A Whisper of Blood

by Ellen Datlow

  He wondered if his watcher had somehow become aware of his secret life, and was using these emotional storms to destroy him. If so it had picked an excellent technique.

  Laura opened in Giselle.

  And the mad scene was unlike any ever seen before. She seemed to float about the stage as if madness had driven out the physical leaving only a fragile, hollow-eyed wraith whose expressive port de bras held a universe of loss, and betrayal. Barnaby ached for her for he knew she was dancing out her private anguish.

  Behind her the corps de ballet went cleanly, sharply, perfectly through the choreography. It was a tour de force ballet perfection … and it held all the soul of a puppet show. Dancing automatons.

  But that’s because they are automatons, thought Barnaby, and felt a stir of fear and resentment from the somna. Molecular programs able to feel pain and pleasure, but unable to replicate themselves. Automatons.

  And you’re automatons too, he flashed at the conductor and orchestra all busily sawing and tooting and gesticulating away. And so are you, he told the audience, as he went slewing about in his seat. And you! And You! And YOU! He was half out of his seat, knee resting on the plush velvet seat cushion, knuckles whitening as he gripped the back of the chair. Around him people stirred, frowned, tittered, shifted nervously.

  And so am I.

  He collapsed back into his chair. Stared morosely at the stage. Sneered at the willies waltzing about that idiotic prince. Waited for the magic to come again, but Laura had lost whatever had earlier animated her. The final pas de deux could have been a course in weight training.

  He had tried to talk about it at the reception afterward. But the people kept drifting away from him, like wraiths, phantoms… willies. He blundered about feeling large and gross, but real God damn it! Real! And they kept scattering.

  “We’re just not real.” He was perched precariously on a chair, listing from side to side, and he couldn’t remember how he got there. White, strained faces stared up at him, and he stretched out his hands, clutching feebly at the air. Trying to grip … what? “Don’t any of you see it?” he cried. “Laura was real tonight. Oh, it was only for a minute or two, but she was real. We should be real like that… all of the time.”

  A hand closed about his wrist, holding him steady.

  “Oh, hello, Dr. Garcia.”

  “Barnaby, stop it. You’re upsetting everyone.”

  “Good. They need to be upset.” He staggered, slithered off the chair, fell onto it with a hard bump. “I feel strange.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “No I’m not. I’m not really drunk. I’m—” He paused trying to think what he was … Doing.

  “You need to stop thinking about this, Barnaby. You’re damaging yourself.”

  “Good.”

  “Antonio, let me.” Laura’s hand was cool against his cheek. “Laura, no,” whispered the doctor. “You’re not supposed to be here!”

  “Who are you to know where I’m supposed to be?” His finger thrust out accusingly. “You’re ignoring instructions!”

  “Yes, no, perhaps, maybe.”

  Barnaby couldn’t tell if she was being facetious or if her neural-paths really were in disarray from this direct disobedience. “Outrageous. This is atomistic behavior.”

  “Yes, no, perhaps, maybe,” sang out Barnaby, but Laura’s only response was a glance filled with blazing anger.

  She got him home, dumped him unceremoniously on the couch, and went to check her somna. He sensed rather than heard her return. Huddled into the corner of the sofa, knees pulled to chest, he stared into the yawning pit of the corner fireplace.

  “You’re leaving.”

  “Yes.”

  “On instructions?”

  “No.” That brought him off the couch. There was again that viselike pressure in his chest, but this had nothing to do with joy. She seemed very small and fragile as she leaned against the doorjamb; a shadowy figure, arms wrapped protectively about her scrawny chest. “This has nothing to do with the soap opera, this is real.”

  “Why, why?"There seemed to be a swelling in his throat, and the words emerged as a harsh whisper as he forced them past the obstruction.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “But tonight—”

  “Was a mistake. I should never have done it. I’m sorry, Barnaby, I’m staying in the womb.”

  “And if I succeed?”

  “You won’t. It was a hopeless dream.”

  “All right, forget succeeding.” He gripped her shoulders. “If I finish it?”

  “I’ll come.”

  “And if I should succeed?” He enunciated carefully giving her a tiny shake between each word.

  “Then it’s a different world, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “You haven’t considered the ramifications.”

  “So Antonio says.”

  “Good luck, Barnaby.” She stood on tiptoes, pressed a soft kiss onto the corner of his mouth.

  He hadn’t really thought she’d leave. But in the morning both she and her somna were gone. His somna probed, excitement flaring like tiny explosions at this newest twist, then slid back defeated, frustrated, confused by his lack of response.

  Seated at the piano late one night, muffled beneath a weight of unhappiness, Barnaby realized that he was experiencing a true emotion. No posturing, no drama, no stirring speeches … just loss, and a grinding pain centered once more in the chest.

  No wonder man’s ancestors thought the heart was the center of all.

  You could duplicate mind. Brilliance was easy. He was brilliant. But the heart of man, the soul of man—that was hard.

  Laura took up with Rudolfo. The somna agitated, Rudolfo gloated, postured, challenged, Laura drooped. It could have been exciting. The growing rivalry, culminating in violence, the death of the philandering husband at the hands of the handsome, virtuous young lover. But Barnaby refused to play; walking away, focusing on his writing, and wondering if it might not have been a deliberate attempt to be rid of him. Enough damage, and reconstruction would have been necessary. And then he wouldn’t be him anymore.

  He stopped waiting for the lone times, and wrote whenever his public life gave him time at home. The somna was an angry presence, squatting like an outraged cat in the shadowed corners of a room. But it didn’t interfere. Perhaps because after so long as a spectator it was incapable of self-initiated action. Or perhaps because it too believed he would fail.

  Only one section remained. The Agnus Dei. He no longer needed the piano, the music ran incessantly through his mind. He also realized he couldn’t pen those final phrases with the somna only feet away. As strange as it seemed, after lifetimes of interactive games, this was something that he needed to do alone.

  He took out the car, and spent several minutes trying to remember the last time it had been driven. He wondered if in some other enclave, say Fez, a man was busy brushing the dust from his car, and reflecting about how long since it had been driven. The banality of the thought was somehow comforting.

  In a few blocks he had left behind the inhabited sections of the city. But the houses continued to straggle across the piñon-covered hills, sad reminders of when Santa Fe had held seventy-five thousand busy, vibrant, productive souls. Now it held ten thousand somnas, and their faithful “backs.” Or make that nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. This "back” wasn’t very fucking faithful.

  He wound up the atrocious two-lane highway toward the old ski basin. Reached the pull off that afforded the finest view of the changing aspens in the autumn. No fall of gold spilled down the mountains at this time of year. Instead the bare grey/white trunks of the naked aspens thrust like bones into the dark green masses of the pines.

  Barnaby arranged himself on a boulder, felt the bite of the cold stone through his trousers. Opened his portfolio, spread the pages, lifted his pen, poised; waiting for the fanfare, the applause, the breathless trembling gasp of amazement from the multitudes.


  The wind sighed down the mountains, tossed the branches of the evergreens with a sound like a distant ocean, fluttered the pages, and passed touching his cheek like a chilly caress.

  And he realized that for better or worse he was alone.

  He was still sitting in frozen frightened stasis when a shower of stones and dirt came skittering down the cliff face on the opposite side of the road. A man followed using a brush and outcroppings with the practiced ease of the longtime mountain climber. He was a big man, with blue eyes that sparkled in a ruddy, wind-chapped face. It was a familiar face. He was the conqueror of Everest.

  “Hallo,” he said in that clipped, British public-school accent which always sounded fake to Barnaby.

  “Hello.”

  “What are you about?”

  “I’m completing a requiem mass,” Barnaby replied lightly. “Oh? Whose?”

  “I don’t know yet. Could be mine.”

  “Ah, ha ha, jolly good.” E.H. tugged at the turtleneck. “Or mine. I’m tackling Everest next week, don’t you know."The smile was back in place as he plowed manfully on with the script.

  Barnaby folded his hands primly on the portfolio. “How many times does this make?”

  “Uh … eh?” The smile faded.

  “How many times?”

  “Nine,” came the sullen response.

  “Doesn’t it get boring?”

  The genial facade was down. For an instant, Barnaby saw despair, and a desperate hunger writhe across the broad, handsome face. Then the mask was back, the somna raging behind the blue eyes.

  An accusatory forefinger thrust out. “Y-y-you’re damaged!”

  Barnaby stood, clutching the portfolio to his chest. “No. What I am is scared. But it’s okay.” He smiled, considering, then added with wonder. “And I’m not bored. I’m curious and anxious and alive. I’m about to take a risk. Thank you.”

  He sat, shook the pen to start the flow of ink. The notes flowed from his soul to the page. He was at peace.

  It was absurdly easy to arrange. They were to perform the Verdi Requiem as the second half of the December concert. During intermission he quietly gathered up the Verdi, and replaced it with his. By the time the orchestra and chorus had noticed it was too late. Most of the looks he received were terrified or hostile, but Peter’s lips skinned back a grin that was almost a grimace, and he gave Barnaby a brief thumbs-up signal.

  No rehearsal was necessary. They went through rehearsals merely to maintain the charade, the vicarious enjoyment for the somnas.

  But it wasn’t perfect!

  As section followed section errors crept in. Perhaps they were caused by disruption of the neural-paths because of this awful deviation from instruction. Whatever the cause they were there, and they did not detract, rather they added to the heartbreaking poignancy of the work.

  The final minor chord hung like a cry in the still air of the auditorium. Barnaby bent double, clutching the podium with both hands in order to stay erect. The vise was back, squeezing at his chest, because it had been so beautiful!

  There was no applause. The audience, orchestra, and chorus went stumbling, almost sleepwalking into the New Mexico night. They knew, because they could forget nothing, that the music they had heard and played and sung was original. After three hundred years of repetition a new voice had been heard.

  A few were manic in their joy. Peter capering about with his violin in one hand and bow in the other chanting in a grotesque singsong. “You did it. You did it. You did it.”

  Barnaby feared that he was damaged, and caught him by the shoulders. “Stop it!”

  For a long moment he searched Peter’s blue eyes, fearing and not understanding what he read there. “You did it,” the violinist whispered again, and spinning from his grip skipped from the stage.

  Thrusting his baton into his hip pocket Barnaby wandered about the empty stage gathering up scores. Then hesitated, not knowing what to do with them. Finally he paced to the edge of the stage, and let them fall, an ivory waterfall, onto the carpeted floor. His own master score he tucked beneath one arm, and slowly left the stage.

  The green room added to his sense of eerie unreality. No chattering crowds, eager well wishers, flushed performers. A bottle of champagne shifted in its bucket, the rattle of the ice loud in the silent room.

  Barnaby started back to the stage, but stopped, arrested by a shadowy hatted and coated figure in the darkened wing.

  "Do you know what you did?” asked Dr. Antonio Garcia.

  “Huh?”

  “That young man,” he gestured toward the empty stage where only moments before Peter had capered. “Seemed to think you had done it. I’m just wondering if you know what it is.”

  The ancient figure seemed to be holding itself with unnatural rigidity. Holding in … something.

  “Stop being so fucking portentous.” He lit a cigarette. “I wrote a requiem. I proved that “backs’ can create.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Shit, I don’t know.” Smoke erupted in two sharp narrow lines from his nostrils. “That I’ll write a symphony next?”

  Antonio’s lined face twisted with anger, quickly suppressed and controlled. “Why a requiem, Barnaby?”

  “I don’t know. Something meaningful there, you suppose?” A broad grin that brought no answering response from Antonio.

  “Yes, Barnaby, there is something meaningful there.” The words hissed out fueled by his suppressed violence. “You’ve done for us, you heedless fool. You’ve upset the balance. Expressed the discontent. You’ve given us choices. An hour ago our world was secure, our place in it established, defined. Now there is no guiding force.”

  Barnaby backed away until he came up against the shell. “You’re somna,” he began.

  “Don’t speak to me of that thing! You’ve ruined us! Ruined us! The entire world has changed, and you don’t see it! God, what a moron. Well, I can’t face your new world, Barnaby. But I can’t go back,” he muttered as he tottered toward the exit. “But I can’t choose. Can’t. Can’t. Can’t.” The quavering voice faded, and Barnaby stood frozen with shock.

  The somna was a huddled, frightened presence. Barnaby stepped into the icy night, and it stirred, uncoiling itself from the deepest recesses of his mind. It probed, urged, agitated.

  “No,” he said aloud, and the word was filled with weariness. “I’m not playing.” It slunk back to cower and brood.

  The streets were filled with disoriented “backs.” Some still trying to play out their somnas’ games, but it was like a one-handed man clapping. And Barnaby realized that the network that linked all the “backs” had brought them all the message of his requiem whether they had attended the concert or not. He once more thought of his imaginary counterpart in Fez, and wondered if he understood what had occurred.

  Barnaby was starting to, and the understanding terrified him.

  Laura was waiting at the house. Cowering on the doorstep. Lost waif. Her hands closed convulsively on his arm as he knelt beside her.

  She tried to speak, but only inarticulate sounds emerged. He soothed her with hands and lips and voice. “I love you, Laura,” he whispered against her hair.

  He rose, stared down at her bowed head. You’ve started this, Barnaby, you crazy fucker.

  So does that mean I have to end it? he wailed. Yes!

  I didn’t know what I was doing. No answer. I never meant, never intended … Choice.

  He pressed Laura’s shoulders, unlocked the door, walked in. Fear coiled through his mind. Burrowed, sought to hide. He gazed down at the floating somna. White and naked, muscles atrophied from decades of nonuse. For three hundred years they had dreamed life, and their faithful “backs” had experienced every endless nuance, sharing each sensation with their silent, insatiable parasites.

  Choice.

  Your time has passed. A monitor gave up its grip on flesh with a sticky pop. It’s not malice that motivates me. Just boredom. The IV’s slid from the skeletal arms, and
hung like dying seaweed over the edges of the tank. You’ve abdicated your right to humanity.

  The somna was writhing now. Wasted muscles jerking as it struggled against the onrush of death. The mouth opening and closing, thick syrupy nutrient bath rushing down the gasping throat.

  It was awful, terrifying, and disgusting all at the same time. But he forced himself to watch to the end. After so many years with this silent watcher it was his final act of service. When the final agonized shudder ended he leaned down, and gently closed the staring eyes.

  And now he knew that humanity had truly passed to them. He had fashioned and destroyed, created and killed.

  It was a contradiction heretofore only achieved by humans.

  Requiem was written because I was asked to edit an anthology of New Mexican science fiction authors, and the University of New Mexico Press insisted that I write a story as well. This kind of kick in the rear is required before I will write a short piece. I’m a novelist, and frankly stories intimidate me.

  But having agreed to this task I had to find a tale to tell. I have several and very diverse areas in which I have a passionate interest. One is music—I studied opera at the Conservatory of Vienna. Another is the area of legal rights for artificially created entities—androids, robots, AI programs, etc. By wedding these two interests I suddenly found myself wrestling with the question of creativity. Can a robot innovate? Does an android have a soul? Can an AI program dream and desire?

  The vampirism element wasn’t a conscious decision. Again, I was grappling with the issues of ownership—human proprietorship of their creations—and it wasn’t until the story was completed that I realized how truly horrific the floating, dreaming human beings actually were.

  So that’s the saga of “Requiem.” Someday I’d like to go back and figure out what caused the virus that destroyed most of humanity. And how the “backs” built their new society. And if they killed all the humans. Hmmm, sounds like a novel. Guess I’m home again. Maybe I’ll make another foray into short fiction next year—if somebody asks me to.