Free Behemoth by Peter Watts Page B

asks innocently.
    â€œLenie’s l—”
    â€œBeyond Lenie’s leg.”
    Dead air in the room.
    â€œYou’ve analyzed the samples by now,” Lubin remarks.
    â€œNot comprehensively. The tests are fast, not instantaneous.”
    â€œAnd? Anything?”
    â€œ If you were infected, Mr. Lubin, it only happened a few hours ago. That’s hardly enough time for an infection to reach detectable levels in the bloodstream.”
    â€œThat’s a no, then.” Lubin considers. “What about our ’skins? Surely you would have found something on the diveskin swabs.”
    Seger doesn’t answer.
    â€œSo they protected us,” Lubin surmises. “This time.”
    â€œAs I said, we haven’t finished—”
    â€œI understood that β ehemoth couldn’t reach us down here,” he remarks.
    Seger doesn’t answer that either, at first.
    â€œSo did I,” she says finally.
    Clarke takes a half-hop toward the airlock. Lubin offers an arm.
    â€œWe’re coming over,” he says.
    *   *   *
    Half a dozen modelers cluster around workstations at the far end of the comm cave, running sims, tweaking parameters in the hope that their virtual world might assume some relevance to the real one. Patricia Rowan leans over their shoulders, studying something at one board; Jerenice Seger labors alone at another. She turns and catches sight of the approaching rifters, raises her voice just slightly in an alarm call disguised as a greeting: “Ken. Lenie.”
    The others turn. A couple of the less-experienced back away a step or two.
    Rowan recovers first, her quicksilver eyes unreadable: “You should spare that leg, Lenie. Here.” She grabs an unused chair from a nearby station and rolls it over. Clarke sinks gratefully into it.
    Nobody makes a fuss. The assembled corpses know how to follow a lead, even though some of them don’t seem too happy about it.
    â€œJerry says you’ve dodged the bullet,” Rowan continues.
    â€œAs far as we know,” Seger adds. “For now.”
    â€œWhich implies a bullet to dodge,” Lubin says.
    Seger looks at Rowan. Rowan looks at Lubin. The number crunchers don’t look anywhere in particular.
    Finally, Seger shrugs. “D-cysteine and d-cystine, positive. Pyranosal RNA, positive. No phospholipids, no DNA. Intracellular ATP off the scale. Not to mention you can do an SEM of the infected cells and just see the little fellows floating around in there.” She takes a deep breath. “If it’s not β ehemoth, it’s β ehemoth’s evil twin brother.”
    â€œShit,” says one of the modelers. “Not again .”
    It takes Clarke a moment to realize that he’s not reacting to Seger’s words, but to something on the workstation screen. She leans forward, catches sight of the display through the copse of personnel: a volumetric model of the Atlantic basin. Luminous contrails wind through its depths like many-headed snakes, bifurcating and converging over continental shelves and mountain ranges. Currents and gyres and deep-water circulation iconized in shades of green and red: the ocean’s own rivers. And superimposed over the entire display, a churlish summary:
    FAILURE TO CONVERGE. CONFIDENCE LIMITS EXCEEDED.
    FURTHER PREDICTIONS UNRELIABLE.
    â€œBring down the Labrador Current a bit more,” one of the modelers suggests.
    â€œAny more and it’ll shut down completely,” another one says.
    â€œSo how do you know that isn’t exactly what happened?”
    â€œWhen the Gulf Stream—”
    â€œJust try it, will you?”
    The Atlantic clears and resets.
    Rowan turns from her troops and fixes Seger. “Suppose they can’t figure it out?”
    â€œMaybe it was down here all along. Maybe we just missed it.” Seger shakes her head, as if skeptical of her own suggestion. “We were in something of a