ii. Maria

She actually had a goodly amount of hair, though it was so fair it was barely visible. Her eyes were an incredible blue even then. Her smile was happy but completely toothless. She was two days old, and his first grandchild. Gerald fell completely, utterly in love with this tiny creature. He would have given the world if necessary to see her smile again. Fortunately, he didn't have to. She seemed as fascinated by him as he was by her - or maybe it was his moustache. He goo-gooed and made faces and completely abandoned his dignity and she tried to pull out the funny hair on his face and gurgled at him. Maria led him out of his depression and although he returned to Kauai to continue his research at ARK, he called nightly to check on her and flew back to visit at least once a month.

The first thing he did was start a push for a new Alternate Research facility. There had been information leaks about some of the research - although not his - so clearly an island wasn't isolated enough. Also the destruction caused by the weapon malfunction, which had killed both of the scientists and two of the technicians working on it as well as causing Mary's death, proved that a better way of containing the more sensitive or hazardous experiments was needed. Gerald submitted plans to alter an asteroid by stages into a space-based laboratory. Mary's liquid energy, channeled throughout the base could power its own containment fields and provide each section with its own, isolatable source of power. If necessary, power to a particular area could be cut off quickly by simply blocking the flow of the fluid to that region. By digging the base into the stone of the asteroid, some walls could be left much thicker than could easily be built, providing much safer rooms for weapons testing by remote control and observation. The asteroid itself could provide many of the materials needed for the base's construction. The plan included several build stages, from a few chambers for testing and a handful of laboratories and dormitories up to the complete, fully-manned space colony. The plans were approved, and the construction begun on what would be a top secret space station officially known as Space Colony ARK to those who knew of it. Anyone not in the know would hear ARK and believe it referred to the Alternate Research facility on Kauai.

The plan was approved, an asteroid moved into a distant earth orbit, and construction begun. Gerald took himself, his protoplasmic blobs, and the Gizoid to monitor the construction of the second stage, and the channeling of the energy fluid. He had managed, by again referring to the Gizoid's unusual circuitry, to develop a prototype protean robot, which he called an "artificial Chaos" after the watery serpent he'd seen in the ancient echidnan pyramid. Powered by a chaos drive and wearing a special helmet shaped "brain" the android could shift itself from blob to "pillar" with extensible arms to grasp and restrain intruders while transmitting what it saw to the Space Colony's main security computer. At GUN's insistence, he augmented it with stun lasers (knowing full well that the military would exchange them for a more lethal version), on his own initiative, he gave them the ability to "seed" sending out miniature remote "heads" to serve as messengers or long range sensors. Unfortunately, he was unable to adapt them to be used in Earth's gravity, as they tended to melt into a puddle of blue goo. Gradually other researchers came to join him, most working on secret weapons deep in the Colony's stony basements. Gerald worried about the weapons - the thought of deliberately injuring, let alone killing another intelligent being was still repugnant, both ethically and medically. Illogical, perhaps, as part of the reason for the Space Colony's existence was to provide a safe place to test such destructive items, but... The Immortality investigation, now under the Codename of Project: Shadow, was trying fruitlessly to utilize chaos drives or the liquid energy to extend the life span of various animals; this also rankled, that the base he had designed and argued for was being used for what he considered immoral experiments. But there was another worry cropping up to distract him from his dismay over other people's research projects - Maria.

It had started innocently enough - two-year-olds often get colds from day-care or other public places, so he wasn't concerned when he made a belated birthday visit to find her a bit snuffly. Certainly the absolute delight and the way her whole face lit up as she squealed "Ganpa!" and flew across the room for a hug didn't suggest anything dire. The problem was the cold wouldn't go away. When the signs shifted to suggest a secondary infection, she was put on antibiotics, and the bacteria vanished quickly enough, but the virus lingered far longer than usual. It did clear, finally...and within a month she was down with a bright red skin rash, and went back on antibiotics. Before this course was over, the pediatrician had to add another drug to control a yeast infection. Gerald got back to Earth to see her shortly after the second round of medicines. His poor, beautiful granddaughter was a strange mottled pink from calamine lotion that was supposed to ease the itching, but the grin was as big (if now full of white teeth) and the eyes as blue as the day he first saw her. And if the pink stuff wouldn't wash out of his lab coat, well the greeting hug from Maria was worth the cost of replacing several mere items of cloth. He noticed though, that when she played with her toys or moved around the house, she seemed clumsier than usual. He soon realized that his son and daughter-in-law had noticed it too, but were denying it to themselves, rationalizing the stumbles and dropped toys with excuses - she's tired, the ground is uneven, the toy's wet so it's slippery. When he had to return to the Space Colony ARK, he went reluctantly, with a grim foreboding as a traveling companion. Two days after his return he got word that Maria was in the hospital, with an alarmingly high fever and a blood-borne infection. The doctors began running immunologic tests that revealed she had very little functional immune system, and a suspicious enzyme traveling through her system. The usual immunologic screens for SCIDS and lesser immune deficiencies had been done as an infant and been normal; the loss of a maturing immune system, plus the mild nerve damage, threw up red flags for a nastier type of disease altogether. The "usual" immune deficiencies could be treated in various ways, up to a bone marrow transplant that could "cure" the worst cases, but Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome could not. The culprit in this case was not the immune system itself, but the nerves, which began producing an aberrant enzyme that both hindered the nerves' own conduction and rendered the various white blood cells impotent. No way had been found yet to block only the aberrant enzyme without also blocking a similar one necessary to nerve function, and transfusions and transplants were of no help since the enzyme deactivated the donated cells as well. As the disease progressed, Maria would suffer more and more illnesses, as well as progressive loss of nerve function leading eventually to paralysis and death, if she did not die of an infection first. Gerald looked at the row of picture frames hung by his desk. Mary, his sons and their wives, and Maria - Maria as an infant, just able to sit up in a blue dress that matched her eyes, with her matching hairbow in her mouth; Maria learning to walk, grinning gleefully up at Gerald himself as she clung to his fingers; Maria smeared with chocolate icing as she ate cake at her second birthday party.

Gerald knew what the results would be before he got the message from his son that they were running the NIDS test. The thought whispered around the edges of his mind, An immortal life form must possess infinite regeneration capabilities. No. It was wrong. They would misuse the research...An immortal life form must also have innate correction of aberrant chemicals. He had had several colleagues back on ARKauai that were certain that all life really was was chemicals produced by cells: proteins, fats, the matrices that supported and bound them together. Mary had gone to battle with several of them verbally, arguing that life was more than mere chemistry. Gerald agreed with her, but it was true enough that some cancers and many other diseases developed due to erroneous chemical production at the cellular or genetic level. An immortal life form -NO, he mustn't think it! An immortal life form - he jerked himself out of his chair and stamped down the corridor trying to block out the whisper, and stopped at the window that showed the blue planet spread out so far below him. Blue, like Maria's eyes... An immortal life form could provide the means to save Maria's life. He bowed his head, feeling tears prick under his closed eyelids. Help me God. This is WRONG. But he knew, in his heart of hearts that if (IF? is there any doubt?), if the tests came back confirming NIDS, he would take the assignment. He could do it, he knew; and he would, for Maria's sake. He had no choice, he would sacrifice his own beliefs for the chance of saving her life. Despite what GUN and the politicians might do with his research... May God have mercy on all of us. She was worth his life, she was worth his soul.

A week later the letter arrived. Gerald made the call. No one ever did question his sudden change of mind.