by Greg Bear
“Something’s wrong,” Gail said softly. “Are you going to tell me, or just act like everything’s normal?”
“It’s just me,” I said. “Nervous. Work at the hospital.”
“Oh, lord,” she said, sitting up. “You’re going to divorce me for that Baker woman.” Mrs. Baker weighed three hundred and sixty pounds and hadn’t known she was pregnant until her fifth month.
“No,” I said, listless.
“Rapturous relief,” Gail said, touching my forehead lightly. “You know this kind of introspection drives me crazy.”
“Well, it’s nothing I can talk about yet, so …” I patted her hand.
“That’s disgustingly patronizing,” she said, getting up. “I’m going to make some tea. Want some?” Now she was miffed, and I was tense with not telling. Why not just reveal all? I asked myself. An old friend was about to risk everything, change everything …
I cleared away the table instead.
That night, unable to sleep, I looked down on Gail in bed from my sitting position, pillow against the wall, and tried to determine what I knew was real, and what wasn’t. I’m a doctor, I told myself. A technical, scientific profession. I’m supposed to be immune to things like future shock. How would it feel to be topped off with a trillion intelligences speaking a language as incomprehensible as Chinese?
I grinned in the dark and almost cried at the same time. What Vergil had inside him was unimaginably stranger. Stranger than anything I—or Vergil—could easily understand. Perhaps ever understand.
Vergil Ulam is turning himself into a galaxy.
But I knew what was real. The bedroom, the city lights faint through gauze curtains. Gail sleeping. Very important. Gail in bed, sleeping.
The dream returned. This time the city came in through the window and attacked Gail. It was a great, spiky lighted-up prowler, and it growled in a language I couldn’t understand, made up of auto horns, crowd noises, construction bedlam. I tried to fight it off, but it got to her—and turned into a drift of stars, sprinkling all over the bed, all over everything. I jerked awake and stayed up until dawn, dressed with Gail, kissed her, savored the reality of her human, unviolated lips.
I went to meet with Bernard. He had been loaned a suite in a big downtown hospital; I rode the elevator to the sixth floor, and saw what fame and fortune could mean. The suite was tastefully furnished, fine serigraphs on wood-paneled walls, chrome and glass furniture, cream-colored carpet, Chinese brass, and wormwood-grain cabinets and tables.
He offered me a cup of coffee, and I accepted. He took a seat in the breakfast nook, and I sat across from him, cradling my cup in moist palms. He wore a dapper gray suit and had graying hair and a sharp profile. He was in his mid sixties and he looked quite a bit like Leonard Bernstein.
“About our mutual acquaintance,” he said. “Mr. Ulam. Brilliant. And, I won’t hesitate to say, courageous.”
“He’s my friend. I’m worried about him.”
Bernard held up one finger. “Courageous—and a bloody damned fool. What’s happening to him should never have been allowed. He may have done it under duress, but that’s no excuse. Still, what’s done is done. He’s talked to you, I take it.”
I nodded. “He wants to return to Genetron.”
“Of course. That’s where all his equipment is. Where his home probably will be while we sort this out.”
“Sort it out—how? Why?” I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I had a slight headache.
“I can think of a lot of uses for small, super-dense computer elements with a biological base. Can’t you? Genetron has already made breakthroughs, but this is something else again.”
“What are you—they—planning?”
Bernard smiled. “I’m not really at liberty to say. It’ll be revolutionary. We’ll have to put him in a tightly controlled, isolated environment. Perhaps his own wing. Animal experiments have to be conducted. We’ll start from scratch, of course. Vergil’s … um … colonies can’t be transferred. They’re based on his own white blood cells. So we have to develop colonies that won’t trigger immune reactions.”
“Like an infection?” I asked.
“I suppose there are comparisons. But Vergil is not infected.”
“My tests indicate he is.”
“That’s probably loose bits of data floating around in his blood, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, I’d like you to come down to the lab after Vergil is settled in. Your expertise might be useful to us.”
Us. He was working with Genetron hand in glove. Could he be objective?
“How will you benefit from all this?”
“Edward, I have always been at the forefront of my profession. I see no reason why I shouldn’t be helping here. With my knowledge of brain and nerve functions, and the research I’ve been conducting in neurophysiology—”
“You could help Genetron hold off an investigation by the government,” I said.
“That’s being very blunt. Too blunt, and unfair.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, yes: I’d like to visit the lab when Vergil’s settled in. If I’m still welcome, bluntness and all.”
Bernard looked at me sharply. I wouldn’t be playing on his team; for a moment, his thoughts were almost nakedly apparent. “Of course,” he said, rising with me. He reached out to shake my hand. His palm was damp. He was as nervous as I was, even if he didn’t look it.
I returned to my apartment and stayed there until noon, reading, trying to sort things out. Reach a decision. What was real, what I needed to protect. There is only so much change anyone can stand: innovation, yes, but slow application. Don’t force. Everyone has the right to stay the same until they decide otherwise.
The greatest thing in science since …
And Bernard would force it. Genetron would force it. I couldn’t handle the thought. “Neo-Luddite,” I said to myself. A filthy accusation.
When I pressed Vergil’s number on the building security panel, Vergil answered almost immediately. “Yeah,” he said. He sounded exhilarated. “Come on up. I’ll be in the bathroom. Door’s unlocked.”
I entered his apartment and walked through the hallway to the bathroom. Vergil lay in the tub, up to his neck in pinkish water. He smiled vaguely and splashed his hands. “Looks like I slit my wrists, doesn’t it?” he said softly. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine now. Genetron’s going to take me back. Bernard just called.” He pointed to the bathroom phone and intercom.
I sat on the toilet and noticed the sunlamp fixture standing unplugged next to the linen cabinets. The bulbs sat in a row on the edge of the sink counter. “You’re sure that’s what you want?” I said, my shoulders slumping.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “They can take better care of me. I’m getting cleaned up, going over there this evening. Bernard’s picking me up in his limo. Style. From here on in, everything’s style.”
The pinkish color in the water didn’t look like soap. “Is that bubble bath?” I asked. Some of it came to me in a rush then and I felt a little weaker; what had occurred to me was just one more obvious and necessary insanity.
“No,” Vergil said.
I knew that already.
“No,” he repeated, “it’s coming from my skin. They’re not telling me everything, but I think they’re sending out scouts. Astronauts.” He looked at me with an expression that didn’t quite equal concern; more like curiosity as to how I’d take it. The confirmation made my stomach muscles tighten as if waiting for a punch. I had never even considered the possibility until now, perhaps because I had been concentrating on other aspects.
“Is this the first time?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, then laughed. “I’ve 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,” I said.
“Sure enough.”
“How … how are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling pretty good now. Must be billions of them.” More splashing with his hands. “What do you think? Should I let the buggers out?”
Quickly, hardly thinking, I knelt down beside the tub. My fingers went for the cord on the sunlamp and I plugged it in. He had hot-wired doorknobs, turned my piss blue, played a thousand dumb practical jokes and never grown up, never grown mature enough to understand that he was sufficiently brilliant to transform the world; he would never learn caution.
He reached for the drain knob. “You know, Edward, I—”
He never finished. I picked up the fixture and dropped it into the tub, jumping back at the flash of steam and sparks. Vergil screamed and thrashed and jerked and then everything was still, except for the low, steady sizzle and the smoke wafting from his hair.
I lifted the toilet lid and vomited. Then I clenched my nose and went into the living room. My legs went out from under me and I sat abruptly on the couch.
After an hour, I searched through Vergil’s kitchen and found bleach, ammonia, and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I returned to the bathroom, keeping the center of my gaze away from Vergil. I poured first the booze, then the bleach, then the ammonia into the water. Chlorine started bubbling up and I left, closing the door behind me.
The phone was ringing when I got home. I didn’t answer. It could have been the hospital. It could have been Bernard. Or the police. I could envision having to explain everything to the police. Genetron would stonewall; Bernard would be unavailable. I was exhausted, all my muscles knotted with tension and whatever name one can give to the feelings one has after—
Committing genocide?
That certainly didn’t seem real. I could not believe I had just murdered a hundred trillion intelligent beings. Snuffed a galaxy. It was laughable. But I didn’t laugh.
What was easy to believe was that I had just killed one human being, a friend. The smoke, the melted lamp rods, the drooping electrical outlet and smoking cord.
Vergil.
I had dunked the lamp into the tub with Vergil.
I felt sick. Dreams, cities raping Gail (and what about his girlfriend, Candice?). Draining the water filled with them. Galaxies sprinkling over us all. What horror. Then again, what potential beauty—a new kind of life, symbiosis and transformation.
Had I been thorough enough to kill them all? I had a moment of panic. Tomorrow, I thought, I will sterilize his apartment. Somehow, I didn’t even think of Bernard.
When Gail came in the door, I was asleep on the couch. I came to, groggy, and she looked down at me.
“You feeling okay?” she asked, perching on the arm. I nodded.
“What are you planning for dinner?” My mouth didn’t work properly. The words were mushy.
She felt my forehead. “Edward, you have a fever,” she said. “A very high fever.” I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Gail was close behind me.
“What is it?” she asked.
There were lines under my collar, around my neck. White lines, like freeways. They had already been in me a long time, days.
“Damp palms,” I said. So obvious.
I think we nearly died. I struggled at first, but in minutes I was too weak to move. Gail was just as sick within an hour.
I lay on the carpet in the living room, drenched in sweat. Gail lay on the couch, her face the color of talcum, eyes closed, like a corpse in an embalming parlor. For a time I thought she was dead. Sick as I was, I raged—hated, felt tremendous guilt at my weakness, my slowness to understand all the possibilities. Then I no longer cared. I was too weak to blink, so I closed my eyes and waited.
There was a rhythm in my arms, my legs. With each pulse of blood, a kind of sound welled up within me, like an orchestra thousands strong, but not playing in unison; playing whole seasons of symphonies at once. Music in the blood. The sound became harsher, but more coordinated, wave-trains finally canceling into silence, then separating into harmonic beats.
The beats seemed to melt into me, into the sound of my own heart.
First, they subdued our immune responses. The war—and it was a war, on a scale never before known on Earth, with trillions of combatants—lasted perhaps two days.
By the time I regained enough strength to get to the kitchen faucet, I could feel them working on my brain, trying to crack the code and find the god within the protoplasm. I drank until I was sick, then drank more moderately and took a glass to Gail. She sipped. Her lips were cracked, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with yellowish crumbs. There was some color in her skin.
Minutes later, we were eating feebly in the kitchen.
“What in hell is happening?” was the first thing she asked. I didn’t have the strength to explain. I peeled an orange and shared it with her. “We should call a doctor,” she said. But I knew we wouldn’t. I was already receiving messages; it was becoming apparent that any sensation of freedom we experienced was illusory.
The messages were simple at first. Memories of commands, rather than the commands themselves, manifested in my thoughts. We were not to leave the apartment—a concept which seemed quite abstract to those in control, even if undesirable—and we were not to have contact with others. We would be allowed to eat certain foods and drink tap water for the time being.
With the subsidence of the fevers, the transformations were quick and drastic. Almost simultaneously, Gail and I were immobilized. She was sitting at the table, I was kneeling on the floor. I was able barely to see her in the corner of my eye.
Her arm developed pronounced ridges.
They had learned inside Vergil; their tactics within the two of us were very different. I itched all over for about two hours—two hours in hell—before they made the breakthrough and found me. The effort of ages on their timescale paid off and they communicated smoothly and directly with this great, clumsy intelligence who had once controlled their universe.
They were not cruel. When the concept of discomfort and its undesirability was made clear, they worked to alleviate it. They worked too effectively. For another hour, I was in a sea of bliss, out of all contact with them.
With dawn the next day, they gave us freedom to move again; specifically, to go to the bathroom. There were certain waste products they could not deal with. I voided those—my urine was purple—and Gail followed suit. We looked at each other vacantly in the bathroom. Then she managed a slight smile. “Are they talking to you?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Then I’m not crazy.”
For the next twelve hours, control seemed to loosen on some levels. I suspect there was another kind of war going on in me. Gail was capable of limited motion, but no more.
When full control resumed, we were instructed to hold each other. We did not hesitate.
“Eddie …” she whispered. My name was the last sound I ever heard from outside.
Standing, we grew together. In hours, our legs expanded and spread out. Then extensions grew to the windows to take in sunlight, and to the kitchen to take water from the sink. Filaments soon reached to all corners of the room, stripping paint and plaster from the walls, fabric and stuffing from the furniture.
By dawn, the transformation was complete.
I no longer have any clear idea of what we look like. I suspect we resemble cells—large, flat, and filamented cells, draped purposefully across most of the apartment. The great shall mimic the small.
Our intelligence fluctuates daily as we are absorbed into the minds within. Each day, our individuality declines. We are, indeed, great clumsy dinosaurs. Our memories have been taken over by billions of them, and our personalities have been spread through the transformed blood. Soon there will be no need for centralization.
Already the plumbing h
as been invaded. People throughout the building are undergoing transformation.
Within the old time frame of weeks, we will reach the lakes, rivers, and seas in force. I can barely begin to guess the results. Every square inch of the planet will teem with thought. Years from now, perhaps much sooner, they will subdue their own individuality—what there is of it. New creatures will come, then. The immensity of their capacity for thought will be inconceivable.
All my hatred and fear is gone now.
I leave them—us—with only one question.
How many times has this happened, elsewhere? Travelers never came through space to visit the Earth. They had no need.
They had found universes in grains of sand.
Afterword
In the early eighties, a brilliant visionary named K. Eric Drexler proposed that very tiny machines could change the nature of the human race. Physicist Richard Feynman had come up with the idea first, imagining a series of “assemblers” that could make smaller versions of themselves, capable of making smaller versions still, down to the molecular scale. Drexler refined these ideas and called his new field of endeavor “nanotechnology.” His first book on the subject, Engines of Creation, appeared from Doubleday in 1986.
To many, “Blood Music” and the novel of the same name suggested the first appearance of nanotechnology in science fiction, which is perhaps true. But Drexler’s vision, while it encompasses biology, relies to this day on the replacement of biology with something more certain, “harder” as it were and less “squishy,” less subject to the vagaries of death and decay.
I tend to believe that since protein molecules already perform many of the tasks of Drexler’s nanomachines, biology will rule—for the time being. But Eric and his colleagues could ultimately be correct. They’ve certainly caught the attention of industry and the government. And they regard a story like “Blood Music” as not so much inspirational as a warning: Avoid processes that can turn the world into “gray goo.”
But the novel version of “Blood Music” ends on a very upbeat note. Very few people die, and we’re all biologically uploaded into a new kind of heaven, where we can do almost anything we want, even live forever.
