Planetbound by DM Arnold (best contemporary novels TXT) 📕

“I know you will.”

An attendant entered. Kronta nodded toward the door. “Goodbye, korlyta. I'll see you later.”

The attendant escorted Nyk from the room. “Nykkyo! Oh, Nick!” he heard Suki cry as he walked down the corridor.

Nyk sat beside Senta as the monorail train headed north to Floran City. “You'll need to find something to do,” she said.

“I already have something to do. I'm going to continue revising my translation of Koichi's journal.”

“Nyk, you spent years on the first translation.”

“Now I have Earth experience. Much of the original translation lacks that perspective. And, I have Midoro Kyhana's journal to work on, too.”

“You can do that in your spare time.”

“It seems I'll have nothing but spare time.”

“I'm making arrangements for you to work in the sequencing labs.”

“Doing what?”

“You'll be running a DNA sequencing machine. Just because your ID's been marked is no reason you can't be a productive member of society.”

“I'm going to go sit in the nosecone.” Nyk stood and walked through the coaches to the front of the train. He sat in a seat in the front row, buried his face in his hands and sobbed.

Nyk sat at a vidisplay in Senta's apartment in Floran City. He loaded a datacel and began scanning through text in Esperanto. The doorchime sounded. It sounded again.

“Nyk, can you get that?”

He walked to the front door and pressed the actuator. The door slid open to reveal Illya Kronta. “Come in.”

“Nyk, I wanted to tell you -- I have word Sukiko was safely returned to her parents in New York.”

“Did you take her to her home?”

“Our enforcer delivered her to Seymor and he took her home.”

“Thanks.”

“I also wanted to tell you -- I saw how you and she interacted at the ... in Sudal. I have a debt to pay in that regard, Nyk. I assure you I'll work behind the scenes to try to mitigate, if not reverse, this outcome.”

“Thanks again, Illya.”

Kronta gave Nyk a two-fingered salute and headed out the door.

Senta stepped from the bedroom in a short, sleeveless robe. “Nyk, now we're together again -- I want to work out some living arrangements. You are, of course, welcome to share my bed.”

“I'll use the guest room. I figure I'd end up there three nights out of ten, anyway.”

“Oh, we are being the pouty adolescent, aren't we? Very well -- use the guest room. You can ride the skimmer with me to the labs.”

“What about days you don't go to the labs? It's too far to walk, and I can't take the tubecar.”

“I'm glad you brought that up. I was speaking to Central Admin about this particular difficulty.” She presented him with a crystal cylinder on a chain. “This is a tubecar pass. It will permit transit between the platform servicing this building and the sequencing labs. You may use it on days I'm not headed there.” She faced him and placed her hands on his hips. “Nyk, please -- it is for the best. I know you don't see it so right now, but you will.” She leaned to kiss his cheek but he pulled away. “Fine. I'll be patient.”

He headed into the study and returned to Koichi's writing.

Nyk stood on the balcony. He saw the skimmer approaching. “Senta -- your skimmer's here.” The craft hovered adjacent to the balcony. The door swung up, stairs descended and the pilot stepped out. “Good morning Mr Kyhana. I haven't seen you in a while.”

“You'll be seeing a good deal of me, Rez.”

Senta approached from the living room. “Good day, Rez.”

“The labs this morning, m'am?” Rez helped her into the craft.

“Yes, Rez. Oh, Mr Kyhana will be coming with us.”

“Yes, m'am.” He gestured Nyk into the skimmer. Nyk sat beside Senta and looked down on the city as they flew toward the labs.

The sequencing labs were located on the southern outskirts of Floran City. The skimmer descended onto a lawn of a low-growing native plant. Rez opened the door and helped Senta step out. “Thank you, Rez. Tonight, the regular time. You're free 'til then.”

“Good day, m'am.”

Nyk stepped onto the lawn and headed into the building. “This way, Nyk. I'll turn you over to one of the Arodsu twins to get you started in the lab.”

He followed her to an ante-room. The sequencing labs were visible through a transparent wall. A young woman with dark blond hair sat behind a desk. She stood when Senta entered. “Good morning ... Katha?”

“Ratha, m'am.”

Senta looked at Nyk. “I can never keep them straight. Ratha, Mr Kyhana will be working in the sequencing labs for a while. Perhaps you could get him started?”

“Certainly. Step this way.”

“I'll see you tonight, Nyk.”

Nyk followed Ratha into an airlock. She handed him clean-room garb. “Here, Mr Kyhana...”

“Call me Nykkyo -- or Nyk.”

“You must wear this, Nyk. We can't have contamination of the samples.” He slipped into a jumpsuit and a transparent hood. She opened the inner door to the airlock and led him to a machine. “This is a genetic sequencer. This is a tray of samples -- each vial is coded with a lot number. You read the lot number aloud and drop the sample here.”

“Isn't there a way to automate this?”

“It is all automated from that point on -- we have to start somewhere. These are lentils from the latest crop. Each container of lentils must be sampled and sequenced.”

Nyk picked up a vial, read the label and dumped its contents into the machine. A red indicator flashed. Ratha giggled. “No, not like that. You must wait for a blue signal before dropping the sample.” She pressed a control to clear the indicator.

Nyk picked up another vial and read the label. He waited for the blue indicator and dumped the contents into the machine. The red indicator lit again.

“You'll note several lentils in each vial. You must read the label once for each seed and place the samples individually.”

“Why can't I read the label once and drop all the lentils at the same time?”

“Because the machine doesn't know how many samples there are.”

“I could read the label and say, 'three samples.' That would be so much easier than reading a fifteen-digit number three times.”

Ratha rolled her eyes. “The machine's not set up that way.”

“Okay, let me try it again.” Nyk picked up another vial and read the number. The blue indicator lit. He tapped a lentil out of the vial and placed it in the machine. The indicator went dark.

“Perfect,” Ratha said. “Why don't you start on this rack of sample trays? We'll bring more when you're done with those.”

“Thank you, Rez,” Senta said as she stepped onto the balcony. “That'll be all.” He nodded, climbed into the skimmer and it headed from the apartment building. “Nyk, how was your day?”

“Torture! That job is ... torture -- I can't think of another word for it. I hope you didn't make any commitments for me, because I will not spend my days doing that sort of busy- work.”

“You have to do something, Nyk.”

“Who says I have to do anything? If they had sent me to a shelter, what would I do? Nothing! Maybe panhandle on the street, but nothing other than that. I'd rather do nothing than run a sequencer day in and day out. Do you know how mind-numbing it is? Have you ever done it?”

“I designed those machines.”

“I could give you some ideas for improving them, and I'm sure your staff would appreciate it.”

“Give it a few days -- if you really can't stand it, I can find something else for you to do.”

“All right, Senta. I'll give it a few days.

Nyk stood before the sequencing machine and fed it samples. “Nykkyo...”

He turned. “Yes, Ratha?”

“I'm Katha.”

“Yes, Katha?”

“You'll need to work faster. We'll never get through our daily quota at that rate.”

He picked up a vial, read the number and dropped a seed into the machine. The red indicator lit. “Katha, what did I do wrong this time?” he yelled.

She looked at the machine. “You read an incorrect number.”

“I read what's on the vial.”

“No, you didn't...” She held up the vial and pointed to a status screen. “You transposed the last two digits.” Nyk re-read the label on the vial and the blue indicator lit. “Just be careful.”

Nyk pulled another tray of samples from the rack and began processing them. He felt a tap on his shoulder. “What now, Katha?”

She pointed to the rack of samples he had completed. “Nyk, there are still seeds in some of these vials.”

“Not all the vials have the same number,” he replied. “You said I had to work faster. One way is to use three specimens from each lot.”

“Why do you think there are four, five or six seeds in some?”

“I don't know -- but many have only three. I figure if three is good enough for some, it's good enough for all.”

Katha cradled her forehead in her hand. “No, Nyk. We must use all the samples we're sent.”

“I'll do that tray over.”

“No -- we'll let this one go.” Nyk watched her walk toward her desk.

He pulled another tray of sample vials from a rack and began removing the stoppers. “Nykkyo,” he heard Katha say.

“What now?”

“Why are you taking the stoppers off all the vials?”

“I thought it would be more efficient -- faster.”

“Just make sure the specimens don't get mixed up.”

“Absolutely not,” he replied and began feeding lentils into the sequencer. One of the vials slipped from his fingers and he stooped to retrieve it. His shoulder bumped the tray, turning it over and dumping the samples onto the floor.

“That's enough. Nyk, you're not having a good time. Why don't you take the rest of the day off?”

“If you think so.”

“I do think so.” Katha picked up a vial, read the label and dropped the seed.

Nyk left the sequencing room, slipped from the clean-room garb and headed out of the building to the tubecar platform. With the crystal pass he ordered a car for the apartment building and rode there. He admitted himself into the apartment and stretched out on the guest room bed.

The apartment door opened and Senta stepped in. “Nykkyo! Are you here?” Nyk stepped from the guest room. She glowered at him. “Would you like to explain yourself?”

“Katha said I should go home.”

“Katha told me what happened. She said you were deliberately sabotaging the sequencing.”

He shook his head. “No -- I told you, I can't do that sort of work.”

“She said you were intentionally wasting samples.”

“Senta, if you're looking for reproducible results, wouldn't it make sense to use the same number of specimens for each lot? If you have lot-to-lot variation in your results, it may be due to lot-to-lot differences in the number of specimens.”

“...All right, Nyk -- you have a point... Still, the way you behaved -- you're making me a laughing stock.”

“Katha didn't seem to understand. How can you have people in charge of running the lab if they don't know statistics? I'm not a statistician, but I know that much. And, I don't understand why you have difficulty telling the twins apart. Katha has a birthmark on her left cheek.”

“I never noticed.”

“I would've expected a brilliant scientist to be more observant.”

“Nyk, don't you see? You can make a contribution, if you'd only want to. If you had given yourself a chance to see how the lab works -- built a rapport with the people there -- maybe you could make suggestions to improve it. Now, I'm afraid you've alienated yourself and nothing you say or do will be taken seriously.”

He glared at her. “I know the contribution I want to make -- the one I was making. It was you who pulled me from it.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you would really rather do nothing than work in the sequencing lab, then by all means, do nothing.”

Nyk sat in the study scanning Koichi's journal. The sound of the skimmer door slamming shut