The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) (25 page)

“I’m introducing the modifications.” She telepathically activated a syringe attached to the end of one of the robotic arms.

“Enlarging,” Verne said. He brought the microscopic visual to standard view above a Granville sphere.

The synconverts streamed into the microscopic elephant egg.

Damy telepathically directed the adjustments, transforming the portions of its genetic code necessary to fertilize it and transform the embryo into the
Deinotherium
.

“Shall I proceed to the second iteration?” Verne said, and when Damy didn’t reply, “Damosel?”

Damy didn’t hear him, her mind distracted, her head foggy.

Brody,
she thought,
come back to me and your child. My gods, my child, my child, how can I give you away?

“Damy?” Verne said.

Behind the graphene, the procedure continued as if nothing untoward occurred. A robotic arm implanted the microscopic embryo into the synwomb.

“Should I cancel the birth?”

Now Damy heard him. She felt hotter than a comet near the sun. She remembered that her team watched them.

Damy
had
to steady herself, prove to them she was still capable of leading the Nicola Facility and their work on Project Silkscape. Their lives, and her unborn child’s life, depended upon her leadership. “The birth must proceed,” she said in a manner that ensured no debate from Verne or the bots.

She transmitted to him, the bots, and her team,
We will complete Project Silkscape within the parameters set by Chancellor Masimovian and the board.

The bots nodded and their eye slits glowed, then dimmed. They attached more tubes to the synwomb.

“Initiate the second iteration,” Damy said.

Verne obliged.

She looked upon the holograms that streamed above Granville spheres and examined the molecules, the DNA of the newly formed
Deinotherium
embryo.

“Accelerating growth,” Damy said.

She adjusted the views.

The synwomb, shades of red and pink with veins, pulsated with Damy’s heartbeat.

Sixty seconds.

The cells divided and divided and divided, looking like bubbles rising beneath the sea.

Three hundred seconds.

Damy blocked out thoughts of Brody and her baby. She took controlled breaths.
The negativity is your enemy. The enemy is your negativity. Ignore the negativity and defeat your enemy.

Four hundred twenty seconds.

Synconvert created a growing embryo with a 99.9995 percent DNA match to the
Deinotherium
.

Six hundred seconds.

A gestation period of six hundred sixty days had just been greatly reduced, as planned, for the shape of the
Deinotherium
formed. A hairless body curved with a trunk as thin as a straw, a tail no thicker than a mouse’s. It moved its mouth in a manner that was fishlike over a sustenance tube. Liquid streamed into the tube and into the
Deinotherium
, which grew bigger, bigger, its legs stretching the synwomb.

It swung its trunk. It rolled. The synwomb burst, and the baby beast emerged, utterly lifeless.

Medical bots swarmed and lifted it. Its eyes remained closed. It drew no breath. They lost their grip, and it thudded upon the turf.

Damy connected to the ZPF and sensed its life energy. She turned to the exit and the entrance.

No time,
she thought. She broke apart a robotic arm, and swinging it as hard as she could, ignoring Verne’s objections, she sent a telekinetic burst into the ZPF and struck the graphene, shattering it.

Red light overtook the facility.

Damy sensed her team’s trepidation in the ZPF.

I cannot fail,
she thought. She lifted herself onto the turf and pushed the bots away from her and the baby beast.

She squeezed its trunk and pulled the fluids from it and with all her strength, with Verne and bots pulling at her, she kicked the
Deinotherium
, again and again, screaming.

Damy threw Verne and the bots away from her and nudged the
Deinotherium
with her shoulder.

The baby beast slipped along the turf until a surge of energy in the ZPF halted Damy.

The
Deinotherium
’s eyes opened, as did its mouth! It curled its short trunk.

Damy collapsed next to it on the ground, gasping. The
Deinotherium
pawed toward her with its thick arms, then stood on shaky legs.

Damy laughed, madly and lovingly, her helmet fogging from her breaths. The bots lifted her to Verne, who dragged her away from the flooded turf.

The next day, when they returned, the beautiful beast was walking through the Nicola Facility’s back-end habitat.

Developmental accelerants, not dissimilar to those used on Harpoon candidates but adjusted for the
Deinotherium
genome, were continuously injected overnight. Already, the
Deinotherium
’s tusks formed, while its leathery skin looked a darker shade of gray.

“What will we name him?” Verne said.

“How do you know it’s a—”

Damy saw her answer. She wondered if
she
presently carried a boy or a girl, and what she would name her baby. Then she averted her thoughts, lest Marstone, and Lady Isabelle, question her delay in registering her unborn child. She’d already lost control of her monologue too often. She feared she’d already given the commonwealth enough traitorous impulses to arrest her. Yet she didn’t care. Brody had been sent away from her, and she didn’t know what to do.
I don’t know if I can do it,
she thought, her hand over her belly on the outside of her bodysuit,
give you to the chancellor, to his Harpoons, and risk losing you to the Lower Level.

She hoped no one noticed her bump today.

“His name is Antarctica,” Verne said proudly. When Damy didn’t respond, he said, “Antarctica?”

Her mind wandered. She couldn’t make this decision without Brody, for if she chose unwisely, she couldn’t put his life in danger too.

“Damy?”

“What’s happening?” Damy said.

Verne wiped a tear from corner of her eye. “You succeeded,” he said.

“Not without your help.” She nearly let her tears flow freely but stopped herself. Verne didn’t have to share this burden with her. She would have to decide whether to obey the Fifth Precept, not him. “Antarctica?” she said. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The
Deinotherium
was native to the Northern Hemisphere, not the Southern.”

“So?” Verne said. “He’s been extinct for nearly two million years, how would he know the difference?”

Damy laughed. “I suppose he wouldn’t. Antarctica he is then—”

Red lights winked, just like when Damy had broken through the graphene containment during the birth. She felt light-headed. The entranceway cleared, and two medical bots rushed inside. “What’s wrong?” Damy demanded. “Is it Brody? Did he return? Why would you interrupt us? Why did the lights flash? What’s—”

“Aha, Madam Scientist,” a research bot said, “the chancellor has requested all supreme scientists attend the festivities in the Valley of Masimovian.”

Damy wondered why the Office of the Chancellor didn’t contact her. Then she knew. “Brody’s returned.” She gasped. “I should’ve stayed in Phanes, no, I should’ve gone to Peanowera, no, I should’ve—”

“Aha, the Barão Strike Team has not yet returned to the solar system, Madam Scientist.”

“I see,” Damy said, catching her breath. She found herself holding Verne’s hand. “Will you come back to Phanes with me?”

Unknown Time

Planet Vigna

Milky Way Galaxy

Radioactive columns grew electrified, heated, and swirled; metal rotated into gigantic tornadoes.
An electromagnet
, Brody thought.
Similar to Earth
. This motion protected Vigna from the radiation of its three stars.

He was thrown into one of the columns through the spinning metal, an electrified twister, still protected, it seemed, for he still saw and heard all, the sounds of fire, of explosions, a combination of motion and heat. Down, down, down through this twister he fell, to the center of Vigna, where the hot and high-pressure outer core, full of iron-crystal shards hundreds of meters tall, blocked Brody’s descent.

Strange,
he thought,
everything should be liquid here.

Or perhaps the pressure was so high no space existed for the iron molecules to expand and liquefy. In that case, and in any case, how was he alive to see it? Was this all in his mind? A hallucination designed by the Lorum? He touched the edge of his transparent cocoon, his fingertips still covered with the metallic organic substance. It bulged but did not break. He looked up. On the other end of this hell, Nero and Verena, suspended as he, bounced upon the massive iron shards, likewise surrounded by a transparent shield that swayed with the colors of the liquid metal, revealing glimpses of their faces and bodies.

Nero and Verena struggled, as did Brody, and he pondered whether they were all prisoners here. To what purpose had the Lorum captured them? When would it show itself? Or perhaps it had already. Perhaps he was encased in it even now.

Brody steadied himself in the weightless environment as the iron crystallized, bit by bit, molecule by molecule, until the iron shards grew rapidly and deliberately, stratified, forming a base upon which Brody stood. Verena and Nero were far away from him, tangled in the iron as if it were vines, squeezing them.

Brody could sense the heat and pressure here, where no living creature should exist. He again mistrusted his senses, as he had nearly this entire mission.

The iron blotted out what lay overhead now, forming as if it was a terradome upon the Earth or Mars. What was the Lorum doing? Was this some message? Suddenly a sky formed, as illusory as this inner sanctum of Vigna, Brody assumed, yet it
did
seem like Mars.

He understood at once that the terradome was similar to the one over Candor Chasma. The time in Brody’s life he tried so desperately to forget, the time when he’d worked on Mars with Antosha Zereoue. Brody turned. Antosha stood in the courtyard of stone with the ansible. This was later in their research, Brody knew, for Antosha had that look, that gleam in his eyes, the snowflakes in them moving rapidly and uncontrollably, and his arms shook as if timed to a tune from his deodar violin. But there was no music; there was just the signal, the quantum energy from the ZPF through which Antosha communicated with the Lorum as he projected his consciousness out to the cosmos. Using the CRISPR system, he dissected and pulled pieces of the Lorum’s DNA apart.

Is this it?
Brody thought.
His methods revealed?

Antosha had implied to Brody they could travel to Vigna by way of the transmigration, though Brody had never quite understood what that meant, how it would happen, or why Antosha sought to do so, until now. The Lorum showed him the truth by way of images, molecules, chromosomes, and data. Antosha was not, apparently, trying to decipher the Lorum’s language, not seeking to understand the origins of life or find new exoplanets that could support life without failure-prone terradomes, as were the directives of their mission upon Candor Chasma. He instead focused on the Lorum’s DNA, believing portions of it could be harvested, converted, and applied to the transhuman genome.

The Lorum resisted Antosha’s prying, for with the keys to its genome, Antosha could have killed them.
Is this what drove Antosha mad?
Brody thought.

He’s dead,
Brody heard himself lie in the ZPF.
You don’t have to fear him, or transhumans. We won’t hurt you.

The Lorum didn’t answer. Could the alien speak Beimeni’s language but not understand it? Was that even possible? How was it sending these impulses into Brody’s mind even now, enabling him to learn, showing him what he had missed, or forgotten, from his days upon Candor Chasma?

Antosha shut down the ansible, and the terrain shifted to a colorless rendition of Palaestra Square, with its marble, mirages of steps at the four corners, arches, and the bioluminescent light in its fountains. Hundreds of Janzers lay dead, genetically poisoned by Antosha.

Brody, with his striker and strategist tethered still in Vigna’s core, faced Antosha alone now, the same as he had in the past, until his former shadow’s likeness altered … transforming to his Gemini. Like Antosha then, as quickly as his Gemini pushed into Brody’s neurochip, Brody reversed its progress and prevented access through the ZPF.

The Gemini persisted, communicating with Brody in ways Antosha had perfected with the CRISPR system, these methods of utilizing synbio with the ZPF and communications with the transhuman body reserved for the great houses of development, under strict controls and regulations.

Brody felt something crawl over his body, a sensation, as of ants emerging from his pores. He blinked. His heart pounded. Scorpions, crawling and stinging, pierced Brody’s skin, pulled at his eyes, slithered into his mouth, down his esophagus, even as Brody knew he should still be protected by the organic, liquid metal.