Ell Donsaii 13: DNA (9 page)

But, on the other hand, it didn’t seem orderly enough to have been cultivated by a farmer.

Ell was almost all the way across the field when she realized that there were a couple of animals down there, both of which she thought were gazing curiously up at her.
I couldn’t really see their eyes though, so I’m not sure why I thought they were looking at me. Even if they were looking at me, I don’t have any reason to think they appear “curious.”

Allan brought the waldo down on the path and Ell decided that “path” was the correct word. It wasn’t paved, just a trail where little vegetation grew. At first Ell thought that the vegetation in the area of the path had just been worn away by the passage of many feet. But then she noticed that dirt wasn’t really showing through. She bent forward to get a closer look and realized that the surface was covered with the woody stems of thousands of tiny vines. They had a faint greenish color, but no leaves. She stepped to the edge of the path and saw that the slender little vines seem to merge with the leafy vegetation at the side of the trail. She got the distinct impression that the mini-vines had somehow been
made
to grow there to suppress erosion.

After a quick glance around, Ell started walking the waldo toward the city. “Now that we’re on the ground,” she asked Allan, “what’s the gravity and atmospheric composition?”

Allan said, “0.19 gravities. The atmosphere is composed of 28% oxygen, 61% nitrogen, 6% argon, 4% neon, and less than 1% other gases including carbon dioxide. The pressure is 4.1 atmospheres.”

Delightedly, Ell said, “We could live
here
! And if I strapped on a couple of wings I could
fly
in gravity this low and atmosphere this thick!”
Now if only it turns out that there really
isn’t
any intelligent life… Or since the grids make it look like they were built by something intelligent maybe there
was
intelligent life, but they all died out?

Allen said, “Unfortunately, background radiation levels are high. Although this waldo does not have means for detecting it, I suspect this planet has a weak magnetosphere and that much of this radiation is from their star. The thick atmosphere is probably providing some protection because radiation levels aren’t
quite
as high as they are on Mars in our solar system, however it still wouldn’t be a very safe place to live long term.”

Maybe radiation wiped out their civilization?
Ell wondered as she walked along as Virgwald. Before she made it to the next turn in the path, an animal came around that bend toward her. A moment later, another one stepped out from amongst the vegetation along the right side. Though Ell initially thought they were animals, she quickly got the impression that they looked excited to see her. Then they began pointing.
Damn!
she thought
, They sure
look
intelligent.
Then a third alien flew in over the vegetation bordering the path and landed next to the first two.

She wasn’t surprised that they were gesticulating toward her—after all, they’d probably heard the waldo’s jets bringing it down and had come around specifically to see what had made the noise. What surprised her was that the three aliens all looked quite different, as if they were separate species, yet they appeared to be communicating with one another.
Could this world have several
different
intelligent species?!

One had a splotchy fuzzy surface and was quite a bit larger than the other two. It had several large bundles of vegetation on its back and was walking on four limbs. Though the four legs appeared slender to Ell, they were significantly thicker and heavier than the legs on the other two aliens. Remembering that the gravity on this planet was less than one fifth that of Earth’s, Ell realized that this animal/alien fit in the “heavyset” category. If she hadn’t already decided that it was intelligent, the thick legs would have fit with her initial impression that it was a beast of burden, transporting the bundles of vegetation from one location to another. It had six limbs total, with two large limbs up front which reminded Ell somewhat of the tines on a forklift—except these tines ended in large graspers. Ell had the impression that those big limbs could have loaded the bundles of vegetation on its own back. Eyes—a structure that seemed fairly universal in appearance because of the physics of optics—were set on stubby stalks at the front of the body. She couldn’t see a mouth or breathing orifice.

Although the other two animals seemed to be similar in size to one another, they still didn’t look like they were members of the same species. One of them had a wrinkly pale blue surface with a white geometric pattern on it. The pattern certainly didn’t look natural, so Ell thought it must be something like a tattoo. It was ambulating on two very slender legs and had four more limbs which looked like they were for manipulation. There were two small wings which had folded up so neatly as to become nearly invisible. It had two heavier outer arms and two very lightweight and delicate central arms with tiny digits. Even the thicker outer arms would have looked slender on earth. It also had
three
eyes, one of which was quite large and centrally located directly on the body; two more were delicate and widely mounted on long stalks.

The second of the smaller animals had a smooth orangey brown skin without decorations. It reminded Ell of an ostrich with two long slender legs on a relatively small body and two small wings set high on its back. Though the wings were even smaller in proportion to its body than the wings on a flightless ostrich, the alien had flown quite well with them in this low gravity. It didn’t have the ostrich’s long neck, just two eyes on short stubby stalks. It had two arms for a total of four limbs. These arms were intermediate in size as compared to the blue alien, neither heavy-duty nor delicate.

Could they
all
be mutants due to the radiation levels here?
she wondered. After a moment’s thought she realized that they didn’t look deformed and crippled like mutants would—somehow they looked… functionally modified.

If not for the appearance that they were communicating with one another, Ell’s initial reaction would have been that the big one and the ostrich-like one were animals while the third one with its geometric pattern was the intelligent one. But the recognition that they
all
had hands of a sort that they were using to point at Virgwald markedly upped her impression of their intelligence. They were also waving the arms around as if that added something to their conversation. Ell said, “Allan, make sure that Virgwald’s audio receptors are working. They look like they must be talking, but I’m not hearing anything.” Before Allan responded, she realized she actually was hearing wind noise, some rustling of leaves, and a strange whispering sound, so Virgwald’s microphones had to be functional.

Allan responded, “They’re making a moderate amount of sound in the ultrasonic range, presumably speech. I will reduce its frequency into the range of human hearing, though it’s of course possible that its content requires the high frequencies to achieve sufficient information density.”

The whispering sound disappeared and Ell began to hear something that reminded her of sticks rattling together.
Damn, I’m going to need Dr. Piscova again,
Ell thought,
there’s no way I’m going to learn that language by myself.

While Ell had been trying to take all this in, the three aliens had approached Virgwald with bouncy, bounding steps and began examining him excitedly. They weren’t actually touching the waldo, but were walking around and around, looking at him from all angles. Feeling fairly certain that these were intelligent beings, Ell lifted one hand and, feeling like she should have had something better prepared, said, “Hello… I come in peace.”

The aliens sprang back when Ell lifted Virgwald’s hand, but responded with a great deal of clattering to the words she said, suggesting that they
could
hear the lower frequency range that Ell was speaking in. After a minute or two, Geo, as Ell had decided to name the one with the geometric patterns on its skin, reached out and gently touched Virgwald on the arm. Ell did nothing for a moment, not wanting to frighten them. Then she gently reached out with Virgwald’s hand and touched Geo on one of his thicker outer arms.

Geo held still for this for a moment, then reached out and began touching and stroking Virgwald with three of the four fingers of one of the smaller more delicate central arms. When Virgwald didn’t object, the fourth finger began touching, then sweeping along his arm. That finger appeared to be different, prehensile, like an elephant’s trunk… or a tongue.

Ell saw that the prehensile digit looked damp, at which point it immediately reminded her
much
more of a tongue than a finger.

The clattering noise crescendoed shortly after Geo had tongued Virgwald’s surface, giving Ell the distinct impression that something about touching Virgwald with the damp tongue-like protuberance had created marked excitement. “Allan,” Ell asked, “do you have access to any of Dr. Piscova’s translation algorithms? And, if so, do you think you’d have any chance of translating what the Virgies are saying without her help?”

Allan said, “I do have access to her work and her publications regarding translation of the Teecees. However, I will almost certainly require human intuition to determine what they mean when they make certain sounds. Something similar to what you did with the Sigmas to obtain their words for a starter set of numbers, nouns, and verbs etcetera.”

Ell sighed at the daunting task, then made Virgwald point at himself. “Virgwald,” she said, then pointed at Geo.

Geo didn’t seem to get it. He continued waving his arms at his companions, sometimes looking at Virgwald and sometimes looking at the other Virgies. Disconcertingly, sometimes he looked at Virgwald with one eye-stalk and at the other aliens with the other eye.

Ell tried again, first waving Virgwald’s hand back and forth to get their attention and then having his hand point at himself and say, “Virgwald,” once again. The three aliens stopped clattering to one another and this time they were all looking at Virgwald when he pointed at himself and said his name.

For a moment, the silence continued, then the clattering resumed. Because ultrasound is quite directional and Virgwald had binaural hearing, Ell had begun to recognize when each of the different aliens clattered even though she couldn’t see a mouth moving. Then Geo waved its hands for a moment, either imitating Virgwald, or trying to gain its companions attention, and pointed at himself. A moment later a brief clatter emanated from Geo. In Ell’s ear, Allan said, “I would assume that sound is the alien’s name.”

Ell said, “Yeah, in my mind I’m calling him Geo for the geometric pattern on his skin. If you could translate that clatter to ‘Geo,’ that’d be great.” To herself, she thought despairingly about how long it was going to take to build up a translation vocabulary and how much she wanted to talk to them
right now
.
Well, I’ve got a few hours,
she thought doggedly,
I’d just as well get started.
She had Virgwald hold up one finger, saying, “One.” She held up two fingers and said, “Two.” She held up three fingers and said, “Three.”

She would have sworn that Geo’s eyes brightened. Then it turned to each of its companions and clattered for a bit. To Ell’s surprise, the big one turned and ambled off on the path away from the city. The ostrich-like one turned toward the city and flapped into the air in that direction. Then Geo took a few steps toward the city, turned to Virgwald and waved for Virgwald to come along. As soon as Ell started Virgwald walking in that direction, Geo held up one digit. He made a clatter, then held up two digits…

***

Dr. Turner stepped into the lab, “Vanessa?” He didn’t see her.

A little kid’s head poked around the DNA sequencer. “Oh, hi Dr. Turner,” the kid said, stepping out from behind the machine. “She just went out the door a few seconds ago... um, I think she went to the bathroom.”

It had to be the Kinrais boy. To Turner’s surprise the kid was seriously overweight.
Probably why he’s interested in obesity I guess. I suppose I really should go talk to him since he’s working in here.
Turner walked that way, “Hi yourself. You must be Zane Kinrais?”

The boy nodded, “Zage.”

“Huh?”

“Zage. My name is Zage, not Zane.”

“Oh, sorry. I thought I should meet you now that you’re actually doing a research project in the lab.
What
is it that you’re working on?”

“Um, well, the last time I was in I ran my own DNA through the sequencer. It turns out that I have several genes present in at least some cells that match genes from HA-36. That fits my hypothesis that I’m obese because I’m expressing some of those viral genes. However, after I found those genes in my own DNA I checked and realized that, of course, some of those genes are present in pretty much every genome, including humans. Once I excluded those conserved genes, at least some of my cells still had two genes in common with HA-36 that
aren’t
in most people. Now I’m running my Mom and Dad’s DNA through the sequencer to see whether I inherited those genes or whether maybe they got left behind during an infection.”