esoteric information into a computer and have it spit out a miracle cure for something that a million other scientists had tried to do and failed.
Still, there was the chance that his eyes might spot something the Vastalimi Healers had missed, if only because they didn’t look at things the way humans did.
But as he looked at the Holographic Impious Particle microscope’s scan, he didn’t see anything that pointed him in a direction. He had already viewed dozens of tissue samples, and if there was an unknown bug in them, he hadn’t spotted it.
The old Vastalimi, Luque, had given him the run of the lab, and while he got more than a few curious looks as he poked around, nobody had bothered him. Luque ran a tight ship, and any of the employees who wanted to cause trouble apparently didn’t last long. Just as well. He didn’t want to use that as-I-stand phrase if he didn’t have to.
Not as if Wink was averse to risks; he had danced with Death more than a few times, and while he didn’t tell people, some of them knew: He enjoyed it. But there was the dance and there was suicide, and he wasn’t suicidal. Fighting with Vastalimi might as well be that for most humans. Maybe Jo could keep up with one, all her augs. He couldn’t, and he knew it.
He looked at the scan again. A view into the depths of a brain cell, and each organelle was accounted for, there weren’t any anomalies not in the catalogue. Nothing missing, nothing that shouldn’t be there.
You could compare every bit of this or that against what it was supposed to look like in an ideal state and see how it stacked up. Some parts were perfect, others less so, but there weren’t any foreign invaders who didn’t belong—no tiny sharks swimming in the Cytoplasm Seas, no dragons dug into the periplasmic caves.
Surely, if something was too small for the HIP scope to detect, it would be too small to do what the illness was doing to the Vastalimi?
If it was an infective agent at all . . .
Wink rubbed at his eyes. If the Vastalimi researchers hadn’t seen it, he wasn’t apt to, either; they saw farther into the red and violet than humans by a considerable margin, and the problem wasn’t fresh eyes, human or otherwise.
No, they were missing something, there was a blind spot, and the nature of such things was that if you knew what it was, it wouldn’t be a blind spot . . .
He’d have to talk to Kay about it, but his feeling was that she was probably onto something when she said it felt artificial. The Vastalimi had lived on this planet for millions of years, and pretty much any pathogen that could have arisen naturally had, as far as Wink could tell. Sometimes you figured out what something
wasn’t
rather than what it
was
, and what was left was your answer.
And sometimes you didn’t find an answer at all.
_ _ _ _ _ _
“Got a visitor,” Gramps said. “Probably you want to see him.”
Cutter, bored with background reports he had put off reading and not unhappy to find another reason to put them off a while longer, said, “Send him in.”
“Best of the afternoon, Colonel, sah.”
“Singh? I didn’t expect to see you here.”
The young man, all of twenty or so, approached, back straight, to stand in front of Cutter’s desk.
“At ease, Singh, have a seat.”
He did so.
“So you’ve come to take me up on my offer.”
“Yes, sah. You do not seem surprised to see me.”
“Yes and no. I know you were loyal to the Rajah despite his, um . . . behavior. But I heard he died. So on the one hand, you could have stayed on Ananda and not had that complication any longer. Then again, with him gone, you would be free to work where you wish if your hitch was up.
“Long way from there to here.”
“And it took most of my savings to afford the trip.”
Cutter smiled. How great it must be to be young and enthusiastic enough to pack everything into a shipping trunk and space halfway across the galaxy, hoping there’d be a job when you
Still, there was the chance that his eyes might spot something the Vastalimi Healers had missed, if only because they didn’t look at things the way humans did.
But as he looked at the Holographic Impious Particle microscope’s scan, he didn’t see anything that pointed him in a direction. He had already viewed dozens of tissue samples, and if there was an unknown bug in them, he hadn’t spotted it.
The old Vastalimi, Luque, had given him the run of the lab, and while he got more than a few curious looks as he poked around, nobody had bothered him. Luque ran a tight ship, and any of the employees who wanted to cause trouble apparently didn’t last long. Just as well. He didn’t want to use that as-I-stand phrase if he didn’t have to.
Not as if Wink was averse to risks; he had danced with Death more than a few times, and while he didn’t tell people, some of them knew: He enjoyed it. But there was the dance and there was suicide, and he wasn’t suicidal. Fighting with Vastalimi might as well be that for most humans. Maybe Jo could keep up with one, all her augs. He couldn’t, and he knew it.
He looked at the scan again. A view into the depths of a brain cell, and each organelle was accounted for, there weren’t any anomalies not in the catalogue. Nothing missing, nothing that shouldn’t be there.
You could compare every bit of this or that against what it was supposed to look like in an ideal state and see how it stacked up. Some parts were perfect, others less so, but there weren’t any foreign invaders who didn’t belong—no tiny sharks swimming in the Cytoplasm Seas, no dragons dug into the periplasmic caves.
Surely, if something was too small for the HIP scope to detect, it would be too small to do what the illness was doing to the Vastalimi?
If it was an infective agent at all . . .
Wink rubbed at his eyes. If the Vastalimi researchers hadn’t seen it, he wasn’t apt to, either; they saw farther into the red and violet than humans by a considerable margin, and the problem wasn’t fresh eyes, human or otherwise.
No, they were missing something, there was a blind spot, and the nature of such things was that if you knew what it was, it wouldn’t be a blind spot . . .
He’d have to talk to Kay about it, but his feeling was that she was probably onto something when she said it felt artificial. The Vastalimi had lived on this planet for millions of years, and pretty much any pathogen that could have arisen naturally had, as far as Wink could tell. Sometimes you figured out what something
wasn’t
rather than what it
was
, and what was left was your answer.
And sometimes you didn’t find an answer at all.
_ _ _ _ _ _
“Got a visitor,” Gramps said. “Probably you want to see him.”
Cutter, bored with background reports he had put off reading and not unhappy to find another reason to put them off a while longer, said, “Send him in.”
“Best of the afternoon, Colonel, sah.”
“Singh? I didn’t expect to see you here.”
The young man, all of twenty or so, approached, back straight, to stand in front of Cutter’s desk.
“At ease, Singh, have a seat.”
He did so.
“So you’ve come to take me up on my offer.”
“Yes, sah. You do not seem surprised to see me.”
“Yes and no. I know you were loyal to the Rajah despite his, um . . . behavior. But I heard he died. So on the one hand, you could have stayed on Ananda and not had that complication any longer. Then again, with him gone, you would be free to work where you wish if your hitch was up.
“Long way from there to here.”
“And it took most of my savings to afford the trip.”
Cutter smiled. How great it must be to be young and enthusiastic enough to pack everything into a shipping trunk and space halfway across the galaxy, hoping there’d be a job when you
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