CROSSFIRE - Atlantis DSV - New Cape Quest

“I don‟t understand,” Callaghan shook his head, sitting down in a seat opposite the
doctor. “What could we even gain from it? We know it‟s not possible for the catalyst to be
transferred genetically by reproduction.”
Ballard huffed as she stared at the ceiling. “That‟s the problem, Lieutenant. As Doctor
van der Weer designed it, the catalyst could not reproduce through the transference of
genes, but it‟s mutated, and I don‟t know why.”
Callaghan stopped at that, and thought about the graph he‟d seen once again. “So
you‟re saying that the Nycarians can transmit the catalyst to their offspring?”
“Exactly, lieutenant. And it gets worse.”
Ballard typed something in to her laptop computer, and then spun it around so
Callaghan could see it. It brought the same graph results up again. “In the most basic terms,
this graph shows the distribution of the same catalyst across human DNA in two subjects.
The first is the original recipient, and the second shows the catalyst when spread from that
recipient by reproduction to a child. By all rights, what we know of reproduction says that the
balance of the catalyst should at least show some kind of correlation between their parents
and their child. In this case... there are anomalies.”
Callaghan closed his eyes for a moment. “Where did this data come from?”
Ballard missed Callaghan‟s implication, and was to the point. “Patients sixty five and
eighty nine showed a good deal of genetic compatibility. Eighty nine was inseminated, and
this graph shows development of the fetus after eight weeks. This was the point where the
catalyst stabilized, and normal development continued, with some unpredictable anomalies.”
Callaghan‟s stomach turned at the thought, considering the cold manner in which
Ballard had just sterilized the argument. “What do you mean anomalies?”
“That‟s what I can‟t work out. The most obvious possibility is that the examiner
contaminated his work. But I did a second test myself, and it came back the same. That
graph you saw represented only a very small change in a few proteins – and I‟m talking less
than point zero five of a percent within just those proteins, out of potentially billions. But at a
genetic level, that is massive. It will take further examination, but if the test is consistent over
the course of several generations of the catalyst... the mutation will become selfpropagating.”
“You‟re telling me it‟s evolving.”
“Yes, I am.”
...Doctor Thecus van der Weer watched Patient One intently. The masterpiece of a
life‟s work – determined to see no harm to his one, greatest triumph. She sat at the center of
a sterile, modestly furnished room, a single window her only view to the great ocean beyond.
Everything inside was pristine – from the white of the walls to the white carpet and white
robes she found herself in... Yet her flair for creativity was astoundingly in opposition. She
sat at the desk in the middle of the room, pencil in hand, as she sketched with all the skill of
Giotto, Degas or even Da Vinci. Images with meanings or designs that he couldn‟t – and
probably would never understand – so intricate and detailed and flawless. Van der Weer
loved her like a daughter: her talent was an extension of the greatest gift he had even given
her.
The white of the walls was blocked by that which she created every day, her
drawings adorning every surface but the window through which she spent a great deal of her
life staring. The images were of things she hadn‟t seen in person for years – the Great Plains
and mountains of Africa, birds, animals and even things that only existed within her brilliant
imagination, but all with such devotion to detail that it was impossible not to understand them
– even if sometimes you didn‟t really know what they were.
“Art”. That was her name. Sanaa Vuender-Weist Hezuin was now the legacy of an
entire people, and it was only fitting that that was how the Swahili origins of that name
translated to the simple, but inelegant English tongue. Her long hair spilled down past her
shoulders, framing a slender, elegant face with eyes that bore in to Thecus‟s very soul.
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