by Vitals (v5)
I keep waking up late at night. I’m having dreams about Rob, frequent and nasty. He’s chasing me. He blames me for his death. He’s mad that Lissa had sex with me. I try to tell him it wasn’t my fault, and he just gives me his most infuriating smile.
My phone bills scare me. (I can’t pay them, but someone is paying them, because the phone hasn’t been cut off.) I’m making long-distance calls to numbers I don’t know, and if I try calling them again, I’m not recognized, or I get answering machines, or a modem line and all I hear is an electronic raspberry.
The last few weeks I’ve been answering so many dead calls. I pick up, and nobody’s there. Just silence, or a hum from another galaxy.
I can’t just let it ring.
Maybe it’s part of this election, thousands of political phone banks, they dial hundreds of numbers at once, I answer, my voice triggers the computer to bring in an operator, but all of the operators are busy . . .
That sort of thing. Common, really. Nothing to worry about.
But eighty or ninety a day? To a guy with an unlisted number, who isn’t registered to vote and has a lousy credit rating? I forget who I am some days, the phone cuts away so many chunks of my time.
Last night around midnight I answered on the third ring. This time there was a voice on the line, but I can’t remember whether I was awake or asleep.
It was Rob. He said he was calling from Lee Stocking Island. He said, “Hal, old boy, I’ve got some news. Do you have the final clues? Shall we visit Dr. Seuss?”
“Goddamn it,” I said. “Leave me alone.” But I couldn’t hang up the phone. After he made sure I was still on the line, he read me a list of numbers.
I still remember those numbers. Every damned one of them.
We kept the coffin closed. I never saw the body. Rob was running Ben, had control of him even at the last, made him see what Rob wanted him to see.
Rob’s list—chopper, piecework, regulus—did not stop the others from being tagged on Lemuria. But it could have protected me. Maybe, in his way, he loves me. He wants to keep me around, especially if I’m under his thumb.
Is this crazy thinking or have I finally figured it out?
Rob found a way to turn the tables. He finished his work while everyone thought he was dead, even his brother. After all the different factions had exhausted themselves, he moved in. Cut deals, made promises. Took over. Replaced Golokhov.
But his hands have the puckering, Irina’s disease, Stalin’s madness.
This morning, I found a pistol under the mat on my front porch. A Glock with a fifteen-shot law-enforcement clip. Lissa’s gun.
Do I use it on someone else, or on myself?
History is my brother’s fist smashing into my face forever.
My stomach hurts.
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You’ve played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:
Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage:
Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
—Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace
Lynnwood, Washington
December 5, 2000
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Special Agent Carl Jensen, FBI; Juliann Brunzell, Special Agent, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension; Ed Ueber, NOAA; David and Diane Clarke; Yoshihisa Shirayama, Director and Professor of the Seto Marine Biological Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan; Mark E. Minie and Rose James; David Thaler, microbiologist at Rockefeller University; Dr. Karl and Sylvia Anders; Karen Anderson; Ron Drummond; copy editors Bob and Sara Schwager; and to my English-language editors, Shelly Shapiro, Jane Johnson, and Joy Chamberlain. And special thanks indeed to the Extropians, and to Max More and Natasha Vita-More.
The theory of aging described in this book is speculative. The concept of bacterial cooperation, however, is firmly established in scientific papers and books, including Bacteria as Multicellular Organisms, edited by James A. Shapiro and Martin Dworkin.
Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel-Aviv University has an excellent Web site devoted to his ground-breaking explorations of bacterial cooperation:
http://star.tau.ac.il/~inon/baccyber0.htm
The notion of a distributed bacterial network—a bacterial mind, if you will—is far from fantasy.
Speculations on the ultimate description and relationship of xenophyophores and the Vendobionts are my own. Dr. Mark A. S. McMenamin’s The Garden of Ediacara is an excellent personal examination of the Vendobiont fossils and their possible relationships to modern life-forms.
Almost needless to say, I owe a great debt to the work of Lynn Margulis.
None of these fine people, of course, are responsible for any blunders or misconceptions that might remain.
disclaimer
The Waldorf Conference actually took place in New York in 1949. The AP photograph described in the text is real, but the person on the far right of the photograph is not, in fact, Rudy Banning.
Rudy Banning does not exist, nor is he intended to symbolize or represent any person, living or dead. Every other character in this novel is totally fictitious.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Bear is the author of more than twenty-five books, which have been translated into seventeen languages. He has been awarded two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction, including the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novel for Darwin’s Radio. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear. They live with their two children, Erik and Alexandra, in the Pacific Northwest.
Also by Greg Bear
Psychlone
Blood Music
Songs of Earth and Power
The Infinity Concerto
The Serpent Mage
Eon
Eternity
Legacy
The Forge of God
Anvil of Stars
Queen of Angels
/ (Slant)
Heads
Moving Mars
Dinosaur Summer
Foundation and Chaos
Darwin’s Radio
COLLECTIONS
The Wind from a Burning Woman
Tangents
EDITOR
New Legends
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Greg Bear
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
can be obtained from the publisher upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-345-45545-1
v3.0
