Grant smiled indulgently. ‘Explain the fruit pigeons, then. And the barbed-wire shrubs. What’s going on with the camouflage,
and the thorns?’
Prabir pondered this for a while. ‘It’s a counterfactual defence. Once you have the São Paulo gene, you can block predators
that have never even tried to prey on you,
in your own history
. And so long as you maintain the defence, they won’t bother evolving in that direction, because they can see that there’s
no point. It’s like a simple chess program: no elaborate strategies copied from grand masters, just the power to look ahead
a few moves and assess the consequences. If brute force computation reveals a strategy – like castling, say – that gives a
medium-term advantage over all possible moves by its opponents, the program will use it. And it will never reverse it, even
if there’s no immediate threat, because it can
look far enough ahead to see that any back-down would be exploited.’
Grant was beginning to look slightly uncomfortable. ‘You don’t seriously believe that’s what’s happening, though?’
‘Absolutely not. He’ll run the experiment on the synthetic chromosome, and prove himself wrong.’
Grant made a half-hearted sound of agreement, as if she was afraid that excessive confidence might be tempting fate.
Prabir said, ‘I meant to ask you: did you get the results of the RNA analysis of the dormant adults?’ The last he’d heard,
it had been running overnight.
‘Yeah. There’s a peptide being produced that’s virtually identical to a well-known hormone that puts the adults of certain
temperate species of butterflies into diapause when they hibernate over winter. And the alteration in the texture and pigmentation
of the wings seems to have followed from a cascade of gene activity very similar to one that happens in ordinary metamorphosis.
It’s all pretty much what I’d expected: just a few existing tricks redeployed.’
‘OK. But redeployed to what end? I know it’s pointless now, because the adults have already laid their eggs externally, but
could this be a throwback to a species that used to reproduce via parasitic larvae?’ Maybe the gene resurrection idea could
still be salvaged, after all.
Grant shook her head. ‘Not unless it’s gone even more awry than that. The males are all doing it too.’
Prabir held the guard rail and pushed against it, trying to unknot his shoulders. ‘If the gene
didn’t
start off as something every species has for mutation repair, we still have to account for its spread from the butterflies
to everything else.’ He turned to Grant, smiling disarmingly, hoping she’d suffer a little more frivolous speculation. ‘Just
for argument’s sake: if Furtado was right, maybe the São Paulo gene saw this as an easy way to get copies of itself into the
fruit pigeons.’
Grant didn’t respond immediately; Prabir assumed she was thinking up a suitably withering reply.
‘I found something else in the RNA analysis,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Large amounts of an endonuclease – an enzyme for cutting and splicing DNA – being produced throughout the bodies of the dormant
adults. I haven’t characterised it any further yet …’ She trailed off.
Prabir said, ‘But if it’s the right kind of endonuclease, it might be perfect for the job of splicing the São Paulo gene into
the genome of the fruit pigeons?’
Grant nodded, and continued reluctantly. ‘The fraction of DNA and endonuclease that survived digestion and entered the bloodstream
would always be tiny, though I suppose it could be packaged in something like liposomes to protect it, and help it get absorbed
by the wall of the gut. There’s then another hurdle to get the gene into the ovaries or testes. This
might
be the transmission route, but the whole picture’s not clear, by any means.’
Prabir looked back across the water; he could still see Teranesia’s volcanic cone in the distance. ‘Everything else could
be a throwback, couldn’t it? If mimcry was once used to get parasitic larvae into the fruit pigeons, then if the genes for
that have been reactivated now, pointlessly, in egg-laying females, they might also have been reactivated in males – simply
because the switch isn’t functioning properly.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And there are other uses for endonucleases, aren’t there? It might be a coincidence that the endonuclease
gene is switched on at the same time as the others?’
‘It might.’
Prabir laughed suddenly. ‘Listen to me. We’ve been to Teranesia, we’ve been to the source, and I expect everything to fall
into place in a day. I’ve gone twenty-one years without an answer. I can wait a little longer.’
He glanced down at the graphic of SPP in Furtado’s article, which was cycling through sixteen of the conformations it could
adopt, binding to each of the four bases in the old strand while adding each of the four to the new. Between them, these sixteen
simple transformations could generate every conceivable change: as the old strand was broken apart and the new one constructed,
the potential existed for the organism to become anything at all.
And from that limitless sea of possibilities, what marvellous inventions did the São Paulo gene pluck?
Those that made as many copies of the São Paulo gene as possible.
They reached the island of the mangroves and made use of the same approach as before, then sailed around the coast inside
the reef. As they drew nearer to the point where the expedition had set up camp, Prabir saw that the fishing boat was gone,
but another vessel had taken its place alongside the research ship.
They dropped anchor and waded ashore. They were halfway to the camp when a young man appeared on the beach about fifty metres
ahead of them, dressed in camouflage trousers, combat boots, and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. He raised a rifle and aimed it at
them, then barked out a series of commands in English.
‘Halt! Put your hands on your heads! Squat down!’
They complied. The man walked up to Prabir and held the rifle to his temple. ‘What are you doing here? Where have you come
from?’ Prabir was too agitated to reply immediately, but as he struggled to relax his larynx sufficiently to speak he took
some comfort from the realisation that the man was probably not a pirate. Only a soldier would be so interested in their movements,
and whatever misunderstanding was provoking his hostility would surely be easy enough to resolve.
Grant explained calmly, ‘I’m a biologist, this is my assistant. I have a permit from the government in Ambon.’
The soldier’s reaction to this last phrase was not encouraging. ‘Pig-fucking ecumenical heretics!’ Prabir’s heart sank. The
man was not a Moluccan soldier: he was with the Lord’s Army, West Papua’s born-again Christian militia. Officially, they weren’t
even part of that country’s armed forces, though it was widely assumed that they received clandestine government support.
They’d been making trouble in Aru for years. But Aru was almost three hundred kilometres east.
‘Where have you been?’ the man demanded.
Prabir said, ‘On the other side of the island.’ If Teranesia’s infamy had spread throughout the region, it might not be wise
to admit to having visited the place.
‘You’re lying. Yesterday, there was no sign of your boat.’
‘You must have missed us. We were halfway into the mangroves.’
The man snorted with derision. ‘You’re lying. You come and see Colonel Aslan.’
As they walked through the camp, Prabir saw three more armed men lounging around looking bored, and several of the expedition
members standing nervously at the entrances to their tents. The biologists weren’t exactly being guarded like hostages, but
this was definitely not a guest/host relationship. There was no sign of Madhusree. Prabir kept telling himself that there
was no reason for the soldiers to have harmed anyone, but nor was there any obvious reason for them to be here at all. Maybe
there’d been a case that Aru should have joined West Papua at independence – even if that was now about as attractive a prospect
as West Bengal being declared a part of Pakistan – but it was hard to imagine what kind of mileage the Lord’s Army expected
to gain for the cause by bullying foreigners deep in RMS territory.
The Colonel had taken up office in one of the expedition’s
supply tents; Prabir and Grant were made to stand and wait outside in the early-afternoon sun. After twenty minutes, the soldier
guarding them muttered something irritably in his native language and went and sat in the shade of a tree, his rifle propped
up on one knee to keep it pointing vaguely in their direction.
Prabir whispered, ‘You do know who we’re dealing with?’
‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll be on my best Sunday-school behaviour.’ Grant seemed more weary than afraid, as if this was just another
tedious obstacle to get through, no different from slogging through the mangroves. But she’d travelled widely, so perhaps
she’d grown accustomed to occasional periods of arbitrary detention.
‘ “Colonel Aslan”’ Do you think he’s a foreign mercenary? It sounds more like a name from central Asia than anything from around
here.’
Grant smiled, somewhat condescendingly. ‘I believe it’s now a common choice upon conversion to Christianity all over the planet,
at least when the evangelists get their hooks in early enough. Just don’t admit to a fondness for Turkish delight, and you
should be OK.’
‘Turkish delight?’
‘Don’t worry. It would take too long to explain.’
A second young soldier emerged from the tent and shot a warning glance at their guard, who leapt to his feet. The two of them
escorted Grant and Prabir into the tent, past drums of flour and boxes of toilet paper.
Colonel Aslan turned out to be a muscular Papuan man in his thirties, apparently devoted to the Dallas Cowboys. He was seated
behind a desk improvised from crates. When Grant handed over her permit, he smiled graciously. ‘So you’re the famous Martha
Grant! I’ve been following your work on the net. You’ve been to the heart of the contagion, and returned to tell the tale.’
Grant replied warily, ‘There’s no evidence that the mutations are contagious.’
‘Yet these creatures turn up hundreds of kilometres away. How do you account for that?’
‘I can’t. It will take time to explain.’
Aslan nodded sympathetically. ‘Meanwhile, my country and my people remain at risk from these abominations. What am I expected
to do about that?’
Grant hesitated. ‘The impact on agriculture and health of flora and fauna transported across national borders by inadvertent
human actions, or acts of nature, is the subject of a number of treaties. There are international bodies where these issues
can be discussed, and any appropriate response coordinated.’
‘That’s a very diplomatic answer. But there are boats weaving back and forth across the Banda Sea as we speak, without regard
to anything some subcommittee of the World Health Organisation might have to say on the matter in five years’ time.’
Grant said neutrally, ‘I can’t advise you on this. It’s beyond my expertise.’
‘I understand.’ Aslan nodded at the soldier from the beach, who led Grant out of the tent. Then he turned to Prabir.
‘You accompanied her on this trip?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you fornicate with her, on the boat?’
Prabir was unsure for a moment that he’d heard correctly. Then he replied icily, ‘I’m not familiar with that dialect of English.’
Aslan was indulgent. ‘Did you have sexual intercourse?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
The soldier who’d remained took a step towards Prabir, holding up his rifle like a club.
Prabir stared down at the tent’s mud-spattered ground sheet.
What was going on in these people’s heads?
Were they
looking for an excuse to brand Grant as promiscuous, so they could rape her with a clear conscience?
‘No. We didn’t have sex.’
There was a long silence, then Aslan said calmly, ‘Look at me.’
Prabir raised his eyes reluctantly.
‘Are you a Muslim?’
‘No.’
Aslan seemed disappointed; maybe he’d been hoping to demonstrate his sophistication in the presence of the enemy. ‘Then I
won’t ask you to swear on the name of the Prophet. But you’re a healthy young man, and she is a very charming woman.’
‘She is a
virtuous married woman
.’
‘But you took advantage of her? You raped her?’
Prabir was about to offer an outraged denial, when he realised that there’d be no end to this until Aslan had an explanation
for his discomfort at the line of questioning. He looked him in the eye and said, ‘Why would I want to? I’m homosexual.’
Aslan blinked bemusedly, and for a moment Prabir wondered if he only knew derogatory terms and Biblese. Then he spread his
arms and proclaimed joyously, ‘Hallelujah!
That
can be cured!’
Prabir muttered, ‘Not half as easily as Christianity.’
The soldier beside him swung the rifle butt into his temple. Prabir reeled, and fought to keep his balance. But the blow hadn’t
been heavy, he wasn’t even bleeding.
‘You can cut off a man’s cock,’ Aslan declaimed, ‘but you can’t cut out his soul.’
Prabir was sorely tempted to improvise a maximally offensive rejoinder involving kuru and communion wafers, but it didn’t
seem worth the risk of discovering that this homily was actually a recipe for surgical intervention.
Aslan said mildly, ‘Get him out of here.’
*
Prabir was led to another tent, where the expedition member who’d examined him after the python attack – he thought he remembered
Ojany calling her Lisa – took a blood sample from him. She was clearly acting under duress as much as he was, but he’d rather
she stuck the hypodermic in his arm than have one of the Lord’s Army do it.
Another soldier, closer to Aslan’s age, took the sealed tube of blood from her and spiked it on to the input nozzle of a robust-looking
machine that resembled nothing so much as a field radio in a World War II movie. Well, not quite: it had an LCD flatscreen
in the lid, like an old laptop computer. The soldier hit some buttons, and the machine began to whir. Prabir glanced down
at the markings on the case, and saw the acronyms NATO and PCR. NATO had been the US imperial force in Europe, PCR was Polymerase
Chain Reaction. It was an old army surplus genetic analyser, presumably designed to detect traces of DNA from biological weapons.
But its current owners could have cut and pasted any sequence they liked into the software, and it would have happily purred
away and spat out the necessary primers and probes.