Hybrids

Chapter Thirty-one

“Asshole!”

Jock knew the other driver couldn’t hear him—it was too cold a day for anyone to have their windows down—but he hated it when morons cut him off.

The traffic seemed intolerable today. Of course, Jock reflected, it was probably no worse than any other day driving here in Rochester, but everything seemed unbearable in comparison to the clean, idyllic beauty he’d seen on the other side.

“The other side.” Christ, his mother used to talk about heaven that way. “Things’ll be better on the other side.”

Jock didn’t believe in heaven—or hell, for that matter—but he couldn’t deny the reality of the Neanderthal world. Of course, it was pure dumb luck that they hadn’t made a mess of things. If real humans had noses like that, we probably wouldn’t have been willing to wallow in our own garbage, either.

Jock stopped at a traffic light. A front page from USA Today was blowing across the street. Kids were smoking at the bus stop. There was a McDonald’s a block ahead. Sirens were wailing in the distance, and car horns were honking. A truck next to him belched smoke out of a vertical exhaust pipe. Jock looked left and right, eventually spotting a single tree growing out of a concrete planter half a block away.

The radio newsreader started with a disgruntled man having shot and killed four coworkers at an electronics plant in Illinois. He then gave ten seconds to a suicide bombing in Cairo, a dozen more to what looked like impending war between Pakistan and India, and rounded out his minute with an oil spill in Puget Sound, a train derailment near Dallas, and a bank robbery here in Rochester.

What a mess, Jock thought, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, waiting for the signal to go. What a goddamned mess.

Jock came in the front door of the Synergy Group mansion. Louise Benoît happened to be in the corridor. “Hey, Jock,” she said. “So is it as beautiful as they say over on the other side?”

Jock nodded.

“I don’t know about that,” said Louise. “You missed the most amazing aurora while you were gone.”

“Here?” said Jock. “This far south?”

Louise nodded. “It was incredible; like nothing I’d ever seen before—and I’m a solar physicist. Earth’s magnetic field is really beginning to act up.”

“You seem to still be conscious,” Jock said wryly.

Louise smiled, and indicated the package he was holding. “I’m going to let that remark pass, since you brought me flowers.”

Jock looked down at the long box Mary Vaughan had given him. “Actually, it’s something Mary wanted me to bring back for her.”

“What is it?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

Jock headed down the corridor to the desk where Mrs. Wallace, who served as receptionist and Jock’s administrative assistant, sat.

“Welcome back, sir!” she said.

Jock nodded. “Any appointments today?”

“Just one. I set it up while you were away; I hope you don’t mind. A geneticist looking for a job. He came very highly recommended.”

Jock grunted.

“He’ll be here at 11:30,” said Mrs. Wallace.

Jock checked his e-mail and voice mail, got himself some black coffee, and then unwrapped the package Mary had given him. It was obvious at a glance that it was alien technology: the textures, the color scheme, the overall appearance—everything was different from what a human would have made. The Neanderthal fondness for squares was very much in evidence: a square cross section, square display, and control buds arranged in squares.

Various controls were labeled—some, to his surprise, in what looked like Neanderthal handwriting. It clearly wasn’t a mass-produced device; maybe it was a prototype of some sort…

Jock picked up his telephone, and dialed an internal number. “Lonwis? It’s Jock. Can you come down to my office, please…”

Jock’s door opened—no knock first—and in came Lonwis Trob. “What is it, Jock?” said the ancient Neanderthal.

“I’ve got this device here”—he indicated the long contraption sitting on his desktop—“and I was wondering how to turn it on.”

Lonwis moved across the room; Jock could almost hear the Neanderthal’s joints creaking as he did so. He bent over—this time the creak was definitely audible—bringing his blue mechanical eyes closer to the unit. “Here,” he said, pointing to an isolated control bud. He grabbed it between two gnarled fingers, and plucked it out. The unit began to hum softly. “What is it?”

“Mary said it’s a DNA synthesizer.”

Lonwis peered some more at it. “The housing is a standard unit, but I have never seen anything quite like this. Can you pick it up for me?”

“What?” said Jock. “Oh, sure.” He lifted the device off the desktop, and Lonwis stooped to look at its underside. “You will want to hook it up to an external power source, and—yes, good: it has a standard interface port. Dr. Benoît and I have built some units that allow Neanderthal technology to be hooked up to your personal computers. Would you like one of those?”

“Um, sure. Yes.”

“I will have Dr. Benoît attend to it.” Lonwis headed for the door. “Have fun with your new toy.”

Jock spent hours examining the codon writer, and reading over the notes Mary had prepared on it.

The thing could make DNA, that much was clear.

And RNA, too, which Jock knew was another nucleic acid.

It also seemed to be able to produce associated proteins, such as those used to bind deoxyribonucleic acid into chromosomes.

Jock had a cursory understanding of genetics; many of the studies he’d been involved with at RAND concerned bio-warfare. If this device could produce nucleic-acid strings and proteins, then…

Jock steepled his fingers. What the boys at Fort Detrick would give for this!

Nucleic acids. Proteins.

Those were the building blocks of viruses, which were, after all, just scraps of DNA or RNA contained in protein coats.

Jock stared at the machine, thinking.

The phone on Jock’s desk made its distinctive internal-call ring. Jock picked up the handset. “Your 11:30 appointment is here,” said Mrs. Wallace’s voice.

“Right, okay.”

A moment later a thin, blue-eyed man in his mid-thirties came through the door. “Dr. Krieger,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Have a seat.”

The man did so, but first handed Jock a copy of a lengthy curriculum vitae. “As you can see, I have a Ph.D. in genetics from Oxford. I was associated with the Ancient Biomolecules Centre there.”

“Did you do any Neanderthal work?”

“No, not specifically. But lots of other late-Cenozoic stuff.”

“How did you hear about us?”

“I was with York University, where Mary Vaughan used to be, and—”

“We generally do our own recruiting, you know.”

“Oh, I understand that, sir. But I thought, with Mary having gone to the other universe, you might have need of a geneticist.”

Jock glanced at the object on his desktop. “As a matter of fact, Dr. Ruskin, I do.”