Obviously, the Unity had come to the same conclusion as the Technocracy navy. Which is why Var-Lann didn’t normally wear a Mayday but decided it was appropriate on this occasion.
I wondered how long the device had lasted before it got EMP’d.
"So Var-Lann strapped the Mayday gadget to his wrist," Tut continued, "then went back to studying the new microbe. Worked on it all night long, till one of his teammates dragged him off to breakfast. He ate as fast as possible so he could get back to the lab. He was just heading back again when the first spasm hit him."
"Ah." Festina only said the one word. Maybe she didn’t even say it aloud — maybe I only perceived it through my sixth sense — but I could tell this was what she’d been waiting for. The moment when things went wrong.
"Yeah," Tut said. "Var-Lann had a major seizure. Like his whole body exploding. It happened so fast, he didn’t even push the Mayday button. It must have bumped on something when he fell… or when he went into convulsions half a second later. All the time he was shaking, Var-Lann said he could hear the device’s audio feedback: a loud, piercing screech, wailing away.
"He wasn’t sure how long the seizure lasted — probably no more than ten seconds. By the time he stopped shaking, his teammates were crowded around him. Var-Lann had crashed just a few steps outside the mess hall, so the rest of the team jumped up from the table and came running. The camp’s doctor began examining Var-Lann with everybody else there watching… and suddenly, they all turned into smoke."
"Var-Lann saw that?" Festina asked.
"With his own two eyes. His teammates vaporized simultaneously. Poof, up in smoke."
"Outside the mess hall?"
Tut nodded. "Their bodies just vanished. Clothes and implants self-destructed a few seconds later. Good thing the camp has gravel on the ground, or the implants might have started a fire."
"The gravel wouldn’t show much sign of fire," Festina murmured. "That’s why we didn’t notice any evidence of burning. And the wind blew away any ash." She looked at Tut. "What happened next?"
"Var-Lann said the smoke from each team member swirled in place for a few seconds, then they all joined into a single cloud. The cloud closed tight around him… which is when his Mayday stopped screeching."
"The cloud EMP’d it," I said.
"Seems so," Tut agreed. "Var-Lann didn’t know about the EMP, but he knew the Mayday had sounded long enough to be heard all the way back to the Unity homeworld. A rescue team would be on the way, and it was Var-Lann’s job to live long enough to report what happened. Normally, he’d just upload his report via brain-link to the team’s computers… but the link had stopped working."
"The cloud EMP’d the brain-link too," I said.
"Right. So Var-Lann realized he had to deliver his report in person. That meant he had to survive — hours or even days — and his best option was sealing himself in stasis. Otherwise, he knew damned well he’d become smoke himself. He could feel it coming on. Stasis was the only way to stave off the transformation."
"Good thinking on his part," Festina said. "You have to admire a man who did what he had to do."
"It wasn’t easy," Tut told her. "Var-Lann got dropped by a few more seizures on his way to the storage building. And the EMP cloud stayed right on him — like it was trying to hold him back or fog him in so completely he’d lose his way. But he kept going till he reached the storage building’s stasis generators and sealed himself in. By then, he was crumbling apart. He’d have turned to smoke like the others if not for his boosted immune system."
Festina looked pensive. "Var-Lann believed those microbes he’d seen were responsible for the transformation?"
"Absolutely. He’d had all night to study them, and…" Tut broke off. "You know how a virus reproduces?"
"The virus invades a cell," I said. "It hijacks the cell’s protein-making facilities and creates copies of itself. Sometimes hundreds of copies, built with stolen materials from the cell. Once the cell is full of new viruses, its outer membrane ruptures, and the viruses scurry off to do the same thing in other cells."
Tut nodded. "That’s the idea. Regular cells become Trojan horses, chock to the brim with freshly manufactured viruses. That’s what Var-Lann saw: normal cells filled with alien stuff."
"When you say ‘normal cells,’ what do you mean?" Festina asked. "Normal Mutan bacteria?"
"Normal Fuentes bacteria. Team Esteem had found lots of Fuentes bugs in Drill-Press: microbes that weren’t native to Muta, growing undisturbed since the Fuentes left. The new bacteria that Var-Lann found had similar DNA, the same sort of outer membrane, plenty of structures in common. However, Var-Lann’s bugs also had stuff that normal Fuentes germs didn’t have: human chromosomes floating inside."
"Human chromosomes?" Festina and I spoke in unison disbelief.
"Yes. Var-Lann’s version of human — Homo unitatis. The Unity’s twenty-four chromosomes rather than our twenty-three."
I said, "Let me get this straight. Var-Lann’s working in his lab. Suddenly, he’s surrounded by new bacteria he’s never seen before. The bacteria look like Fuentes microbes, but they’ve got Unity chromosomes inside?"
"Exactly," Tut said. "The mystery bacteria contain hundreds of copies of each Unity chromosome. To Var-Lann, the germs looked like cells invaded by viruses and filled to bursting with viral copies… only in this case, the Fuentes cells were filled with human chromosomes."
"This does not sound good," Festina muttered. "This sounds very, very bad."
"Var-Lann thought so too," Tut replied. "He hypothesized the bugs were delivery systems for Trojan horse chromosomes. You know what I mean? These bugs would get inside human bodies, then break open and spill their chromosomes all over everywhere. The chromosomes would burrow into surrounding cells and… who knows? The new chromosomes would look like ones your cells already had. They’d be treated like members of the family. Next thing you know, the infiltrator chromosomes are screwing up the works somehow — making poisons, disrupting your metabolism… or turning you into smoke."
Festina made a face. "Don’t tell me Var-Lann actually considered that possibility."
"Not till he saw it happen. Until Team Esteem vaporized, Var-Lann didn’t know what the hell these chromosomes would do if they got inside a person’s cells. That sort of thing takes months to figure out."
Tut looked down at the scorch marks on the floor. "He didn’t have months, did he?"
"Okay," Festina said, "let’s go back a step. The night before things went bad, Var-Lann found Fuentes bacteria full of human chromosomes. But the flakes of skin we found — Var-Lann’s skin — had human cells full of dark matter chromosomes… or if Youn Suu prefers, chromosome-shaped holes in reality."
She waited for me to comment. I didn’t. "Anyway," Festina went on, "what the hell is going on? This shit doesn’t happen by accident."
"Of course not," Tut answered. "Var-Lann had a theory about what was going on."
"Oh good. I’d be thrilled if anyone could make sense of this."
"Don’t speak too soon," Tut said. "You won’t be thrilled if Var-Lann is right. See, he believed the mystery bacteria were created by a Fuentes defense system. A weapon intended to attack invaders who dropped in uninvited. It’s not a fast weapon, but it’s thorough. Basically, the defense weapon analyzes invaders and creates biological agents tailored to their physiology."