thin, stiff sheets and vase shapes like mutant funeral-flowers in others. The technician who had sequenced its pseudoDNA told Sri that it was a fast-growing variant of a common strain that absorbed sunlight and generated an electrical charge.
‘Something like point six watts over its entire surface. Not very much, but enough to supplement the battery the girl was using to run her equipment. And of course it was still growing. In another year it would have covered most of the shuttle,’ the technician said.
‘Using carbon and other material from the shuttle’s hull.’
‘Yes, ma’am. But its feeding hyphae don’t penetrate very far, so it would not have damaged the integrity of the ship.’
‘She planned to stay asleep for a long time,’ Sri said.
‘We believe that she could have survived for at least ten years,’ the technician said.
‘The change in the shuttle’s delta vee when it was retrieved started the process of revival.’
‘Yes, ma’am. A simple tilt trigger. Fortunately, she was found before she woke up.’
‘She hid herself carefully. She didn’t stay inside the ship. So she must have realised that the ship might have been retrieved by her enemies rather than by her friends,’ Sri said.
She was trying to imagine the foresight and calm with which the girl and the other passengers on the shuttle had made arrangements for her long-term survival. It was impressive. So was the self-sacrifice of the other passengers, all of them members of Avernus’s entourage, all found dead and frozen aboard the shuttle. She examined the pumps and filters and yeast culture that had kept Yuli alive, then had a long and interesting discussion with the crew who were analysing her genome and proteome.
It seemed that Yuli was Avernus’s biological daughter, not a clone. Also, she possessed a number of intriguing and novel cuts in the genes that controlled development of her brain and nervous system. Her hippocampus was larger than average; the synaptic connections in her reticular formation, her visual cortex, and her neocortex, especially in Wernicke’s area, which controlled language processing and speech, were extremely rich; there were subtle alterations to the myelin that sheathed the axons of her motor and sensory nerves. In short, her nerve action potential speeds were ramped up, and her reflexes and her various levels of information-processing and decision-making were faster than those of ordinary humans. There were other cuts, too. Some were common to most Outers - physiological adaptations to low gravity, alterations to her retinas so that she could see more acutely in low levels of light, and so on - but there were also modifications to the structure of her muscle fibres, mitochondrial ATP production and storage, and the oxygen-carrying capacity of her haemoglobin. And there were extensive tweaks to her metabolism, too. She could synthesise essential amino acids, for instance. Sri discussed everything with the crew, suggested two different methods for determining the girl’s true age, and wrote up a summary for Arvam Peixoto.
She didn’t tell him about the test she’d performed. A simple cross-match of the girl’s DNA against the sample she’d brought from Titan, proving that Yuli was the child of Avernus and Gunter Lasky. If the old pirate hadn’t been lying about his relationship with Avernus, Sri thought, if he didn’t know that he was the father of the gene wizard’s daughter, she might be able to find a use for that bit of information. And if the girl didn’t know who her father was, it might be possible to use it as a bargaining point, or to gain her trust.
Sri was granted a meeting with Arvam Peixoto the day after he returned to the garden habitat. They began by talking about Berry. Arvam shrugged off Sri’s complaints about the boy being allowed to fly, saying that it was perfectly safe, that he should be allowed to take a few small risks.
‘I have three sons of my own,’ he
‘Something like point six watts over its entire surface. Not very much, but enough to supplement the battery the girl was using to run her equipment. And of course it was still growing. In another year it would have covered most of the shuttle,’ the technician said.
‘Using carbon and other material from the shuttle’s hull.’
‘Yes, ma’am. But its feeding hyphae don’t penetrate very far, so it would not have damaged the integrity of the ship.’
‘She planned to stay asleep for a long time,’ Sri said.
‘We believe that she could have survived for at least ten years,’ the technician said.
‘The change in the shuttle’s delta vee when it was retrieved started the process of revival.’
‘Yes, ma’am. A simple tilt trigger. Fortunately, she was found before she woke up.’
‘She hid herself carefully. She didn’t stay inside the ship. So she must have realised that the ship might have been retrieved by her enemies rather than by her friends,’ Sri said.
She was trying to imagine the foresight and calm with which the girl and the other passengers on the shuttle had made arrangements for her long-term survival. It was impressive. So was the self-sacrifice of the other passengers, all of them members of Avernus’s entourage, all found dead and frozen aboard the shuttle. She examined the pumps and filters and yeast culture that had kept Yuli alive, then had a long and interesting discussion with the crew who were analysing her genome and proteome.
It seemed that Yuli was Avernus’s biological daughter, not a clone. Also, she possessed a number of intriguing and novel cuts in the genes that controlled development of her brain and nervous system. Her hippocampus was larger than average; the synaptic connections in her reticular formation, her visual cortex, and her neocortex, especially in Wernicke’s area, which controlled language processing and speech, were extremely rich; there were subtle alterations to the myelin that sheathed the axons of her motor and sensory nerves. In short, her nerve action potential speeds were ramped up, and her reflexes and her various levels of information-processing and decision-making were faster than those of ordinary humans. There were other cuts, too. Some were common to most Outers - physiological adaptations to low gravity, alterations to her retinas so that she could see more acutely in low levels of light, and so on - but there were also modifications to the structure of her muscle fibres, mitochondrial ATP production and storage, and the oxygen-carrying capacity of her haemoglobin. And there were extensive tweaks to her metabolism, too. She could synthesise essential amino acids, for instance. Sri discussed everything with the crew, suggested two different methods for determining the girl’s true age, and wrote up a summary for Arvam Peixoto.
She didn’t tell him about the test she’d performed. A simple cross-match of the girl’s DNA against the sample she’d brought from Titan, proving that Yuli was the child of Avernus and Gunter Lasky. If the old pirate hadn’t been lying about his relationship with Avernus, Sri thought, if he didn’t know that he was the father of the gene wizard’s daughter, she might be able to find a use for that bit of information. And if the girl didn’t know who her father was, it might be possible to use it as a bargaining point, or to gain her trust.
Sri was granted a meeting with Arvam Peixoto the day after he returned to the garden habitat. They began by talking about Berry. Arvam shrugged off Sri’s complaints about the boy being allowed to fly, saying that it was perfectly safe, that he should be allowed to take a few small risks.
‘I have three sons of my own,’ he
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