Davenport permitted himself a smile. Davenport’s nose was shaped for wedging into tight spots; a youthful altercation had left a star-shaped scar on his right cheek. Yet a fellow could get his fill of the field, lose his taste for adventure, and-while cherishing his memories of encounters of the close kind-look almost with envy at the cloistered academic who adventured with his mind. Perhaps the Ganymead had turned him philosophical-or prone to babble-too; he was about to express his feelings about life when Dr. Urth saved him.
Dr. Urth had taken a last sip, had raised the glass to his eye to look through its emptiness, and now set it down with regretful finality. “Back to work. To give Flammersfeld’s death its proper name, we must first understand what Terrarium Nine is all about, what Flammersfeld was in the business of.”
He raised a forefinger, though Davenport had given no sign of breaking in.
“I know you think you know, but please bear with me while I tell you what I think I know. Let me state the obvious and posit the known-nothing is so overlooked as the obvious and nothing is so mysterious as the known. “
Davenport sweepingly brought his palm up in sign of turning everything over to Dr. Urth.
Dr. Urth just as graciously gave a nod. “To forestall ecological disruption, Earth has laws against releasing genetically altered plants and animals into the terrestrial environment. Such experiments must take place off-planet. Hence, the Terrariums-at last count, a dozen?-in near-earth orbit. A collateral benefit is zero gravity, which facilitates such techniques as electrophoresis-the rapid continuous-flow fractionating of concentrated solutions of proteins in a high-intensity electric field. “ He cocked an eye at Davenport. “Your turn. What do you think you know about Terrarium Nine and Flammersfeld’s experiments?”
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.”