“Sounds like it.”
Fayez glanced back at him, and the laughter and humor were gone. “This is where we keep the sample. The catalyst. Come take a look.”
The cabin was small and spartan. A satchel was fixed to the wall with a tablet just visible at the edge. The only other thing reminded Jim of the kind of pressurization chamber used on Earth when someone had come up from scuba diving too quickly, or else a crematory furnace. It was a little over two meters long with a hatch at the end. A screen set into the box was dark. Fayez tapped it, and it came to life.
There was a woman on the screen. Her eyes were open. They glowed with a subtle blue light, and they focused on nothing. Jim understood, and it felt like a punch to the chest.
“This is the catalyst?”
“I looked her up,” Fayez said. “I didn’t tell Elvi. Back in the day, this was Francisca Torrez. She worked in the Science Directorate as a technician. I assume Cortázar knew her, at least in passing. She was going through something. Maybe her love life sucked. Maybe she always wanted to be a dancer and realized it wasn’t happening for her. Anyway, she started drinking and showed up to work intoxicated and belligerent. She didn’t even go home that day. Ochida had a streamlined disciplinary hearing with Cortázar and the head of security, and they put her in the Pen before she even sobered up.”
Jim looked at the face. It was smooth, but not like she was young. Like she was swollen. The woman . . . the catalyst . . . Francisca opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, then closed her lips again.
“For about five years before Duarte tracked Elvi down and brought her to Laconia—at your suggestion, granted—this woman was being eaten by the protomolecule. And she still is. We keep it in check so that it’s not growing free the way it did, but we don’t feed her. We don’t cut her hair. She doesn’t take bathroom breaks. She doesn’t sleep. Every now and then we hit the chamber with a couple hours of hard radiation. That’s it. She isn’t human in any meaningful way. Not anymore. She’s a skin balloon filled with protomolecule.”
Jim tried to catch his breath.
“I’m not going to bullshit you,” Fayez continued. “If we took what we do here to a normal ethics board, they’d just call the police. We’ve moved past scientific ethics, past moral questions, and I’m pretty sure we’re shooting past crimes against humanity now. But I still know it could be even worse.”
Jim nodded. “I understand.”
“No offense, but you fucking don’t,” Fayez said. “I don’t want to be the one doing this. I really don’t want Elvi to be the one doing it. But more than anything else, I don’t want Cortázar or Ochida to be here. The men who looked at Francisca Torrez and thought this was a good thing to do with her? I don’t want them in charge. If this was their lab, Xan wouldn’t be over with his new friend Teresa, laughing at a dog pooping into partial vacuum. He’d be in a box, like he was when we found him. They’d haul him out when they wanted to do something to him, and they’d put him back when they were done, just like they were fitting a screwdriver back in a toolbox. So yeah, you fucked me and mine over. And we’ve done shit here that the gods will never forgive us for. But when you’re feeling bad about it, remember that the alternative was somehow even worse.”
Jim was still thinking about it three days later when the lab was ready. It looked like a mess. Cables snaked along the walls and floor, tied in place with bits of wire and binding tape. The second medical couch—the one for Amos—was canted at thirty degrees to make space for the sensor arrays that were hooked into it. What had been a perfectly organized, clean, clear, overly designed space looked like Jim’s bedroom before he’d gone into the navy, only with less laundry on the floor. The voices of the Laconian team were tight and high. No one looked at him, and for the first time since the Roci had docked to the Falcon, he felt like being ignored came easy. When they did take note of him, the sense was more annoyance that he was in the way than anything else.
“If you feel uncomfortable . . .” Elvi was saying.
“I’m fine,” Cara answered. She was in a tight-fitting medical slip that kept her warm, held the contact sensors in place, and made a fine-mesh matrix for the scans that would be going through her as soon as the dive began. She looked like someone in a swimming competition. The same hard, athletic focus. “I want this. I’m ready for it.”