by Nancy Kress
“I’m not surprised. Undoubtedly Dieter is still sleeping off yesterday’s party, snuggled next to a bag of his precious rocks.”
Ann laughed again. Not a pretty woman, but appealing. Bazargan approved of her trim body, shining blond topknot, expressive eyes. But Bazargan took his marriage vows seriously, as did his wife Batul, waiting for him in Iran. The seriousness was helped along by the standard dose for fieldwork of sex suppressants, the only neuropharm Bazargan used. The whole team took sex suppressants. It removed potential complications.
Ann had set up the Lagerfeld scanner on a bench that formed a perfect parabola, although Worlders didn’t call it that. She had already run the diagnostics. The square, boxy lines of the Lagerfeld, with its softly glowing display screen, looked odd to Bazargan, after so many weeks of World’s preferred curves. It was astonishing how quickly one’s own culture looked alien on an alien world, while the alien became the norm. No wonder young Allen was getting so carried away.
“David is part of what I want to talk to you about,” Bazargan said. “I’m concerned about him.”
“I am, too, I have to admit. Has he explained to you his theory that the shared-reality mechanism, once we understand it, could be incorporated into the human genome?”
“Yes. I told him—quoting you—that the mechanism is most likely not genetic. And even if it is, and if it can be spliced in, it still would not change humanity. If you made the genemod voluntary, all you’d produce is a small number of peace fanatics who couldn’t stand to interact with the rest of humanity. If you made it involuntary, you’d get either the worst tyranny the solar system has ever had, or else a systemwide civil war. And the current political structure doesn’t allow for either. He seemed not to understand the political aspects at all.”
Ann frowned. “He has the idea that if a small, initially isolated colony did splice it into all their offspring, they would have such a winning evolutionary strategy that bit by bit other groups would have to join them or lose out to natural selection. But the Dawkins equations say just the opposite, Ahmed. I ran the sims for him. No matter how you define ‘small initial population,’ the ability for individual deception always wins out genetically over inability to cheat in any major way.”
Bazargan said, “Do you know the poet Sadi? Let me try to translate …
“‘Human beings are like parts of a body, created from the same essence,
When one part is hurt and in pain the others cannot remain in peace and be quiet.
If the misery of others leaves you indifferent and with no feelings of sorrow,
You cannot be called a human being.’ ”
Ann stared at him. Bazargan suddenly felt foolish. He hadn’t meant to defend David Allen, who was thinking like a genuine fool. Nor had he meant to quote poetry to an appealing young woman who was not his wife. It must be due to World, with its constant scent of perfume, its lush ripe gardens …
“May your flowers flourish and bloom!” said Hadjil Voratur from the archway. He was early.
Bazargan felt relief. “May your garden please your ancestors, Pek Voratur.”
Hospitality flowers were exchanged. With Pek Voratur were his wife Alu, looking anxious, a woman in the flowered tunic of a priest, and the silent Pek Renjamor. All four crowded into Ann’s lab, followed by Enli. Of course. The girl was like a burr. Bazargan still wasn’t sure whom she worked for, and was still puzzled over how she could be working secretly for anyone, given shared reality. Wouldn’t it give her horrible headpain?
Maybe they’d all know more after the Lagerfeld scan.
Pek Voratur made the introductions. His jovial gaze swept around the lab, pausing at the Lagerfeld scanner on the curving table. It was obvious he considered it unnecessarily ugly but was too polite to say so.
“Pek Sikorski,” Voratur said, “I was hoping to see the antihistamines ready for us. As I already told Pek Bazargan, Pek Renjamor has healers in his manufactury prepared to duplicate whatever you teach him. We hope to begin the tests on Worlder bodies by tonight.”
Ann said, “I’m sorry, Pek Voratur. I was busy arranging for your brain picture. As soon as we have finished that, I will prepare the first batch of antihistamines, and Pek Renjamor may watch me do it.”
Voratur nodded, satisfied. Alu Pek Voratur plucked at her neckfur. “The brain picture is not dangerous?”
“No, no,” Ann said. “Not at all. Well, let’s begin. Pek Voratur, if you will sit here …”
The trader settled his bulk on a large pillow, his back to the low table holding the scanner. Ann settled the helmet on his head. It adjusted itself to fit snugly over his scalp, neck, and forehead, leaving his face clear. This was not Bazargan’s field of knowledge, but he knew that hundreds of minute electrodes were sliding into place on Voratur’s bald head and through his neckfur. Tiny needles carrying their own anesthetic would also sample blood, cerebralspinal fluid, even sweat. But the most useful data would come from the MOSS component of the Lagerfeld.
MOSS—Multilayer Organ Structure Scan—delivered almost neuron-by-neuron detail of the brain in action. Which cells were activated, which neurotransmitters were released, which neuron-firing patterns emerged. Receptor-cell docking, transmitter reuptake, enzyme cascades, substance breakdown and by-products … MOSS captured it all, analyzed the data in multiple ways, and delivered equations and formulae to explain them. It did everything but synthesize pills and put labels on the body. Without MOSS data, medicine would still be in the Dark Ages.
Bazargan had had his first Lagerfeld scan at eighteen, when he was ready to begin the Discipline. The MOSS data provided the base for his personal mixture, the fingerprint ID showing where his brain worked optimally, where it was biochemically deficient. Every adolescent who could afford it then spent the next few years learning to monitor himself in all the subjective ways that supplemented the MOSS base, and to mix the neuropharms that would best boost that day’s planned performance.
Bazargan hadn’t cared for the whole process. He’d done it while at college and graduate school; there was no other way to stay competitive with the other students. But in the long years since, he’d mostly skipped morning neuropharms, except in unusual circumstances. He knew this was irrational. How to reasonably object to artificiality, when all of anthropology spotlighted how artificial all cultural institutions actually were? Nonetheless, Bazargan felt a faint distaste for the enthusiastic use of neuropharms. Or perhaps it was not distaste but pride. His base MOSS profile had been in the ninety-eighth percentile for personality stability.
Alu Voratur laughed uneasily at her husband. “Flower of my heart, you look like a beetle in that … thing. A beetle with a smooth hard green head!”
Voratur waved a plump hand negligently. “Yes, yes. But it will not harm me once it begins.”
“It has already begun, Pek Voratur,” Ann said. She watched the display intently. Graphs flickered past, meaningless to Bazargan..
Immediately the priest, the healer, the Voraturs, and Enli began to chant. No signal had been given that Bazargan could see; they just all plunged in simultaneously. Shared reality.
“Please, softer!” Ann said in English, caught herself, and repeated it in World. “We’ll need to ask you some questions, Pek Voratur … there. We have a base reading.”
The chanting quieted to a low, rocking singsong. Flowers figured prominently. After another moment, Bazargan recognized it. A ritual blessing for a person engaged in any risky activity, such as climbing down a cliff after birds’ eggs. Bazargan smiled.
“I am going to show you objects and ask you different questions to see how the picture of your brain changes, Pek Voratur,” Ann said in her careful World. “Would you please smell this flower?”
“With pleasure,” Pek Voratur said. His voice was heartily cheerful as always, but Bazargan saw the neckfur below the helmet collar stir. This could not be easy for someone who seldom encountered anything not already long established in his, and everybody else’s, realit
y. Worlders possessed strange courage.
“Thank you,” Ann said. “Now will you think of your children? … Good. Now think about having a terrible accident, falling off your bicycle and breaking your back … Yes. Now think of a wonderful success with bringing the antihistamines to market …”
The session wore on. Voratur sweated, although the room was not hot. Alu Voratur frowned, fluttering anxiety giving way to a sterner concern. The chanting grew louder. Just when Bazargan feared the tension would be too much, Ann said, “We’re finished. Thank you, Pek Voratur.”
She removed the helmet and Voratur sprang up like a bounced ball.
“Good, good, no difficulty at all!” Voratur said. Sweat shone on his flushed face, and he blinked several times. Bazargan guessed that Voratur had the mother of all headaches. Discreetly Bazargan moved to stand in front of the Lagerfeld scanner, blocking it from view.
“We thank you, Pek Voratur. Now Pek Sikorski will show you how to prepare the antihistamines.”
“Yes, yes, but show Pek Renjamor, he’s the healer.”
“Come, flower of my heart, and lie down,” Voratur’s wife said.
“No need, no need, dearest bloom.” But he let her lead him away. At the archway, however, he turned back. “First, a gift. Enli!”
The girl rose from her corner pillow and left the room. She, too, Bazargan noticed, was unusually flushed. Another headache? In a moment she returned, her arms full of pink roses.
Bazargan stood very still. Those roses should not exist. He had fulfilled his bargain with Voratur, replacing the irradiated sterile roses with viable seeds, all for red roses. The rosebushes had grown—through two flowerings. Then the lethal gene had kicked in, preventing further germination. That should have been the end of Terran roses—of any color—on World. But here were fresh pink roses, presumably the result of sophisticated manual cross-pollination with some white flower whose appearance genes were recessive. How had the gardeners managed that? And were these pink hybrids fertile?
Ann looked as startled as Bazargan felt. But after a moment she moved forward, said the right ritual thank-you’s. It was very incorrect to ever inquire directly about the breeding methods of gift flowers. It would be like inquiring about one’s host’s sex life. Bazargan would have to wait to find out how the pink roses had been created.
“Your flowers bloom in my heart,” Voratur said, with considerable emphasis. Then his wife led him away.
Ann put the roses in a vase and immediately turned to the healer and the priest waiting for instruction. And, of course, Enli.
Bazargan moved toward the vase and rubbed one pink petal. It slid under his fingers, living velvet, releasing thick perfume. He was back in his mother’s walled garden in Isfahan. He was a small boy lifted up by his laleh, that patient servant who was half nanny and half bodyguard, to smell his mother’s perfect, genetically enhanced roses blooming among the pomegranates and almond trees.
Roses now existed on World. There would be no removing them. Nor antihistamines. The idea that you could bring cultural change to World without bringing biological change was wholly bogus. Not to a place like World, where the sentients were as acquisitive as Medici.
Now it was Bazargan who had a headache. He pushed it aside and sat down to watch Ann work, herself watched ceaselessly by the girl Enli.
By the next day Ann had analyzed the Lagerfeld scan. She had stayed up all night to do it, Bazargan suspected, after a day spent teaching basic lab techniques to the World healer, Renjamor. Ann’s face had the peculiar combination of exhaustion and elation that comes with the biggest, best results. Despite his increasing worries about their position on World, Bazargan let himself yield to the charm of that look.
“We got it,” David Allen kept saying. He was as excited as Ann, after his initial sulkiness at having missed the scan session itself. “We got the son-of-a-bitch pinned, dissected, labeled!”
“Let Ann tell it,” Dieter Gruber said. The geologist had recovered from his drunken celebration of his own finds in the Neury Mountains. “But, Ann, have pity for us nonbiologists, yes?”
“Yes,” Ann said. “But understand, this is only a preliminary analysis. Very far, David, from a wholly labeled, pinned, and dissected son-of-a-bitch.”
David grinned. Bazargan settled himself more firmly on his pillow. They were meeting in Bazargan’s personal room, which was filled with the scent of something in the garden that had just come into bloom. The pillow had lovely curves, but they were not the same curves Bazargan’s body had. He shifted again.
“The Lagerfeld shows a brain structure completely consistent with ours, as we’d already guessed,” Ann said. “Whoever ‘seeded’ the galaxy with hominid life-forms did so fairly late. There are only minor deviations from our brain development among Worlders, Candiotes, Atvarians, and Blickers, and nothing that doesn’t fit with probable evolutionary development to a point nine five confidence level. The Fallers, of course, are a different case.”
“As far as we can tell,” Gruber said. Xenobiologists had dissected dead Fallers, but no live ones. They did not permit themselves to be taken alive.
“Yes,” Ann agreed. “Voratur’s brain shows only two major divergences from ours. One is in some of the hormones related to digestion–you do all know that the body is thrifty, it often uses the same substances as hormones in the body and transmitters in the nervous system?”
“No,” Gruber said.
“Yes,” Bazargan said.
“It doesn’t matter!” David Allen said. “Go on!”
“The digestive-hormone differences are presumably related to the differing diet on World. There’s some overlap, which is why we’re able to digest some of their food. It also suggests that they could metabolize some, but not all, of ours. The other difference is of course the shared-reality mechanism.”
Ann stopped, licked her lips once, unfocused her eyes, and ran a hand over her hair. Bazargan recognized the signs of a scientist trying to figure out how to simplify the hopelessly technical for the benefit of the hopelessly ignorant.
“Let me start with the basics,” Ann finally said. “The brain is both electrical and chemical. The electrical comes first. Something starts millions of neurons firing simultaneously in many different parts of the brain. That something might be an external stimulus: a physical sight or sound or smell or sensation. It might also be internal, like a memory or an intention. Or it might be a combination, like when I asked Voratur to think about something that never physically happened: falling off his bike and breaking his back. The accident is imaginary, but the sound of my voice using linguistic symbols is physical.
“Whatever the stimulus, it starts neurons firing in rhythm, including a particular high-frequency firing called ‘synchronized gamma oscillation.’ It lasts for only about a quarter of a second, but the synchronization of oscillations in separated parts of the brain is what lets people think of thoughts as a coherent whole. A ‘thought’ is really millions of separate electrical impulses in different brain areas—sensory areas, motor areas, memory, emotion centers, all that. But because of the gamma-oscillation synchronization, the person experiences the thought as a single, horrifying, painful image of falling off a bicycle and breaking his back. It’s the pattern of the firings that’s important, at a macro-level. You all still with me?”
“Yes,” Bazargan said. “Go on.”
“Okay.” More lip-licking, eye-unfocusing. “Here’s what happens at the chemical level. On each nerve, the moving electrical impulse creates a moving toroidal electrical field, with the nerve as axis. The moving field reaches the nerve end, where there’s a very small space between that nerve end and the beginning of the next.”
“The synapse,” Gruber said, clearly proud of himself.
Ann smiled. “I’m making it too simple, aren’t I?”
“Even for a dumb geologist, Frau Professor,” Gruber said, and there was a teasing note in his voice that made David Allen glance at him sharply and frown.
Ann continued. “Anyway, at the end of all nerve spines are structures called ‘paracrystalline presynaptic grids.’ They look like tiny, tiny rigid lattices inside a tiny pyramid. In the interstices of each grid are thirty to forty little balloons called vesicles, and inside those is a supply of a chemical neurotransmitter. Some grids hold dopamine, some serotonin, some the peptides that inhibit pain, and on and on … everything your biomonitor mixes up for your morning Discipline, David.”
Bazargan saw Allen nod, pleased at Ann’s attention.
“So the electrical nerve impulse reaches the presynaptic grid, with all its waiting balloons of neurotransmitters, and the electrical impulse causes an influx of calcium ions that makes one—and only one—balloon get released into the synapse. That in turn starts the nerve on the other side of the synapse to fire, setting off its balloons of transmitters, and so on. You get a chemical cascade, and the chemicals do everything you expect chemicals in the body to do. Break down energy for action. Stimulate motor cells. Affect blood flow. Get the adrenaline flowing or the emotions hopping or whatever. All this so far we understand pretty well.
“But understanding the parts doesn’t mean we understand the brain as a whole. The whole is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.”
Bazargan said dryly, “Rather like a culture taken as a whole.”
“Too subtle for me,” Gruber said.
“Which is why you should stick to rocks,” David Allen muttered.
Bazargan felt impatience. Gruber was nowhere near as dumb as he pretended, and Allen nowhere near as combative. They were both showing off. For Ann?
He suddenly wondered if all of his team were taking sex suppressants after all.
Ann continued. “Here’s one aspect of the brain we don’t understand. When that electrical impulse hits the presynaptic grid, it has a measurable, constant voltage, the same voltage across all neurons. But—sometimes it causes a release of neurotransmitters and sometimes it doesn’t. The probability of release varies from point seventeen to point sixty-two, depending on the kind of neuron. And no one really knows why.”
