Babylon's Ashes

Khana crossed his arms, scowling at her. Prax, confused, had only the data to turn to, so he turned to it. Harvester yeast strain 18, sequence 10 was doing very well. The production numbers—sugars and protein both—were slightly above expected. Lipids were inside the error bars. It had been a good run. But…

His office was spare and close. The same room he’d taken when he’d brought Mei back from Luna. The first office of his tenure on the Reconstruction Committee. The others on the committee had moved on to larger places with bamboo paneling and augmented-spectrum lights, but Prax liked being where he already was. The familiar had always offered a powerful comfort. If Khana and Karvonides had worked in any other section, there would have been a couch or at least soft chairs for them to sit on. The lab stools in Prax’s office were also the same ones he’d had his first day back.

“I…” Prax said, then coughed, looked down. “I don’t see why we’d break protocol. That seems… um…”

“Completely irresponsible?” Khana said. “I think the phrase is completely irresponsible.”

“What’s irresponsible is sitting on this,” Karvonides said. “Two additions to the genome, fifty generations of growth—so less than three days—and we have a species that can beat chloroplasts for making sugars out of light and extends out almost into gamma. Plus the proteins and micronutrients. Use this for reactor shielding and you can shut down the recycler.”

“That’s hyperbole,” Khana said. “And this is protomolecule technology. If you think—”

“It is not! There is literally nothing in Hy1810 that comes from an alien sample. We looked at the protomolecule, said It can’t do that; can we? and figured out how to make something of our own. Native proteins. Native DNA. Native catalysts. Nothing that traces back to Phoebe or the ring or anything that came off Ilus or Rho or New London ever touched this.”

“That… um,” Prax said. “That doesn’t mean it’s safe, though. The animal protocol—”

“Safe?” Karvonides said, wheeling on him. “There are people starving to death all over the Earth right now. How safe are they?”

Oh, Prax thought. This isn’t anger. It’s grief. Prax understood grief.

Khana leaned forward, his hands in fists, but before he could speak, Prax put up his palm. He was in charge here, after all. It didn’t hurt to actually exercise his power now and then.

“We’ll continue with the animal protocol,” he said. “It’s better science.”

“We could save lives,” Karvonides said. Her voice was softer now. “One message. I have a friend at Guandong complex. She’d be able to replicate it.”

“I’m not going to be part of this conversation,” Khana said. The door slammed closed behind him so hard that the latch didn’t hold. The door ghosted open again, like someone invisible was coming in to take his place.

Karvonides sat, her hands on Prax’s desk. “Dr. Meng, before you say no, I want you to come with me. There’s a meeting tonight. Just a few people. Hear us out. Then, if you really don’t want to help, I won’t bring it up to you again. I swear.”

Her eyes were dark enough it was hard to tell iris from pupil. He looked back down at the data. She was probably right, in her way. Hy1810 wasn’t the first yeast that had been modified with radioplasts, and Hy1808 and most of the Hy17 runs had been in animal trials for months without any statistically significant ill effects. With things on Earth as bad as they were, the risk of Hy1810 having adverse effects was almost certainly lower than the dangers of starvation. His stomach felt tight and anxious. He wanted to leave.

“It’s proprietary,” he said, hearing the whine in his voice as he said it. “Even if we could ethically release it, the legal consequences, not just for us but for the labs in general, would be—”

“Just come hear us out,” Karvonides said. “You won’t have to say anything. You won’t even have to talk.”

Prax grunted. A little chuffing sound that centered behind his nose. Like an angry rat.

“I have a daughter,” he said.

The silence between them went on for the space of a breath. Then another. Then, “Of course, sir. I understand.”

She stood up. Her stool scraped against the flooring. It sounded cheap. The urge to say something fluttered in his chest, but he didn’t know what it would be, and before he found it, she was gone. She closed the door more gently than Khana had, but with a greater finality. Prax sat, scratching at his arm though it didn’t itch, then he closed the report.

The rest of the day was filled with his own work in the hydroponics labs. His new project was a modified fern built for water and air purification. They stood in long rows, fronds bobbing in the constant and well-regulated breeze. The leaves—so green they were almost black—smelled familiar and welcoming. The embedded sensors had been gathering data since the day before, and he looked it over like sitting with an old friend. Plants were so much easier than people.