The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [69]
“I’m sorry,” Sara said, plucking up her courage at last, “but I don’t have the least idea what you’re pointing at.”
Mr. Warburton half-turned to look over his shoulder, his expression slightly rueful. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been reading proteonomic spectra so long that it’s almost like looking at a picture. This trace here”—he tapped the screen with his fingernail—“is probably the fly in the ointment...except that in this case, it’s more a case of the ointment in the flyer. I’ll have to wait for the proteonome register to put the whole story together, and I probably won’t have the tees crossed and the eyes dotted for another four or five hours, but there’s enough of a clue here to help me figure out the vague outlines of what must have happened.
“The problem with sublimate organisms, you see—one of the problems, that is—is that they’re a trifle oversensitive. They’re built to feed on a very limited range of substances secreted by a standard smartsuit. The downside of their ultra-simple diet is that there are a lot of compounds that disagree with them.”
“Poisons, you mean?” Sara said, helpfully
“In a way. Let’s say that shadowbats have something like an allergy problem. They can lose their shape, or their ability to fly, if they come into intimate contact with the wrong things...which, unfortunately, include some other kinds of suit-fitment. Not roses, or anything that Linda Chatrian deals in, but...do you ever look at the ads on the shopping channels your parents have told you not to watch?”
“Migratory chromocytes,” Sara said. “Lepidopteran alate scaling...metaspectral melanin...dermal ivory inlays... those sorts of thing?”
“Those sorts of things,” the Dragon Man confirmed, with a wry grin. “Well, I knew that there was a strong possibility of quasi-allergic reactions to one or two of the client’s other suit-based systems, so I tweaked a couple of the pseudogenes to strengthen the sublimate’s permeability barrier—what wearers would call its smokeskin. I did wonder why the manufacturers hadn’t done that themselves, and now I know. The molecular networks that serve to keep bad chemicals out can also operate as traps. When I strengthened the shadowbat’s smokeskin so that it would keep more dangerous substances out, I accidentally made it into a sponge for some not-quite-so-dangerous ones...one of which must be a key component of the artificial nectar designed for cosmetic hummingbirds to drink. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I think so,” Sara said. “You can never do just one thing—that’s the first rule of genetic engineering.”
“Exactly. Every planned effect has unplanned side-effects. The nectar wouldn’t normally do any harm, but once the shadowbats began soaking it up and concentrating it...well, while we’re quoting slogans, you’ve probably heard the one that says that the poison is the dose. The shadowbats couldn’t get rid of the stuff, and it began to disrupt their metabolism. To say that they were getting drunk is probably putting it mildly. Blowing their tiny minds might give a slightly more accurate impression.”
“Can you cure it?” Sara asked, looking down at the stricken shadowbat clinging to its shard of flesh.
“I doubt it,” the Dragon Man confessed. “The rest of the flock probably didn’t make it back to base—which means, I suppose, that you did the right thing to grab one while you could, so I apologize for telling you that you shouldn’t have. Their owner probably wouldn’t have understood what you meant about one of six even if he had looked at the public noticeboard. I’ll contact him this evening, when I can give him a more detailed explanation of what went wrong.”
“Will you get into trouble?” Sara asked.
“Perhaps. If the manufacturer wanted to take the matter to court, I suppose my tweaking license could be revoked. I’ll have to hope that they take