towards the Ngorongoro, attempted to unravel the Gordian knot of Chaga symbiotic ecology. South of the mountain, Moshi base moved across the great empty Lossogonoi Plateau and studied the climatic and environmental effects of an alien biosphere on East Africa, and East Africa’s adaptations to it. And Tsavo West crawled through the great game reserve from which it took its name toward the fragile Nairobi-Mombasa road and rail line and delved into cellular and molecular biology. It was there that the discovery was made, down among the atoms in the country of quantum uncertainty.
There was a bridge between terrestrial and Chaga-life. It was the chemistry of the carbon atom, but the Chaga was not built on the chains and lattices of earth-bound carbon forms. Its engineering was that of the sixty- atom sphere of the Buckminsterfullerene molecule; its organic chemistry a three-dimensional architecture of domes, arches, cantilevers, tunnels and latticed skeletons.
‘The molecules are immensely complicated, hundreds of atoms in length,’ Dr Shepard said, waving the red dot of his laser pointer across the screen where wire-frame spheres cannoned off each other and convoluted molecular intestines twined and wriggled.
I bet that is the only suit he has, Gaby McAslan thought.
‘Locked into hollow cylinders, they become essentially machines for processing atoms. Molecular factories. This is the mechanism by which the Chaga absorbs and transmutes terrestrial carbon – in vegetable form, mostly, but as you all know, it’s not averse to the odd juicy complex hydrocarbon or polymer. The fullerene worms break the chemical bonds of terrestrial organic components into the equivalent of short peptide chains – analogies tend toward the biological, for obvious reasons. We’re talking, in a sense, about a form of life on a smaller scale than the fundamental units of terrestrial biology; each of these smart molecules is the equivalent of a cell. The fullerene molecules pass the broken-down terrestrial molecules through their guts, for want of a better expression, in the process adding new atoms, realigning molecular bonds; building copies of themselves, imprinting them with information. In a sense, it’s a kind of alien DNA, processing basic amino-acids and inorganic compounds into the pseudo-proteins of Chaga biochemistry.
‘Essentially, the Chaga is one mother of a buckyball jungle.’
Gaby wrote that on the back of her hand. Dr Shepard sat down. The Mediterranean-looking woman stood up. She had a French accent. Gaby did not hear one word she spoke in it. She was watching the way Dr Shepard sipped his water and inspected his fingernails and doodled on his notepad and folded little scraps of paper into origami frogs and flapping birds. She watched him scan the faces in the auditorium. His Paul Newman blue eyes met hers for an instant and passed.
You don’t know me, but I know you, Gaby McAslan thought.
After the token Kenyan had said his few words, Dr Shepard asked if there were any questions. Gaby was first on her feet.
‘OK, at the back, red-haired woman with the interesting T-shirt.’
‘Gaby McAslan, SkyNet on-line.’ Ah, maybe you do know me now, or at least wonder whether you might know me, but you are not certain. ‘From what I understand of fullerenes, they’re the dominant molecular form of carbon in deep-space hydrocarbon clouds. Does this astronomical fact have any relation to what
If the face does not help you remember, will the voice, the accent? She did not know why it was so important for him to remember. But she wanted deeply to impress him.
‘As far back as the Kilimanjaro Event, speculative connections were being made between the Chaga and the Iapetus Occupation. It may have been a shock seeing the images that came back from
‘So the Chaga is not native to the Saturnian system?’ Gaby asked, beating a dozen raised hands by not having sat down while Dr Shepard answered her question.
‘Certainly not Iapetus. And we would very much doubt that it originated in or around the Hyperion Gap, either. If we’d an unlimited budget and our own HORUS orbiter, or even a spare SSTO, we’d very much like to send a probe for a sneaky look under Titan’s cloud-layer, not because it may have evolved there, but because it may have used it as a way-station on the way to Iapetus, and ultimately, Earth. There’s barroom speculation about Saturn; if not the planet itself, perhaps in the ring system. The planet pumps out a lot of energy, though personally I’m not convinced it’s enough to power up so complex and energy-heavy a chemistry. Off the record, my private theory is that it does not originate from our solar system.’
Journalists were on their feet, fingers raised. Gaby sneaked in a parting shot.
‘Could this have evolved naturally?’
‘Are you asking me are the Iapetus and Earth Chagas artefacts of an alien intelligence?’
Their eyes met across a crowded Kajiado cinema.
‘Are there aliens in spaceships with lots of windows in them?’
She made him smile. It was a major triumph. He was one of those men whose smiles so utterly transform their faces they seem like two people.
‘On the strength of the evidence to hand, I’d give a reluctant “no”. No UFOs landing on the White House lawn. Well, that kind of depends on where, and whether, the Chaga is going to stop. Have you heard of Von Neumann machines?’
‘Machines that move from planet to planet building copies of themselves.’
‘The Chaga may be a highly sophisticated Von Neumann machine. Starships the size of molecules. In a sense, what is a living cell but a Von Neumann machine programmed by its own DNA? And we said earlier that the Chaga “memes”, as we call them, can be thought of as living molecules. As to whether there is a guiding intelligence behind it – I’m blue-skying here – Von Neumann machines can easily outlive the civilization that produces them. The designers of the Chaga – if they exist at all – could have become extinct a million years ago. But is there any reason why our particular brand of behaviour and problem-solving should be the sole criterion of “intelligence”? Our intelligence may be so particular to us that we cannot recognize that something truly alien may be “intelligent”. We’re all thinking in terms of little men with big heads and glowing eyes. Anthropomorphic chauvinism. Perhaps the aliens are the Chaga, or have become the Chaga, over aeons of travel. Then again, as you said, the first fullerenes were deduced from the profiles of interstellar molecular clouds, so perhaps the Chaga, or, I should say, the Chaga-memes, the fullerene-machines, are a form of life that has evolved in interstellar space. But there may be another level of chauvinism: we assume that within any sufficiently complex system, there must be intelligence. That’s how God got invented, I suspect. The Chaga may just be dumb, fecund life, with no more intelligence than the lilies of the field, or a condomful of sperm.
‘Thank you for asking that. I enjoyed your question. OK, Jean-Marie Duclos.’
Gaby did not hear the French television journalist’s question, any of the questions that followed. She had what she wanted from Dr Shepard. After the press conference, when the others were filing out and picking up their hard-copy technical releases and blinking in the bright sunlight outside, she came cantering down the steps to the front.
‘Can I sound-bite you on “buckyball jungle”?’
‘If you put a little “TM” superscript after it,’ Dr Shepard said. ‘Or is it an “R” in a circle? You can sound-bite anything you like. I prefer fullerene machine.’
Gaby shrugged to say that it was not quite so aurally digestible. Dr Shepard hesitated as people do when they need to say something that will embarrass them if it is not right.
‘Your accent sounds familiar.’
‘Northern Ireland.’ She baited the hook. ‘You saved my ass once.’
He must work it out himself.
He worked it out himself.
‘The con gang. What was it?’
‘Persecuted students trying to escape to Mozambique. They’d got you with the Rwandan refugee one.’
