Page 43 of Pets in Space 10

Curiosity made her pull up more HM-8544 project records.

The initial concept reports looked solid, with standard RyoGenomica thoroughness.

But as she skimmed through the preliminary research logs, anomalies began to poke through like pernicious weeds in an ornamental garden.

Inconsistent cascade analysis results and no repeated tests to look for the cause of the anomalies.

An entire section of baseline neuro-interaction modeling was marked incomplete, but later steps had been initiated anyway.

Unusually brief meeting notes and noticeable gaps.

Another twenty minutes with the records netted two disturbing facts.

One, the early records were properly marked with standard workflow tags for who did what and when.

However, later records were inexplicably untagged and orphaned.

The system shouldn’t have allowed approvals without them. Why had Tikka Parnumaya let it slide?

Disturbing fact number two was the lack of precursor references for the compound.

Maybe it was different in HuMed, but the Agronomy and Animal Support departments kept detailed sourcing notes, down to which rancher had complained about a problem, or what anecdotal home recipe a grower used to keep pests at bay.

Her team and Gaerynx’s researched and cited scientific studies that had any remote connection to the idea.

Because she insisted, her team even included excerpts from meeting notes from staff brainstorming sessions that touched on the subject.

As far as she could tell, HM-8544’s records started with a half-complete compound, then jumped to a full compound eighty-five days later without explanation.

Maybe something happened to the records and they got re-created from backups, but that didn’t explain the procedure anomalies. At best, they indicated sloppy, bad science. At worst, it was deliberate misconduct.

She closed the files and crossed her arms to shove her suddenly chilled fingertips under her armpits.

The pharma industry was a labyrinth that had evolved to diffuse liability, but brain drugs that went wrong were a special kind of nightmare.

If RyoGenomica licensed a concept based on flawed, incomplete, or manipulated data, or if an opposing lawyer could make it look like they had, the company would get slaughtered along with the rest of the lambs.

The office suddenly felt too small. She needed to move, to breathe real air. Pushing back from her desk, Amalena headed for the exit. A walk outside might help clear the tingling tension threatening to spiral her into a panic attack.

The afternoon’s warmth and the gentle breeze rustling the leaves soothed her frayed nerves somewhat. She walked along the curving path toward the main building. The stately architecture and carefully tended landscape belied the potential chaos brewing within the company’s business.

Walking briskly along the longer path to the edge of the campus, where the new fence and gates were, gave her the chance to separate her thoughts. Filing a formal complaint about HM-8544 was premature and potentially career-ending if she was wrong. But she couldn’t just ignore what she’d learned.

She needed more information, specifically about HuMed’s standard operating procedures.

How did they normally handle the procedures she took for granted?

An idea blossomed. She knew Husford Danteres in HuMed.

Not well, but they’d served on a cross-departmental charity committee last year.

He seemed approachable, if perpetually harried and overworked.

Following the path toward the main building took her by the newly improved and locked shapeglass enclosure for personal transportation storage.

Amid the assortment of air gliders and airsleds, a single, bright-patterned bicycle stood upright in a holdfast along one wall.

Even with an enhanced power assist like that one had, she wasn’t brave enough to ride a bicycle in regular ground traffic.

One automated groundhauler with faulty forward cameras, and she’d be a smear on the solar roadway.

She found Husford hunched over a small datapad at a communal workstation near the HuMed section, looking as stressed as she remembered. Today, she could sympathize.

“Husford?” she began casually, offering a small smile.

“Sorry to bother you, but I think I got one of your department’s analysis reports by mistake.

I think it was HM-85-something or other.

Somehow, it landed in my department’s queue.

Maybe because it isn’t tagged. Any idea who I should send it to? ”

Husford looked up, rubbing his eyes. “HM-85... oh, frelling hell, don’t tell me it’s 8544?

” When she nodded, he sighed wearily. “Honestly, Amalena, with that project, anything’s possible lately.

Procedures?” He gave a short, humorless laugh.

“Which version? The official ones in the handbook, Tikka’s, or the ‘get-it-done-yesterday’ ones?

” He folded his datapad, grabbed a large mug from the table, and pushed back his chair.

“Look, I need caffeine and maybe a muffin, if the vultures haven’t cleaned them out.

Come with me, and maybe we can figure out what happened. ”

“Lead the way,” Amalena said. “Misery loves company. And muffins.”

As they walked down the wide, featureless corridor toward the building’s central kitchen, Husford grumbled a running commentary.

“Normally, everything goes through peer review. You know, data verification, ethical checks, independent replication requests for anything iffy, the usual. But 8544...” He shook his head.

“It showed up in our workload list about nine months ago. Tikka said it was a hush-hush pet project from the fourth floor, but we should handle it like normal. About ninety days later, Sainik asked about it and got torqued that it wasn’t moving along.

From then on, everything was go-go-go. Reviews get bypassed with ‘exec priority’ overrides.

Sainik kept pushing, but Tikka insisted on sticking to protocol.

” He gave a cynical snort. “I guess he got what he wanted. After she leaves, he’ll be free to ram it through. ”

Husford sighed again when they got to the second-floor kitchen.

It was sadly devoid of even the crumbs of muffins, but coffee and kaffa were both available from dedicated spigots as found in restaurants.

Considering most scientists needed caffeine only slightly less than they needed oxygen, Amalena approved of RyoGenomica’s accommodation.

As Husford filled his mug and grabbed a sugar stick to stir into it, he glanced at the clock display on the wall.

“Oh, hell, I’m late for a meeting with the execs upstairs.

Just send me the report you got and I’ll figure out where it’s supposed to go.

It was probably a one-off mistake, but let me know if you get anything else.

Apparently, I’m on tap to be acting manager after Tikka’s gone.

” His expression soured. “The chaos gods just love messing with me.”

He took off down the hall toward the lifts. Amalena pulled one of the company coffee cups from the shelf and filled it with kaffa. Maybe the naturally sweet caffeinated warmth would smooth away the rough edges of her thoughts.

She would like to talk to Tikka, but she wanted to have her questions clearly in mind first. Right now, all she had were worries and suspicions that could offend the woman if Amalena wasn’t careful. She wanted to keep an ally, not make an enemy.

Remembering her team’s worries about space, she decided to take a self-guided tour of the HuMed and Animal Support work areas. HuMed took up the north two-thirds of the second floor, and the Animals, as her team liked to teasingly call them, occupied a much smaller area on the south end.

The BioChem team and their state-of-the-art modeling labs had the third floor to themselves, though they had to share their well-appointed kitchen with the extra conference rooms. Amalena was glad they didn’t have room to spare.

Being only one floor down from the chiefs and executives would be uncomfortably close.

And the penthouse level on top with the Governing Board suites and plush conference rooms would make the third floor feel downright claustrophobic.

On second thought, maybe she should take a quick tour of the basement first. The farther away from the fourth and fifth floors, the better.

When the lift doors opened and let her into the basement level, the space seemed bright enough, but even top-of-the-line solaxial lighting couldn’t hide the fact that it was still underground.

The green-tinted walls and abstract organic pattern on the floor didn’t help, either.

It was a depressing collection of cryptically numbered storage rooms, utility access tunnels, and maintenance bot bays.

Definitely not suitable for workspaces. Not even if they installed a starship-sized botanical garden as part of the Customer Innovation office decor.

Amalena took the stairs rather than spend another minute waiting for the lift to get her back to the sunlit second floor.

Her shoulders loosened as she refilled her cup of kaffa and walked through the deserted workstation area on her way to the HuMed offices. The scent of the kaffa she carried banished the memories of the dust and lubricant odors from the basement.

The unusual sight of two RyoGenomica security guards standing in front of Tikka Parnumaya’s office slowed her steps. One of the guards gave her a hard look that seemed to be telling her to move on.