Chapter Thirty-seven
“Who would have thought that both destinies for Mars could be fulfilled? But, of course, now they can. We will travel to the Mars of this universe, the one that graces the night skies of the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, and, as has ever been our way, we will conquer this new frontier, making an additional home for Homo sapiens there…”
When they returned to the mansion, Jock was waiting for them. Mary thought her heart was going to explode. “Adikor, Ponter,” said Jock. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave us.”
“Why?” said Adikor.
“The hospital called. Lonwis’s condition is deteriorating, and they don’t know what to do. He’s going to be rushed back to the Neanderthal world, so that he can be treated there. I’ve arranged for a U.S. Air Force plane to take him up to Sudbury, but he wants the two of you to accompany him. He says—I’m sorry, gentlemen, but he says he may not last much longer, and he needs to go over his quantum-computing ideas with the two of you.”
Ponter looked at Mary. Mary lifted her eyebrows, wishing there were some alternative. “I’ll drive you to the airport,” she said.
“Say, guys,” said Jock, “before you go, one question.”
“Yes?” asked Ponter.
“When does—what do you call it?—‘Two becoming One’? When does that happen next?”
“Three days from now,” said Adikor. “Why?”
“Oh, no special reason,” said Jock. “Just curious.”
The codon writer remained in Jock’s safe, dammitall. Mary really wanted to take it with her when she and Louise fled to Canada, but that wasn’t going to be possible. Still, although the safe was apparently impregnable, Jock’s computer files were not. Louise had had no trouble compromising Jock’s password file—his password turned out to be “minimax,” a term Mary vaguely recognized as having something to do with game theory—and after everyone else had left for the evening, Mary slipped back into Jock’s office, while Louise returned to her own lab.
Mary entered “minimax” at the password prompt, gaining access to the hidden files on the Synergy server. She then clicked on the Surfaris icon, and the USAMRIID Geneplex program opened, displaying the virus’s design. Mary set about modifying it.
It was a heady experience. Despite her scientific training, despite everything Vissan had said, down deep, some part of Mary still thought there was something mystical about life; that, at its core, it was more than just chemistry. But of course it wasn’t; the geneticist in her knew that. Program the right sequence of nucleotides, and you’ll ultimately produce a series of proteins that will do precisely what you wish. Still, Mary could scarcely believe what she was doing. It was like back when she was married to Colm. He’d written poetry in his spare time, selling—in the poet’s sense of the word, meaning giving away in exchange for copies of the publication—dozens of poems to places like The Malahat Review, White Wall Review, and HazMat. Mary had always been astonished that he could sit down at his keyboard, pounding away in WordStar—would he ever give that program up?—and produce something beautiful, meaningful, and unique out of absolutely nothing.
And now Mary was doing the same thing: specifying sequences that would eventually be output as an actual life-form—or, at least, as a virus—that had never existed before. Of course, she was really only modifying the existing Surfaris template that some other geneticist had created, but, still, the resulting virus would indeed be novel.
And yet, the virus she was creating wouldn’t actually do anything. Whereas the original design would have aborted only if it was hosted in the cell of a Gliksin, rather than a Barast, Mary’s version would abort regardless of the input it received: it would do nothing no matter what sort of cell it was within. It was only the branching logic Mary was changing. She left the code that would produce the hemorrhagic fever intact not out of any desire to see it ever invoked, but rather to make sure that, at a cursory glance at least, her sequence would look like the one Jock had intended the codon writer to produce.
Mary wanted a name to mentally distinguish her version from Jock’s. She frowned, trying to think of something appropriate. Jock’s original had been named “Surfaris”—a word that even the on-line Oxford English Dictionary didn’t have in its database. But then it occurred to Mary that it might be a plural form, and so she tried what she guessed would be the singular, although that looked like it could be a plural in its own right: “surfari.”
And there it was: a blending of “surfing” and “safari,” referring to the search surfers make for decent waves. Mary couldn’t see the relevance, so she typed the term, in the plural form Jock had used, into Google.
Of course.
The Surfaris. A rock group who in 1963 recorded what went on to be a standard on golden-oldie stations, “Wipeout.”
Sweet Jesus, thought Mary. Wipeout.
She shook her head in disgust.
Well, what’s the opposite of “wipeout?”
At thirty-nine, Mary was young enough—barely—to remember the heyday of vinyl 45-rpm records. Doubtless “Wipeout” had been released in that format. But what had been on—she still remembered the term—the flip side? Google to the rescue: “Surfer Joe,” written by Ron Wilson. Mary honestly couldn’t remember ever hearing that song, but then again, that was often the fate of B-sides.
Regardless, it was as good a code name as any: she’d think of Jock’s original as the Wipeout virus, and her modified, do-nothing version as Surfer Joe. Of course, she saved Surfer Joe with the same filename Jock’s geneticist had used for the Wipeout version, but at least she could keep them straight in her mind now.
Mary leaned back in her chair.
It did feel like playing God.
And, she had to admit, it felt good.
She allowed herself a little chuckle, wondering what Neanderthals called megalomaniac thoughts. Surely not playing God. Maybe “pulling a Lonwis”…
“Mary!”
Mary’s heart jumped. She’d thought she was alone here. She looked up and—
God, no.
Cornelius Ruskin was standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” Mary said, her voice trembling. She grabbed a heavy malachite paperweight off the worktable.
Cornelius held up a hand; in it was a brown leather wallet. “I forgot my wallet at my desk. I just came in to pick it up.”
Suddenly it hit Mary. The other geneticist. The one Jock had been using to code this…this evil. It was Cornelius. It had to be.
“What are you doing in Jock’s office?” asked Cornelius.
Cornelius couldn’t see Jock’s LCD screen from the doorway. “Nothing. Just looking for a book.”
“Well,” said Cornelius. “Mary, I—”
“You’ve got your wallet. Get out.”
“Mary, if you’d just—”
Mary’s stomach was roiling. “Louise is upstairs, you know. I’ll scream.”
Cornelius stood in the doorway, his expression weary. “I just want to say I’m sorry—”
“Get out! Get the hell out of here!”
Cornelius hesitated for a moment, then turned. Mary listened to his footfalls go down the corridor, and the sound of the heavy door to the mansion opening and closing.
Her vision was blurry, and she felt nauseous. She took a deep breath, then another one, trying to calm herself. Her hands were slick with sweat, and there was a sour taste at the back of her throat. Damn him, damn him, damn him…