Ell Donsaii 13: DNA (8 page)

Ell shook her head, “I don’t want to try to tell the AI to lie to the kid. AI’s aren’t very good at it.”

“And if he asks, and the AI tells Zage that he’s got one of only three AIs in the world currently powered by Kylen supercomputers?”

Ell sank back into the couch, staring into the distance. “Maybe I’ll tell him that Ell Donsaii found out how smart he was and she offered to buy it for him.”

“Even though she’s never met him?”

Ell shrugged, “She’s met his mom. She’s rich and felt charitable towards Raquel’s genius child?” Ell’s eyes turned up towards where her son’s bedroom was located in the floor above. “Or,” she said sadly, “maybe that question will be the turning point after which we should tell Zage about our little secret.” After a moment, she continued, “I need to tell you about a little incident we had today. The security team is going to start following you and Zage as well as me.”

She described the incident to him. Shan’s comment started with, “Aw crap…”

***

Heading home for the evening, Turner stopped on his way through the lab, “Vanessa, sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you about the paper. I thought you’d already sent it in, so I just now got around to your message. Good thing you read through it one more time and found that math error. Those other citations were good too. That last paragraph though…” He shook his head, “You’ve had some
amazing
ideas for further work. While I congratulate you on those, we don’t want to give a roadmap to all the other labs out there. Some of the bigger research groups might beat us to some important results with you pointing the way so elegantly.” He shrugged, “Essentially, the only change I made was to cut some of that last paragraph to keep it from giving away so much.”

He turned to go, but then turned back, “I really should congratulate you on those ideas. You keep having insights like that and you’re going to go a long ways in this field. Good job.”

Vanessa stopped him with his hand on the doorknob, “Um, Dr. Turner?”

He turned back, a questioning look on his face.

“Zage made those changes.”

Turner looked like someone had punched him in the stomach, “What?!”

“That last paragraph, it came from the Kinrais boy.”

Turner shook his head, “I don’t believe that! Somebody
must’ve
helped him. His dad’s, what, a mathematician?”

Vanessa nodded.

“What’s his mother do?”

“I don’t know. She works out at D5R and I know they do some biomedical research, but none of it seems to be microbial or to have much to do with the gut. When I asked the kid, he didn’t seem really sure what his mom does, but he seems to think she’s some kind of a gofer for Donsaii. Apparently the mom spends a lot of time going here and there troubleshooting things for the company.”

Turner stood for a moment, thinking. Then he said, “I think you better ask the kid who helped him. We don’t want them coming after us later claiming
they
should’ve gotten credit.”

Vanessa shrugged, “I’ll ask him, but…”

“But, what”

“He really
is
that smart,” she said quietly. “He came in the other day and sequenced his own DNA to look for viral gene insertions.”

Turner’s eyes narrowed, “He’s using our sequencer! He shouldn’t be doing that, besides, who’s paying for it?”

“His dad deposited some money into the research account for his expenses.”

“And is it enough to cover repairs when the kid breaks the sequencer?! For God’s sake, Vanessa, we can’t have some grade school kid in here playing with our lab equipment!”

“Kindergarten. I make sure he knows what he’s doing with equipment before he uses it but…”

Turner broke in, “Geez! That’s right, he’s in
kindergarten!
A kid that age
can’t
know what he’s doing. I don’t care…”

Vanessa interrupted this time, “
Dr. Turner
, before he came in, he’d read the
entire
manual for the sequencer. I swear he’d committed it to memory! He knows more about how the sequencer works than I do. When I was trying to show him how to use it, he corrected me on a couple of minor procedural things. Things I’ve been doing wrong because I learned them that way from Ralph when I first joined the lab. Unfortunately,
I
never bothered to read the manual myself.” Seeing the alarmed look on Turner’s face, she said, “Don’t worry the errors won’t have affected our final results.” She grimaced, “We might have gotten cleaner results with fewer runs though.”

Stunned, Turner stood staring at Vanessa for a moment, then he said, “Maybe I’d better talk to this kid myself next time he’s in here.” He pulled the door open and walked out.

Ell said, “Allan… Let’s have another look at Virginis 3. Have you seen any other evidence of intelligent life? Especially anything moving around?”

Allan said, “With the improved optics on the new orbiter, I’ve found what looks like roads or paths between some of the city-like structures.”

“Roads?” Ell said as Allan zoomed the view in on two relatively close-together “cities,” as she thought of the hexagonally gridded areas on V3. She could see something passing between the two cities, but it was relatively meandering. It seemed to be following the landscape rather than blowing through it like modern human roads do. It also looked quite narrow. Some animals appeared to be ambling along it, so maybe it really was just a trail formed by the passage of various creatures. She said, “How wide is that road?”

“About three meters.”

The width gave her some perspective.
If it’s three meters wide and not very straight,
Ell mused,
you wouldn’t be able to travel very fast. Maybe it’s more like an animal trail or a country lane that might have arisen on what was originally an animal trail.
She asked Allan to pull back so she could stare at one of the cities again.
Maybe this is what primitive cities on earth looked like?
She thought about that for a moment, then,
Well, maybe this was how they
were
laid out.
The structures still appeared to be covered with vegetation and she doubted that earth cities looked like that until after their civilizations had collapsed.

She had Allan bring up some maps of primitive cities on earth including the downtown area of some modern cities like London that still had streets laid out like they’d originally formed—haphazardly. Those old cities on earth were often quite irregular though some sections almost always seem to be laid out rectangularly to some degree. The “cities” on V3 seemed to be both more regular, yet less. There’d be an area of hexagonal cells with some of the hexagons divided into six small triangular cells. Rows of the hexagons often gave way to apparent roads in the three directions that lay perpendicular to the flat walls of the hexagons. Ell’s impression was that there were small lanes or passageways around most hexagons, but that major traffic could follow the larger paths along the three major directions that lay at sixty degrees to one another. Occasionally, some small areas were laid out rectangularly. Rarely did she see a section that just seemed to be wedged in between other segments like she saw on many of the old Earth city maps.

Ell saw animals moving and big birds flying about here and there, both within and without the cities. The animals seemed to be many different sizes and shapes and, other than the fact that there seemed to be more of them in the areas she thought of as cities, she never saw what she thought of as crowds.

In fact, she never saw large numbers of any kinds of animals that looked similar to one another. No herds of meat animals, no congregations of beings that might be meeting in conclave because of their intelligence. She had the distinct impression that she was looking at an ancient city, overgrown with vegetation, and populated by the animals its masters had once kept as pets or food. She couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the people who built the city.
Or could it be that one of the “animals” I’m looking at
is
the race that built this city? And, of course, that they happen to like having all their buildings covered with vegetation.

There weren’t going to be any answers looking down on this world from orbit.
I’m going to have to land as a waldo and get in amongst these… animals before I can decide whether they’re intelligent or not,
she decided. To Allan she said, “Are the waldoes in orbit yet?”

“It’ll be ten more days,” Allan responded.

But I want to go down now!
Ell grinned at her own impatience. To Allan, she said, “Okay, between now and then, please keep looking for any big assemblies of animals that might suggest intelligence. I know you’re relatively certain you haven’t seen any machines, so if they
are
intelligent their technological savvy must still be pretty primitive, but even primitives tend to have get-togethers.”

Allan said, “Are you including assemblies of
different
kinds of animals?”

“Yeah, any kinds of assemblies. I should at least look at them.”

***

Vanessa looked up at a knock from the lab’s doorway. Zage and his handsome father were there. “Hi,” she said, eyes on Zage’s dad, “come on in. Did Zage tell you what he’s wanting to do?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s pretty far out of my area of expertise,” Kinrais said with a grin. “Do you think what he’s proposing is at
all
reasonable?”

Vanessa narrowed her eyes a little, “He told you that he wants to sequence the DNA in some of his cells, looking for genes that might have been left behind by an adenovirus?”

Kinrais nodded, “And that he thinks those viral genes might be expressing peptides that are causing his obesity... Is that even possible?”

Vanessa shrugged, “Crazier things have been hypothesized. Most of them don’t pan out though.”

“No harm in his trying though, right?”

“Um, it might harm your budget?”

Kinrais blinked, then grinned again. He looked at his son, “How about if I set him up with a ‘grant’ of two thousand dollars to do some sequencing with.” He looked back up at Vanessa, “If he wants to spend more than that, he’ll need to write up a report on what he’s done so far.” Kinrais stared back down at his son, “In language
I
can understand.” He looked back at Vanessa, “Would that be okay? I can just send the money to your research account if you’ll give me the number.”

Vanessa blinked.
They must pay these math professors better than I thought if he’s so willing to lay out two grand for his son’s whims!
she thought. “Um, and you’d still be paying me for… supervising him?”

“Of course.”

***

Jamieson leaned back in his chair to think. His AI had just finished showing him all the clips of people coming and going from the house to the south of Donsaii’s. His research had determined that the house was owned by a Shannon Kinrais and his wife Raquel. Interestingly enough, Kinrais had actually written a paper with Donsaii. Even more interesting, Raquel was the same height as Donsaii though she had darker coloring, brunette hair, and a slightly bigger nose.

The bitch’s disguised herself, gotten married, moved into the house next door, and had a kid! And
nobody
seems to know about it!

Jamieson told his AI to arrange a meeting with Wang.

***

Wang sat on the bench in the park like he’d been told. He held his head still as if he was reading on his HUD, but actually his eyes were roaming the area around him. He frequently checked his HUD which was actually sending him the picture from a rear facing camera.

Nonetheless, a shadow suddenly fell over him and a shiver ran down his spine.
That damned Jamieson managed to sneak up on me again!
He wondered why he found it so irritating. It was a sign of the man’s competence, which was what Wang’d hired Jamieson for. So far the piyan (asshole) had demanded $40,000 in two separate payments
just
to try to determine whether he thought the job could be done, so it was to be strongly hoped that he was competent. Wang kept wanting to tell his handlers that they should just bring over their own team to capture this Donsaii. However, since they’d lost three teams in years gone by while trying to do just that, he knew what the answer would be. Whoever was in charge back home had decided that they needed a competent native team. Someone who knew the ins and outs of America. Such a person could presumably do this job better,
and
in a more deniable fashion.

Wang stood up, once again feeling a little intimidated by Jamieson’s large size and impressive musculature. Since the man had once been a Navy seal, Wang was fully aware of just how dangerous Jamieson could be if he wanted. They started walking casually along a trail in the park. Wang thought to himself that if anyone was actually watching them, they would find the pair, a large, sloppily-dressed Caucasian warrior and a dapper little Asian, unlikely.

Jamieson said, “I’ve got a twofer for you.”

“Twofer?”

“‘Two for the price of one.’” Jamieson laughed, “but in your case it’ll be one and a half for the price of two.”

Annoyed by the American’s irritating sense of humor, Wang grated out, “How much?”

“Five million.”

“Five million dollars?!”

“Of course dollars.” Jamieson snorted, “Not
yen
for Chrissake.”

Exasperated, Wang almost barked out that yen were Japanese, then realized that if this idiot
thought
he was Japanese that would be one more layer of anonymity protecting Wang’s country. “Five million dollars, far too much!”

“Five million dollars is ridiculously cheap. I’m not only getting you Ell Donsaii, the most famous person in the world,” he lifted an eyebrow, “but I’m gonna get you her kid.”

Wang drew back in startlement, “She not have kid!”

Jamieson grinned at him, “Yes she
does
. And he’s
exactly
the lever you need to get her to do what you want. Don’t even
try
to tell me you don’t want him.”

“Where is this boy?”

Jamieson laughed, “I’d have to be an idiot to tell you.”

Wang’s mind raced. If Donsaii actually did have a child, capturing the child as well would be a coup! Nonetheless, he shook his head, “Five million still too much.”

Jamieson shrugged, “Kidnapping’s a capital crime.
Six
million’s cheap.”

Not understanding what Jamieson was trying to do, Wang said, “No! Six million
not
cheap. Five million not cheap.
Four
million not cheap. I pay you
two
million.”

Jamieson snorted, “You don’t understand. I don’t
want
to do this. It’s
too dangerous
. If you want me to even
consider
it, your next bid needs to be seven million.” He laughed, “Or, you can try to lowball me again… then it’ll be eight million.”

Finally grasping what Jamieson was doing, Wang paused to think. His country would be happy to pay a lot more than seven million—
if
they got Donsaii—
Wang
just didn’t want to give Jamieson that much. “Okaaay,” he said, dragging the word out, “one million now and six million on delivery.”

Jamieson grinned at him, “Four million now and four million on delivery.”

Wang closed his eyes and gritted his teeth,
Eight million!
“Okay,” he said resignedly.

Jamieson clapped Wang on the shoulder. He said, “Nice negotiating with you. Three million in gold, and one million in hundred dollar bills. Let me know when you’ve got it. Oh, and I’ll also need these drugs.” He handed Wang a list and walked off into the woods, leaving the smaller man fuming on the trail.

***

Ell said, “Allan, have you landed the little waldo on Virginis 3 yet?”

“It’s descending now,” he responded.

“Let’s call him ‘Virgwald.’ Give me a view out of his eyes. You’re bringing him down outside the city, correct?” Although Ell didn’t really care which city he brought it down outside of, she assumed that he was bringing it down near the one he’d first shown her surrounding a bay on the coast. That was the one they’d spent the most time looking at so far.

The view that popped up on Ell’s HUD showed mostly green landscape, though she could see the blue of the ocean in the distance. Allan said, “We’re coming in at a low slant that should keep us below the horizon until we land about one kilometer from what appears to be the edge of the city.”

As the view swung in closer, Ell could see that Allan appeared to be bringing the waldo down onto one of the paths that meandered from city to city. At present they were swinging over a large field, or at least what Ell thought looked like a field. It was covered with plants and Ell had the strange feeling that they were cultivated; however, they looked like there were many different types of plants growing in it. Back on earth, Ell was used to seeing fields where all the plants were of the same species, so seeing an area with many kinds of vegetation didn’t fit her expectation. In fact, the field was irregular in shape and undulating. The more Ell thought about it, the more she wondered why she even had the feeling that it was a farmer’s field.

She decided the plants were too big to call it a meadow and, though not organized, didn’t seem disorganized enough to think of it as being “wild.”