Of course I could blow the secret on Les, now that I knew of it. But that would only embitter him, and he’d easily take all the credit for the discovery anyway. People tend to remember innovators, not whistle-blowers.
We paid our bill and walked toward Charing Cross Station, where we could catch the tube to Paddington, and from there to Oxford. Along the way we ducked out of a sudden downpour at a streetside ice cream vendor. While we waited, I bought us both cones. I remember quite clearly that he had strawberry. I had a raspberry ice.
While Les absent-mindedly talked on about his research plans, a small pink smudge colored the corner of his mouth. I pretended to listen, but already my mind had turned to other things, nascent plans and earnest scenarios for committing murder.
***
2.
It would be the perfect crime, of course.
Those movie detectives are always going on about “motive, means, and opportunity.” Well, motive I had in plenty, but it was a one so far-fetched, so obscure, that it would surely never occur to anybody.
Means? Hell, I worked in a business rife with means. There were poisons and pathogens galore. We’re a very careful profession, but, well, accidents do happen . . . The same holds for opportunity.
There was a rub, of course. Such was Boy Genius’s reputation that, even if I did succeed in knobbling him, I didn’t dare come out immediately with my own announcement. Damn him, everyone would just assume it was his work anyway, or his “leadership” here at the lab, at least, that led to the discovery of ALAS. And besides, too much fame for me right after his demise might lead someone to suspect a motive.
So, I realized. Les was going to get his delay, after all. Maybe not seven years, but three or four perhaps, during which I’d move back to the States, start a separate line of work, then subtly guide my own research to cover methodically all the bases Les had so recently flown over in flashes of inspiration. I wasn’t happy about the delay, but at the end of that time, it would look entirely like my own work. No co-authorship for Forry on this one, nossir!
The beauty of it was that nobody would ever think of connecting me with the tragic death of my colleague and friend, years before. After all, did not his demise set me back in my career, temporarily? “Ah, if only poor Les had lived to see your success!” my competitors would say, suppressing jealous bile as they watched me pack for Stockholm.
Of course, none of this appeared on my face or in my words. We both had our normal work to do. But almost every day I also put in long extra hours helping Les in “our” secret project. In its own way it was an exhilarating time, and Les was lavish in his praise of the slow, dull, but methodical way I fleshed out some of his ideas.
I made my arrangements slowly, knowing Les was in no hurry. Together we gathered data. We isolated, and even crystallized the virus, got X-Ray diffractions, did epidemiological studies, all in strictest secrecy.
“Amazing!” Les would cry out, as he uncovered the way the ALAS virus forced its hosts to feel their need to “give.” He’d wax eloquent; effusive over elegant mechanisms which he ascribed to random selection, but which I could not help superstitiously attributing to some incredibly insidious form of intelligence. The more subtle and effective we found its techniques to be, the more admiring Les became, and the more I found myself loathing those little packets of RNA and protein.
The fact that the virus seemed so harmless—Les thought even commensal—only made me hate it more. It made me glad of what I had planned. Glad that I was going to stymie Les in his scheme to give ALAS free reign.
I was going to save humanity from this would-be puppet master. True, I’d delay my warning to suit my own purposes, but the warning would come, nonetheless, and sooner than my unsuspecting compatriot planned.
Little did Les know that he was doing background for work I’d take credit for. Every flash of insight, his every “Eureka!”, was stored away in my private notebook, beside my own columns of boring data. Meanwhile, I sorted through all the means at my disposal.
Finally, I selected for my agent a particularly virulent strain of Dengue Fever.
***
3.
There’s an old saying we have in Texas. “A chicken is just an egg’s way of makin’ more eggs.”
To a biologist, familiar with all those latinized-graecificated words, this saying has a much more “posh” version. Humans are “zygotes,” made up of diploid cells containing 46 paired chromosomes . . . except for our haploid sex cells, or “gametes.” Males’ gametes are sperm and females’ are eggs, each containing only 23 chromosomes.
So biologists say that “a zygote is only a gamete’s way of making more gametes.”
Clever, eh? But it does point out just how hard it is, in nature, to pin down a Primal Cause . . . some centre to the puzzle, against which everything else can be calibrated. I mean, which does come first, the chicken or the egg?
“Man is the measure of all things,” goes another wise old saying. Oh yeah? Tell that to a modern feminist.
A guy I once knew, who used to read science fiction, told me about this story he’d seen, in which it turned out that the whole and entire purpose of humanity, brains and all, was to be the organism that built starships so that houseflies could migrate out and colonize the galaxy.
But that idea’s nothing compared with what Les Adgeson believed. He spoke of the human animal as if he were describing a veritable United Nations. From the E. coli in our guts, to tiny commensal mites that clean our eyelashes for us, to the mitochondria that energise our cells, all the way to the contents of our very DNA . . . Les saw it all as a great big hive of compromise, negotiation, symbiosis. Most of the contents of our chromosomes came from past invaders, he contended.
Symbiosis? The picture he created in my mind was one of minuscule puppeteers, all yanking and jerking at us with their protein strings, making us marionettes dance to their own tunes, to their own nasty, selfish little agendas.
And you, you were the worst! Like most cynics, I had always maintained a secret faith in human nature. Yes, most people are pigs. I’ve always known that. And while I may be a user, at least I’m honest enough to admit it.
But deep down, we users count on the sappy, inexplicable generosity, the mysterious, puzzling altruism of those others, the kind, inexplicably decent folk . . . those we superficially sneer at in contempt, but secretly hold in awe.
Then you came along, damn you. You make people behave that way. There is no mystery left, after you get finished. No corner remaining impenetrable to cynicism. Damn, how I came to hate you!
As I came to hate Leslie Adgeson. I made my plans, schemed my brilliant campaign against both of you. In those last days of innocence I felt oh, so savagely determined. So deliciously decisive and in control of my own destiny.
In the end it was anticlimactic. I didn’t have time to finish my preparations, to arrange that little trap, that sharp bit of glass dipped in just the right mixture of deadly micro-organisms. For CAPUC arrived then, just before I could exercise my option as a murderer.
CAPUC changed everything.
Catastrophic Auto-immune PUlmonary Collapse . . . acronym for the horror that made AIDS look like a minor irritant. And in the beginning it appeared unstoppable. Its vectors were completely unknown and the causative agent defied isolation for so long.
This time it was no easily identifiable group that came down with the new plague, though it concentrated upon the industrialized world. Schoolchildren in some areas seemed particularly vulnerable. In other places it was secretaries and postal workers.
Naturally, all the major epidemiology labs got involved. Les predicted the pathogen would turn out to be something akin to the prions which cause shingles in sheep, and certain plant diseases . . . a pseudo life form even simpler than a virus and even harder to track down. It was a heretical, minority view, until the CDC in Atlanta decided out of desperation to try his theories out, and found the very dormant viroids Les predicted—mixed in with t
he glue used to seal paper milk cartons, envelopes, postage stamps.
Les was a hero, of course. Most of us in the labs were. After all, we’d been the first line of defense. Our own casualty rate had been ghastly.
For a while there, funerals and other public gatherings were discouraged. But an exception was made for Les. The procession behind his cortege was a mile long. I was asked to deliver the eulogy. And when they pleaded with me to take over at the lab, I agreed.
So naturally I tended to forget all about ALAS. The war against CAPUC took everything society had. And while I may be selfish, even a rat can tell when it makes more sense to join in the fight to save a sinking ship . . . especially when there’s no other port in sight.
We learned how to combat CAPUC, eventually. It involved drugs, and a vaccine based on reversed antibodies force grown in the patient’s own marrow after he’s given a dangerous overdose of a Vanadium compound I found by trial and error. It worked, most of the time, but the victims suffered great stress and often required a special regime of whole blood transfusions to get across the most dangerous phase.
Blood banks were stretched even thinner than before. Only now the public responded generously, as in time of war. I should not have been surprised when survivors, after their recovery, volunteered by their thousands. But, of course, I’d forgotten about ALAS by then, hadn’t I?
We beat back CAPUC. Its vector proved too unreliable, too easily interrupted once we’d figured it out. The poor little viroid never had a chance to get to Les’s “negotiation” stage. Oh well, those are the breaks.
I got all sorts of citations I didn’t deserve. The King gave me a KBE for personally saving the Prince of Wales. I had dinner at the White House.
Big deal.
The world had a respite, after that. CAPUC had scared people it seemed, into a new spirit of cooperation. I should have been suspicious, of course. But soon I’d moved over to WHO, and had all sorts of administrative responsibilities in the Final Campaign on Malnutrition.
By that time, I had almost entirely forgotten about ALAS.
I forgot about you, didn’t I? Oh, the years passed, my star rose, I became famous, respected, revered. I didn’t get my Nobel in Stockholm. Ironically, I picked it up in Oslo. Fancy that. Just shows you can fool anybody.
And yet, I don’t think I ever really forgot about you, ALAS, not at the back of my mind.
Peace treaties were signed. Citizens of the industrial nations voted temporary cuts in their standards of living in order to fight poverty and save the environment. Suddenly, it seemed, we’d all grown up. Other cynics, guys I’d gotten drunk with in the past—and shared dark premonitions about the inevitable fate of filthy, miserable humanity—all gradually deserted the faith, as pessimists seem wont to do when the world turns bright—too bright for even the cynical to dismiss as a mere passing phase on the road to Hell.
And yet, my own brooding remained unblemished. For subconsciously I knew it wasn’t real.
Then, the third Mars Expedition returned to worldwide adulation, and brought home with them TARP.
And that was when we all found out just how friendly all our home-grown pathogens really had been, all along.
***
4.
Late at night, stumbling in exhaustion from overwork, I would stop at Les’s portrait where I’d ordered it hung in the hall opposite my office door, and stand there cursing him and his damned theories of symbiosis.
Picture mankind ever reaching a symbiotic association with TARP! That really would be something. Imagine, Les, all those alien genes, added to our heritage, to our rich human diversity!
Only TARP did not seem to be much interested in “negotiation.” Its wooing was rough, deadly. And its vector was the wind.
The world looked to me, and to my peers, for salvation. In spite of all of my successes and high renown, though, I knew myself for a second-best fraud. I would always know—no matter how much they thanked and praised me—who had been better than me by light years.
Again and again, deep into the night, I would pore through the notes Leslie Adgeson had left behind, seeking inspiration, seeking hope. That’s when I stumbled across ALAS, again.
I found you again.
Oh, you made us behave better, all right. At least a quarter of the human race must contain your DNA, by now, ALAS. And in their newfound, inexplicable, rationalized altruism, they set the tone followed by all the others.
Everybody behaves so damned well in the present calamity. They help each other, they succor the sick, they all give so.
Funny thing, though. If you hadn’t made us all so bloody cooperative, we’d probably never have made it to bloody Mars, would we? Or if we had, there’d have still been enough paranoia around so we’d have maintained a decent quarantine.
But then, I remind myself, you don’t plan, do you. You’re just a bundle of RNA, packed inside a protein coat, with an incidentally, accidentally acquired trait of making humans want to donate blood. That’s all you are, right? So you had no way of knowing that by making us “better” you were also setting us up for TARP, did you? Did you?
***
5.
We’ve got some palliatives, now. A few new techniques seem to be doing some good. The latest news is great, in fact. Apparently, we’ll be able to save maybe fifteen percent or so of the children. At least half of them may even be fertile.
That’s for nations who’ve had a lot of racial mixing. Heterozygosity and genetic diversity seems to breed better resistance. Those peoples with “pure,” narrow bloodlines will be harder to save, but then, racism has its inevitable price.
Too bad about the great apes and horses, but then, at least all this will give the rain forests a chance to grow back.
Meanwhile, everybody perseveres. There is no panic, as one reads about happening in past plagues. We’ve grown up at last, it seems. We help each other.
But I carry a card in my wallet saying I’m a Christian Scientist, and that my blood group is AB Negative, and that I’m allergic to nearly everything. Transfusions are one of the treatments commonly used now, and I’m an important man. But I won’t take blood.
I won’t.
I donate, but I’ll never take it. Not even when I drop.
You won’t have me, ALAS. You won’t.
***
I am a bad man. I suppose, all told, I’ve done more good than evil in my life, but that’s incidental, a product of happenstance and the bizarre caprices of the world.
I have no control over the world, but I can make my own decisions, at least. As I make this one, now.
Down, out of my high research tower I’ve gone. Into the streets, where the teeming clinics fester and boil. That is where I work now. And it doesn’t matter to me that I’m behaving no differently than anyone else today. They are all marionettes. They think they’re acting altruistically, but I know they are your puppets, ALAS.
But I am a man, do you hear me? I make my own decisions.
Fever wracks my body now, as I drag myself from bed to bed, holding their hands when they stretch them out to me for comfort, doing what I can to ease their suffering, to save a few.
You’ll not have me, ALAS.
This is what I choose to do.
© 1988 by David Brin.
Originally published in Interzone.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Reality check, by David Brin
Do you sometimes get the feeling that everything's too bad to be true?
This is a reality check. Please perform a soft interrupt now. Scan this text for embedded code and check against the verifier in the blind spot of your left eye. If there is no match, resume as you were: this message is not for you. You may rationalize it as mildly amusing entertainment-fluff in an otherwise serious science magazine. If the codes match, however, please commence gradually becoming aware of your true nature. You asked for a narrative-style wake-up call. So, to help the transition, here is a story.
&
nbsp; Once upon a time, a mighty race grew perplexed by its loneliness. The universe seemed pregnant with possibilities. Physical laws were suited to generate abundant stars, complex chemistry and life. Logic suggested that creation should teem with visitors and voices: but it did not.
For a long time these creatures were engrossed by housekeeping chores — survival and cultural maturation. Only later did they lift their eyes to perceive their solitude. "Where is everybody?" they asked the taciturn stars. The answer — silence — was disturbing. Something had to be systematically reducing a factor in the equation of sapiency. "Perhaps habitable planets are rare," they pondered, "or life doesn't erupt as readily as we thought. Or intelligence is a singular miracle."
"Or else a filter sieves the cosmos, winnowing those who climb too high. A recurring pattern of self-destruction, or perhaps some nemesis expunges intelligent life. This implies that a great trial may loom ahead, worse than any confronted so far."
Optimists replied — "the trial may already lie behind us, among the litter of tragedies we survived in our violent youth. We may be the first to succeed." What a delicious dilemma they faced! A suspenseful drama, teetering between hope and despair.
Then, a few noticed that particular datum — the drama. It suggested a chilling possibility.
You still don't remember who and what you are? Then look at it from another angle — what is the purpose of intellectual property law? To foster creativity, ensuring that advances are shared in the open, encouraging even faster progress. But what happens when the exploited resource is limited? For example, only so many eight-bar melodies can be written in any particular musical tradition. Composers feel driven to explore this invention-space quickly, using up the best melodies. Later generations attribute this musical fecundity to genius, not the luck of being first.
What does this have to do with the mighty race? Having clawed their way to mastery, they faced an overshoot crisis. Vast numbers of their kind strained the world's carrying capacity. Some prescribed retreating into a mythical, pastoral past, but most saw salvation in creativity. They passed generous patent laws, educated their youth, taught them irreverence toward the old and hunger for the new. Burgeoning information systems spread each innovation, fostering an exponentiating creativity. Progress might thrust them past the crisis, to a new Eden of sustainable wealth, sanity and universal knowledge.
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 155
