Genome (novel) - Plot

Plot

Alex Romanov is a pilot-spec, born on Earth, gets out of the hospital on the planet Mercury Bottom, where he spent six months after an accident. Alex meets Kim Ohara, a runaway fourteen-year-old girl, who is an unformed fighter-spec, escaped from her home on Eden. He invites the hungry girl to dine, but, during dinner, her metamorphosis kick in. Unfortunately, the process must take place in a hospital under the watchful eyes of qualified doctors, but Alex is out of money and does not know anyone on this planet. As a pilot-spec, Alex is psychologically incapable of not helping someone in his charge. He takes her to a cheap hotel (the Hilton) and tries to help her through the transformation. For this he needs medicine, but he has spent everything he had left on the hotel room. He uses the network terminal in the hotel to search for work. He surprisingly quickly locates a perfect and extremely attractive offer — the post of captain on a small but new ship Mirror with the right to choose his own crew. While Alex is skeptical that this is just too good to be true, he has no choice but to sign the contract. He gets his advance and uses the money to help Kim.

During the metamorphosis, Kim reveals that she has a secret compartment in her body, containing a fairly large gel-crystal — one that is usually used in a supercomputer. The crystal costs a fortune, and the fact that a poor, hungry girl is carrying it around makes no sense at all. With Alex's help, Kim successfully goes through the metamorphosis overnight and is completely fine in the morning. She refuses to talk about herself or of how she got to the planet. She only confirms that she does not know anyone on the planet and has no job or identification.

Taking command of his ship, Alex begins the process of hiring his new crew. He hires a Black-race doctor named Janet Ruelo from the quarantined planet Ebon, a spec with five specifications. Other crewmembers include a nineteen-year-old energetic-spec Paul Lurie and a navigator-natural Pak Generalov. Later, he hires a co-pilot, a spec named Hang Morrison. Instead of looking for a fighter-spec (the crew requirements are very specific in the contract), he decides to give Kim a try. However, this is problematic, given that she has no ID. In order to obtain one without contacting Eden, he has to bend the rules: Alex and Kim get temporarily married, Kim takes Alex's last name as her own, and gets a new ID as Kim Romanova.

With his crew ready, Alex is ordered by the owner of the ship to take on several passengers and do whatever they ask. The passengers turn out to be two Czygu tourists, Zei-so and Sei-so, as well their guide-spec Danila C-third Shustov, an employee of the Sky Company, who are also the owners of the Mirror. Apparently, as Alex finds out, their job is to transport alien tourists to see Imperial planets. Unfortunately, the situation is not very pleasant. One of Janet Ruelo's specifications is as an executioner-spec, meaning she specialized in killing aliens and utterly hates them. Kim becomes hysterical, after finding out that one of their stops is the planet Eden, as she is afraid to return to her homeworld. Alex finds out that Pak Generalov pathologically hates clones and has a hard time accepting C-third on their ship. Alex has to convince Kim, demand Janet to give him a warrior's oath not to harm the Czygu, and reason with Generalov. There is another problem, however. After a genetic test, Alex finds out that Kim is not only a figher-spec, but also a hetaera-spec. The latter specification demands the love of her object of desire, who turns out to be Alex. But Alex, being a pilot-spec, is physically incapable of loving Kim. And Kim physically cannot stop loving Alex until he returns her feelings.

The tour almost immediately results in a disaster. While entering the hyperchannel, another ship nearly collides with the Mirror which would have forced the ship to end up in Brauni space. Alex's Czygu passengers would have almost certainly been taken prisoner. Fortunately, with Janet's quick thinking, they were able to avoid the collision.

During the flight, Kim reveals to Alex the secret of her gel-crystal. Apparently, the crystal contains an encoded personality of a friend of Kim's, an adolescent boy named Edgar. Edgar explained to Kim that his personality was artificially created to become a unique spec — a genetic constructor, a spec creator. Growing up within the crystal's virtual world, Edgar managed to gain access to the public network, meeting Kim. He then programmed his lab's robot to give the crystal to Kim and destroy the lab, so that everyone thinks that Edgar's crystal perished with it. Kim have long protected Edgar's secret, carrying his crystal inside her body. Unfortunately, her mother accidentally discovered the crystal and called the police. Kim and Edgar were forced to flee. Alex, connecting the crystal to his personal computer, enters Edgar's virtual world and meets the boy. While Edgar confirms Kim's story, Alex sees certain inconsistencies in his virtual surroundings and the boy's behavior.

Alex asks Edgar for a favor — to create a substance which would temporarily disable a spec's emotional modifications. Alex wants to give this substance to Kim to "cure" her of her love for him. While no one believes that such a thing is possible, Alex finds out that Edgar is truly a genius. He gives Alex a formula to synthesize the blocker, and Alex orders it from a pharmaceutical lab on the planet New Ukraine. However, before risking giving an untested substance to Kim, Alex takes a few drops of it himself. The effect is nearly immediate — Alex loses the pleasurable feeling every pilot-spec gets during the neural connection with the ship. Also, he understands that this feeling, like the usual pleasures of sex — are simply shadows of the true feeling which he has been denied. Still not understanding what it means to love, Alex begins to feel sorrow and the feeling of enormous loss.

Before landing on the planet Zodiac, the crew finds out that a crime has taken place on board the ship — Zei-so has been brutally murdered. The ship remains in orbit and receives two visitors: a detective-spec named Peter C-forty-fourth Valk, preferring the name Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, a natural forensics expert Jenny Watson. While the crime itself is horrendous, the consequences are even more so. Apparently, Zei-so was an heiress to the Czygu throne. As such, the Czygu are preparing for an all-out war with the Empire. Since the forces are about even, the war is bound to devastate both species, and the victor will be too weak to stand against the other races, who will not miss their chance to gain extra territory. This has already happened to the once-mighty Taii, who are now a dying race. The Empire, faced with such prospects, will be forced to lift the quarantine of Ebon. The military power of Ebon is so great, that the Czygu will have no chance, but the other races will forget their differences and united against humanity. There is only one way of preventing the war — find the murderer within two days and show the Czygu undeniable proof that justice has been served. If Sei-so personally executes the killer, the war will be averted. Unfortunately, the murder was committed by a professional — no trace has been left in Zei-so's quarters. Also, every crew member had the opportunity and the motive to perform the deed.

After further conversing with Edgar, Alex realizes who he really is. He is not an adolescent consciousness artificially grown in a gel-crystal. In fact, it is the consciousness of a long-dead legendary genetic constructor named Edward Garlitsky, who is credited with founding the science of specification. Garlitsky wanted to create a superhuman, who would unite all the enhancements from all specs. Unfortunately, his work was not only deemed unneeded, it was seen as dangerous. Garlitsky was fired and, at the Emperor's decree, his consciousness was copied onto a gel-crystal and his body destroyed, so he could continue working on specifications but under a watchful eye of the overseers. Unable to find another way out, Garlitsky saw his chance when he was requested to create a new secret agent specification. He made certain unnoticed alterations to the specification, like a hidden pouch in the stomach. This child turned out to be Kim Ohara. Garlitsky made contact with her, falsifying his identity, and convinced her to help him escape. His goal is to become a physical human again.

When Alex claims he knows the identity of the killer, the detective-spec allows him to do whatever is necessary to reveal him or her. Using Edgar's blocker, Alex reveals the killer — an undercover agent-spec, pretending to be a member of the crew. The killer is apprehended and executed, although Sei-so is critically wounded in the process. Unfortunately, further investigation turns out to be fruitless, as everything points to people too powerful to accuse. The Sky Company is bankrupted, and the crew of the Mirror is fired. The body of the executed person is bought out by Kim, who plans to give it Edward "Edgar" Garlitsky. Alex begins to understand that the effect of Edgar's substance is not temporary, which means that he will retain the ability to love for a long time, possibly forever.