She got it hog-tied easily enough. What she hadn’t counted on was Eurydice itself, which refused to relinquish its prize. Held onto it with a tenacious, possessive, no-you-don’t grip. From the beginning Cav had argued strongly and persuasively against trying to forcibly detach the object of interest from the asteroid, which could: one, damage it; and two, damage it irreparably.
Gunjita suggested decommissioning the arms.
“How?” he asked.
“Demolition?”
“Frowned upon by Gleem, I’m guessing. Plus, risky.”
“We could cut them off.”
Also risky. And difficult. “Any other ideas?”
She was floating beside the asteroid, the nose of Eurydice above her, cone in socket, firmly docked. “I can try loosening the bolts.”
He was surprised she hadn’t mentioned this first. “Are there bolts?”
She showed him on camera. He located them on a schematic of the probe. Thought it might work.
She got busy. It wasn’t long before the asteroid was freed and in motion, she alongside it, guiding it through the cargo doors into the cargo bay, where she secured it, careful to steer well clear of the thing on its surface, which at close range looked slightly larger than they first thought, also slightly thicker, with a hard, shiny surface that concealed what appeared to be a lumpy interior. She reported all this to Cav, whom she eventually joined at the window overlooking the bay.
His nose was pressed against the glass. First contact? Could this be it? He was jelly inside.
Forced himself to calm down and think logically.
He assumed that it was, or had been, living. An improbable assumption, but open to scientific verification. His null hypothesis: it was no different, essentially, from other living things.
Beside him, Gunjita was lost in her own thoughts. Her first impression hadn’t changed. The thing was not alive. Not now, or ever. Her null, quite simply, was the opposite.
–THREE–
Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love the organisms for themselves first, then strain for general explanations, and, with good fortune, discoveries will follow.[1]
They watched it for two days, keeping their distance, observing through the window. This was Cav’s way of doing things. Watch. Listen. Smell. Use your senses. Interfere as little as possible. Let nature take its course. Wait.
To watch, they had eyes, and cameras. To listen, ears and mics. Eventually, they’d touch it. What they couldn’t do was smell. Too dangerous to smell it directly, and the odorometer only told them so much. Not having smell left a hole in the experience. A question mark. Gunjita liked to say it was tantamount to walking on one leg.
She’d said this very thing the first time Cav had laid eyes on her, in a lecture hall. She was a rising star, and he’d come to check her out. He assumed she was being dramatic, though she didn’t seem the type. The longer he listened, the more convinced he became she not only meant what she said, but knew exactly what she was talking about.
Smell began when life began. At the very earliest stages. Smell was basic, primitive, the bedrock of communication. Smell was truthful. Smell was blind. Smell made you fall in love. Smell made you take to the hills. Smell was a rocket, a red flag, an invitation, an alarm.
Cav learned all this and more at that first lecture. He remembered nearly every word, spellbound by the lesson and the teacher. Impossible to say which bound him first, and whether in fact there was a first, his recollection more of a growing, interdependent, virtually simultaneous seduction by speaker and speech.
She’d opened his mind, or rather, closer to say, his mind was blown, which made him all the more aware, now, of what, without the sense of smell, he was missing.
Two days they watched and listened. Cav rarely left the window. He was a scientist, which translated into a Peeping Tom. Living things were meant to be observed. They were meant to attract attention. Not always, but sooner or later. Being noticed at the wrong time was potentially a death sentence. But at the right time: voilà! Connection. Mutual interest. If the stars lined up, a compatible, coordinated, and, who knew, concupiscent future.
He tried not to think too far ahead. Tried not to get his hopes up. He’d once zoned out on a python coiled on a branch of a Mocambo tree. A magnificent creature, and a rare sighting. He was on a medical mission at the time, doing minor and not so minor surgery in what was left of the Amazon. A day later, after a morning of botfly extractions, he discovered to his chagrin that the snake was dead. A few hours after that he was shocked to find out that it wasn’t dead at all, but fake. A practical joke.
He had learned not to pass judgment prematurely.
Gunjita was a member of the same congregation. It rarely helped to jump to a conclusion in science or life, but especially in science. Spontaneity had its place, and occasionally yielded gold, but mostly it didn’t. Ninety percent of progress came from slow, methodical work. This suited her, as by nature she was patient and thorough. But after two days she was ready to start running some tests.
Cav resisted: even passive tests ran the risk of altering it.
“How long do you plan on waiting?” she asked.
He didn’t have an answer.
“There’s work to do,” she reminded him. “We’re here on business.”
“This is more important.”
“We have a contract to fulfill.”
He grunted.
“You may not care, but I do. You may be done with work. Retired.” He hated the word. She was prodding him, fishing. “I’m not. I’m looking forward to many more productive years. I’ll need funding. Gleem is a cash cow. It seems counterproductive to spit in their face.”
“I see your point,” he replied carelessly. His eyes were fixed on the Ooi, the object of interest.
“I’ll give you one more day,” she said.
He nodded his agreement.
She headed to the lab, where she could be herself without resistance. H82W8 had been acting strangely, flipping out of what should have been a stable shape, as though energized, then flipping back, as though not energized enough. Wanting to change but unable to quite do so. If she could discover the cause, she could eliminate it, and re-stabilize the compound. Then again, if she could discover the cause, she could possibly boost its energy, allowing the grav-sensitive drug to break free of its internal restraints and reassemble itself in a new conformation, maybe closer to what they were looking for, maybe far afield, maybe a dead end, but maybe not. A lab was a kitchen, and Gunjita was a master cook. In the days of the Hoax, when she had her own lab, and defense-related funding was off the charts, she followed her nose to her heart’s content, mixing, blending, altering recipes as she saw fit. Now she worked for someone else. And she was on the clock.
She made a note of what she was seeing, intending to investigate it further if she had time. If not, someone else could run with it. She was willing to be the shoulders. Not too terribly invested in this particular study. Science was incremental, and she was incrementally content.
She shot an update to Gleem, then spent some time thinking about biological alarms. Decided to focus on arterial plaque, the cause of most heart attacks, strokes, and related catastrophic events. Plaque was a complex mix of proteins, calcium, and lipids. Scents, on the whole, were much simpler. Could she engineer one to bind to plaque—putrescine, say, or putrescine-like—and as the plaque increased, the scent also increased, to a certain critical level, at which point it got released into the bloodstream, creating a new body odor, as distinctive as the fruitiness of ketosis, say, or the fishiness of uremia, but extra stinky?