Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [131]
Matthew’s notepad was too small to produce readable images of the data-complexes, so he and Ike had to go into the cabin to use the wallscreen, where a petty quarrel immediately developed as to who ought to have control of the keyboard. Ike won, not just because he had two capable hands but because he had three years’ more experience in interpreting the data. He had every right to play commentator to Matthew’s audience, even though the reversal of what seemed to Matthew to be their natural roles was a trifle irksome.
As the data began to pile up, however, Ike had to spend more and more time merely sifting through it, looking for items of significance that the scanner programs were not yet sophisticated enough to catch. When the commentary lapsed Matthew quickly became lost in the data-deluge, acutely conscious of the fact that he probably would not be able to spot an interesting anomaly if it stood up and waved Rand Blackstone’s hat at him. He was still learning his way around the fundamental and familiar patterns, trying to come to terms imaginatively with the weird binary genomes that all Tyrian organisms possessed; its biochemical complexities were so much gibberish. He had to remind himself, very firmly, that this was not his forte, and that the hypnotic effect it had on Ikram Mohammed was something he ought to avoid, lest it distract him from the kinds of observation and hypothesis-formation that were his forte.
Evening approached again with what seemed like unreasonable rapidity. The previous days had been so busy and so strenuous that Matthew had hardly noticed the fact that Tyre’s day was 11 percent shorter than the Earthly day that had been carefully conserved aboard Hope. Now that Voconia had take over the burden of progress, while Matthew was not merely a passenger but an invalid, the time-scale difference seemed to leap out at him as if from ambush, further increasing his sense of dislocation and surreality.
Ike finally condescended to step back from the wallscreen and lay the keyboard aside, saying: “I can’t take any more.”
“We’re not going to turn anything up this way, Ike,” Matthew said, somberly. “We’re just looking at the rest-states of the cells. We need to keep tabs on them while they’re active. Lityansky’s watched the cut-and-paste processes that produce the local equivalents of sexual exchange, but we need to fill in the yawning gap that still separates us from an understanding of their reproductive mechanisms. It’s not here. It’s just not here. The specimens are all too small, too simple. This stuff isn’t ever going to show us what all that juicy over-the-top complexity is for.”
“It might,” Ike demurred, “if we could only figure out how to extrapolate the data properly. Even in the simple world of the DNA monopoly it’s extraordinarily difficult to catch the more elusive genes at it. The guys who navigated their way through the hinterlands of the original genome maps back in the twentieth century had to creep up on all the rarely activated axons. It took them all century and a lot of inspired guesswork to nail down the really shy ones. It might take us as long. We have better equipment, but we’re on the outside looking in. But you’re right about one thing: we need some good key specimens—and these don’t qualify. Unfortunately, we couldn’t know that they didn’t until we’d looked.”
Matthew nodded agreement. Earth’s ecosphere had thrown up useful specimen species at every stage of genetic research, but nobody would have been able to identify them as significant keys just by looking at them. Drosophila, Rhabditis, and the puffer fish had not come bearing labels proclaiming their unique value as foundation stones of genetic analysis.
“Even if we found a humanoid,” Ike continued, pensively, “there’d be no guarantee that analyzing his—or more likely its—genes would illuminate the fundamental issues. On the other hand, there might be some unobtrusive little creature minding its own business