Steven wasn’t at all happy with the bottle that Rick was trying—inexpertly—to force into his mouth. There was something about the teat that he didn’t like, in spite of the fact that he was hungry. His face was red and his eyes were screwed up tight and he was mewling pitifully. It wasn’t a full-blown tantrum yet, but it was going on that way. Rick gritted his teeth and tried to be patient, yet firm.
“Do it gently,” Chloe advised. “You’re upsetting him. We all have to keep calm, for his sake.”
“I heard about some practical joker who used a random-number generator to send copies of a spoiler virus through the net,” said Dieter. “Maybe that’s what happened—maybe our number just got thrown up at random.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Rosa. “This isn’t something that flashes silly messages on our screens—it’s something that’s sabotaging our nursery. What kind of joker would do a thing like that?”
Steven, clearly despairing of half-measures, began to yell. He hadn’t yet begun to strike the secret note, but Rick could tell that the gathering crescendo was heading in that direction
“Oh, come on, Rick!” Dieter complained. “Can’t you at least keep him quiet, so we can think about this. This is important!”
Rick abandoned the bottle and tried to jolly Steven out of the crying fit by bouncing him around a bit. He knew that it wasn’t going to work, but at least it demonstrated to the others that he was trying. Silently, he willed the baby to be quiet, but the power of positive thinking that he was trying to exercise kept getting interrupted by silent pleas and curses.
“Wrap him up,” said Rosa. “He’s not in the nursery now and the ambient temperature’s too low for him—find him something soft and warm and comforting, then try the bottle again.”
The torrent of advice did nothing to soothe Rick’s temper; it only made him more aggrieved. But the one thing he couldn’t do was to hand Steven over to someone else and say, “You take care of the little brat.” That would really call down the wrath of Heaven upon him.
The lar informed them that someone else was at the door, and Rosa went to let in the second of Dr. Jauregy’s expected helpers. His name was Lionel Murgatroyd, and his ID informed them that he was with the Ministry of Defense.
“The Ministry of Defense!” said Dieter, incredulously. “What is this—World War Five?”
“No, no, no,” Mr. Murgatroyd assured them. “It’s nothing to worry about—nothing at all. A routine notification under the rather-be-safe policy. Please don’t let your imagination run away with you. It’s just that where novel DNA is concerned, especially when it seems to be a bit on the nasty side, we have to be extremely careful.”
They didn’t have time to ask Mr. Murgatroyd any more questions, because he was seized by Officer Morusaki and hauled into the nursery.
“We have to seal everything up now,” said Morusaki cheerfully, as he prepared to close the door behind him. “We’re taking control of all the house’s systems except for the fundamental subroutines, so you won’t be able to phone out or call up data from the net. You might experience some slight problems while we’re running tests, but please be patient.”
The nursery door closed behind him, and the four householders exchanged helpless looks. Nobody wanted to start asking accusative questions about who might or might not have got the house a front-line posting in the next Plague War. The thought was too preposterous to entertain.
Steven was still bawling, despite the fact that Rick—following Rosa’s suggestion—had managed to summon up a warm and soft ultrawoolly shawl. Rick tried unsuccessfully to persuade the baby to accept the makeshift teat, but Steven obviously wanted the nursery nook and wasn’t prepared to accept any second-rate substitutes—not, at least, without making his protest first. Rick had retreated to the corner of the room furthest away from his co-parents in the hope of reducing the nuisance level slightly, but it was a futile gesture.
“I know one thing,” said Dieter, raising his voice above the din. “Whatever it is and however it got into our systems, this thing is dangerous. It has weapon-potential. They want to tame it before they stop it—that’s why they’re beavering away in there under the protection of a full-scale security shield.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Chloe. “If it’s organic, it must be dextro-rotatory. It can’t hurt anything living—not really living. It can only affect right-handed proteins.”
“Chloe, darling,” said Dieter, with uncharacteristically bitter sarcasm. “Half the world lives in houses made from dr-wood, and dresses in dr-clothes. There are dr-components in virtually every machine our factories produce. A virus that could eat its way through dr-materials would be the ideal humane weapon. It could wreck a nation’s property without actually killing anyone.”
“You’re being silly,” said Rosa, shortly. “There aren’t any lr-viruses that destroy all laevo-rotatory materials, even after three billion years of lr-evolution. Why should a universally-destructive dr-virus suddenly turn up out of the blue? And if it did, why on earth would it make its first appearance in our nursery? Rick, can’t you keep the poor little mite quiet for a while.”
Rick interrupted the murmurous stream of soothing noises that he was emitting into Steven’s ear in order to say “No.” Then he added, “Oh, pollution!” as he realized to his discomfort that the ultrawoolly had suffered a sudden attack of stinking stickiness.
He moved rapidly to the disposal chute, hitting the control-button with his elbow because his hands were over-full with the bottle and the wrapped-up baby. The lid failed to respond to his signal. He jabbed it again, and then again, but nothing happened.
He turned round to complain but saw that Rosa was now busy giving Dieter an extended, if inexpert, lecture on the elements of dextro-rotatory organic chemistry. Dieter, obviously resentful of being treated as if he were one of her primary ed counseling cases, was busy going red in the face. Rick knew that if he called their attention to what had happened, they would merely point out with some asperity that the chute’s systems must have fallen prey to the side-effects of the probings being carried out by the investigators in the nursery.
The door to the staircase that led down to the cellar was only a couple of feet away, and Rick kicked the control panel, probably a little bit harder than was necessary. He sighed with relief when it opened, and he went swiftly through it. He glanced back as the door slid shut behind him, but only Chloe was taking any notice, and her expression showed profound relief that the crying baby was being taken away.
Rick figured that it would probably be possible to dispose of the polluted ultrawoolly into the cellar chute, and that, even if it turned out not to be possible, he could at least abandon the horrid thing, sluice Steven down, and then have another go at persuading him to take the bottle without having to suffer the censorious glares of his co-parents. He took the six steps two at a time, and made his way along the narrow corridor between the massed root-ridges to the portal set in the basal trunk.
The portal opened readily enough, and he sighed with relief. He had thrown the ultra-woolly in before he realized that all was not well within the chute.
Instead of falling away through empty space to the reclamation-chamber, the soiled garment landed in a pool of turbid water whose surface was only a couple of centimeters below the opening. Because of the odiferous nature of the stain on the shawl, Rick did not at first notice that the water was also rather noisome, but when he
