Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 9

Zack sat with Caitlin in the Enclave dining room, called a “mess hall” even though the Army had its own mess in Lab Dome, as the little girl fished the last of her vegetables out of the broth in her bowl. A bit of broccoli dropped onto her pants. She picked it up and ate it.

“Good girl. Now drink the broth.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Drink it, pumpkin. You know we don’t waste food.” There was not as much of it to waste now.

Caitlin made a face and drank her broth. A pair of children from the Settlement entered the mess, surprising Zack; he thought that all the Settlers had been crammed into Lab Dome. Maybe Susan, as quartermaster, had moved some of them over here. Well, that would make sense—the school, such as it was, occupied a single room in Enclave Dome.

Caitlin’s eyes went wide. “Daddy, who’s that!”

The six children of Enclave Dome—that was all Caity had ever seen. Maybe that was all she thought existed in the world. He said, “The new people who came to live at the base. Do you want to say hello?”

She turned shy, pressing herself against his knee. “No. Where’s Mommy?”

“She’s at work. You know that.”

“Okay. Can I eat my peach now?”

“Go ahead.” A woman in a homespun tunic rounded up the two kids and led them away. Compared to the few people in the mess in midafternoon—two uniformed soldiers on duty in Enclave and four pale civilian staffers in old, 3-D–printed jeans—the three sandaled and suntanned Settlers looked as exotic as Fiji Islanders.

Caitlin put down her half-eaten peach. “I don’t feel good.”

“Is it the headache again?”

“No. My tummy.” She turned and vomited onto the wooden bench, then started to cry.

“Oh, sweetie. It’s all right. Here, let’s get that icky shirt off you.”

Zack took off the child’s shirt and wrapped her in his own. Her head lolled against his bare chest. A janitor, sister to one of the lab techs, rushed over. “I’ll take care of that, Dr. McKay. Do you need a doctor?”

“No, she saw Dr. Patel yesterday. It’s just a stomach bug, but I thought she was over it.”

“I’m over it,” Caitlin mumbled against his chest.

“You take her home. I’ll get this.”

“Thank you so much.”

He carried his daughter “home,” which meant an eight-by-ten cubicle that Zack had been moved to after the influx of Settlers. Susan had been careful to not show any favoritism to her own family. Her and Zack’s bed occupied four-by-six of the space; when Caitlin’s trundle was pulled from underneath, there was barely room to stand beside it. He extricated the trundle and laid her on it, gazing down worriedly. “Does anything hurt now? Tummy? Head?”

“Nothing hurts. I’m sleepy.”

“I see that.” She was, it seemed to him, sleeping too much lately. But in the last few days, both Claire Patel and Lindy Ross had examined her. Neither had found anything unusual. Zack was supposed to turn Caity over to the two teachers who babysat children as well as taught them, but he wasn’t going to leave his daughter until he was sure she was all right. Anyway, neither Karen nor Marissa would appreciate being saddled with a vomiting child. He intercommed Susan.

Caitlin yawned and said, “Tell me a story.”

He began The Three Bears, a Caitlin favorite, but it was clear she wasn’t listening. In the middle of Goldilocks’s discontent with porridge, she said, “Daddy, who made the domes?”

“The Army made the domes. You know that.”

“No, who made them. Devon says the Army doesn’t know how the domes work.”

True enough. How to explain to a four-year-old what physicists didn’t understand? “The Army built the domes. But they didn’t invent them. Somebody else told them how to make domes. Like when your teacher tells you how to add up numbers.”

“Who told the Army how to make domes?”

“People from another planet. People like Jane—you met Jane.”

“She’s pretty.”

Was she? Zack realized that he hadn’t ever noticed. Susan was the only woman he’d noticed that way in years. Talk about your long-married clichés.

Caitlin said, “Jane must be really smart if she showed Colonel Jenner how to make domes.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly like… you see, sweetie, some other people showed Jane’s people how to make domes.”

“Who?”

“Nobody knows. Nobody has ever seen them. They’re… they’re like super-aliens. Like in your book about Jerry and the Space Puppy.”

That woke her a little. Caitlin sat up. “There are super-aliens? Where?”

“Nobody knows. They left a long time ago.”

“Where did they go?”

“Nobody knows.”

“What did they look like?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Why did they go away?”

“Nobody knows that, either.”

She stared at him doubtfully, this father who didn’t seem able to provide answers to anything, and then lay back down on her trundle bed. “I know.”

“You know what the super-aliens look like?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me! I really want to know!”

Caitlin frowned, and her eyes roamed the room, jammed with her family’s few possessions, most heaped on shelves hastily affixed to the wooden walls. Her gaze fell on her own drawings. Triumphantly she said, “The aliens look like zebras, ’cause they are zebras!”

When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.

“Maybe,” he said, but Caitlin was already asleep.

Zack hurried through the tunnel connecting the domes. This was just as complicated as going through two ground-level airlocks, but right now Zack didn’t want to deal with delay of the required military escort. It had taken too long to find someone to stay with Caity, and he was already late.

He ran down the long flight of stairs leading from the kitchens. The large, alien-metal room at the bottom was Enclave Dome’s storeroom, jammed with produce, eggs, and grain from the Settlement and forest game shot by the Army. Semi-successful cheeses ripened on a shelf, the result of a semi-successful experiment with capturing and milking wild sheep. Two men were filling tote bags with apples from a crate; the smell made Zack’s mouth water.

In the corner stood the door to decon and the airlock. “Retinal scan and digital chip match: Dr. Zachary McKay.” The kitchen workers watched him with an expression Zack couldn’t read: envy or pity or maybe just puzzlement that anyone would risk exposure to RSA. I already had it, boys, he thought, and pushed the memory away.

The airlock gave onto a tunnel with two branches. One, sealed a short distance along, was an escape hatch that Zack hoped fervently would never have to be used. He hurried, holding his flashlight, along the much shorter tunnel. It connected to a similar branching outside Lab Dome. Airlock, decon, and he stood in the small space outside the bird lab and the mysterious, heavy third door. Up the stairwell to the young soldier on guard (didn’t they ever get bored, doing essentially nothing?), who unlocked the door to Lab Dome.

Zack raced into the conference room jammed with chairs, people, and the odors of too many bodies. Colonel Jenner sat at the head of the table. Was Jenner’s command post at the top of Enclave Dome more spacious than this? Zack had never seen it. Almost no civilian had, and only the most trusted soldiers.

“Sorry I’m late,” Zack said, squeezing into the only empty chair, beside Toni. Jenner frowned at him. Present were the heads of each research team, with some of their colleagues both military and civilian, plus some of the lab assistants. Four newcomers: two Army captains, Marianne Jenner, and Claire Patel. Neither of the Worlder scientists, which surprised Zack. Either Jane would not be able to keep up with the translation for this more technical meeting, or Jenner had decided on security grounds to exclude Ka^graa and Glamet^vor¡ from what was essentially a military briefing. Theoretically, these monthly briefings were classified, although in such close and crowded quarters almost nothing stayed secret very long. Major Duncan, whom Toni referred to as “Stonejaw,” wasn’t here; presumably Jenner had left her in temporary command at the top of Enclave Dome.

Surrounded by all those uniforms, Jenner looked tired but even more powerful than usual. “The emperor in state,” Toni said to Jason under her breath. She had the disconcerting ability to speak sotto voce without moving her lips at all.

Jenner said, “This briefing is in session. I’d like to introduce captains Mott and Darnley from Headquarters. Their mission is to update General Hahn.”

Zack blinked. Sending brass from Headquarters was a big deal, complicated and dangerous, unless these captains were already in the area. Why would that be? Something in Jenner’s posture suggested that this visit had been a surprise to him as well.

Jenner said only, “Captains Mott and Darnley will need to be brought up to speed on progress to date, so please start with the basics of your work. Dr. Yu?”

Dr. Jessica Yu, chief scientist for the base, also headed the vaccine unit. It seemed to Zack that she had always headed the vaccine unit, since the beginning of time. She’d been with the original Embassy team with Marianne. They had succeeded in creating a vaccine against R. sporii, and now Dr. Yu was trying to do the same for its weaponized cousin. At eighty-two, however, she turned more and more of the work over to others. She said, “Dr. Sullivan will present for the team.”

Major Denise Sullivan, once of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, stood diamond-fiber straight, facing her listeners as diagrams from her tablet appeared on the wall screen behind her. Despite the lack of advance warning, her presentation was meticulous and detailed. Zack couldn’t tell how much of it the visiting captains understood, but by the end, one thing was clear: there was still no vaccine against RSA.

“Thank you, Major,” Jenner said. “Major Vargas?”

Juan Vargas, a brilliant but disorganized researcher perpetually in trouble for disregarding military protocol, headed the human immunity unit. His uniform, which he hardly ever wore, was missing a button. Toni, who respected both Vargas’s ability and his laissez-faire attitude toward spit-and-polish, changed her expression from fake to genuine interest, even though both she and Zack knew that Vargas’s unit had nothing real to report. They had made no progress toward tweaking the human immune system to cope with RSA. The variant of the protein that conferred natural immunity on a very few people was their hope; they had not been able to mimic it.

Marianne and Claire both asked a lot of questions. Zack watched Mott and Darnley. He became certain that they understood little of what they were hearing; Vargas was being too technical for laymen. Well, Zack could remedy that, maybe earning some brownie points for his team.

When Vargas wrapped up his presentation, Jenner said, “Dr. McKay?” And to the newcomers, “Dr. McKay heads the experimental unit. Please keep in mind that his research is the fallback position and may never be deployed, even if successful.”

Zack got to his feet. Before he could begin, Jenner added, “Since your area is the least familiar to all of us, Doctor, I hope your materials will begin with basics.”

“Yes,” McKay said. Definitely brownie points. He picked up a marking pen and pressed the button that retracted the screen into the ceiling. Behind it was an old-fashioned whiteboard on which someone had written “I WANT FUCKING REAL COFFEE!” There was no eraser. Zack swiped his sleeve across the board, leaving a smear. The marking pen had gone dry. Toni looked like she was suppressing giggles.

Two pens later, when he got one that actually wrote, he drew a diagram, talking as he sketched.

“Sparrows inherit two copies of every gene in their bodies, one from each parent. We are trying to alter one or more of those genes in order to develop two separate and distinct gene drives. Let’s call a sparrow carrying one copy of any altered gene ‘capital G.’ The other copy of the gene, plus both genes in unaltered wild sparrows, ‘small g.’ If the altered gene is dominant, then usually inheritance will go like this through successive generations:

“As you can see, fifty percent of the offspring carry the altered gene. Now each of these birds mates with wild sparrows, who are all small g:

“Now only one-quarter of offspring carry the altered gene. In the next generation, it will be only one-eighth, until the genetically engineered change effectively dies out. But with a gene drive, the situation is different. A gene drive utilizes a so-called ‘selfish gene,’ which is a bit of parasitic DNA that circumvents the laws of normal inheritance. It gets itself propagated preferentially by pasting a copy of itself into the matching chromosome inherited from the other parent, so that all of the offspring carry two altered genes. By piggy-backing on a selfish gene, a gene drive always gets inherited, like this.”

He sketched another diagram, suppressing the insane idea to draw birds instead of letters. Too bad he hadn’t had Caitlin “prepare his briefing materials.”

“Then those birds mate, and every one of their fledglings carries the alteration, on through the generations.”

Zack turned back to the table. “A gene drive creates a ‘selective sweep,’ spreading like wildfire and so eventually wiping out all other versions of that gene. This is a known phenomenon, occurring both naturally and through lab creations pre-Collapse, although there it affected insects, not birds.”

One of the new captains said, “But Dr. McKay, what are these two gene drives you’re trying to create going to do?”

“I was coming to that. One of the gene drives we’re working on would hinder birds’ ability to carry RSA. The other—”

The captain interrupted him. “But you haven’t achieved that gene drive, have you? In fact, Monterey Base research hasn’t advanced on any of your three fronts.”

“Well—we get closer every week.”

Toni raised her eyebrow at this blatant exaggeration. The captain looked skeptical, or unimpressed, or something else that annoyed Zack. All at once a new thought hit him—was he in the middle of some sort of turf war between Jenner and HQ?

No way to know. He turned back to the board. “The other gene drive will render male sparrows sterile. The result will, eventually, be this.”

There was silence. His attempt to lighten the atmosphere had fallen as flat as his dead bird.

The captain said, “And just why hasn’t this gene drive succeeded so far?”

“The main difficulty of the complex gene drive is resistance to it that develops after a few generations of bird breeding. We’re hoping to get around that by combining three different gene drives, so that resistance by mutation is minimized. But obviously that’s a difficult task. Sometimes the alterations interfere with each other. The gene-editing tool doesn’t cut or insert where it’s supposed to. Or it cuts the target but doesn’t complete the delivery.”

Marianne Jenner said, “But… apart from the difficulties… May I ask questions, too?”

Zack braced himself. Marianne, undeterred by considerations of either rank or turf wars, was probably going to put her very capable finger on every reason that Zack’s research shouldn’t even exist.

She did. “I’m wondering how you can create a gene drive capable of being carried by more than one species of sparrow, since their genomes do differ.”

Zack said, “We’re piggybacking on RSA itself, which infects all species of sparrows, and only sparrows.”

Her voice rose. “You’re further altering the virus that killed so many people?”

“Yes.”

“What if your alterations—”

“We’re doing extensive testing.” Both of them, and probably everyone else in the room, knew that “extensive testing” wasn’t possible with their limitations of resources, personnel, time, birds. Zack was doing what he could with what he had.

Marianne said, “You mentioned pre-Collapse gene drives in insects. I’m sure you know that when the bacterium Wolbachia was used to create a gene drive to infect mosquitoes that carry malaria, the researchers also discovered that some strains of the bacteria were capable of transferring horizontally to other arthropods. What if your gene drive—either of your gene drives—jumps to other species and changes their reproductive biology?”

“I think,” Zack said, “that you already know it can’t jump to humans. And that the chances of it jumping to species more closely related to birds is small.”

“But not zero. Altered genes have been transmitted through bacterial and parasitic plasmids.”

“Yes. We are trying to build in safeguards.”

“Doctor—you know that isn’t possible.”

Zack hadn’t wanted to do this. But if he didn’t, his entire team might be shut down by HQ. And nobody present except Toni would know he was about to utter a half-truth. “It wasn’t possible in your time, Marianne. We know more now.”

She was silenced.

The visiting captain was not. “But even if this gene drive can’t jump species, wiping out all the birds on Earth will wreck the entire ecology, won’t it?”

As if it weren’t already wrecked. Zack put both palms flat on the table and leaned forward. “Look, I’ve tried to make clear that this is last-ditch, final-resort, hope-to-God-we-don’t-need-it research in case the work by the other two scientific units fails. We cannot stay cooped up for generations in the few remaining domes. Ninety-six percent of children being born aren’t immune to RSA, and we can’t even discover which six percent are immune without exposing our children to overwhelming odds of a horrible death. If someday the choice comes down to the death of all birds or the death of humanity, which would you choose? I know my preference. And what I want is for us to have the means to have a choice, if it comes to that. That’s what this research is about.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Jenner said. “I think we’re done here. Captains, this way, please.”

The room emptied. Toni lingered, but Dr. Vargas called her aside to ask her something. When everyone had gone, Zack hunted for an eraser to wipe the board of his clumsy diagrams. There still wasn’t one.

As he used his hand to erase, smearing his palm with black ink, he saw that in the second diagram, he had misspelled “inheritance.”

The briefing left Marianne feeling shaky. Not that she hadn’t known most of it before, since Zack’s first explanations in the signal station, but somehow this meeting had made the full horror more real. At night she dreamed not of the Collapse she had never seen, but of the result that she also hadn’t seen. Cities overgrown by wilderness, or else H-bombed into rubble. Vast empty stretches of farmland reverting to prairie. Primitive settlements of survivors trying to hang on. And in Europe and Asia and Australia and Africa and South America, probably more of the same. A mixture of technology from Bronze Age to late twentieth century to alien artifacts like domes and esuits, used but not understood. The mind had trouble grasping it.

And yet people went on, replacing abysmal loss with everyday activities: prepare communal dinner, work in labs, educate children, prepare for dome defense. The new normal.

She made her way through the crowded, overpopulated Lab Dome to the infirmary. Children from the Settlement, who evidently had no trouble adapting to a change of “normal,” pushed past her in some sort of excited game. Their parents looked bewildered and unhappy, although Marianne knew that the more enterprising of them had already begun to plant a vegetable garden right outside the dome walls, under the watchful eyes of Jason’s guards, where they could be hustled back inside in case of attack.

Halfway to the infirmary, Kayla Rhinehart grabbed Marianne’s arm. “Where are you going?”

“To see my son.” Marianne peeled Kayla off her.

“I want you to get me in to see Colonel Jenner!”

“I can’t do that, Kayla. I almost never see him myself and I have no authority.”

“You’re his grandmother!”

Marianne wanted to say And this is not a matrilineal lahk, but she didn’t. Kayla looked dreadful. Claire must have adjusted her meds again, still without finding the optimum dose. Mania had been replaced not with depression but with desperate anxiety. Kayla had lost weight, and her thin face looked cadaverous. Marianne said, “Can I help?”

“No! Only Colonel Jenner! I want him to send us back to World on the Return!”

Marianne said as gently as she could, “That isn’t going to happen, Kayla.”

“It has to! I hate it here! And so does Glamet^vor¡ and La^vor and… and everybody!”

Marianne had not observed La^vor hating Earth. Jane’s friend was mostly occupied with her younger, mentally challenged brother: playing with him, teaching him, looking after him. At fifteen Terran years, Belok^ had the lively curiosity of a three-year-old, although not as large a vocabulary. La^vor seemed the most loving of caretakers, the sort of woman born to be a wonderful mother.

Kayla said, “I want to go back to World! This isn’t the Earth I came here for!”

As if it were for any of them. “Maybe someday we’ll go back. But for right now—”

“You won’t help me! You’re no different from the rest of these fuckers, Marianne!”

“I—” But Kayla punched her on the shoulder, turned, and stalked away.

Marianne rubbed her shoulder. She would need to find Claire and tell her about this. But first she was going to see Colin, still in infirmary.

In the infirmary corridor, she met Lindy Ross. Lindy’s face was creased with worry, and Marianne’s heart clenched. “Colin? Is he—”

“No, no, he’s fine. Healing well.” Lindy hesitated. “Marianne, can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“When Jason was a child, was he vindictive? No, that’s the wrong word. I mean, did he feel that scores had to be settled even if there was no immediate threat?”

“No, never. He valued fairness and got indignant when people weren’t fair, but he was never mean, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Lindy nodded, her face still troubled. On impulse, Marianne said, “Forgive me if I’m overstepping boundaries here, but I think Jason still cares for you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

Immediately Lindy’s face closed. “I’ve seen the way he looks at Jane.”

Jane? Really? How had Marianne missed that? Or was Lindy mistaken? Marianne said, “Don’t be too hard on Jason. He looks exhausted. He’s holding this place together with spit and duct tape and sheer will.”

“With all due respect, Marianne—do you think I don’t know that? Plus a lot more that you don’t know?”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Lindy’s mouth twisted. “We’re all just taut as catgut.”

“I know. And you’re all doing a wonderful job.”

“Trying, anyway.” Lindy forced a smile and walked away.

Marianne watched the back of Lindy’s upright figure. Such a formidable young woman: intelligent, tireless, but unforgiving. Had Marianne herself ever been like that? She had. Maybe that was why she liked Lindy so much, despite Lindy’s prickliness. Well, in this situation, prickliness was a reasonable response. Much better than hysteria or despair or fanaticism.

But… what did Lindy mean by Plus a lot more that you don’t know?