should have seen months ago.
“Well?” Tim said. “What organ was it?”
“The largest organ,” Claus said, getting the words out before Jian could say them. “The integument. The skin.”
Tim looked from Claus to Jian. “Really?”
Jian nodded, even smiled a little. “The ancestors will have cow fur.”
“And that’s it?” Tim said. “Problem solved?”
Of course that didn’t solve the problem. The boy wasn’t even close to Erika’s brilliance. “Don’t be stupid, Mister Feely. All we did was defeat the immune response. That allows us to implant, monitor, measure and modify as we go. We will
probably lose all the embryos within a few days of implantation. When we cloned the quagga, we implanted over twelve hundred blastocysts before one survived to birth. That part of the quagga project was Doctor Hoel’s, Mister Feely. Now it’s yours.”
Tim’s eyes widened. “But, but I’m Jian’s assistant. We have to get someone else in here to replace Erika.”
“There is no one else,” Claus said. “We are isolated, we have to stay hidden. Congratulations, Mister Feely … you’ve just been promoted.”
“But, but … I can’t … she brought back species from extinction, I can’t—”
“You can and you will,” Claus said. “Time to grow up, Mister Feely. Millions of avoidable deaths now rest squarely on your shoulders.”
Tim blinked again. He opened his mouth to speak, but gagged, ran to a trash can and threw up in it.
NOVEMBER 9: FLY BY
THE SUN JUST breaking free somewhere behind its tail, the C-5 approached Black Manitou Island; a tiny sliver of white, brown and green in the midst of Lake Superior’s glittering blue splendor. Colding sat in the observer’s seat. Sleep fuzzed his eyes. His axe cut hurt.
“Here you go,” Cappy said, and put a half-full Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.
“Thanks,” Colding said. “And thanks for the shirt and jacket.”
Cappy ticked off a little two-fingered salute, then walked out of the cockpit. Colding set the coffee down, keeping an eye on it so it wouldn’t spill while he opened the manila folder. The liquid vibrated in time with the C-5’s engine hum.
He took a sip—strong brew—and looked out the front canopy. They were so low the sun sparkled off whitecapped waves, creating a miles wide cone of flashbulbs reflecting the morning light.
“Middle of freakin’ nowhere,” Alonzo said. “And they call these things lakes? I’ve seen smaller oceans.”
“That’s why they call them the Great Lakes, kid,” Sara said. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen them. You gotta get out more.”