Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

variations, not the discards. I’d like to trace the lineage a little further back. I was wondering if there might be a natural prototype somewhere among the antecedents.”
    The librarian gave a nod. “Like the nitrogen-fixing plasmids from terrestrial bacteria that were found in the original corn genome. Well, let’s have a look and see what your problem is.”
    He squeezed out of his cubbyhole and accompanied Bram to the row of alcoves that held the visual interface readers that let humans use the Nar library system. The reading machines were a patchwork of individual design, reflecting the varied off-the-shelf components available to the human computer buffs who had volunteered their talents and time over the years. Some of the rigs dated back more than a century. At least half of them could be counted on to be out of commission at any given time.
    About a dozen men and women were hunched over the reading screens at the moment—some of them bio-researchers, like Bram, from the center; others, browsers from outside, interested mainly in the historical and cultural material. One of them looked up as Bram and Hogard passed. It was the sallow-faced man whom Bram had recognized at the political meeting.
    The man’s eyes encountered Bram’s and instantly darted away. Had there been a flicker of recognition in them? Bram was sure of it, but the man had gone back to his screen without a sign.
    Hogard seated himself at the console Bram had vacated. The screen was still on, the image flickering. Hogard hit the device with the heel of a meaty hand to steady the picture. Bram’s index symbols came into view along with a boxed message that said no further record in Inglex and Chin-pin-yin.
    Hogard fiddled with the finger bars for a minute or two, following Bram’s references and punching in alternate codes. There were blinks of meaningless text and the reemergence of the boxed message.
    “It may be this machine,” Hogard said, frowning. “Did you try one of the others?”
    “Three of them,” Bram said. “Same result every time.”
    “You understand that the translation program is very basic,” the librarian said. “We couldn’t possibly transcribe the Great Language in anything but a simplified form, because the ultimate limitation is the human sensory apparatus and the human nervous system. Oh, the computer boys will keep working on improved programs, and maybe someday there’ll be computer-mediated brain implants and genetic enhancement of the deep brain structures. Some of the wilder visionaries talk about it, anyway. But for now, what we’ve got is mainly a system that’s good for hard technical data, things that can be expressed in numbers, visual data, human-loaded references, and so forth. And a sort of precis of everything else.”
    “I’m not asking for anything subtle,” Bram said. “It’s all perfectly straightforward—just nucleotide sequences. I’ve got the right reference tabs. I know that, because I’ve been following them through.”
    “This research program goes back five or six hundred years. In fact, here’s your foster tutor’s name on one of the reference tabs. Voth-shr-voth. Maybe the early work was too inconclusive to enter. Or it’s floating around in another file. We don’t have the resources for locating everything. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go back to the message of Original Man. There’s a log reference. Maybe you can trace it from that end.”
    “There’s a gap there, too.”
    Hogard looked up alertly. “Are you sure?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, there’s some kind of glitch, then. It may have been improperly entered. We’ll have to try to bypass the interface program and go direct to the source.”
    “I’ve already taken a crack at the body reader upstairs, but I didn’t get anything I could make sense of. I’ve had trouble with that file before.”
    “Let’s give it another try, shall we?”
    Hogard led the way back to his cubbyhole and invited Bram inside. It was a rare honor. Few people were allowed behind the swinging gate. The burly librarian clambered up a step stool and stretched himself full length on the star-shaped surface of the body reader. Bram was glad to defer to him. Hogard’s hairy chest and arms, so the joke went among the envious, were really covered with excessively long and curly cilia.
    He lay there a long time, his brow knotted with concentration. When he climbed down, he wore a thoughtful expression.
    “I don’t