Scuzzworms (22 page)

From here on, things would go a little slower.  The emergency deployment of decontamination procedures had left everyone gasping, and most were still reeling when Kreiss called this meeting.  She turned again to the monitor to watch the auditorium.  Imelda hoped that he would remember her instructions.  He seemed shrunken as he surveyed his audience.

“As you know....” he paused, surveying the crowd anxiously, “this meeting was called on an emergency b
asis.  An accident has occurred which has resulted in a major breach of research protocol.  One of our groundbase teams encountered unexpected difficulty in sampling a specimen, and, because of the unusual nature of the situation, there was a maloccurence.  As a result, we have a contamination.”

Nicely put, thought Imelda.  We screwed up, plain and simple.

“Emergency cleanup procedures have been successfully implemented but at some cost to the local ecology at the site of the contamination.  We are making every attempt to preserve as much of the local ecology as possible, transporting specimens into orbiting sanctuaries until we are certain that the contamination has been controlled.  The specimens will be returned to the site of removal as soon as we feel that it is safe to do so.

“Biotech is a reputable company.  We hav
e an excellent record behind us and we do not intend to allow this accident to change that.  I know that all of you have been working hard on your individual projects up to this point.  But, because of this accident, the entire thrust of the project must shift.”

Good, he was reading his lines.

“We intend to study the accident site thoroughly.  We cannot allow a single Earthsource microbe to survive and multiply on Iago IV.  The result of even such a small infusion of alien DNA into this ecology is not currently predictable.  I do not want it to happen, and if it has happened already, I want the results to BE predictable and the appropriate therapy known.  I have listed your new assignments here.”  The board behind him lit up with the new groups highlighted.

A real hubbub started then, but Kreiss was no fool.  He gulped once and left.

Post shook his head.  “We should have picked up more worms, Imelda.  I need more of them to feed blood to.  We must find out what happened in the ones that played vampire down there.” 

He rubbed his eyes from exhaustion.  He had taken to duplicating Imelda’s habit of twenty-hour work stretches and it showed.  “We know we didn’t get them all.  There were too many gorging on the Scuzzhog.   We have no choice but to assume that we did not contain the contamination.”

Imelda nodded.  “The lab is analyzing the nutrient makeup of the worms so that we can create an artificial food for the small borgettes that we recovered.  As soon as I confirm that the borgettes can survive on artificial nutrients I’ll let you have the rest of the worms.  For now, just pick out the ones you need the most.”

Post scowled.  “I don’t know which ones I need. I have no way of knowing which ones ate Pleister’s blood. Those are the ones that I need.”

“What about the one that we pulled off his leg?”

“It wasn’t labeled.  Remember, Pleister wasn’t in any shape to label it. I have one worm in an unlabeled box that is frozen.  I have to assume that it is the one.”

She sighed.  “So tell me what you do know.”

“To summarize, a lot, and nothing.  The younger worms are threadlike, slow moving.  The older ones have extensive deposits of small cells under the cuticle, probably energy storage like the higher species.  They are quite primitive in structure, much like earthworms, annelids, that sort of thing.  Their gut is straight with a lot of outpocketing. 
Food seems to travel in boluses with very erratic digestion, not terribly efficient.  No acid, no bacteria to break down particles, and only a few digestive enzymes produced. Some food boluses seem to digest completely; others pass through almost intact and seem to get hung up in the pockets where they finally dissolve.  I’m afraid that we can’t count on the worms sterilizing their intake completely.  A bacteria-laden blood specimen could have contaminated their GI tract pretty easily, from the looks of it.”

“What about other structures?  Their immune system, glandular, interstitial composition?  Would a bacterium be able to penetrate the gut wall and infect tissue?”

“Maybe. The gut lining is porous and thin.  The interstitial spaces are low in antibodies but they do contain a lot of enzymes that the biochemists can’t tell me the purpose of.  In some of the worms a few bacteria did penetrate the gut wall but they disappeared, fragmented pretty quickly. I assume that they were killed but we haven’t identified how.  The cells of the worm appear impenetrable to both earth bacteria and viruses.  I assume that the unusual enzymes are responsible, but Biochem hasn’t completed their research yet.

“We
looked at their fecal material to see if microbes could be dispersed in it.  It’s rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and looks like a perfect food for plant forms.  The worms appear critical to the local ecology.  The waste is toxic to the bacteria we’ve tested.  So far, no bacteria have survived a worm ingestion.  We may have nothing to worry about.”

Imelda frowned.  “We’ve got to be sure.  You still haven’t identified a reproductive system in any of the worms you’ve looked at?”

“I’m not sure.  Those gut outpouchings are lined by a lot of secretory cells.  It’s possible that they could shed unicellular larvae and excrete them in their fecal material or something similar.  Forget standard earth reproduction, though.  They don’t have any oviducts that I can see, no cloacae, and no egg sac formation.  No obvious male or female forms.  I haven’t seen any budding or dividing forms either.”

She grunted.  “The mystery continues.  Spontaneous generation looks like the only alternative to
some process involving borgettes.  Then, again...”  She rolled her eyes, “Maybe the bogs act as a gene exchange area.  Cells fall off, aren’t killed by the water, and recombine to grow into new organisms.”  She paused looking at Post.  “Who knows?”

Post frowned, obviously considering her idea seriously.  “No, I don’t think so.  The bogs are very acidic, toxic. Cells can’t survive alone there.  Only the worms’ thick cuticle and the borgettes’ thick skin allow them to survive.  The other animals don’t even drink there, only at the feeder streams.”   

She nodded.  The idea had almost sounded good to her too.  “What about the genetics?  Any help on enzyme systems?”

“Search me.  Those guys are so busy playing with your borgette that no one else can get a chromosome in edgewise.”

“Oh.”  She sighed, rubbing her eyes.  “I’ll put the worms on high priority with them.  They interact quite closely with most other species, at least when it comes to mealtime.  A closer look at them may give us some unexpected bonuses.”

Post nodded.  “What about you?  Anything official on the borgettes?”

She sighed.  “One mountain of speculation so far.  I am faced with the rather grisly and distinctly unpleasant chore of trying to fit together some wormy looking slabs of meat into what used to be an animal.  If my stomach holds out, I may be able to get a good idea of how the monster worked.  The scans we got are quite interesting in slo-mo. I’m doing the official presentation on shift 107.  You are welcome to attend, if you like.”

“You going to replay the accident?”

Imelda stared down at her hands a moment.  “Yes, parts of it.”  She looked back at the monitor screen.   “The genetics are wild, really wild.  Every tissue specimen has a different genetic makeup in almost every area we sampled.  The borgette was a chimera of massive proportions.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Post stared at her, frowning.  “A chimera?”  His eyes narrowed. “Is that what you’re going to tell everyone tomorrow?”

She nodded.  “A chimera.”  She watched Post’s face carefully.  “The huge organs in the central body cavity structurally resemble ovaries.  That’s where most of the genetic diversity is.”

#

Steinson threw down the gauntlet.  “Everything that you have said is absolute gibberish!  An ecology based on the biological systems that you have outlined simply won’t work!”

Imelda turned to face him calmly
.  She tended to agree with him but, unfortunately, the evidence said otherwise.

“If you look at the cellular data...”

“Damn it, you are an ethologist!  You don’t know cells from air bubbles on a slide!”

Imelda stood with raised eyebrows.  “Air bubbles?”

“Biological feedback!  Every system must have feedback!  You can’t have a central mother randomly producing every other species in existence without some sort of feedback from the species produced.  Darwin would roll over in his grave if he heard this!  Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?”

Grady interrupted.  “Whoever said that the fittest were surviving down there?”

Laughter drowned out any response from Imelda.

Steinson continued.  “I agree that it looks like the scuzzhogs may be...”

“Borgettes,” she corrected.

“...t
he scuzzhogs may be producing eggs that contain certain species.  But species that rely on the scuzzhog for reproduction would evolve slowly and inefficiently with a high frequency of malfunctioning mutants.  The scuzzhog would have no way of knowing which species to reproduce.”

Imelda nodded.  “Very well said.  We have two ways of looking at that issue.  We can look at the geologic evidence to see at what time life appeared on this planet and get an estimate of how fast evolution has occurred.  We can also look more closely at the bogs themselves to see if there is some way that the borgettes communicate with the species on shore.  We know that they verbally arouse other animals around the bogs when they lay eggs.  Maybe there is more communication than that.”

This produced much muttering and whispering in the audience.  She had openly revealed the direction in which her next major research would be going.  Now the entire division would be trying to coup her.

#

The problem with most scientific research is that it takes time, a lot of it.  The end result may turn out to be confirmation of a minor bit of knowledge that has been around since antiquity and better proven by prior research.  Imelda’s eyes hurt.

Caldwell
paced about her office relentlessly.  His thin, gangly frame was awkward as he turned corners and retraced his path.

“How could this have happened?  CHA is going to sack the entire project now!  Not that it matters.  Biotech wouldn’t listen to me.  They were going to pull us out and transfer most of the team to Aldolaeus.”

“Aldolaeus?  Where’s that?”

“New place.  Found by a scout a few years ago.  Has some slime on the surface that might be alive.  They wanted to send us there to find out.”

“That would be okay for the primordial specialists but I’m an ethologist.  Slime doesn’t exhibit a lot of organized behavior.  What did they plan to do with the rest of us?”

He grunted in disgust.  “Dispersal to various projects.  They promised not to lay anyone off.  I got that much out of them.”

“Another desk job?  I would have rather been laid off.  So what are you going to tell Biotech?  And CHA?”

His pacing continued mercilessly.  Imelda squelched a desire to tag him with a tranquilizer gun.  “I don’t know.  Except that the project can’t be dismantled immediately.  I was supposed
to tell everyone to go home with the next ship out.  You did a good job in putting the decontamination procedures into motion, but Kreiss will have to handle things from here.  I want you to come back with me.”

“What?  To Syned?”

“Yes.  To tell them what happened, in your own words. The ship is leaving in another eight hours and we will be on it.  This can’t wait until the next one arrives.”

Imelda felt an acute panic attack setting in. “But the borgette carcass!  I haven’t reconstructed it yet. And I haven’t established that the borgettes that we picked up can even survive in the biospheres we threw together.  Who is going to watch them?  The surveys we are doing, who will make sure that...?”

“The procedures that are to be followed are in the CHA manual.  Jamison is quite capable of supervising the microbiological assays.  In fact, this is the first time that she has had anything constructive to do since her arrival.   You have been working closely with Post, haven’t you?  He can keep an eye on the borgettes for you.  The live specimens should give us perfectly adequate information on borgette physiology.”

“But what about the carcass?  The smaller specimens might not even be borgettes!  I can’t drop everything now!”

“I need you with me.  It is vital that we get approval to monitor the Iagan ecology closely for evidence of contamination.  I cannot accept a maybe or a temporary extension.  Your work has been the most illuminating in explaining the ecology down there.  You have the best grasp of the situation of anyone here, and can give them a personal account of the events in detail.  The rest of the team can manage until we get back.  It shouldn’t take more than a week or two of your time on planet.  I may have to remain behind to deal with the CHA regulatory committee but that won’t require your presence.  Your previous work gave you some popular appeal, which the board will be wary of.  I need you there to answer the questions that I can’t.”

Imelda frowned.  She would be the direct recipient of the wrath of headquarters, and of CHA. 
Caldwell was taking her straight into the lion’s den and telling her not to worry.

“No.  I don’t want to.”  She had said it in a petulant, little girl voice.

Caldwell waited expectantly, not responding.

Her expression slowly changed from feigned stubbornness to desultory resignation.  She made one last stab at resistance.  “This isn’t in my contract.”

Caldwell shrugged.  “I’m sure that the legal language of your contract is sufficiently vague that it could be construed as being there.”

She stood up and walked towards the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To pack.  I know you well enough to know that I can’t talk you out of a decision like this, no matter how wrong it is.”

He nodded, watching her.  “Go pack, then.”

#

Syned.  Sanitized Earth in decorator colors.  Even the bugs were tame.

She stretched out her long frame in the coilcar.  She was supposed to appear at Biotech’s corporate HQ in a few hours. 
Caldwell had gone on ahead as she wrestled with the customs protocol of bringing a cat on planet.  Igor slept through the entire process.  He was a trusting beast.  Customs wasn’t trusting, though.  She was forced to sign sixteen affidavits stating that Igor had never mauled anyone before.

A heavy gust of wind caused a tremor in the speeding coilcar’s shell.  The
track stretched away overhead like a silver arrow pointing to the clear, sparkling blue horizon.

Earth was wh
ere real life existed, grimy, grubby, clawing and struggling.  Only a few humans lived there now, mostly caretakers and primitivists.  Evolution still operated there, producing the occasional new species and extinction of old ones.

Here on Syned lived a freeze
-frame of earthforms present in the early twenty-first century.  Mankind had achieved enormous control over his environment, moreso than had any other species on earth.  On Syned, there were no weeds, no cockleburs, no rattlesnakes, and no biting insects, only compatible tame species that were pretty.  Ecology according to
Better Homes and Gardens
.