Davenport shrugged. “All I know about Terrarium Nine is that it was constructed and commissioned six years ago and that Flammersfeld was its first and only personnel. All I know about Flammersfeld is that he was a hard worker who never took a break; he routinely turned down R and R-according to his superiors in the home office he said he got all the relaxation he needed by interactive video, and in fact at the time of his death Through the Looking-Glass was in his computer/player -and he was working concurrently on two unrelated projects. Plus he had plans for the future-his last, though unsent, requisition was for swine embryo and eagle eggs. “
Dr. Urth wrinkled his brow, then resettled his glasses. “I would like to see his notes on the two unrelated projects you mentioned.”
Davenport looked uncomfortable. “That may be impossible.”
Dr. Urth’s mouth tightened. “Is there a clearance problem? If so, good day.”
Davenport hastened to say, “It’s not that, Dr. Urth, not that at all. I believe you have cosmic clearance.”
That mollified Dr. Urth. “Then what is the problem? Did Flammersfeld destroy his notes?”
“Not that, either. It’s just that he seems to have been paranoidally secretive. His notes are in his computer’s memory, but locked behind passwords that we haven’t broken-yet.”
“I admire your optimism, sir, but optimism-while admirable even when it is foolish-is pie in the sky, a future repast; it does not feed us now.”
Davenport reddened.
Dr. Urth relented. “Two unrelated projects; you know that much. You may know more than you think you know-that is, if you can give me the titles of the two projects. His superiors at the home office to whom he reported must have had some idea of what he was working on if they were to approve his requisitions.”
Davenport brightened. “I don’t have the titles at the tip of my tongue, but I do remember that he was seeking a cure for hemophilia and that he was looking for the-uh-direction sensors in plant cells.”
Dr. Urth patted his paunch as if he had just had a good feed. “Excellent. Hemophilia. Bleeder’s disease. Disease of kings-e.g., the Romanovs of Czarist Russia. Women pass it on through a recessive X chromosome but do not themselves have it. Profuse bleeding, even from the slightest wound. In a test tube, normal blood from a vein clots in five to fifteen minutes; hemophiliac clotting time varies from thirty minutes to hours. A natural for zero-gravity research. While the sheer bulk of total plasma would rule out its fractionation by electrophoresis at zero gravity, the same does not hold for minor components, such as clotting factors.”
His voice pitched even higher in his excitement. “Yes, yes. And Flammersfeld’s other project is another natural for zero-gravity research. The plant world presents an intriguing puzzle: how does a plant sense the direction of gravity? Plants tend to grow in a vertical direction-but we have yet to find the cellular direction sensors. Yes, yes. We have our answer. “
Davenport stared at Dr. Urth. “We have?”
“It’s as obvious,” Dr. Urth said sharply, ‘‘as the nose on my face.”
Maybe that’s why I don’t see it. Davenport muttered mentally. But he put on a pleasant mask. “You said it’s easy to overlook the obvious.”
“You’ve been listening, at least.” Dr. Urth made himself a monument of patience. “Listen now to a bit of verse.
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes-and ships-and sealing-wax-
Of cabbages-and kings-
And why the sea is boiling hot-
And whether pigs have wings. ‘ “
Dr. Urth looked at Davenport and smiled. “You don’t know whether to laugh or snort at such utter nonsense. Well, laugh. We humans need a leavening of levity; there can be too much gravity.”
Davenport did not laugh, but then he did not snort. “That’s from a child’s book, isn’t it?”
“Indeed. The child in Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was named Lewis Carroll. The verse is from his Through the Looking Glass. “
“Flammersfeld’s interactive video!”
“The same.”
Davenport shook his head. “How does it tie in?”
“It ties in first with an even older nursery rhyme.
“‘Old King Cole
Was a merry old soul,
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe,
And he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler, he had a fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Twee tweedle dee, tweedle dee, went the fiddlers.
Oh, there’s none so rare
As can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three!’ “
This time Davenport could not help laughing. And after a moment Dr. Urth joined in.
Davenport sobered first and non-judgmentally waited for Dr. Urth to subside.
Dr. Urth sounded all the more serious when he picked up where he had left off. “The rhyme about King Cole was in Lewis Carroll’s mind-consciously or unconsciously-when Carroll wrote the Walrus’s speech. ‘ King Cole’-cole as in cole slaw-split naturally into’ cabbages and kings.’ And came back together in Flammersfeld’s mind as a protoplast fusion of cabbage seed and royal blood. “
Davenport fumbled the death-scene hologram to light and stared at the magnified cabbage. “You mean this thing…?”
Dr. Urth nodded. He pointed to a spot atop the cabbage. “Very like a crown gall, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t-since I don’t know the first thing about crown galls.”
“Then take my word for it. There are two kinds of living cells: eukaryotic and prokaryotic. A eukaryotic cell is nucleated; that is, its nucleus walls in its chromosomes. A prokaryotic cell is less organized; that is, its chromosomes drift freely in the cytoplasm, in among the organelles. Enter Agrobacter-short for Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Agrobacter’s innards hold the Ti plasmid-a tiny loop of DNA-some two hundred genes long. Agrobacter can hook a plant cell and inject the Ti plasmid into the nucleus. Once inside, a twelve-gene length-called tDNA, for transfer DNA-cuts loose from the Ti plasmid and becomes part of the plant cell chromosome. The tDNA genes then program the plant to nurture Agrobacter.”
Dr. Urth paused a moment for breath and-Davenport thought-for dramatic effect.
“Now I come to the point of all this. The insidious parasite Agrobacter causes a tumorous swelling-a crown gall.” Dr. Urth’s voice rose in wrath. “Can you imagine? That nasty procedure was Flammersfeld’s elaborate way of fitting his poor little intelligent hybrid King Cole with a crown!”
Davenport gazed upon the image, saw only a rotted cabbage, and tried to picture it as it had been in life-a being with reasoning power, and therefore memory and foresight; with feelings, and therefore the need to love and hate. It would have been mostly head, the face framed in leaves. He shivered. For a flash he visualized its round face superimposed upon Dr. Urth’s round face, another bud of Buddha. He glanced at Dr. Urth.
Dr. Urth looked melancholy. It hit Davenport that Dr. Urth had been a child prodigy. Dr. Urth would have fellow feeling for freaks of any kind. Dr. Urth must have felt his look and sensed his thoughts, for Dr. Urth met his gaze and smiled sadly.
“We all-ourselves and our matrix-are interference patterns. So it comes natural to think of crossing this with that. It’s the nature of the beast-meaning the universe. All in all, it’s just as well Flammersfeld and his creature died when they did-if not as they did. We humans need a minimum of levity; there can be too much gravity. But Flammersfeld went too far, interfered too much.” His brow darkened. “ And meant to go on interfering. Remember his last requisition-for swine embryo and eagle eggs? And remember the line from Lewis Carroll-’whether pigs have wings’? We humans need a minimum amount of gravity; there can be too much levity.” His face closed. “That’s it, then.”
Davenport put the holograms away and got up to go. “Thanks for your help, Dr. Urth.”
Dr. Urth waved that away. He bounced to his feet and shook hands.
His voice halted Davenport on the threshold. “Inspector.”
Davenport turned around. “Yes, Dr. Urth?”
“About my fee…”
Davenport smiled. “I wondered when that would come.”
“Now you know. It comes now. A few trifles.”
“You know I’ll do my best. They are?”
“First, two bits of information to satisfy my curiosity. When you get back to New Washington, kindly stop by Near-earth, Ltd., and retrieve the file on Terrarium Nine. See if you can find out from Flammersfeld’s requisitions, and other documents, the genetic history of the cabbage and of the hemophiliac blood.” He smiled. “I’ve a mind bet that the cabbage was a savoy cabbage and that the blood came from a descendant of the House of Savoy.”