Nature's Shift by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, edgar allan poe, house of usher, arthur c. clarke
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2011-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

When I did wake up, I lay silently in my bed for some time. I had closed the shutters over the window before going to bed, simply by turning a switch that had caused them to come together like eyelids, so the room was dark—but not entirely dark, for there was a slight residual bioluminescence in the walls: a sort of integral night-light. When I opened my eyes, unhurriedly, I continued to lie still. I thought that I could perceive a vibration in the dull, warm walls. I wondered briefly whether it might be the echo of something external, like heavy rain. I was in the tropics, after all, and although the storm promised by Adam’s equivalent of the Met Office wasn’t due until the following day, it might well be raining. I decided, however, that the faint sensation was more likely to be due to some mysterious internal process at work within the living fabric of the fabulous structure. After a time, I found it strangely comforting, as if it were a subliminal lullaby, but I resisted the temptation to drift back into peaceful sleep. There was work to be done, and I was anticipating a long and busy day.

I made my way to the dining-room without making any advance inquiry or notifying anyone of my intention, but I found Rowland there, and we breakfasted together. He seemed less pale than he had the day before, in spite of the fact that he must have worked long into the night; if his condition the day before had been an effect of abandoning the use of some psychotropic substance with which he had been experimenting, he had now overcome the slight withdrawal symptoms—one way or another. He told me, however, that he didn’t have time to continue the guided tour of the house that he had begun the previous afternoon.

“My own work still requires my presence,” he explained, “but you’ll want to set up your own lab anyhow. Adam will help you, but without a knowledgeable assistant of your own you’ll find that it’s a slow process—he’s willing, but not expert.”

“There’s no rush,” I said. “I won’t be able to start collecting specimens until the day after tomorrow at the earliest, if there’s going to be a storm, and for at least a fortnight, I won’t be doing anything but observing and sorting. All I’ll need, for quite some time, is an abundant supply of tanks and microscopic apparatus. I’ll set up the sequencers and the vector cultures, of course, but I doubt that I’ll being dong any genomic analysis for a week or the days, let alone any tinkering.”

“I have some efficient vectors for use in plants,” Rowland told me. “Some of them might be effective in algal cells, or easily adaptable to that purpose. I’ll bring you some samples when I have time.”

He didn’t bring them that day, which I spent organizing my laboratory in a careful and painstaking fashion. Adam was with me all the time, and proved to be more helpful than Rowland had led me to expect.

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