Bahia
Jarius familiarly grips the senior Senator, the woman, by her elbow and steers her and her comrades toward the elevator. Kerry trails the pack.
“We have marvels aplenty to show you, Senator Ferryway” Jarius trumpets. “Exciting parabiological developments that will reward taxpayer investment a thousandfold.”
Ferryway looks around suspiciously, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “We’re particularly interested in Project Benthos.”
Jarius positively glows. “Some astounding implications there. But not for general release to the public, of course.”
“Of course.”
Kerry scrolls up a directory of files on her PDA. There is no entry for any Project Benthos.
With Jarius frequently turning to Kerry for support, the next few hours are filled with demonstrations, interviews with staff scientists, computer simulations, performances by surly lab animals, soporific slide shows, lectures, and a lunch break in the company cafeteria. Over coffee, the Senators exhibit a suitable factoid-generated numbness, save for Ferryway, who bores in on her first concern.
“You’ve saved Project Benthos until last, I see.”
“Quite true, Senator. The last shall be first. Ha, ha, if I may be so religiously cryptic! Shall we go?”
One wing of the tenth floor is sealed off, entry determined by a hand-scanner. Before Jarius can trigger their entrance, Senator Ferryway casts a cold eye on Kerry. “Is your secretary cleared for this?”
In the fervency of his answer, Jarius seems almost more intent on impressing Kerry than on reassuring the Senator. “Why, of course she is. In fact, she has complete access to this wing. Ms. Hackett, if you would—”
Jarius is gesturing to the security device. Haltingly, Kerry mates her hand to the surface of a detector she has never before utilized.
Solenoids in the door retract with solid thunks.
Jarius bows the Senators in first. As they enter the Project Benthos area, he bestows behind their backs a sly smile on bewildered Kerry.
“I’ll explain later, my dear,” Jarius whispers to her.
Beyond the thick steel door, a sprinkling of technicians and scientists occupy themselves at intricate workstations resembling individualized factories, or perhaps the stacked reef habitats of reclusive sea-creatures. Kerry recognizes large-scale titration devices, Helios gene-guns, cyrogenic Dewars, ultrasonic autoclaves, DNA-sequencers and protein-linkers, but a host of more obscure machinery fails to correspond to any label she possesses. The skilled workers look up briefly, acknowledging the visitors, then return to their alchemical labors, save for one man, a burly dark-haired fellow with the mien of a shambling circus bear. He advances toward Jarius with a tentative smile.
“Dr. Teague, our friends would like to view the fruits of your ingenious labors.”
Teague radiates authentic pleasure, plainly relishing this unwonted attention from important laypeople. “Ah, you’ve come to see the benthic. Very good, very good. Follow me.”
On the far side of the lab, an interior window grants a view into a small sealed room. A pair of remote-manipulator gloves extrude into the airtight enclosure. A joystick and several simple buttons flank the glove cuffs on the humans’ side of the partition. Stickers depicting the familiar wheel-like labrys of the biohazard trefoil are pasted at several points.
Teague positions himself at the controls, quickly jabs two buttons and wambles the joystick. Beyond the window, a robot trolley begins to move toward a rising hatch similar to a dumbwaiter door.
“The benthic,” explains Teague, “is a literally unique creature, the only entity composed of one hundred percent realtime totipotent cells. It lives in a scrupulously controlled environment that replicates many human physiological parameters. We can decant it into its observation container for only a short time.”
Something very like a small lidded aquarium studded with monitoring devices is sliding out of the hatch on a metal tongue and thence onto the trolley. Teague next maneuvers the trolley with its cargo before the window. The contents of the liquid-filled observation vessel become apparent.
Velvet golden-magenta convolutions, a welter of amorphous limbs, rugosely flocked, writhe with fluid grace, alternately shyly hiding and boldly revealing finer hairlike, hooklike or papillary structures. Coiling and uncoiling with languid strength, teasingly half-illuminating more recondite assemblages, casting fairy-delicate pseudopods and tendrils out only to reel them in, the strange asymmetrical uncentered creature conceals its true form in its extravagant display, a dancer clad with diaphanous yet impenetrable veils. The benthic seems to mass only as much as a housecat, but judging by its variable sinuousity, might very well be capable of spreading and flattening to cover the floor of a good-sized room.
