Scuzzworms (15 page)

Imelda rubbed her eyes, feeling her aloneness acutely. “Okay, one more hill to go over.  This one is not as steep, but there’s a lot of vegetation.  Look at that!  I guess they could be similar to tree crabs but look at the size of them!  Anyway, they don’t act like they see us so let’s go on.  Yes, that looks like a good path.  The grazers probably go down to the bog this way.”

The top of the low hill seemed to take forever to reach.  As the unit finally crested it and the bog below swung into view, both Imelda and Post leaned forward in their seats.    At first, the scene looked as though it could have originated on earth.  Muddy green water overhung by verdant vegetation sparkled in dappled shadow and bright light. The water’s surface rippled as though blown by a gentle breeze, and the shore was peaceful and quiet as a small animal slept close to the water’s edge.

Then, the illusion shattered.  The ripples in the water were created by thousands of swimming worms.    

The sleeping animal wasn’t really sleeping, but struggling against oncoming death, its feet deformed and its mouth a ghastly cross between an insect’s mandible and a toothed jaw, the entire structure rather obviously nonfunctional.  As she watched, it managed to rip off a bit of greenery by lunging and twisting its head around to snag it with its deformed lower jaw.  Imelda grimaced painfully. Its pitiful efforts would only prolong its death, dragging out the misery.

As the unit drew nearer, globular, slimy-looking things could be seen floating on the surface of the water.  Imelda magnified the scene.   A few huge gelatinous oval structures bobbed drunkenly as giant worms rippled by, gliding along the surface.  Imelda’s eyes struggled to absorb every grotesque detail, absently glancing at the readings printed out on her screen.  The closest orbs weren’t alive, the best she could tell.  They looked as though they had been floating for a very long time and were shriveled and blackened.    

“What are those?” asked Post.  Imelda started, having become used to his silence.     Camille’s image appeared just then as her workstation joined the comline.  Camille leaned forward, staring intently, her argument with Kellogg apparently forgotten.     Imelda paused a long time before answering.  Post was trying to get better readings.  Two more somethings were far out in the water, too far for the grapple arm to reach.  She could pick up small vibrations of noise and the infrared sc
reen showed faint shapes within that, as she watched, moved.

She sighed, pensive, frowning.  “I don’t know,” she answered.  “But if I had to guess, I would say that they are eggs.”

#

Imelda sat in
Caldwell’s office, sprawled over a chair.     “I know we need tissue, but the eggs are too far out.  Look, Post is furious.  He’s getting nothing out of this.  I need my own unit.  He needs to be given another...”

“No.  Our budget won’t allow it.  In any case, he will share credit for these discoveries with you.”

“Share.  That’s the key word here.  He’s an astute observer, very capable.  So far, we’ve forced him to assist Camille in her study and now act as a cabby for mine. We’re wasting talent and he won’t put up with it for much longer.”  She closed her eyes, leaning her head back. “I can’t put up with it much longer either.  Give him his own unit.”

Caldwell
sighed.  “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”  He paced the floor of the small room.  “He is assigned the invertebrates, isn’t he?  The worms ARE his project, and their interaction with the bog is equally as important as that of Borg’s.  There is no reason why you two cannot conduct your studies concurrently.”

Imelda frowned, unable to think of a good response.   Her heart felt like a dead weight.   Her entire career was based on how many papers her name appeared on, and the common assumption was that her name shouldn’t have appeared on most of them.  Post was getting screwed out of legitimate papers.  No wonder no one had ever heard of him.  This wasn’t fair, and she had always prided herself on being fair, even if no one else thought she was.  To hell with papers and to hell with
Caldwell, too. 

Just then the door opened and Kreiss stuck his head in. Upon seeing Imelda his face reddened and he started to back out.

“No wait, come back.” Caldwell called. “We were just finishing up.  What do you need?”

Kreiss stuttered. “Uh, I, uh, just got my report.  From genetics.  They were able to do it.”

Caldwell and Imelda sat up.  “Yes?”

“Well, uh, all of the sessiles that they have looked at are colonies.  Cell colonies.  Unusual cell colonies.”

“Unusual?  In what way?” asked Caldwell.

Kreiss kept looking embarrassedly from
Caldwell to Imelda.  He apparently thought he had disturbed a tête-à-tête.

“The, uh, chromosomes.  The way the cells reproduce. They were able to separate the cells into two separate types in the centrifuge.  When Cellular attempted to culture each type separately, neither one would grow.  But when they were combined into one culture they would grow.”

Imelda frowned.  “That’s funny.  Post mentioned having similar problems in getting his cell cultures to grow.  He thought it was the size of the inoculum, though.”

Kreiss shook his head furiously.  “No, not the size of the inoculum.  The enzymes.  Each cell type only supplies part of the enzymes necessary for reproduction.  The cells can’t divide unless both cell types are present.”

Caldwell stared at Kreiss thoughtfully.  “Cell colonies. Earth has cell colonies, usually lower forms, though.  But...”  His voice rose in excitement.  “That’s it!  Cell colonies!”

Kreiss was confused.  “Um, yes, that is what they said.”

“The higher organisms!  They are colonials!  Gigantic cell colonies!  Run a check on it, Imelda! See if it fits!” Caldwell’s excitement was growing.

Imelda remained immune to his enthusiasm.  “No.”

“What?”  Caldwell turned to face Imelda.  “Why not?”

“Take it to Cellular and Genetics.  Present them with the data.  They are the ones who should write the paper.  I don’t want my name on it.”

“Why not, for god’s sake?”

“I am an ethologist, remember?  I don’t know anything about cell biology.”  She stood up to go.

Caldwell frowned, completely nonplused.  “You are extremely well-educated in cellular....”

Imelda continued, interrupting him.  “No.  You’ve taken up enough of my time.  I want to get back to MY study, the one I’m SUPPOSED to be doing.  You can handle it from here.”

Caldwell stared at her, his eyes narrowing.  “You had it figured out already, didn’t you?  Have you run the check?”

“I didn’t need to.  It all fits.  I have work to do.”

Caldwell continued to stare as the door shut behind her.

Caldwell
slammed his fist down on the podium.  It took more than one slam to get a degree of quiet.  His voice when he spoke was fevered, excited, with none of his usual hesitancy.

“Do you see what the problem is, then?  The colonial cells do not reproduce easily.  We were able to grow some of the less complex species’ cells in culture, but have thus far been unable to coax the more advanced species’ cells into reproducing except under extremely unphysiologic conditions.”

Caldwell exhibited a graph showing under which conditions a few cells had been made to grow.  Upon seeing the types of cells being cultured, Imelda realized with a start that Caldwell was exhibiting Post’s work.  She wondered why he hadn’t asked Post to do this part of the presentation.

“Apparently each individual mature cell is genetically deficient.  Advanced animal species here appear to hatch fully developed, and cells do not divide in the adult, but only bud cytoplasm or enlarge with storage.  Although we are beginning to derive some information about metabolism from the genetic sequences we have, it would help to know how many sets of chromosomes each cell carries, and whether reproduction is sexual or asexual.  In order to do that, we must find the gestating form and obtain embryonic cells.  Unfortunately, we have not discovered any germ cells in the species we have thus far examined.”

“This is nuts.  We should be able to at least count the chromosomes.”

“We have tried to, but in disrupting the cell nucleus to obtain DNA, we mechanically break the chromosomes.  Cellular is busy devising centrifugation techniques to separate the different cell lines
into their components so that we can get purified chemical to look at, but it is taking time to do.  The cells hold long, oddly arranged chromosomes, by the look of it.  Caphorn, can you explain it a little better?”

Caphorn stood up, clearly appalled to be speaking before a crowd.  “Um, uh, you see, on electron microscopy, the nuclear proteins appear to form highly stable crystalline structures around the DNA.  They allow only certain segments of DNA to be read in the mature cell, similar to the function of earth
-type nuclear proteins.  The difference is that these crystals are even more stable than those of earth.  Once a cell reaches maturity, it is locked into a rigid, undividing structure.”

“You are talking about the more evolved species. What about the primitives?”

Caphorn cleared her throat.  “We haven’t found any enzyme systems that qualify as ‘primitive’ by earth standards here.”

A pause followed by an uproar greeted her words.  “But there have to be primitive species!”  The rest was drowned out.

Imelda, watching from her desk as usual, sighed. Scientists were such a rigid bunch.  Once they decided that they knew how things should be, it upset them to find things that weren’t that way.  Actually, it cluttered up a cell’s structure to remain able to divide into maturity.  DNA strands could be yards long in a single cell.  Cell division was a complicated process requiring specific enzymes and a lot of energy, and fraught with the risk of error.

Earth species weren’t so different, really.  Only certain tissues continued to grow and divide in adult mammals.  Blood cells, connective tissue, skin and mucous membranes, the cells of those structures were expendable, and those that died were rapidly replaced.  The cells of most other structures did not divide and were replaced by scar tissue if destroyed.

She frowned to herself, thinking.  There were always exceptions, especially on Earth.  Earthly adult cells remained stable until assaulted by foreign chemicals or viruses capable of disrupting that stability.  Then the cells became unruly, cancerous, growing out of proportion to the rest of the body.  Iago IV had no viruses, no volcanoes gushing sulfurous gases, no chemical industries polluting the environment.  Iagans had no concept of the evolutionary pressures that Earthlings had been forced to survive.

Nettles was speaking.  “All of the higher species appear to have very complex structures.  In every tissue specimen we have looked at, there appear to be at least two or three cell types, based on nuclear weight.  In an individual specimen, these nuclear weights appear consistent in each tissue type, but differ from tissue to tissue, leading us to believe that the higher organisms are composed of colonies of cells that are synergistic.  Most of the lower forms, the sessiles, appear bicellular, with two cell types.

“We have not confirmed the exact genetic makeup of these cells, or whether most cells are haploid or diploid at this point, that is, have one or two sets of chromosomes per cell, but we are working on it.”

“What about the plants?” from a botanist near the front.

“We’ve only examined a few species, but they appear to be colonials as well.  If anything, they are even more complex than the animal species.  We have found as many as fifty cell types in some species.  The root systems are formed by a separate set of cell types, which can interact with almost any species of plant.  As in earth plants, it appears that multiple duplication of chromosomes within a nucleus is probable.  The cellular interactions among plant species are going to require years of study to understand.”

“How can this be?  What sort of immune system would tolerate this?  Didn’t Iagans listen to
Darwin?  Whatever happened to dog eat dog down there?”  The biologists were quite upset, Imelda noted ruefully.  Darwin would have been burned as a heretic had he been born on Iago.

Caldwell
interrupted.  “The animal types do primarily depend on the plant types for survival, so there have been evolutionary pressures.  The plants appear to have formed an extremely intricate communal colony with striking genetic diversity present.  No single cell type has the machinery for an independent existence.  Together, the total mass has formed an efficient chemosynthetic and photosynthetic system.  Within the plant world, we are looking at a marvelous symbiosis.  As for the animals, we simply do not understand their biology on Iago IV yet.”

#

Imelda walked into the room containing her workstation tiredly.  The other three workstations were filled and busy.  Before she could sit down, Post whirled to face her.

Imelda halted, surprised by his expression.  She had seen him angry before, but this was an expression of furor.

“What’s the matter Postman?” she asked warily.

“YOU!  YOU’RE the matter!”

Imelda’s eyes widened.  “Me?”

“What do you mean releasing my data without my permission?”

Imelda frowned.  “Without your permission?”

“Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about!  I hadn’t filed any official reports on the trouble I was having with cell cultures.  The only person that I mentioned it to was you!  You told
Caldwell without asking me first!   I told him I wasn’t ready but he accused me of delaying the project!”

“You should have filed it sooner.  The information turned out to be the key to solving a lot of problems we were having understanding the metabolism down there.”

“I wasn’t ready!”

Imelda felt herself losing patience.  “Why not?  The data was of major importance to the entire project.  Were you feeling greedy, or were you just too ignorant to realize the importance of your observations?”

Post’s face flushed.  “I hadn’t confirmed them!  I still had four other cell media that I wanted to inoculate, to see if the same growth pattern occurred!”

Imelda’s voice rose slightly.  “Postman, you idiot!  Cellular has been sitting on zero since groundbase started because they couldn’t get any cell cultures to grow at all!  Genetics couldn’t progress in doing their work because they were forced to analyze tiny and very precious specimens obtained on planet, and they couldn’t grow more cells to verify their results! Your peevish little possessiveness has put us months behind!  You made a shrewd observation!  We are all grateful you made it!  Be glad you didn’t get fired for not making it in front of anyone!”

Post stood gaping at her.  “If my observation was so shrewd, then why wasn’t I acknowledged in the report?” he almost roared.

“It is in the written copy.  You would know that if you had bothered to read it instead of mouthing off.”

He glared at her coldly a long minute, his jaw working.  “I’ll be getting credit, then?” 

She shrugged, just as coldly.  “Look at the byline. 
Caldwell is careful about things like that.  Your name is listed first.  Even if you don’t deserve it.”

His eyes shot razor blades.  “Then why didn’t someone tell me?”

“It makes a difference?”

“Yes!  My name is on that report and I didn’t know there was going to be a report until the conference!  I disagree with what was said!  If anyone had told me about this beforehand I would have told them to make changes!”

“Changes?” Imelda looked at Post in surprise.  So did Camille and Kellogg, who had been listening embarrassedly.  “From what I understand, Caldwell pulled the report straight out of your file.”

Post glared at her.  “I’ll send a revised report to
Caldwell,” he snarled tersely, then whirled and walked out. 

Imelda looked after him.  Her curiosity almost made her chase him down, but she instead continued unsteadily to her workstation.

She was almost relieved, in a way.  He did have original ideas, but she had thought him too mild to champion them.  This ought to be good.

#

The rain poured down, sheeting through the mist that shrouded the view.  The scene was reminiscent of Earth, in a strange, nightmarish way.  Life crowded the screen, ignoring the shooting droplets, braving the knots of concentrated wind energy.

A million tiny green algae
-like drops writhed in corners and folds of the almost solidified water’s edge.   Filamentous light-seeking forms reached tendrils towards the sky, constantly battered back, but just as constantly reaching again.  In some areas, the filaments had joined into a dense, impenetrable sheet that formed a barrier to the constant pelting.  Hiding within that barrier, tiny independent creatures crawled and probed, nibbling on the communal chlorophyll species that intertwined into knotted tendrils.

It was hard to discern which might be plant or which animal.  Imelda wasn’t sure that it truly mattered.  Life constantly sought energy in any form to sustain its wriggling and multiplication.  On Earth, photosynthesis had proved an efficient means of providing energy, and the species that used it had forsaken mobility as they had evolved more and more extensive roots to access the nurturing chemicals of the soil.  Here, the roots were stationary, but the chlorophyll tops were not, sliding from one root system to another in search of brighter light, more water, and better soil.    

Animals were all parasitic after a fashion, preying on lower forms, plants and each other, ingesting pre-stored energy to use as easily obtainable fuel for their increasingly rapid search for more fuel.  Humans were at the top of the food chain on Earth.  They could subsist only on the preformed nutrients of other creatures.   They were just beginning to understand the food chain on this planet.

The jelly
-like egg continued to roll and sway as the dark form within flopped.

“It still hasn’t hatched?”  Post joined her.  His voice was cold, she noted, surprised that he would speak to her at all.

“No.  I think the other egg is dead.  It hasn’t moved in a while and it’s cold now.  Infrared activity has ceased.”

Post grunted.  “That’s too bad.  It would have been nice to see it hatch.”

Imelda nodded thoughtfully, wondering that he cared at all.  “The worms haven’t eaten it yet.  Eggs must be the only animal form that gives them indigestion.”

Post snorted.  “True.  They’ve eaten everything else that hasn’t eaten them first.  Even that pathetic mistake that died.”  The empty bank stood in mute testimony to the deformed animal’s demise.  Post cleared his throat. “Any new eggs?”

“No.  None since we’ve been here.” 

“How is the scuzzhog doing?” 

She frowned.  Post was being deucedly friendly, although his voice still had an edge to it.  He must want something.

“The same as he did at a distance.  His mouth stays open and the worms crawl inside.  But he’s not alone.  There are two smaller scuzzhogs in this bog too, near the corners.  See the scanner?  It looks like the little ones do exactly the same thing as the big one.  A real fun bunch.”

Post grunted in disgust.  “A truly delightful existence.  Scuzzhogs are first on my list of things that I would rather not be reincarnated as.  By the way, I thought I saw a few smaller eggs near the edge of the bog.  Do you think they could be the source of the smaller feather dusters?”

Imelda suddenly understood.  So that was what he was getting at.  Post was supposed to be studying invertebrates.  Most of the successful arthropodians around this bog were about the same size as the smaller feather dusters.  If the eggs didn’t hatch feather dusters, they might hatch arthropodians.  Post was not above a little chicanery himself.  Of course, she didn’t mind chicanery if it coincided with her own motives.

“Anything’s possible.  Think we can roll this unit a little closer?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so.  Why?”  He hid his eagerness well, she noted appreciatively.