Lifeline

Chapter 7

AGUINALDO—Day 8

Pliant green strands, gelatinous and damp.…

Luis Sandovaal ran his fingers through the fresh wall-kelp, allowing himself a broad grin since no one else was around. The solarium alcove looked like a lush, primeval forest. Thick fronds dripped from the walls and window plates.

A month ago, ten days ago, his kelp had been nothing more than animal feed. Now the Aguinaldo’s survival depended on it. President Magsaysay had told him to find a way to get wall-kelp to Orbitech 1 and to Clavius Base as well, perhaps even to the Soviet Kibalchich station at L-5. It was just like Magsaysay to worry about other people in trouble before he got himself out of the same mess.

The odor of sewage filled the air. Hidden vats circulated the Aguinaldo’s untreated wastes for absorption by the kelp nexus. Harsh light from the viewing ports glared into the chamber, washing over the wall-kelp appendages.

Under these ideal conditions, with all the nutrients and sunlight it could handle, the genetically enhanced kelp grew fast enough to be harvested daily. It was food—unappealing to the colonists, perhaps, but it would see them through. They could treat it, remove all taste, then add their own cayenne and soy and other chemical seasonings. If you were starving, who cared about seasonings anyway?

The other colonies were in much worse shape than the Aguinaldo, which the Filipinos had always intended to make into a viable home. The international Clavius Base, the American Orbitech 1, and the Soviet Kibalchich—they had been caught with their pants down. They had no contingency plans for disasters. Oh, certainly they had backup launch systems on Earth, agreements with other countries, reciprocal treaties with non-spacefaring nations, and even scores of shuttles—but none of that mattered now that Earth’s industrial capability had been removed. Even if some industry still functioned, the survivors would use it to rebuild things they desperately needed—not to send supplies to stranded space colonies.

American and Soviet technologies far outstripped what the Filipinos had available to them. With all that skill and knowledge at hand, the superpowers had more than enough ability to survive—but, Sandovaal thought, they seemed to have the wrong mind-set.

The superpowers relied too heavily on high technology—machines—when the key was biotechnology, genetic engineering. Living organisms were more sophisticated and adaptable than anything humans would ever build. The success of Sandovaal’s wall-kelp would put the Filipinos in the forefront of all future genetic research. He knew it. Especially now.

But how to get kelp nodules to the other colonies? The Aguinaldo didn’t have the capability for powered spaceflight, or a facility, or resources to create fuel. All of the stations were effectively stranded on desert islands—like living on the Philippine Islands before the age of boats. Sandovaal was the Aguinaldo’s chief scientist. He was supposed to come up with ideas.

He flared his nostrils, wondering how much responsibility one person could shoulder. It seemed the more he did, the more they expected of him.

But then he thought of the others the Council could turn to. Dobo Daeng? Sandovaal snorted. Dobo was a good assistant, a crackerjack technician, but he had no initiative to head up a research team. Dobo followed orders and did things right, but he had no imagination. Tough times demanded a special type of person—someone who could do what needed to be done. Someone like Luis Sandovaal.

He stood in the alcove for some minutes, lovingly rolling the meter-long strands of wall-kelp with his fingertips. He thought he could sense the wall-kelp growing, hear it moving like bamboo, but a thousand times faster.

Sandovaal brought the strand close to his lips and took a nibble. This substance would etch his name in Filipino history forever, right alongside General Aguinaldo, General MacArthur, and the first President Magsaysay.

Sandovaal winced at the taste.

He dropped the strand and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Conceptually, he realized the raw kelp material was edible, but his mouth rebelled at the acrid, unprocessed taste.

Even he admitted that things would have to be very grim before people worshiped that as manna from heaven.

Trial and error.

For months their research had followed a dogged routine. Sandovaal’s team, including Ramis’s parents, Agpalo and Panay Barrera, and Dobo Daeng, clustered in the laboratory units. Using chlorella algae as a genetic base material, combined with two different species of kelp, Sandovaal tried to enhance the salient features of a good food substitute—that it be fast growing, high in protein, and tailored for the Aguinaldo’s environment. Sandovaal insisted that the plant be self-sufficient, not tied to the soil by any root system.

After running a series of converging molecular-dynamic calculations, and dozens of trials, the transgenetic algae/kelp survived and increased its mass. Dobo, in a rush of accidental inspiration, suggested they could grow the plant over the Aguinaldo’s walls. The idea excited Sandovaal. He grabbed the other man’s round face and patted him like a puppy.

The wall-kelp proved to be amazingly versatile—to Sandovaal’s surprise as much as anyone else’s. It could cling to any freestanding object; a few unsupported spherical nodules drifted in the zero-G core. The fronds of wall-kelp advanced like a green wave over barren sections of the internal hull, producing oxygen and a digestible bio-mass.

Sandovaal decided he had discovered the panacea that would give the Aguinaldo independence from the Americans and their supply shuttles.

Decades before, his grandmother had worked in the rice paddies on the Philippines, tilling the soil and carrying “honey buckets” of human waste to spread as fertilizer. She splashed through the brown water, sweating in the humidity, her hands raw from the rice shoots. Sandovaal remembered seeing a tractor rusting at one end of the rice paddy, but otherwise he might have been imagining a scene from two hundred years ago.

By way of support for the new Filipino government established after World War II, the Americans had shipped in thousands of tons of farm equipment: tractors, harvesters, silos—equipment that should have elevated the Philippines to a true second-world country. The Islands had all the resources; the Filipinos had only to learn to use the new equipment.

But once the tractors ran out of gas or oil, or ground to a halt because of mechanical failures, the Filipinos found it easier just to let them stand in the fields and rust than to fix them.

Sandovaal had heard their excuse: it was Western equipment, built and designed to be run by Western hands.

Sandovaal snorted at the blindness of his own people, their stupidity. Survival was more important than misplaced pride. They should use the tools, the techniques, the discoveries already available. He himself had not felt the need to reproduce all the pioneering genetics experiments Gregor Mendel had performed in his monastery garden. That would be foolish, and Sandovaal had no patience with fools.

The same ingrown resistance to change made the Aguinaldo colonists reluctant to accept his wall-kelp as food. They turned up their noses at its taste, though the kelp was nutritionally sound. Sandovaal considered it a direct insult from his own people. But at least they used it as animal feed.

One day, after he had been on the Aguinaldo for two years, Sandovaal looked up as daylight streamed into the laboratory from the open door. President Magsaysay stood outside, silhouetted. His bare feet contrasted with the formal barong he wore, but fit his image well.

Sandovaal motioned him inside and indicated the small culture tanks of new wall-kelp strains. The laboratory room carried a spoiled smell from the raw nutrients. He began to jabber about his progress, knowing how important it would be for the Council to learn, but Magsaysay seemed uninterested in the conversation. It occurred to Sandovaal that the dato’s eyes were misty and troubled.

Magsaysay stared at his long fingernails, looking very tired. He rubbed his temples, avoiding Sandovaal’s gaze. “Luis, that is not the reason I am here.”

“I suspected as much.”

Magsaysay held out his hands, but said nothing. Sandovaal watched him, growing impatient. “Well, what is it?”

“Agpalo and Panay Barrera were your assistants, correct?” His voice trailed off.

Sandovaal frowned. “Yes. I hired them out of the Baguio barrio, back on the Islands. They were always trying to get ahead. Moonlighting, in fact—running a Sari-Sari store when I found them. They were much too bright for that. Are they giving you trouble?”

Magsaysay set his mouth. “They were killed this morning.”

“What?” Sandovaal sat and slumped back in his chair. His face fell slack. “But they were here not more than a few hours ago—”

“They were almost home when—”

“When what? What do you mean?”

“Some youngsters brought a fiberglass plate to the core. They tried to go skimming around the Sibuyan Sea, ride against the rotation. They lost control of the plate—”

Sandovaal sat up straight. “Idiots! If they flew into the rim—” he thought for a moment, calculating. “Why, they could impact at fifty kilometers an hour.”

“We found out,” Magsaysay said. “The children were unharmed. But the fiberglass plate flew into one of the walkways. The Barreras … I have already talked to their son, Ramis—the one who is here on Aguinaldo.”

Sandovaal looked up at him, feeling oddly quiet inside. “Why have you not done anything before this?”

“Luis, how are we going to stop children from sneaking out and playing in the core?”

“Toss them out the airlock if they get caught. That would stop the little terrors.”

“We do not have that kind of government, Luis.”

Sandovaal hit his hand with his fist. “It should never have happened. Panay and Agpalo did good work.” He stopped. “What will you do with their boy, uh—”

“Ramis. This is his home. He will stay with me.” Sandovaal lifted an eyebrow at the dato. President Magsaysay? he thought. With a boy to take care of? But establishing their colony as more than an experimental outpost was very dear to Magsaysay’s heart.

“I have not lived with anyone since Nada died. But I have plenty of room—and plenty of time, for that matter. In a country as small as the Aguinaldo, even the president is not kept too busy. Ramis has a brother back on Earth, but he may be better off staying here.” Magsaysay shrugged. “Besides, I feel responsible for what happened.”

Sandovaal still grumbled to himself. “Those idiots should have known better. Humans are supposed to be an intelligent species, remember?”

Magsaysay looked at the floor. “Luis, you cannot convince children what is good for them. You must have precautions and enough safety features to stop accidents. Perhaps we will have to set up a strict patrol, like policemen. No, like lifeguards.”

Sandovaal paced back to his desk, pondering. “They are children. They need sheepdogs, not lifeguards.” The laboratory seemed silent to him; the vat of maturing wall-kelp emitted a putrid smell.

Magsaysay stood up, brushing the palms of his hands over his barong. “I just needed someone to talk to, Luis. But I should be alone now. Or maybe I should be with Ramis. I will let you get back to your work.”

Sandovaal nodded distractedly and walked the dato to the door. But long after Magsaysay’s electric cart had trundled uphill along the curving rim, Sandovaal remained lost in thought, staring out at the enclosed world around him.

It was, after all, time to begin the new phase of trans-genetic research to follow up on his brilliant success of the wall-kelp. Take it one step farther. Like that sail-creature debacle he had pushed.

Sheepdogs.…