"Kress, Nancy - Wetlands Preserve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

But Paul Lambeth had fought to keep research into the animal, and the other animals soon found exactly like it, as a joint project between Kenton and Washington's hand-picked labs. Paul had won, but not because Kenton was such a well-equipped research lab (although it was; John C. Kenton had left an endowment so generous it was the envy of even places like Harvard). Kenton had kept primary research responsibility because that's where the wetlands were, and who knew what else had come off that spacecraft? The Kenton Preserve, immediately quarantined, had become the mountain toward which the eminent scientific Mohammeds went, since the entire wetlands ecosystem could not go to them. So Kenton did the in situ research, and the CDC, Harvard, and Cold Harbor did the genetics and zoological work.

NonЦDNA-based. Alien.

"What Е" Lisa was annoyed to find her voice coming out too high. "Е what will they do with it?"

"Nothing, yet," Paul said, and even in his slick media-loving voice she heard the hidden awe. "We're not done searching the ecosystem, even. Did you finish those water sample tests?"

"Not yet," Lisa said. Yes, work, that's what she needed, routine methodical work. To ground her. But she couldn't do it. "Can I see the report?"

"Sure," Paul said, smiling, and there was that condescension again, that egotistical pleasure in his own generosity at sharing this historic moment with such a very junior colleague. Lisa pushed the perception away. She darted for the report and began to read hungrily, wanting to know everything, to gulp it down all at once.

NonЦDNA-based. Alien.

From the stars.




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After the initial elation came the questions. The animal was not DNA-based, yet it was eating DNA-based plants. Lisa could see one of the snakers (the catchy name was Paul's) in the oversized cage, munching contentedly on sedges. How was it metabolizing plant food it had not evolved to metabolize? And how had such fully developed animalsЧwarm-blooded, multi-stomached, large if unfathomable brain tissueЧsurvived the trip through space? They might have been in some sort of cold sleep; Lisa had not seen the inside of their small craft. So small! How many had made the journey?
They couldn't have been here more than a few years, at the most. Someone would have seen them before now. The twenty-square-mile Kenton Preserve was supposedly off-limits to hunters and bird watchers, but in fact both seeped in all the time, at least on the vast wetland's edges.

The CDC/Harvard report said the genetic material seemed to be concentrated not in the cell nucleus but rather scattered throughout the cell. That was characteristic of very simple organisms like prokaryotes, but not of complex ones. The cells themselves were full of structures. Some had already been catalogued, at least in a preliminary survey, as analogous to ribosomes or mitochondria or receptors. They broke down molecules for energy, they utilized oxygen, they received chemical signals from other cells. Some were total mysteries.

Lisa read the report once, twice. Then she went to stare at the snakers' cage, which was a mini-ecology twelve feet by five, equipped with marsh areas, a pool, a dry hummock, stands of cattails and bulrushes, aquatic plants and rocks and insects. Two of the three captive snakers had disappeared into the foliage. The third one raised its head and looked back at her from a side-facing eye. Lisa stood gazing for a long time.

"Lisa?" Stephanie said. "We're going out this afternoon on the boat to survey another sector. Want to come?"

"Yes!" The Preserve had not been so thoroughly surveyed in years, now that everyone wanted to know exactly how many of the alien creatures existed. A lot, it seemed. They bred quickly. Lisa went to finish her water sample runs as quickly as possible so she would be able to go out on the boat.




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When she finally got home, muddy and exhausted and smelling of swamp, Danilo was there.
"How did you get in? The door was locked."

"Jimmied a window," he said in his liquid Filipino accent. "Not hard. God, Lissy, you look like a drowned rat."

Lissy. His pet name for her. Which he goddamn well had no right to use. He lounged at the table in her kitchen, which was also her living room and dining room, having helped himself to Raisin Bran and English muffins. She said sourly, "You better be careful. That food probably has genetically modified foodstuffs in it. You could sully your ideological purity."

"Same old Lissy." He sat up straighter, and the gleam of white teeth disappeared from his sunbrowned face. Despite the heat, he wore jeans and heavy boots, the old uniform. A knapsack rested on the floor. His trim body looked fit and rested, which only irritated her more. It had been so long since she'd had a good night's sleep. Too much to do, always.

Danilo said quietly, "I want to see him."