by Greg Bear
Edward ate lunch at a Jack-in-the-Box and sat in the glass-enclosed eating area after he was finished, arm on a window ledge, staring out at the passing traffic. Something wasn’t right at Genetron. He could always rely on his strongest hunches; some part of his brain reserved for close observation and cataloging of minute details would sometimes put 2 and 2 together and get a disturbing 5, and lo and behold, one of the 2s would really be a 3; he just hadn’t noticed it before.
Bernard and Harrison were hiding a very salient fact. Genetron was doing more than just helping an ex-employee with a work-related problem, more even than just preparing to take advantage of a breakthrough. But they couldn’t act too quickly; that would arouse suspicion. And perhaps they weren’t sure they had the wherewithal.
He scowled, trying to pry loose the chain of reasoning from the clay matrix where it had been pressed and examine it link by link. Security. Bernard had mentioned security in connection with Candice. They might just be concerned with company security, sharing the fear of industrial espionage that had turned every private research company along North Torrey Pines Road into a steel-shell turtle, closed to public scrutiny. But that couldn’t be all.
They couldn’t be as stupid and unseeing as Vergil; they had to know that what was happening to Vergil was far too important to be held dose to the breast of a single business concern.
Therefore, they had contacted the government. Was that a justified assumption? (Perhaps it was something he should do, whether Genetron had or not) And the government was acting as quickly as possible—that is, on a timescale of days or weeks to make its decisions, prepare its plans, take action. In the meanwhile, Vergil was unattended. Genetron didn’t dare do anything against his will; genetic research companies were already regarded with enough suspicion by the public, and a scandal could do much more than disrupt their stock plans.
Vergil was on his own. And Edward knew his old friend well enough to realize that meant no one was watching the store. Vergil was not a responsible person. But he was under self-imposed isolation, staying in the apartment (wasn’t he?), suffering his mental transformation, locked in his psychosis-inducing ecstasy, filled with the results of his brilliance.
With a start, Edward realized he was the only person who could do something.
He was the last responsible individual.
It was time to return to Vergil’s apartment and at least keep track of things until the Big Boys came on the scene.
As he drove, Edward thought about change. There was only so much change a single individual could stand. Innovation, even radical creation, was essential, but the results had to be applied cautiously, with careful forethought. Nothing forced, nothing imposed. That was the ideal. Everyone had the right to stay the same until they decided otherwise.
That was damned naive.
What Vergil had done was the greatest thing in science since—
Since what? There were no comparisons. Vergil Ulam had become a god. Within his flesh he carried hundreds of billions of intelligent beings.
Edward couldn’t handle the thought “Neo-Luddite,” he murmured to himself, a filthy accusation.
When he pressed the buzzer on the condo security panel, Vergil answered almost immediately. “Yeah,” he said, sounding exhilarated, very up.
“Edward.”
“Hey, Edward! Come on in. I’m taking a bath. Door’s unlocked.”
Edward entered Vergil’s living room and walked down the hallway to the bathroom. Vergil was in the tub, up to his neck in pinkish water. He smiled vaguely at Edward and splashed his hands. “Looks like I slit my wrists, doesn’t it?” he said, his voice a happy whisper. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine now. Genetron’s coming over to take me back. Bernard and Harrison and the lab guys, all in a van.” His face was crisscrossed with pale ridges and his hands were covered with white bumps.
“I talked to Bernard this morning,” Edward said, perplexed.
“Hey, they just called,” Vergil said, pointing to his bathroom intercom and phone. “I’ve been in here for an hour and a half. Soaking and thinking.”
Edward sat on the toilet. The quartz lamp stood unplugged next to the linen cabinet.
“You’re sure that’s what you want,” he said, his shoulders slumping.
“Yeah. I’m sure,” Vergil said. “Reunion. Take back the prodigal son, not so prodigal? You know, I never understood what that prodigal bit meant. Does it mean ‘prodigy’? I’m certainly that I’m going back in style. Everything’s style from here on.”
The pinkish color in the water didn’t look like soap. “Is that bubble bath?” Edward asked. Another thought came to him suddenly and left him weak.
“No,” Vergil said. “It’s coming from my skin. They’re not telling me everything, but I think they’re sending out scouts. Hey! Astronauts! Yeah.” He looked at Edward with an expression that didn’t quite cross over into concern, more like curiosity as to how he’d take it.
Edward’s stomach muscles tightened as if waiting for a second punch. He had never seriously considered the possibility until now—not consciously—perhaps because he had been concentrating on simply believing, focusing on more immediate problems. “Is this the first time?”
“Yeah,” Vergil said. He laughed. “I have half a mind to let the little buggers down the drain. Let them find out what the world’s really about.”
“They’d go everywhere,” Edward said.
“Sure enough.”
Edward nodded. Sure enough. “You never introduced me to Candice,” he said. Vergil shook his head.
“Hey, that’s right” Nothing more.
“How…how are you feeling?”
“I’m reeling pretty good right now. Must be billions of them.” More splashing with his hands. “What do you think? Should I let the little buggers out?”
“I need something to drink,” Edward said.
“Candice has some whiskey in the kitchen cabinet.”
Edward knelt beside the tub. Vergil regarded him curiously. “What are we going to do?” Edward asked.
Vergil’s expression changed with shocking abruptness from alert interest to a virtual mask of sorrow. “Jesus, Edward, my mother—you know, they’re coming to take me back, but she said…I should call her. Talk to her.” Tears fell across the ridges which pulled his cheeks out of shape. “She told me to come back to her. When…when it was time. Is it time, Edward?”
“Yes,” Edward said, feeling suspended somewhere in a spark-filled cloud. “I think it must be.” His fingers dosed about the quartz lamp cord and he moved along its length to the plug.
Vergil had hot-wired door-knobs, turned his piss blue, played a thousand dumb practical jokes, and never grown up, never grown mature enough to understand how brilliant he was and how much he could affect the world.
Vergil reached for the bathtub drain lever. “You know, Edward, I—”
He never finished. Edward had inserted the plug into the wall socket. Now he picked up the lamp and upended it into the tub. He jumped away from the flash, the steam and the sparks. The bathroom light went out. Vergil screamed and thrashed and jerked and then everything was still, except for the low, steady sizzle and the smoke wafting from his hair. Light from the small ventilation window cut a shaft through the foul-smelling haze.
Edward lifted the toilet lid and vomited. Then he clenched his nose and stumbled into the living room. His legs went out from under him and he collapsed on the couch.
But there was no time. He stood up, swaying and nauseated again, and entered the kitchen. He found Candice’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s and returned to the bathroom. He unscrewed the cap and poured the contents of the bottle into the tub water, trying not to look at Vergil directly. But that wasn’t enough. He would need bleach and ammonia and then he would have to leave.
He was about to call out and ask Vergil where the bleach and ammonia were, but he caught himself. Vergil was dead. Edward’s stomach began to surge again and he leaned against the w
all in the hallway, cheek pressed against the paint and plaster. When had things become less real?
When Vergil had entered the Mount Freedom Medical Center. This was another of Vergil’s jokes. Ha. Turn your whole life deep midnight blue, Edward; never forget a friend.
He looked into the linen closet but saw only towels and sheets. In the bedroom, he opened Vergil’s wardrobe and found only clothes. The bedroom had a master bathroom attached—he could see into it from where he stood by the corner of the unmade bed. Edward entered the master bath. At one end was a shower stall. A trickle of water came out from under the door. He tried the light switch but this whole section of the apartment was powerless; the only light came from the bedroom window. In the closet he found both bleach and a big half-gallon jug of ammonia.
He carried them down the hall and poured them one by one into the tub, avoiding Vergil’s sightless pale eyes. Fumes hissed up and he dosed the door behind him coughing.
Someone softly called Vergil’s name. Edward carried the empty bottles into the master bathroom, where the voice was louder. He stood in the doorway, one plastic jug brushing the frame, and cocked an ear, frowning.
“Hey, Vergil, that you?” the voice asked dryly. It came from the shower stall. Edward took a step forward, then paused. Enough, he thought. Reality had been twisted enough and he didn’t really want to go any farther. He took another step, then another, and reached for the door of the shower stall.
The voice sounded like a woman, husky, strange, though not in distress.
He grasped the handle and tugged. With a hollow click, the door swung open. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, he peered into the shower.
“Jesus, Vergil, you’ve been neglecting me. We’ve got to get out of this hotel. It’s dark and small and I don’t like it”
He recognized the voice from the phone, though he could not possibly have recognized her by appearance, even had he seen a photograph.
“Candice?” he asked.
“Vergil? Let’s go.”
He fled.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The phone was ringing as Edward came home. He didn’t answer. It could have been the hospital. It could have been Bernard—or the police. He envisioned having to explain everything to the police. Genetron would stonewall; Bernard would be unavailable.
Edward was exhausted, all his muscles knotted with tension and whatever name one could give to the feelings one has after-
Committing genocide?
That certainly didn’t seem real. He could not believe he had just murdered a trillion intelligent beings. “Noocytes.” Snuffed a galaxy. That was laughable. But he didn’t laugh.
He could still see Candice, in the shower.
Work had proceeded on her much more rapidly. Her legs were gone; her torso had been reduced to an impressionistic spareness. She had lifted her face to him, covered with ridges as if made from a stack of cards.
He had left the building in time to see a white van speed around the curve and park In front, with Bernard’s limousine not far behind. He had sat in his car and watched men in white isolation suits climb out of the van, which, he noted, was unmarked.
Then he had started his car, put it in gear, and driven away. Simple as that. Return to Irvine. Ignore the whole mess as long as he could, or he would very soon be as crazy as Candice.
Candice, who was being transformed over an open shower drain. Let the little buggers out, Vergil had said. Show them what the world’s about.
It was not at all hard to believe that he had just killed one human being, a friend. The smoke, the melted lamp cover the drooping electrical outlet and smoking cord.
Vergil.
He had dunked the lamp into the tub with Vergil.
Had he been thorough enough to kill all of them in the tub? Perhaps Bernard and his group would finish what he had started.
He didn’t think so. Who could encompass it understand it all? Certainly he couldn’t; there had been horrors, fearsome things for the mind to acknowledge, to see, and he did not believe he could predict what was go-big to happen next, for he hardly knew what was happening now.
The dreams. Cities raping Gail. Galaxies sprinkling over them all. What anguish…and then again, what potential beauty—a new kind of life, symbiosis and transformations.
No. That was not a good thought Change—too much change—and
so where did his objections begin, his objections to a new order, a new trans
formation because he well knew that humans weren’t enough that there had to be more Vergil had made more; in his clumsy unseeing way he had initiated the next stage.
No. Life goes on no period no end no change, no shocking things like Candice in the shower or Vergil dead in the tub. Life is the right held by an individual to normality and normal progress normal aging who would take away that right who in their right minds would accept and what was it he was thinking was going to happen that he would have to accept?
He lay down on the couch and shielded his eyes with his forearm. He had never been so exhausted in his life—drained physically, emotionally, beyond rational thought. He was reluctant to sleep because he could feel the nightmares building up like thunderheads, waiting to shower refractions and echoes of what he had seen.
Edward pulled away his forearm and stared up at the ceiling. It was just barely possible that what had been started could be stopped. Perhaps he was the one who could trigger the chain of actions which could stop it. He could call the Centers for Disease Control (yes, but were they the ones he wanted to talk to?). Or perhaps the defense department? County health first, work through channels? Maybe even the VA hospital or Scripps Clinic in La Jolla.
He put his arm back over his eyes. There was no clear course of action.
Events had simply exceeded his capacity. He imagined that had happened often in human history; tidal waves of events overwhelming crucial individuals, sweeping them along. Making them wish there was a quiet place, perhaps a little Mexican village where nothing ever happened and where they could go and sleep just sleep.
“Edward?” Gail leaned over him, touching his forehead with cool fingers. “Every time I come home, here you are—sacked out. You don’t look good. Feeling okay?”
“Yes.” He sat on the edge of the couch. His body was hot and wooziness threatened his balance. “What have you planned for dinner?” His mouth wasn’t working properly; the words sounded mushy. “I thought we’d go out.”
“You have a fever,” Gail said. “A very high fever. I’m getting the thermometer. Just stay there.”
“No,” he called after her weakly. He stood and stumbled into the bathroom to look in the mirror. She met him there and stuck the thermometer under his tongue. As always, he thought of biting it like Harpo Marx, eating it like a piece of candy. She peered over his shoulder into the mirror.
“What is it?” she asked.
There were lines under his collar, around his neck. White lines, like freeways.
“Damp palms,” he said. “Vergil had damp palms.” They had already been inside him for days. “So obvious.”
“Edward, please, what is it?”
“I have to make a call,” he said. Gail followed him into the bedroom and stood as he sat on the bed and punched the Genetron number. “Dr. Michael Bernard, please,” he said. The receptionist told him, much too quickly, there was no such person at Genetron. “This is too important to fuck around with,” he said coldly. “Tell Dr. Bernard this is Edward Milligan and it’s urgent.”
The receptionist put him on hold. Perhaps Bernard was still at Vergil’s apartment, trying to sort out the pieces of the puzzle; perhaps they would simply send someone out to arrest him. It really didn’t matter either way.
“Bernard here.” The doctor’s voice was flat and serpentine—much, Edward imagined, like he himself sounded.
“It’s too late, Doctor. We shook Vergil’s hand. Sweaty palms. Remember? And ask yourself whom we’ve touched since. We’re the vectors now.”
“I was at the apartment today, Milligan,” Bernard said “Did you kill Ulam?”
“Yes. He was going to release his…microbes. Noocytes. Whatever they are, now.”
“Did you find his girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do with her?”
“Do with her? Nothing. She was in the shower. But listen—”
“She was gone when we arrived, nothing but her clothes. Did you kill her, too?”
“Listen to me, Doctor. I have Vergil’s microbes inside me. So do you.”
There was silence on the other end, then a deep sigh. “Yes?”
“Have you worked out any way to control them, I mean, inside our bodies?”
“Yes.” Then, more softly, “No. Not yet Antimetabolites, controlled radiation therapy, actinomycin. We haven’t tried everything, but…no.”
“Then that’s it, Dr. Bernard.”
Another longer pause. “Hm.”
“I’m going back to my wife now, to spend what little time we have.”
“Yes,” Bernard said. “Thank you for calling.”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“Of course. Good-bye.”
Edward hung up and put his arms around Gail.
“It’s a disease, isn’t it?” she said.
Edward nodded. “That’s what Vergil made. A disease that thinks. I’m not sure there’s any way to fight an intelligent plague.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Harrison leafed through the procedure manual, making notes methodically. Yng sat in a stressless leather chair in the corner, fingers of both hands forming a pyramid before his face, his long, lank black hair falling over his eyes and glasses. Bernard stood before the black formica-topped desk, impressed by the quality of the silence. Harrison leaned back from the desk and held up his notepad.
“First, we’re not responsible. That’s how I read it. Ulam did his research without our authorization—”
“But we didn’t fire him when we learned of it,” Yng countered. “That’s going to be a bad point in court.”
