Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers (16 page)

25 April 3477

Nowhereistan, Earth

Lon frowned down at all the messages waiting for him. All the various lab reports were back. And they must be hot, three of them had follow up messages flagged
Call me immediately.

He grabbed breakfast to go and got to his temporary office early. The four days he'd snatched in Dallas had been great. Carol had taken time off from her regular job, and even trimmed hours with the campaign.

But now he took a careful sip of very hot coffee and got back to work. He opened the mineral lab report first. Roughly the same as the first samples. The call me note was asking if the deposits were extensive. Ha! Like he was about to answer that. His reply was stiff, mentioned the illegality of insider trading and included a copy of the confidentiality agreement, as a reminder.

The University of Bern's Astronomy department confirmed that the crater was indeed an astrobleme. They'd accessed a soil sample from the government survey and pointed out the shocked quartz, microtectites, and microscopic diamonds. "Obviously reworked, but indicative of a very large volume of affected material." The follow up had details of a mobile two meter telescope and everything else needed for a complete field setup to scan for more asteroids on a collision course, including personnel. With cost estimates.

The dating service (old joke) informed him that the eight samples sent all had burned plant material that had been datable. Four were one thousand forty years old, give or take a hundred and fifty years. The other four were thirteen thousand seven hundred and twenty, plus or minus three hundred years. So, the two dark, charred layers in each of four cores marked world-wide, catastrophic events.  

"Help them tie down the Early Diaspora." Lon looked up quickly to see if anyone had heard him muttering. The office was still
mostly empty. Monday-itis.

One of the warehouse gofers came in, coffee pot in hand.

Lon eyed her cynically. Champion gossip. He held out his coffee cup anyway. "What's up, Bec?"

She rolled her eyes. "That Jefferson person. Good grief. He hates your guts, but he was trying to do everything you did, bu
t better. He just had to have a few more boxes than you did, and a bigger cadre. We all just about died laughing when he realized he didn't have any gate times scheduled. And with a three week layover, he got the worst drivers from the temp pool."

"In that terrain? Now that's a bit scary. But don't gossip about him behind his back too much. He's nasty when he figures out who's doing it. He's all about Team Work. Mainly so he'll have someone handy to blame his failures on."

Bec grinned. "We know. We saw him in action, trying to blame you for not scheduling his gates for him. Then he whined until McCamey gave him your first slot. That didn't fly with most everyone. You're the one who needs to watch his back." She topped off his coffee and headed out.

"Thanks, Bec."

"Well, we thought you should know. What we should have known was that you would be on it."

The genetics testing lab sent a form letter telling him the analysis was nearly complete. The followup was from
JimPaulson, head of the lab. "Meet me for lunch. Mimi's 13:00. Important!"

He wrote a brief report for the Board, saying that follow up lab reports confirmed both the mineral content and the ages of two major bolide impacts. He recommended an astronomical survey to determine if more impacts were a possibility and quoted the expenses the University had g
iven him plus truck rental and gate time. He suggested that sociologists and linguists might be useful additions, floating a figure that ought to cover two of each.

Then he sat back to stew over all the various explanations until he got a direct call from a government prefix number.

There was a pleasant female voice on the other end. "Dr. Hackathorn? This is Case Supervisor Marie Mendoza. We would like to speak to you about the natives you've discovered on world Twelve fifty-three. When would be a good time?"

Lon looked at his clock. "15:00 hours this afternoon?"

"We'll be there." Click.

Lon sighed and checked the time. 12:45. He hoped Jim didn't expect him to get half plastered at lunch.
With DONA coming he'd better keep his wits about him.

Mimi's was a nice spot for lunch meetings. Quiet enough that you could talk, screened and spacious with enough background noise that you couldn't be easily overheard. Lon grabbed a nice private booth and ordered a beer.  The only one he'd better have today.

He spotted Jim and flagged him down.

"Lon! What the Hell have you done? Umm, Heiniken. Thanks. Lon!"

"Relax Jim. I just tripped over the mess, I didn't make it. I'm not dirty. I'm not even aware
it had that much muck potential. What's up?"

"Well, thanks be for that! I couldn't believe the engineering on those genes. There are several alleles we've never seen before, from the fairly small sample of Oner genes we've gotten
, but most are just classic. Two of your samples had all but four of the known artificial genes, with two new alleles and three completely new completely artificial gene insertions that have never been seen before. The other fellows had, like about sixty percent of the known changes. How the hell did you get them? Why did you send them to
me
?"

Lon
sank back in his seat. The room seemed to have dimmed. He took a careful breath. Another. "Jim, did you just say that those gene samples are from One Worlders?"
The only other world with Dimensional travel ability. Oh, God, please no.

"Yeah. Didn't you know?"

"I . . . no, but I suppose the possibility should have occurred to me. Which samples are which?"

"Well, you've got a family group. Father, s
on and daughter. Two different mothers, and the daughter's got two different new artificial genes on the X chromosome she got from Mommy, plus Daddy's gene on the other."

"
Right. Dudit is the kids' father. They call the other guy uncle."

"Courtesy title, or by marriage. He's not
genetically close."

Lon wished he had some antacids. "
Good Grief. I don't know anything about the One World. Can you give me a primer on them? Especially genetically?"

"We barely know
anything. And that's all secondhand, from the natives of their so-called client world. The One commit suicide when captured. All you get are the genes and what they ate in the last twenty-four hours. What we do know . . .  There's like ten percent of their population that are highly engineered, they are called the One. Everyone else is the Multitude, or Halfers. Halfers are, like, another ten percent or so of the population. They aren't literally half breeds, there's three-quarters and such in there too. If their kids get enough of the right genes they can be 'called' into the One. Your samples 'L' and 'H' may be halfers. Your 'D' guy and his daughter may be the first examples of the elite of the One we've ever gotten. Like I said, they've got genes we've never seen before."

"Any theories about how the One became so segregated?"

"Tons of them. Space Aliens engineered them. They're an escaped experiment from a world that does lots of genetic experimentation. Supersoldiers that turned on their masters. They're a self-engineered elite. Take your pick."

"The
world where I encountered these two people has evidence for two genetic events, judging from the animal DNA studies. The one at thirteen thousands years ago—about the end of the last ice age—is probably when they split from Earth. The other is between one and two thousand years ago. We were wondering about the Early Diaspora theory."

"With the same genetic engineering as the One World? Occam's Razor."

"Yeah, but you just said they had some genes you've never seen before, even in the Oners. And would Oner's just stand there and let us give them physicals, complete with taking those genetic samples?" Lon chewed his lip and worried the ideas around.

Jim narrowed his eyes. "Can you get me some more samples? A split off of One World,
thirteen hundred years ago may be possible . . . except I don't have enough Oner samples for a population analysis. Damn. Okay, what do they say about their society? The Oners are organized in groups. Clans. And their explorations teams come in several flavors, Information and Action are the only ones I recall. I think the Action Teams are their special forces, assassins. Information Teams are their spies. Damn. I need more samples. And to read up on any new findings."

"I can get you
tons of plant and animal samples, but not human. We've only made contact with these two travelers with the kids."

"Hmm, well, I'll take anything I can get." Jim settled back. "Split from One World. I hadn't thought about that.
If the One World had had gate travel that long ago, they'd be more widespread than we think they are. Unless they had a war, lost tech." Jim was looking thoughtful as they ordered and ate.

Lon chewed artificial meat and swallowed. "P
erhaps they have the same home world, someplace that lost tech and never regained it. Two marooned colonies with originally identical genetic engineering?"

Jim n
arrowed his eyes in thought. "The One World could have been a colony on a world with a native population. Your new world could have been uninhabited. Slight difference in smallish founder populations. That would explain a lot."

They kicked ideas around, but without more data, they were stymied.

Lon was considerably subdued when he returned to his office.

The warehouse manager's gofer tapped on his door, "Dr. Hackathorne, some people are here to see you?" She looked back with a frown. They were right on her heels.

"Thanks Bec. Come in, sit down. I'm Lon Hackathorn."

The middle aged woman that led the trio stretched out a hand. "I'm Marcie Mendoza. I'll be the Case Supervisor. This is Field Agent Jerold Hastings, and First Contact Specialist Ivan Kolnavik. Tell us all about it."

Lon braced himself. "Dallas
Twelve fifty-three. We have had contact with a few natives."

"Contact?" The Specialist frowned. "Friendly, I hope?"

"Oh yes. The two men seem to be traveling, one had his two kids along. There are no settlements in the area."

"How interesting. Tell me about these people." Mendoza clicked a recorder and also started tapping away as Lon talked.

"We flew a remote piloted drone out to check on what we thought was a grass fire—we detected an infrared emission. What we found was a wagon and two men. And a bridge." He pulled up the entire record, all the raw data, the pictures from the balloon that crossed the ocean, and talked about what happened in the unrecorded majority of the time. Then he pulled out the chip Jim had passed him at lunch. All the genetic results. He reiterated his thoughts about the Early Diaspora. "I'll be returning to Twelve fifty-three in a week."

"We'll be coming shortly thereafter. These
natives may require additional personnel. And in case they are from the One World, we'll contact the appropriate people."

Lon nodded. He copied all the raw data and handed over chips.

"We'll be in touch."

The rest of the week was quiet, his budgets were approved and equipment and personnel moved quickly. Janice Berman showed up, beaming at the opportunity to work up labor estimates. She hired a pair of linguists and a pair of sociologists to do the field work, and headed back to Dallas to do the managing from a comfortable distance. Then there was a mad scramble as the gate authorities moved up his gate time. He shoehorned the linguists and sociologists into his gyp, checked that the astronomers were riding with their instrument and equipment, and arrived at the gate moments before they rolled.

***

Question was back in class, claiming that since it had to be their last week, she might as well try to absorb a bit more information. And she was going with Never to see the trader.

Never moderated her pace and strolled, after dinner, out to Trader's Alley. And immediately started getting itchy. "This isn't good. You duck back to the barracks and get our stuff. In fact, go invisible as soon as you're reasonably sure no one is watching. Meet me, umm, at the front gate. No reason to try and climb this metal mesh stuff if we don't need to."

Question nodded and turned back with a casual wave. Never strolled on, itchy. The trader had a nice stack of big fat books. "Look Honey, I made a real haul, just for you!"

Biology. Virology. Home Medical Reference. Ancient History. "Excellent. I'll take them all." She handed him the diamond as the shop door opened.

"Freeze! You're all under arrest!"

A herd of large men shoved through the door. The first one tackled her bodily and she pulled power as she ducked her head and hit the floor on her shoulders. She stopped pulling when she felt him start relaxing. She had plenty of power for a shield or invisibility . . . metal clinked on her wrists and she was hauled to her feet, hands behind her and slammed against the counter. The little building was too small. If she warped light, there were still enough people here to physically corral her. The men were yelling incomprehensible things at her, at the trader who was looking as frightened as she ought to be feeling.