David was stuffed, and it wasn't even 8 o'clock in the morning. The size of the breakfast was a sure sign of how much Nana had missed him. At South Eastern University, the school "sequence" was close to 18 months, broken into even trimesters with breaks midterm and between trimesters. The breaks were typically all too brief, but in the past, he'd been able to extend his visits home, or take unscheduled leaves, by attending remotely, via the nets. Dr. Charles's insistence on physical attendance, and his later appointment as her assistant had put an end to that practice this sequence, and it had been six months since he'd last been home. So, in spite of the brevity of second break, David and Jerry made the five-hour tube ride back to the small town on the Pacific coast, to be with his grandmother, as he had promised himself that day in the mountains. Nana was his father's mother, and he and his father had gone to live with her when his mother had died. After the accident that had killed his father, Nana had been the only family he had. They had a close relationship, the extra generation alleviating most of the typical conflicts that separate parents and children, but diminishing none of the love. From his earliest recollection, Nana had been a straight shooter with him, respecting him first as a person, and enjoying him as a child secondarily. She had allowed him the dignity of arranging his father's funeral, although he had barely turned 15, and deftly refocused him on the cycle of living by taking him on as a ranch hand that summer. Together, they had nursed a weak ewe through a difficult pregnancy, and the day after she lambed, he woke to find much of his grief had lifted. David couldn't imagine life without her. Nana was strong and spry, in defiance of her advanced age, and still ran the small sheep ranch with only a few hired hands. Now, the look in her eye as he leaned back from his enormous meal told him the pampering was just about over, and the work was about to begin. "Nana, whatever you've got in mind, I hope we can waddle to it, because that's all I'm going to be good for for hours." She laughed, and kissed the top of his head as she removed the plate. "Good, then I won't have to refuel you for a while." She carried their dishes to the kitchen sink, and motioned for David to follow her. "Did you bring your boots?" she asked, pulling a pair of heavy work gloves out of a box near the back door. He nodded. "Well, go put them on," she said, handing him the gloves. "I thought we'd go up to the north end of the ranch, and mend some of the fences on the bluffs. Last winter's storms were pretty hard on them, and a few of the more adventurous rams have taken to wandering into Gualala." She laughed again, this time remembering the look of surprise on Mr. Carter's wizened old face as the ram she was pursuing had ambled purposefully up the wide steps onto his front porch, and helped himself to a hanging spider plant. They worked into the afternoon, and in spite of Nana's joke about refueling, David was ravenous by the time she decided they should take a break. As they climbed gingerly up the crumbly bluff, David considered that his love of climbing had probably started here. He often used to sneak down the bluffs to explore the creatures in the tide pools, or revel in the power of the ocean roaring up through blowholes when the tide was in. It was a wonder he wasn't washed out to sea before he was ten, given the prevalence of sleeper waves and riptides on this part of the coast. As a boy, he hadn't believed in the danger, and no amount of lecturing could keep him away. Now, he and Nana climbed fully to the top, and well away from the edge, before opening the lunch she had packed. They ate for some time in silence, gazing out over the serene Pacific. The thick, muffling fog had finally burned off, and it was an uncommonly fine day for this time of the year, sunny but cool, with a delightfully salty breeze. A cormorant dived into the ocean in search of a meal, but apparently misjudged. Farther out, the slick form of a sea lion could be seen popping his head up from the kelp beds, diving and surfacing again and again. A watercolor of this very spot hung in the room he had slept in last night. Not for the first time, David reflected on what a talented artist his mother had been, and wished she had lived long enough for him to really know her. "So," Nana broke the reverie, "Jerry tells me he hardly sees you anymore. Says you're spending all your time with some young lady." David saw the glint of mischief in his grandmother's eyes and knew he was being ribbed. "In your dreams, Nana," he said, smiling. "She's almost as old as you." "Nobody's almost as old as me, sprout," she said. "They're all young from where I sit." "Well, she's probably as old as Mom would have been. I don't know exactly. She's pretty gray, but her face is young. She acts as old as you, though. Older sometimes, I'd say," he reflected. "How much did Jerry tell you?" He had heard them talking late into the night, still going strong when he drifted off to sleep. The sound of their voices, muffled down the hallway, had reminded him of being a small child, listening to the comforting murmur of the adults after his bedtime. Jerry had been a family friend for years, had been his grandmother's friend even before David had come to live with her. The slight deepening in the timbre of his voice told David that Jerry had adopted the older version himself that was most familiar to Nana. They had probably gone on for hours. "He told me that you've dropped your other coursework to concentrate on this class, and that you're assisting this professor in her lab." "Studying with her, too. We've covered a lot of ground." "What's she like?" Nana pressed. "She loads me up with vegetables and works me to death," David said, glancing sidelong at his grandmother. "Kind of like you. You'd probably like her." His remark earned him a playful swat on the back of the head. "I can still take you down, sprout, don't you forget it," Nana joked. "Not a chance," David affirmed. After a beat, he continued. "I don't know. She's kind of enigmatic." "How so?" Nana prompted. "Well, I've been working with her for a while now, and I still don't really know that much about her. She never talks about her family, and the only friend she's ever mentioned died a long time ago. She puts people off, she's cold in class, and the freshmen are petrified of her. But, her house is very warm, homey, almost like here. And sometimes when we're working together I catch her looking at me, like..." he drifted off. "Like what?" "I don't know. Sometimes I think it's my imagination." He shook his head. "Anyway, she's brilliant, but she has some strange ways, and strange ideas." Nana pulled a couple of deep red apples from the lunch cooler, handing one to David as she bit into the crunchy sweet flesh. She waited patiently for him to go on, knowing he would when he had organized his thoughts. "She plays baseball," he noted. "That's not so strange. It's still pretty popular in the East." "Yeah. But she's really good. She acts like it's a casual thing, but you don't get that good at something you haven't spent a lot of time on." He took another bite of the apple, and chewed thoughtfully. "I think she's religious." "Well, that is a bit more uncommon, but it's still not unheard of," Nana commented. David's face screwed up in perplexity. "I don't understand why anyone holds to the old religions anymore. I just don't see what they have to offer. There's no point in maintaining the conceit of a divine genesis considering we know of at least two other times that life arose in the universe. And science answers the rest, sooner or later." He took another bite. "And that's part of it, too. I mean, she's a scientist, but she says a prayer at every meal." "Does that make you uncomfortable?" Nana asked. "Yeah, a little," David confessed. He thought a while more. "She's got an enormous collection of printed material in her house." "Paper? Really? Old stuff or recent printouts?" "Both I think. Old mostly. She's a little bit paranoid about the Grays, which I don't understand. She thinks they're somehow responsible for the history gap from the wars. She thinks that history has been getting erased, bit by bit, and that nobody's noticing." "Well, she's right, you know." David looked in shock at his grandmother. For a moment, he thought she might be teasing him again, but her face held no mischief. He considered this last item the most damaging in his profile of Dr. Charles, and was unprepared for the person he most trusted to agree with it. "Oh, I don't know about it being the Gray's fault," Nana clarified, "but history from that time has become more sparse over the years. When I was little, I can remember my own grandmother telling me tales about that era. Nothing detailed about the battles or anything like that -- those would have happened in *her* grandmother's time -- but stories she'd been told about how people lived through those times from day to day. How they got by." She wrapped up the core of her apple and tucked it back into the cooler. "It seems to me there have been plenty of opportunities to record it, teach it to youngsters, but it never has made it onto the nets, or into the curriculum. Someday, no one will remember the wars ever happened, if it goes on this way." The corner of David's mouth turned down in a grimace, and his brow furrowed. "Nana, now you're just exaggerating. It would be pretty hard to forget considering there are a bunch of abandoned cities scattered around the continent." "Fewer than there were. You were in the interior for first break, what did you see?" David recalled the vegetation overtaking the foundations of Colorado Springs. Nana saw the memory pass across his face, and pressed her point. "Why raze the old cities? I never understood it, myself." "They raze them to give nature the chance to recover," he said. But his tone was doubtful. "And anyway, the ruins are dangerous." "You think it's for our safety?" Nana asked, pondering. "They've helped us, Nana," he insisted. "They've taken stewardship of the planet wherever we don't have the resources to attend to it." "Indeed they have," she agreed. She sighed. "David, I used to be as free of doubt as you. I revered them because they're ancient. I believed the power and technology they command must surely attest to their wisdom. I was grateful for the aid they gave our ancestors, for the way they maintain the satellites and the nets, I felt that they'd more than repaid humanity for what happened during those wars, and never questioned that belief. But when your father died..." Nana pressed her lips together, eyes glittering with pain that was still sharp despite its age, "when your father died building the transatlantic tube, I wondered where they were then. If they're so concerned about our safety, why didn't they lend aid during that terrible accident? They probably have the technology to build a tunnel like that without any manual labor at all, but they didn't even take part in the rescue mission. Your father was a brilliant engineer. And now his life's work sits sealed up, miles deep and half flooded, with no one courageous enough to finish it." "Nana," David said softly, "that's our failing, not theirs." "Maybe so, David," she conceded. "Sometimes, though, I just wonder." David shifted closer to his grandmother, put his arm around her and pulled her comfortingly into his side. Resting his chin on the top of her head, he gazed back down the coast at the distant gray and weathered wood of the home and the barns where he grew up. The Gray's long ago gift of unlimited energy meant that no one had to struggle simply to survive. The lifting of that one burden had allowed the dawn of an age where people with a passion were free to follow it. Nana loved the ocean, loved the sheep, loved to weave. And because she did, she was richly successful, her fine wool and cloths finding enthusiasts on both coasts. But she could just as well live on 2 acres as 200, have 10 sheep as 1000, and survive. He weighed that against the life of a father, of a son. And his faith in the benevolence of the Gray's felt as strong as ever. Years later, he would look back on this moment and recognize that the first seeds of doubt had been planted on this day. ------------------------------------------------------------- The dreams were getting worse. It was still impossible to remember much that was specific, but the sense of foreboding was clear, and remained with her long after she awoke, sweaty and shaking, with the urgent sense there was something she needed to *do*. There was a vague impression of colorless people, everywhere, oblivious to some coming danger. And a presence urging her to stop it. The presence radiated confidence in her, but she didn't know what it wanted. She pressed her forehead against the tile of the shower wall, cool in spite of the steaming water pouring over her, sluicing away the stench of her fear, draining the cramps out of her muscles. She stayed that way until the water began to run cold, little needle pricks against her reddened skin. It helped some, but not as much as she would have liked. Six months ago, she relished her solitude. She had been eager for the second break to arrive, a brief respite from the chore of maintaining her public face. But this morning, she found herself craving the distraction of the campus routine. People, students, faces, questions, bustle, activity. Company. Though she had been alone much of her life, she had learned over the years not to be lonely. But now that skill seemed to have abandoned her. Wrapped in her heaviest robe, she went to the back door, hopeful, but not even the tabby cat was in evidence today. Perhaps that's all the dreams were. So many that were dear to her had been lost in her life, that disconnecting from humanity had become a refuge. Science was a faithful, enduring companion. And now despite herself, she was coming back into the world, inviting the danger of loss, and her subconscious was protesting. She rolled the idea around in her mind for a moment, and while it felt somewhat true, it didn't feel whole. There was something more. She headed into the lab, hoping to forget herself there, but was surprised to find her experiments holding less appeal without her young assistant present. David. The bright young man whose naivete was at once exasperating and endearing. She still hadn't adequately explained to herself why she found him so compelling. "Old enough to be his grandmother," she had snorted to herself derisively, but that wasn't really it. There was just an odd sense of familiarity about his presence, especially on those occasions when he dared to argue with her. She found herself staring, sometimes, while he was engrossed in studying, or preparing samples for incubation. She was fairly certain that she'd been caught, although he hadn't commented. With a sigh, she turned her back on the lab. The house felt oppressive, she needed to get out. There was still one thing she could count on to soothe her agitation. Grabbing a bat, she headed out the door and off toward the campus batting cage. She stayed there, hitting and hitting, until her arms were leaden and her back ached. And even then she continued. A few of the students who had remained over the break noticed her marathon session, her single-minded focus on ball after ball. By the time she at last stepped out of the cage, on rubber legs, weak with exhaustion, the whispers had flown to all corners of campus. She would sleep soundly tonight, and come Monday, people would be asking David if he knew his professor was a little bit cracked. ------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Charles wasn't in the lab, as David expected, when he arrived at her home early Saturday morning. "Hello?" he called out, shutting the back door tightly behind him. They had a lot of work to do, he knew. Dr. Charles had told him during their afternoon sessions that none of the last base-pair segments they had assembled had produced a viable or stable protein, nothing suitable for functional analysis. "Even failure generates data," she had commented amiably, but he sensed she was disappointed. He hung his jacket up on an old fashioned brass hook in the anteroom to the lab, and put on the traditional white smock Dr. Charles insisted upon. Not sure what was keeping her, he busied himself checking the supply of water and food in the several cages where the small white mice were kept. He freshened the bedding in one of the cages, making small chittering noises at the occupants as he added the fragrant, curled wood-shavings. One of the larger mice stretched upright to see what the excitement was about, gazing at David with tiny black eyes. He rewarded the little creature's curiosity with a small disc of carrot he had brought just for this purpose. The mouse dropped back down to all fours, whiskers and pink nose twitching, then fell to nibbling busily on the treat. David wasn't really sure why Dr. Charles kept the mice. He'd never seen her perform any experimentation on them. Certainly nothing they had worked on together even approached the macro-biological level of live animal experimentation. Still, they seemed to fit in the atmosphere of the lab, and the child in David occasionally enjoyed watching their antics. That task complete, David was at a loss to explain Dr. Charles' continued non-appearance. Puzzled, he ventured out of the lab and into the heart of the house. "Hello?" he called out again, as he wandered in search of her. He came up empty on his first guess, the kitchen, but he knew by the stoneware dish and stocky teapot sitting beside the sink that she was awake, and had eaten breakfast. He found her on his next guess, in the study at the end of the hall. He knocked quietly on the slightly ajar door, and leaned into the room, hanging at the length of his arm from a snug grip on the jamb. "Sorry," he said, when she jumped slightly. Dr. Charles scrubbed both hands across her face and through her hair before waving him into the room. "Why so early today, David?" she asked. David's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Actually, Dr. Charles, it's a little late," he pointed out. Pushing her book slightly aside to read the integrated display of her desktop, she let out a soft huff of surprise. "Indeed it is," she said, but made no move to get up. Following her uncharacteristic lead, David took the final steps to the sofa and sat down on the creaky old leather, waiting expectantly. Moving deliberately, Dr. Charles laid a wide strip of red satin across the page of the book and closed it. Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes and raised her arms above her head, stretching until her shoulders popped. Her fatigue was palpable, and David imagined he could see faint shadows beneath her eyes. But maybe it was just the dimness of the room. Lowering her arms, she pinched the bridge of her nose, leaning forward on her elbow, shuttered and silent. David found himself agitated by the departure from her familiar prompt and precise nature, suddenly realizing the comfort he drew from her dependable routines. Being a little tired was a small weakness, but it was the first she had allowed him to witness, and he felt a pang of concern. The rumors floating around campus suddenly sprang to mind, and before he could censor himself he blurted out, "What happened to you last weekend?" Without raising her head from her hand, she opened her eyes and looked sideways at him. If he could see more than her profile, he would have noticed one eyebrow raised in indulgent challenge. "Did something happen to me last weekend?" she replied, amused. The campus chatter had not escaped her notice. "Uh..." Desperately wondering where his tact had gotten to, David tried to rephrase the question. "I heard that, um," he shook his head, opting for blunt. "The batting cage thing. You were there for hours. People say you were completely compulsive, and you were staggering when you finally stopped." He scratched his chin. "And you've never been late before today," he added as an afterthought. "Have you ever picked a face you knew you couldn't climb, David? Gotten three quarters of the way up, with your arms and legs shaking, and instead of anchoring in and rappelling back to safety, you continued to the top?" She sat up again, swiveling her chair to face him. He nodded, thoughtfully. "Why did you do it?" she asked pointedly. David understood. "Ok," he said, nodding with his whole torso. "So, what's bothering you?" he dared. She hesitated only briefly. "Nothing serious. I've been having a little trouble sleeping. Disturbing dreams, that's all. But they're hard to shake, so I gave myself something else to focus on." "Is that what you were doing this morning, with the book?" he asked, encouraged by her openness. "You could say that," she hedged. "What are you reading, anyway?" In answer, she reached to the desk, picked up the heavy leather bound volume, and leaned forward, handing it over to him. His hand dropped perceptibly as he took it, not expecting the weight of the dense paper. Two words were embossed in gold leaf on the front cover, worn from handling. "Holy Bible." He stared at the book longer than necessary, reluctant to meet her eyes and reveal his distaste. Finally, he gave it back, looking only at their hands as he made the exchange. "I've never read it," he said neutrally. "Your name comes from the Bible, did you know that?" she asked, keeping her tone light in deference to his obvious discomfiture. "No," he answered, shaking his head. "David was a great king. As a youth, he slew a giant that was feared by all the men in his country's army. In his reign, he united disparate peoples into a great nation. He was known for overcoming great odds." She cocked her head to the side as she regarded him. "Not a bad namesake." David shrugged. "Not a real man, either." Dr. Charles was surprised. "Why would you think that?" "None of it's real. It's all fable and parable." "That's a pretty bold assertion considering you've never read the book," she remarked. "Just out of curiosity, how did you arrive at that conclusion?" He squirmed uncomfortably, realizing he'd been caught in a position he couldn't support logically. He couldn't empathize with religious beliefs, and had always accepted the common wisdom that they were relics of a less enlightened time. But the problem with the whole concept of God was that it was just as impossible to disprove as it was to prove. He couldn't even see any real point in engaging in the debate. "Dr. Charles, you're not going to convince me to believe in God." "Who said anything about God?" Dr. Charles asked. "I thought we were talking about King David. My point is simply that he was most likely a real historical figure, in spite of the fact that he's documented in a text that happens to be central to the rather unpopular notion of religion." She opened a low drawer in the heavy desk, and set the book inside. Turning back, she pinned him with a solemn regard. "David, I would never presume to proselytize to you," she said, with utter gravity. "But I will continue to insist that you think precisely. Do you understand?" "You're saying that the Bible may contain historical accounts," he grudgingly conceded. "I'm saying that individual concepts should be considered individually, even when they're interrelated. The Bible, God, and religion are three different things." She sighed, reaching down to shut the desk drawer. "I'm not unaware that giving any of them credence comes with a stigma attached. What troubles me, though, is how uncomfortable my having these beliefs seems to make *you*." David felt a twinge of shame, recalling that he had all but accused her of bigotry just a few months earlier, and now realizing that his own behavior was less than tolerant. "Your beliefs don't make me uncomfortable, Dr. Charles," he insisted. "David, you cringe when I say grace," she retorted, but her face was amused. Looking into her eyes he realized that he was being teased, and the tension drained out of the conversation. He relaxed back into the sofa chuckling. "Yeah, I guess I do," he confessed. "Sorry about that." She returned his humor with a warm smile. "Apology accepted." No longer feeling defensive, David's curiosity emerged. "As long as we're talking about it, Dr. Charles, why *do* you..." he waved his hand in the direction of closed drawer. "You're a scientist. You work with facts. I don't understand how you can reconcile that with a belief in something that's ultimately unproveable." Dr. Charles nodded thoughtfully. "Science and faith aren't really at odds in my mind. It's not difficult for me to envision the things I've learned through science as being the tools of a higher power. In fact, the longer I study the ingeniousness and beauty of life, the harder I find it to believe it's all random." "Ok, I guess I can picture that, but even so, what do you gain from it?" It was hard to distill a simple answer. "Comfort, mostly, I guess. Hope. Meaning." "Meaning?" "Science teaches me how, David, but not why. If we're really all just random variations on a theme, what difference do our lives make?" David considered her position, but reached a different conclusion. "I don't agree. I don't mean any disrespect, but that seems kind of sad to me. Our lives make a difference to the people who care about us, who we care about. There's meaning inherent in that." "And what does it mean when those people are all gone? When we're gone?" She meant it as a rhetorical question, but a note of melancholy crept into her voice. Sensing her mood, but not its reason he continued, "It carries on. Your family, your friend's families, the next generations. What we do affects the connections between people that will exist in the future. Don't you feel that way about your family?" She responded with a wan smile. "I'm an orphan David, have been for a long time. Look around you. I live alone and work on my science. I have colleagues, not friends." He looked stricken at his gaff, so she leaned forward and touched his arm lightly, reassuringly. "David, you didn't say anything wrong, and I'm not telling you this to garner sympathy. I'm content with my life. My work is very satisfying." Recovering quickly, he tried to reassure. "Well, that's it then. Your work. That will last into the future, just as Dr. Luder's work did. Maybe even more. What you're doing may affect the way we and the alien races relate to each other in ways we can't imagine." She leaned back again, touched by his effort to comfort her, reflecting on his assertion. "Is that why you're here?" He looked confused. "What do you mean?" "Why are you focusing on Xeno science, David? It's not for cosmetic medicine anymore, and I don't think it's to prove you can make the grade anymore, is it?" He reddened slightly, unaware that Dr. Charles had had that insight. It seemed a little shallow in the context of their present discussion. "No," he confirmed. She echoed his earlier question. "So what do you gain from it?" It wasn't anything he'd thought through before, just a fascination he had followed. He answered haltingly, as he tried to explain the reasoning he was just formulating. "I guess it's partly because of Jerry. He's been a friend of our family since before I was born, and even though I'd trust him with my life, I guess in some ways I don't know anything about him. I don't know how he was born or how long he'll live. I know how to inoculate myself in case he bleeds in my presence, but if he were hurt, I wouldn't know how to help him. Not that anything ever seems to hurt him, but there must be things that can." He paused for a moment, working out the rest of it. "And, I guess it's because I want to know more about the Grays, too. I mean, I look at my life, the world, and it's all pretty great. My grandmother has this terrific ranch right on the ocean. Everybody alive is free to follow their muse, more or less. And then I think, it's all because of them, because of what they did for us during the reconstruction, and I want to know them. But they're so reclusive, they don't come out, they don't live with us. So this seems like the only way that I can. Know them, I mean." Dr. Charles quieted for the moment the voice in her head that was unable to forgive the Grays for the death of half of humanity, in spite of their reparations. Of course David would feel that way, the modern world was all he knew. "You know David," she said instead, "there's a bit of the mystical in that." "How so?" "I know that most of what's taught about religion as an archaic economic and political structure focuses on the negatives, like how it stood in the way of scientific advancement that might undermine its power. But on the other hand, some faithful people used to believe that science was the only true path to divine understanding. So they studied the universe, believing it God's creation, in order to know the mind of God. It was analogous to studying an artist's work to know the artist. The way you want to know the Grays so badly just resonates with that kind of quest, to me." David shook his head. "No. I don't see the Grays as gods Dr. Charles. That's not it at all." She nodded agreeably. "I'm sure you don't. It's just as well, anyway, because we'd be on a dangerous path." "Why?" "There's a creation story in the Bible, have you ever heard Genesis?" He shook his head. "After creating man and woman, God places them in an idyllic garden to live, called Eden. They're happy, but ignorant. Then he tells them not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Of course they do, and the punishment is that they're evicted from paradise." She waited while he drew the parallels. The modern world he'd described so glowingly as Eden, a gift from the hands of the Grays, who by all observance, had no desire to be known. Finally, he gave a resigned shrug. "I guess it's a good thing neither one of us believes they're gods then, because I don't think I can help myself. I don't think you can, either." He rose from the couch, the cushions whiffling softly with the loss of his weight. "Come on, Dr. Charles, let's go get kicked out of paradise." She let out a small burst of air that wasn't quite a chuckle, and pushed herself to her feet. "Lead on, David," she gestured toward the door. He studied her for a moment before turning away, feeling encouraged that they could come to some common ground on a topic where they differed so strongly. The achievement gave him a new sense of confidence with her, and in himself. He started toward the lab, but stopped and turned back when he reached the doorway. "Dr. Charles, what you said earlier, about having colleagues but not friends?" He paused only a beat. "I'm your friend," he offered earnestly. "Thank you David. I know," she replied in kind. He nodded once and continued to gaze at her with the unbearably sincere regard found only in the young. Always the teacher, she knew it would be best to temper their new rapport. "Let's not get maudlin," she said kindly. His face relaxed into a quirky little grin, and he gestured for her to precede him. Together they headed into the lab to begin the day's work. ------------------------------------------------------------- He was about thirty minutes into his usual routine of preparing the equipment and gathering the raw materials to make the solution out of which today's segment of the Gray base-pair sequence would be assembled into actual strands of DNA, when Dr. Charles interrupted him. "I think we should do things differently today, David. Come over here." He joined her at the console where she was working, trying to narrow the choice from 4.5 billion base pairs down to a few sequences that they could work with this weekend. A few that might yield a stable and comprehensible selection of proteins. The console where she sat was interfaced with some of the most potent and efficient computing power available, necessary in order to run the complex searching and matching algorithms of her research software. "I think I'd like you to design the search parameters today. My selections haven't been proving fruitful, recently." "Really?" David asked, then cleared his throat, chagrined that his voice had broken like an adolescent on the word. "Yes, really," she affirmed. "I think you've got a good grasp of the protocol of the search language at this point, and you've been observing the way I select my parameters for several months. I'd like to see what results arise from a fresh approach." She held out her hand expectantly, and it took David a moment to realize she was waiting to be given the container of enzymes that he held. He released it to her, and self-consciously took the seat at the console that she vacated. At first it felt strange to be there, listening to the clinks, hums, and swooshes of the jobs he usually performed, but as he became engrossed in the problem, the feeling gradually abated. The first choice he would have to make was whether to perform a progressive or regressive search today. A progressive search looked for something specific. The input described some understood earthly protein, or a specific gene, not necessarily human, and every possible DNA variation that could describe it. Since there were multiple ways the same amino acid could be coded by the DNA base pairs, the number of variations for a complex protein could be staggering. Still, such variations were well understood, and the search language accounted for them. Using that as a starting point, the entire Gray genome would be searched, looking for any partial matches within a degree of accuracy that he could also control. It had been a series of progressive searches using contractile proteins against the Smith genome that had eventually led Dr. Charles to an understanding of the Smith shape shifting ability. It was the faster of the two searches, but it was very dependent on a good choice of input. If the selection turned out to be for some feature that was absent from the Gray physiology, the search was likely to return nothing, or even worse, false leads. And that was the rub, since the Gray physiology was unknown. Dr. Charles had gradually been exhausting the obvious avenues, comparing against the human gene sets for such things as bipedalism, and the transport proteins for processing Earth's atmosphere. A regressive search took longer, and was more random, but almost always turned up some result. With this technique, the input was some sequence, any sequence really, of the Gray genome that an educated guess indicated might be more than just some meaningless intergenic region. As in a progressive search, the input was expanded to account for equivalent variations, and then those variations were compared against the entire available genomic library, which included the many strange and wonderful creatures that had been examined by the renowned Dr. Luder. Because the library was so huge, the search was extremely slow, but because it was so diverse, near matches occurred with a certain regularity. If there were a sufficiently close match to be compelling, the sequence might be a good one to assemble. If the match were extraordinarily close, Dr. Charles would sometimes acquire a specimen of the life form for further study. As effective as the searches were, though, both kinds tended to choke when they encountered the still incomprehensible fifth and sixth nucleotides scattered throughout the Gray genome. Suddenly, it occurred to David that there might be a faster way, a way to largely bypass all this endless searching. He swiveled in his seat. "Dr. Charles, have you ever just gone ahead and assembled the entire Gray genome?" Dr. Charles stopped her preparations, and considered him with a slightly furrowed expression. "No, I haven't David. It would be extremely time consuming and difficult. Such long strands don't tend to be stable in artificial circumstances. Why?" "I was just thinking... we could save a lot of time by just assembling the whole sequence and trying for a clone." His suggestion earned him a brief, but leaden silence. "And how would you gestate such a thing David?" she said, finally. "We have no idea what kind of requirements they have in the fetal stage. Or if they even have a fetal stage in the sense we understand, for that matter." He considered the obstacle for only a moment, then pressed on. "It doesn't really matter, though, does it? Even if we only get through a short phase of somatic development before it self arrests, we'd still have cellular material to examine. That would still enable a huge leap forward." Dr. Charles shook her head. "And if it doesn't self arrest? If through some fluke it gestates into a recognizable life form? What are you going to do with it? Abort it and dissect it? Deliver it and raise it as a lab specimen, away from any of its kind? This is still an intelligent species we're discussing here." He frowned, puzzled at her vehemence. "It wouldn't come to that," he began, but she continued without noting his interruption. "And what about the Grays themselves? Would you keep it a secret from them? Would you call them in to consult if it became ill? How do you think our reclusive friends would react to discovering that we've circumvented their physiological secrecy with an approach like this? How would *you* feel if you discovered they were indiscriminately cloning humans for their own experiments?" She winced slightly as she made that point. "Cloning a Gray could be dangerous, David, and it's completely unethical." The rebuttal he'd been about to make died on his lips, as the image of a small child, convinced it was the only of its kind, flashed across his mind. "I didn't think," he said. "No you didn't," she said without sympathy. "And that's the only reason you're here. To think. You've been given the opportunity today to show me that you can. Don't squander it." She gestured to the console, and then turned back to the lab preparations. Chastised, he swiveled to face the console, considering the three-dimensional display of the alien double helix that the computer had constructed for him. Regressive search, he decided on an impulse. Taking the console controls, he adjusted the display so that he appeared to be zooming along the length of the strand, allowing the intuitive part of his mind to take over, hoping to recognize familiar patterns in the complex, colored image. Instead, he found himself distracted by the occasional clusters of the alien nucleotides. Exasperated, he reset the run to the beginning of the strand, and started over. Again, the occasional dense clots of the foreign colors distracted him. He steeled himself to focus harder as he started a third run. After the seventh repetition of the exercise, he decided to change his approach. Clearly, something in his mind was drawn to these areas of alien chemistry. Dr. Charles generally avoided any dense groupings since the searches tended to break down around them, but he decided to indulge his curiosity for a while. The alien nucleotides were not evenly distributed throughout the Gray genome, but tended to occur in clusters. David instructed the display to jump every few seconds from one cluster to the next. After a few minutes, he recognized something familiar. Every cluster started with the same sequence of base pairs. The very sequence that had been in Dr. Charles's extra credit problem from the beginning of the course. The question had been to explain the significance of this repeating sequence. David grinned. "Dr. Charles, you passed your research off on the class as extra credit." She looked up from the solution she was preparing, one eyebrow raised. "Your point being?" "If one of us had solved it, would we have our name on the paper?" "Have one of you solved it?" she retorted, but her voice was approving. He shrugged a little, tipping his head to the side. "One of us *found* it," he said. "And on your first day driving, too," she remarked. "Very impressive. Let me know when you figure out what it means." She touched a sensor pad on a piece of equipment that immediately began to hum quietly. "I'm just about done here. I'm going back to my study for a while. Come and get me when you've selected a sequence and we'll begin the assembly." She stifled a yawn as she headed out of the lab. David knew he needed to concentrate on selecting an input sequence. If he took too long, by the time the computer generated the results, there would no longer be adequate time left in the day to do the assembly. But having engaged the puzzle, he found he couldn't let it go. There was something about the occurrence of those nucleotides that seemed to suggest a pattern. Over by the cages, David's organizer announced the hour, startling the mouse David had fed earlier. It was so quiet that he could hear the little creature skitter and burrow deeper into the shavings. He'd wasted another hour engrossed in the patterns. Doing any serious work today was becoming a dicey proposition. Sighing, he decided to try to make up some lost time. The genomic library was so vast that it was stored in a tightly compressed format. The search would run faster if the library was already local and decompressed, instead of having to download and decompress as it searched. It would take up a huge quantity of extra storage for a while, but might make the difference between a wasted weekend and a productive one. Something tickled his brain as he made the link to the library and began navigating the commands that would start the decompression running in the background. Decompression. Decompression? Decompression! It couldn't be that simple, could it? Heart pounding with excitement, he switched back to the helix view. Because Jerry was amazing with everything having to do with computers and the nets, as were most of the Smiths, David had learned the fundamentals of data compression. Maybe. Quickly, he linked up to the computer science archive at North East U, and hunted until he found a pattern analyzer that was generalized to work on any computer language. The analogy of DNA to computer code was an old one, taken for granted, but never in quite this way. He had to backtrack several times, as his sweaty fingers slid from the selection he was aiming to touch, and activated a path he didn't want to follow. Digging further, he found a compatible learning program, probably heavy with artificial intelligence, and linked the two together. Next, he taught it the language by feeding in the lesson material from a middle school homework node, one that explained the basics of genetics, describing the nucleotides, their meaningful combinations forming amino acids, and a baseline set of examples. When that completed, he manually fed in the concept of a fifth and sixth nucleotide as unknown quantities. Finally, he fed in one of the puzzling Gray sequences, starting from the uniform pattern that began all the strange clusters, until a few hundred thousand base pairs beyond the occurrence of the last alien nucleotide in that cluster. Then he sat back and waited. The result arrived astonishingly fast. It confirmed a recognizable data compression pattern. Barely breathing, he asked the program to compute the decompressed form. A weight began to gather in his gut as the time elapsed. It shouldn't take this long, should it? He'd been so excited by the discovery he wasn't sure he could stand the disappointment if the first result was an error. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply to calm himself. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Again. When he opened his eyes, the screen showed him a new file. Immediately, he directed the console to display the file of the decompressed sequence in the helix view, and began to run its length. It was three times longer than it had been originally, and all the alien base pairs were gone. Scrubbing his face with his hands, he made two decisions. First, this was the sequence he would use for today's regressive search. Second, he was going to feed the entire genome into the decompressor, and save the results. It would probably have to run all night. ------------------------------------------------------------- Moments later, after seeking out Dr. Charles to continue the day's work, he found himself at a loss. Dr. Charles was asleep on the sofa in her study, soundly so. He had cleared his throat, coughed, knocked, and cleared his throat again, loudly, none of which elicited so much as a stir. There was something intimate and intrusive about being with her while she slept. She granted privileges cautiously, and he was pretty sure this wasn't one he had earned. Still, he indulged himself in a moment's study. In repose, she appeared much younger than she did while wearing her gruff professor's persona. With her features relaxed, her faced smoothed of its few pronounced creases. In fact, if it weren't for the preponderance of gray in her hair, she might be mistaken for a woman in her late thirties, instead of the mid-fifties he supposed her to be. "Dr. Charles?" he called quietly. Still not even a twitch. He sighed inwardly. There was no helping it, he was going to have to go over and touch her to wake her. He only hoped she wouldn't feel that he was taking license. Walking the few steps across the creaking floor to the old sofa, he tapped her lightly and quickly on the cheek with a single finger. Her eyes snapped open at the touch, and her mouth exhaled a breathy "muh". David involuntarily took a step back, retreating from her personal space, watching as the sleepy confusion drained from her eyes, and the professor reemerged. "Uh, I'm sorry if I startled you, Dr. Charles," he apologized. "You weren't having another bad dream, were you?" She sat up slowly, swinging her short legs to the floor and dry washing her face with her right hand. "That's all right David, and no, I wasn't having a bad dream. In fact, it was..." "Was what?" he asked, when the pause had stretched beyond comfort. She shook her head. "It was so vivid, but it's gone. How strange." She lifted her shoulder slightly in a shrug. "I'm sure you're not here to talk about my dreams. Are you ready to continue?" she asked. His pulse quickened again at the excitement of sharing his discovery. "I think I solved that extra credit problem," he deadpanned. She regarded him from under a single raised eyebrow, cocking her head slightly to the side. "Do tell," she answered dryly. Unable to contain himself any longer, he broke out into an unabashed grin. The second eyebrow joined the first in her hairline, and she tilted her head slightly forward, studying his expression. "You're not kidding," she finally concluded. He shook his head like a puppy, his grin widening. After a moment, she realized he wasn't going to continue on his own. "And...?" "Come on, I'll show you," he said, with all the enthusiasm of a six year old who has just mastered balancing on a two wheeler, and wants to show off. She hauled herself achingly out of the old couch. He was on her heels the instant she turned for the door, exuding impatience, and daring to hurry her along with a light press to the small of her back. A quick, cutting glance over her shoulder was enough make him back off, but there was something unnervingly familiar about the gesture. It would come to her later that the gesture echoed her dreams. There was someone in them that touched her that way, and in the dream, the touch carried comfort. He darted ahead of her when the got to the lab, eager to explain the console display. "This is the strand I want to assemble," he said, gesturing to the image. She reached over and entered a routine command instructing the computer to locate the strand's position in the genome. When the computer responded that the strand could not be found, she gave him a puzzled look. "Where did this come from, David?" "How much do you know about data compression?" he asked. "Most computer data is stored in a compressed format," she said thoughtfully. "It saves storage, and it allows fewer satellites to handle the transfer of greater quantities of data. I haven't really given it much attention beyond that." "Ok," he began, "let me give you some fundamentals. Digital data is ultimately binary, zeros and ones, right?" She nodded patiently. "Ok. Now, this is a simplistic example, but what if you had a binary file, and there was a long string of zeros, say, twenty-two of them. You could save a lot of space if you could somehow use the decimal digits for twenty-two, and just a single zero, to indicate that you really have twenty-two zeros in the following sequence." "That makes sense," she agreed, "you'd only need three digits, two decimal twos, and one binary zero, instead of twenty-two binary zeros." "Exactly right," he continued. "Except that you don't have the luxury of decimal digits. Still, the binary representation of the value twenty-two is still quite a bit less than twenty-two digits long. It's only 5 digits long: one zero one one zero. So you're still down to six digits, instead of twenty-two. The first five digits represent the value twenty-two, and then the zero indicates twenty-two of what." Dr. Charles saw an obvious flaw with that system. "That's a big savings, but in a long binary sequence, how would you know that the sequence for twenty-two wasn't just a part of the overall series of ones and zeros? How would you know that it represents a value that needs to be reverted to its original form of twenty two zeros?" she asked. "And that's the crux of the matter," he agreed. "Again, remember that this is a simplistic example, but you'd need to have some sort of recognizable binary sequence that wouldn't occur naturally in the particular data stream that it's a part of. That sequence would trigger the software or the hardware to realize that the next thing coming should be interpreted as a compressed value, rather than something that is part of the ordinary binary sequence of the file." He took a deep breath before revealing the last piece. "That's what the fifth and sixth nucleotides are for in the Gray genome. They form control sequences for a compression algorithm." The concept was astonishing. "Are you sure?" she challenged. "The kind of data compression you're describing is an artificial construct engineered by computer scientists. Not something naturally occurring." "I don't know how it can be," he concurred, "but I think I'm right. People have compared DNA to computer code almost from the beginning, right? Maybe it's even closer than we think. Here, look at this." He pulled up the image of the original sequence, before he had fed it into the computers at North East. "This is what I started with. North East University has the best Computer Science research facilities anywhere, so I linked in with their systems. I presented basic genetic theory to an analysis program as if it was a computer language, and then I gave it this sequence to analyze. It came back and told me it found compression. This," he switched back to the other image, "is what it generated when it applied decompression, according to its analysis." She stared hard at the image, astonished by the implications. "What could possibly catalyze such a transformation organically?" she wondered aloud. "In either direction?" "I don't know," he grinned. "It would probably take a lot of energy." "Probably," he agreed. "Do you think it happens all at once, or in segments?" "I don't know," he repeated, grinning wider. "Dr. Charles?" "David?" "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research, would it?" She laughed at the old quote, delighted with its aptness. "Let's assemble your strand, Mr. Mitchell. I think you're on your way to getting published." ------------------------------------------------------------- The sequence was so compelling, in light of David's discovery, that they went forward with the assembly without even waiting for the regressive search to complete. The computer was still cranking away at decompressing the entire genome, and neither of them wanted to steal any speed from that process to conduct the search for terrestrial near- matches. At the end of the day, the first bacterial colonies that had been injected with the alien DNA strand were beginning to crank out the bits of protein they would study later. It was a promising sign. There was nothing to do for a while but wait. Wait for the samples to produce a sufficient quantity of the protein for study. Wait for the computer to complete its processing. In spite of the day's excitement, David caught himself stifling a yawn. "Draining, isn't it?" asked Dr. Charles. "Hmm. I'm sorry, I was kind of faded on you. What?" "Draining," she repeated. "After the first rush of excitement passes, you can feel surprisingly fatigued." He nodded in agreement, holding his hand over his mouth as another yawn overcame him. This one was so fierce that his eyes watered. "Go home and get some rest," she suggested. Part of him wanted to argue, wanted to push on without stopping, wanted to ask to borrow the sofa in her study. Instead he simply asked "Same time tomorrow?" "No," she said thoughtfully. "I think we've earned a break, don't you? An hour later than usual will be fine." David snorted quietly at Dr. Charles' idea of a break. "Wear something comfortable tomorrow, David," she added. "Why?" "I thought we might celebrate. Take a day off. I've got a field trip in mind to mark the moment." "A field trip? Where?" She paused to stifle her own yawn. "Those are contagious, David," she commented. "I think I'll keep it a surprise for now. Just wear something comfortable, and don't be late." He stood then, stretching until his joints popped, and gracefully shedding the white lab smock. He smiled inwardly at the familiar admonition for promptness, and wondered to himself at what point he had begun to find it comforting. "You can show yourself out, can't you?" she asked beneath another yawn. "I'm all in, I'm afraid." "Sure thing, Dr. Charles," he said to her retreating back. "There's summer squash in the kitchen," her voice drifted back from the hallway. "Take some with you when you go." No doubt about it, he thought, retrieving his jacket from the anteroom. Nana would like her.