The Garden - Melissa Scott [105]
"Mostly bruises, and a broken ankle from falling in a Jeffries tube," he said. "However, there is something else that has come to my attention. In examining the body of the Kirse Lieutenant Paris brought aboard-"
"Grayrose," Paris said, softly.
"-I've found a number of anomalies," the doctor finished, and Torres stirred again.
"They use a lot of implanted technology," she began, and the doctor shook his head.
"No-well, of course, yes, they do, I found several such implants, including the primary which certainly contributed to her death."
Paris winced at that, but the doctor went on as though he didn't see the reaction.
"That was a direct link to the shuttle's controls, by the way, which seems to have permitted her to use her natural reflexes as a flyer to control the shuttle. I suspect that a direct hit on the ship created a feedback current that overrode any safeties in the implant and-in essence-electrocuted her. Of course, I can't tell more certainly without performing an autopsy."
"Which we don't want to do without the Kirse's permission," Janeway said. She looked at Chakotay. "I know you informed Adamant that we had the body aboard. Has there been a response?"
The first officer shook his head. "Not yet, Captain."
"I'm well aware that I can't do an autopsy without the captain's authorization," the doctor said. "However, I can and did take tissue samples-purely for therapeutic purposes, of course, hoping that I could do something for her. But when I analyzed them, I got this extremely interesting result."
The viewscreen split, the doctor's face shifting to the side, and a complicated pattern, bright colored symbols against black, filled the rest of the screen. It looked like a DNA sample, Janeway thought, but there were too many red bits, too many similar shapes and colors, for it to be viable.
Across the table, Paris stirred again, brows drawing down into a frown, and Kim tilted his head to one
side. "Is that a DNA pattern?" he asked, and only then seemed to realize that he had spoken aloud. "Sorry, Captain."
"It is DNA," the doctor answered. "This Kirse's DNA, in fact. The only thing is, any being with this DNA shouldn't have made it to birth."
"Explain," Janeway said, though she suspected she could guess the answer.
"There are simply too many repeats in this strand," the doctor answered. A light formed on the screen, circled two sections of the display. "You see there? These two segments are almost identical, except half of the second is displaced by one base-and then within those segments there are these repeats-" The light moved again on the screen, marking another three spots. "-that are just the same pair duplicated twenty-seven times. Even allowing for alien genetics, not only was this Kirse unable to reproduce, but her parents probably shouldn't have been able to produce her. This DNA codes for nonsense, not a viable being."
"That's ridiculous," Paris said, sharply, and Kim touched his shoulder.
"Easy, Tom. He's right. That DNA doesn't make sense."
"But Grayrose was fine."
Janeway said, "We've suspected that there was more to the Kirse than meets the eye, Mr. Paris. The question is what."
"There was something," Torres said, slowly, her eyes focused on the middle distance, "something Silver-Hammer said. . . ." She looked up sharply. "She said, about the Andirrim, that they would bury their dead because they couldn't make use of them anymore. Do you suppose they, I don't know, harvest
genetic or other material from their dead enemies?" Her expression wavered between queasiness and belligerence.
On the screen, the doctor shook his head. "I doubt it. Certainly this Kirse-"
"Grayrose," Paris said again, and the doctor looked at him.
"Grayrose, then. This Grayrose isn't borrowing any material, genetic or otherwise, from any species other than her own. I'm positive of that." The doctor pau sed. "The DNA is simply implausibly repetitive, and it can't be anything except replication errors repeated over and over. It's more as though she'd been copied