The Sowing (6 page)

“Eli? Not hungry?” I ask, through a mouthful of bread. “You okay?” Just like before, he starts, as if abruptly jerked away from a different world.

“Yeah, starving,” he says, but he still doesn’t touch the food.

“What’s up?” I demand.

“Just thinking. Did any of you get a weird feeling from Vale’s speech today?”

“Just reading between the lines here, but it sounds like he’s preparing to hunt us into oblivion. Is that what you’re talking about?” Soren asks sarcastically.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. But why and why now? Think about it. We’re not a real threat. We’ve never killed a Sector citizen. We’ve never bombed a seed bank or blown anything up. So what’s the real motivation for the Seed Bank Protection Project?”

We sit in silence, munching on our bread, thinking. He’s got a point. Even though it seems obvious from our perspective that we’re a threat to the Okarian Sector—we are, after all, trying to build a movement that will take down the OAC—we really haven’t done any serious harm. So why does it sound like Vale’s coming after us with guns blazing?

“What’s in a name?” Soren asks in his meandering, philosophical way, as though he’s talking to himself. Soren has three modes of existence: very angry, very sarcastic, and very chill. There’s really no in between.

“What does that even mean, Soren?” Jahnu demands, his dark face creasing up in curiosity.

“Just wondering if there’s anything in the title he gave his placement. The ‘Seed Bank Protection Project.’”

“My thought exactly,” Eli nods. “They’re going on the offense. That’s what his ‘We must protect our future from the mistakes of our past’ bullshit was all about. So why call it the ‘Seed Bank Protection Project’? That makes it sound defensive.”

We all ponder that for a few more minutes, and I sit in awe of Eli’s ability to quote Vale’s speech by the word. Then it hits me.

“You were listening to the speech again when we walked in on you in the comm center, weren’t you? You recorded it.”

“Smart girl,” he says, patting me on the head. “Yeah. It got me thinking. Listen up: I need to tell you something.”

Suddenly we’ve all forgotten about the food—which Eli still hasn’t touched.

“Three years ago, that day in the lab, when Professor Hawthorne and Tai were…” he pauses, swallows, and I know it’s all he can do to shove those memories back down into the deep. “I think there was something else going on. A few months before that, Hawthorne abruptly changed the focus of my research. He gave me a genome sequence and told me it was some form of DNA that didn’t map to any organismal chromosome, or even to any biological traits. Basically,” he says, translating for my benefit, since I really, really do not understand science the way my friends do, “the DNA didn’t mean anything from a biological standpoint and could never have existed in a living organism. Hawthorne said he wanted me to help him crack the code and figure out what the DNA represented.

“But here’s the key: he told me I couldn’t tell anyone about it, that it was top secret, because—”

“Wait,” Soren interrupts. “Where did he get the DNA in the first place?”

“I don’t know. When I asked him, he said he was studying some old frozen cyanobacteria samples he found in one of the lab’s storage units, but now I’m not so sure. Anyway, he said he looked at their chromosomes and realized they didn’t look anything like cyanobacteria chromosomes. In fact, they were perfectly ordered and well-structured. The crazy thing is, they looked like sunflowers.”

“What?” I sputter. “What do you mean, ‘they looked like sunflowers’?”

“The chromosomes had been somehow manufactured and arranged so that the strings of DNA took on the pattern of a sketch of a sunflower, when viewed in their entirety. We’d never seen anything like it. Some chromosomes wind themselves up into intricate supercoiled structures, like when you twist and keep twisting a rope, although most just look like tangled knots of spaghetti. This one, though, was so perfect, so elegant. It might as well have been a 3D model of a sunflower. When Hawthorne studied them, he realized every single cell contained non-functioning DNA—even though those cells could never have existed as living organisms with that DNA.”

“What does that mean?” I demand.

“It means that someone removed the bacteria’s real DNA and inserted artificially coded DNA,” Eli says. I can always count on him to put scientific information in easy little packages for me. “Then they froze the cyanobacteria, ensuring that the DNA would be perfectly stored.”

“And perfectly hidden,” Soren breathes.

“Every cell had the same DNA. Hundreds of copies of this non-functioning genome in hundreds of cyanobacteria—they were clones.”

“But why—and who?” Jahnu asks. “Why would someone do that? What was in that DNA that was so important to hide and preserve?”

“I don’t know. That’s what Hawthorne wanted me to help him figure out.”

“Get back to the point,” Kenzie says. “What does this have to do with … with the massacre?”

Eli’s brow furrows, and he peers into the distance for a moment, as if trying to see the molecules vibrating in the air itself. “I don’t know.” He turns back to Kenzie. “Maybe nothing, but a couple of weeks before he died, Hawthorne told me he’d made a breakthrough. That’s when he got all excited about using synthesized DNA as a method of data storage. We were scheduled to meet in his lab after class the day of the, you know. But, and this is key: he also told me he was going to tell Corine Orleán about it.”

“Did he tell her?” My parents never bought the story about the terrorist attack by an Outsider, and ever since the sham investigation and Sector cover-up, they’ve been convinced Corine was involved somehow. But there was never any way to prove it.

“If he did, he never told me. But right before the attacker shot himself, he said something about Corine.” I’ve heard this part of the story before, but from the surprised looks on the others’ faces, I can tell I’m the only one who has.

Eli pauses, and I fight the urge to tell him to go on. He has to tell the story on his terms. After a moment, he turns and looks at me.

“He said: ‘A word to the wise: never get on Madam Orleán’s bad side.’”

The silence is so thick it almost pulsates with every breath we take. The wind rustles through the tall grasses around us and flies buzz near my ear. The smell of autumn leaves and chill air presses in around me.

“Shit,” Jahnu whispers.

“Do you think Corine ordered the attack?” Kenzie asks in a hushed voice.

“I’ve wondered about that every day since,” Eli replies.

“Okay, let me get this straight. You’re thinking my sister was murdered because of this DNA and that this same DNA may be what Vale’s supposed Seed Bank Protection Project is all about.” If this is why Tai died, could it also be the key to avenging her death?

“I don’t know, Remy, but something in my gut tells me it’s all related.”

“Why is it so important? What is it?”

“That’s the thing. I still have no idea what’s on it. I’ve gone back and looked at the code again and again—”

“Wait,” Soren interrupts again. “Didn’t you say this was top secret? How have you looked at it again since then?”

“I downloaded it onto my computer, genius,” Eli scoffs. “You think I let Hawthorne dictate my work hours? Nine to five, in the lab with him looking over my shoulder? No way. I worked when I felt like it. So I copied it to my plasma. When I fled with the Alexanders, I copied the sequence onto a spare drive. I can reconstruct the whole sequence for you on Remy’s new plasma.”

As usual when Eli’s announcing his law-breaking habits, I am immensely proud to call him my surrogate older brother.

“Do you think she knows?” Jahnu asks. “Do you think Corine suspects you still have this information? Maybe that’s what Vale’s ‘Seed Bank Protection Project’ is all about. It’s not the Resistance they care about—it’s you.”

Eli shrugs in response. “It’s been three years. Why now?” he says warily. “None of it really makes sense, but….”

“One thing’s for sure, though,” I say, feeling as though my life has been given singular purpose. I cut a huge chunk of cheese for myself, suddenly starving again. “We need to find out what’s in that DNA.”

5 - VALE

Fall 48, Sector Annum 105, 12h28
Gregorian Calendar: November 7

Waking up at 06h30 hours this morning was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a long time. I met General Aulion at the training center of the Sector Defense Forces Complex. He wasted no time setting me on a two-hour daily workout routine, making it explicitly clear to me that if I failed to complete it every single day, I would be demoted from my command position. After struggling through the ten-kilometer run, the sprints, and the weights—with him watching my every step—he gave me ten minutes to shower and clean up. Then he walked me to the tactical room.

“Lieutenant Orleán,” he growled, “if you’re not in this room every Monday through Friday at 0915 hours
sharp
, I’ll skin you alive.”

I’m thrilled we got off to such a great start.

By the time our three-hour tactical briefing was over, I was ready to crawl back into bed for the rest of the week. The general and I went over every detail of the current security systems in place to defend our seed banks, with a thorough analysis of how the Resistance had managed to break in to three of them. We reviewed aerial photographs that Sector drones had taken of possible Resistance base sites. We talked about their renewable energy technology and their communications systems. And then at the end of it all, Aulion announced that my homework for the day was to prepare a detailed profile of each known member of the Resistance leadership. Due tomorrow morning at 0915 hours.
Sharp
.

“Sir?” A voice jolts me back from my thoughts. “This is the entrance to your new office.”

“Ah. Yes. Thank you, Chan-Yu,” I respond, returning to the present. I step up to the metal box mounted on the wall and insert my arm, pressing my palm against the fingerprint scanner inside. A red light begins flashing above the door to my office. I feel the tiniest pinch on the back of my hand as a microscopic needle penetrates my skin, pulling off just a few cells for DNA analysis. As my palm print and heat signature is read, the red light turns to yellow. After a few seconds, the light turns green, and a robotic voice says, “Thank you for confirming your identity, Valerian Orleán.” The door clicks open.

As I step inside, I can’t help but smile.  I had Chan-Yu make sure my new office was decorated for comfort. He’s done an excellent job. My heels click across the wide planked wood floor until I step onto the thick carpet, handwoven with the Orleán family crest. My mother’s graduation gift. I sink down into my new leather chair and resist the temptation to stick my legs out and spin around. Instead, opting for the more mature path, I run my fingers across the desk and admire the polished wood.

“How do you like it, sir?” Chan-Yu asks from the doorway, his expression stoic. “Does it meet your expectations?”

“Meets and exceeds,” I say. “Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, that will be all.”

And with that, Chan-Yu is gone, and I stand and trace my fingers over the bindings of the books filling the floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the room. Bookshelves. An indulgence, a relic of the past. There are so few printed books left what with all the libraries and personal collections burned during the Religious Wars and then whatever survived just left to rot or turn to dust during the Famine Years. And, of course, we don’t print our own now. Paper is a thing of the past. We write on our plasma tablets, or keep audio notes, or store everything in image files.

I notice a small box sitting on the credenza behind my desk. On the box is a printed note in what looks like my father’s handwriting.

Congratulations – P.S.O.

My father, Philip Sebastian Orleán. I open the box and gasp. How many times have I asked if I’d ever get a Communications Link, a C-Link, of my own?

“Of course, I think you’re responsible enough for one,” Dad would say, “but the Sector’s Board of Governors has to approve it. I’m the chancellor, Vale, not a dictator.” I carefully peel it from its padded case and hold it up to the light. It’s the color of my skin, wafer thin and nearly transparent. I hold it between my fingers, bending it ever so slightly. I can see the circuits that look like nothing more than blood-filled capillaries, and the clear filaments that are both microphone and transmitter. It weighs nothing, yet this tiny device, invisible once inserted in the ear, is the true indicator of my new status in the Sector—everything else pales in comparison. This makes up for all the pain Aulion put me through this morning.

There are only ten or twelve of these little devices in the world, and now three of them are owned by members of my family. I turn it over in my hand. The color matches perfectly, and when I let it rest in my palm, it looks like nothing more than a flap of skin. And yet, this is the tool that will allow me access to all the databases in the Sector. Every bit of information that was ever compiled and that survived the wars—every book, map, academic paper, government memo, blueprint, shipping manifest, crop report, seed genome, and even databases a few unscrupulous travelers have sold us from the remnants of the Russian European Federation, the Chinese Collective, and the South American Alliance—all of it is available through this device. All the knowledge I could ever desire is now at my fingertips.

I sit back down and press the earpiece firmly into place. The skin of each C-Link is imprinted with a scanned topological map of the ear canal of the individual for whom the device was created. My father probably had my ear scanned during my graduation physical. The malleable flap of rubber is designed to mold itself to the wearer’s ear when first inserted and will not engage unless the ear matches the map.

 “Valerian Orleán, welcome to the Okarian Sector’s Database Library.”

The voice is female, soft, low—and not just a little sexy. I smile and look around the room as if someone could be watching.