Chapter 2

Michelle and Dey Young of the Genome Colony had spent nearly three days trying to find a way to adjust the path of the approaching core fragment. If they did not succeed in the next forty-eight hours, the Doctor could see no alternative but to begin evacuation.

Carolyn and the Doctor were in mid-conversation. The Doctor was bringing some tea over to her.

"I believe some will choose to risk death than leave, Doctor."

"You've spent a good deal of time on the surface, Carolyn. How do you suggest we change their minds?"

"I'm not sure we can. It means abandoning their fundamental way of life."

The Doctor frowned. "They've managed to turn a dubious scientific endeavour into a dogma."

"You don't approve of genetic engineering."

"It was a bad idea whose time passed long ago."

"They seem to have made it succeed."

"They have given their humanity away to this genetic manipulation, many of the qualities they breed out – the uncertainty, the self-discovery, the unknown – those are the very qualities that make Human life worth living, at least from my observation. My people did the same thing with the Looms – and the result has been a class of stuffy Time Lords who lack imagination. Would you like to live with knowledge that much of your future had been written, that your boundaries had been set?"

"I've asked myself that question a lot during the past few days. I don't know. I doubt it. Nevertheless, this is what they believe in, and it won't be an easy matter to talk them into leaving."

"This leader of theirs, Snyder, he seems like a reasonable man, doesn't he?"

Her smile betrayed an affection. "I find him very reasonable. Open to suggestions, thoughtful, quite disarming, the perfect administrator."

The Doctor grunted. "I'm sure. Will he leave when he sees there is no other choice?"

"I don't know. I hope so."

"You admire him."

"Yes."

"Try at least to help him accept the reality of what may happen to his colony. If he makes the right decision, and he's as good a leader as he was 'designed' to be, perhaps the others will follow him."

Carolyn nodded and left.

Dey and Michelle were working on a test apparatus, a practical model that emitted a beam that the device could measure.

"If we increase Artron Energy transfer by eighty percent…"

"It's just gonna blow the emitters again."

Dey was frustrated. "We won't be able to reinforce the conduit to hold that power level, it just doesn't work." She turned off the device.

Michelle collapsed into a chair, hung her head in fatigue, she rubbed her tired brow. "I haven't slept in so long, my eyelids feel like they have lead weights attached."

Dey studied her. "Michelle…"

"Uh?"

"Have you always lived among humans?"

Michelle reacted. "Ah… I suppose you'd never seen Blowfish before now."

"No. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"I've never been embarrassed by my Blowfish characteristics, Dey. Never. I've interacted with Humans since birth. I'm accustomed to our differences."

"May I look at your… gills?"

She tilted her head sideways and she looked at them.

"I guess if I had been conceived on your world, I wouldn't be here right now, would I?"

"No."

"I'd've been terminated as a fertilized cell."

"It was the wish of our founders that no one have to suffer a life with disabilities, which is what your crest would have been viewed as."

"Who gave them the right to choose whether or not I should be here? Whether or not I might have something to contribute?"

"I don't know what to say."

She straightened her head.

"How do they work?"

"They have sensitive gills inside, which allow me to breathe both water and air and are revitalized…" She stopped in mid-sentence, suddenly having a thought… "Wait a minute, wait a minute, we should be able to send a high-energy pulse through the tractor system, and if it's short enough, it shouldn't overload the emitters. If we could adapt the pulse-compression routines and apply them to the artron energy conduits…"

"We would have to avoid tractor force rebounding, but that shouldn't be hard."

She rose, moved to a computer panel, started to work the board.

"Sure. With some modifications… Oh, this would be perfect."

"What?"

"If the answer to all this is in the mind of a woman who never would have existed in your society. No offense intended."

She was forced to smile.

A 12-year-old pianist played a gentle Chopin prelude in the courtyard with an outdoor concert being attended by two dozen seated people, with Carolyn standing in the back next to Snyder. Suddenly, the concert was interrupted by a quake, the music stopped, everybody looked up, held onto their balance. After a brief instant, it passed, but the people were shaken.

"Please, Matthew. Continue."

The boy began again, and after a beat, Snyder moved off, and Carolyn followed him.

Carolyn and Snyder were at an isolated location by the biosphere wall. On the other side: swirling noxious gases rose to a bright starry sky, Chopin still audible in the background.

"It's hard to believe, so much loveliness here, just a few metres away from such desolation."

He nodded. "Hard to believe we're about to lose it."

"This must sound incredibly simplistic, but can't you re-'engineer' all this on another planet?"

"A nursery rhyme my mother used to read to me has been running round and round my mind since this all began."

"A nursery rhyme?"

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall."

"All the King's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again," they finished together.

"Why do we tell our children such ghastly stories?"

"Perhaps to prepare them for times like these."

He looked to the ground. "We are every bit as fragile as an egg and as impossible to reconstruct, integrated and refined to such a degree that any fundamental change would lead to chaos. Nobody ever talks about how the king feels about being so… helpless…"

"I'm so sorry, John. I wish I could do something to help."

He looked at her, smiled. "But you have helped, you've been wonderful these past few days, you've been… my friend."

Carolyn smiled. "Yes. I think of us as friends."

Snyder studied her. "Friends. No, that just won't do…"

They looked at each other with intensity, and he moved to her and kissed her gently on the lips, and he stayed close as he said softly to her… "will it."

"John…"

"I must confess a part of me knows that if I leave these walls, you will be on the other side." And then he moved in and passionately kissed her and she tried to resist the intense feelings rising up within her…

"John, this is wrong…"

"Terribly wrong." He kissed her again, and she dissolved into his arms.