by Greg Bear
Sex, it seemed, was too important to be left to the whims of romance. Love, yes, but not this boiling torrent of fickle affection.
In late summer, the paths and woods had sometimes smelled like an explosion in a cocoa factory, mixed with shocking and eye-stinging hints of musk and civet. Couples, all combinations—and sometimes triples—could be seen wrapped in congeries of self-involved, fondling splendor, intertwined, giggling, fever-scenting, persuading—everything but having sex.
At first, Kaye and Mitch had speculated that some of the couples and triples were too young, but soon the sixteen-year-olds were proving them wrong, mating outside the romance, and almost always across demes.
Those who were still prepubescent could become juniors in romantic groups, but such relationships were less demonstrative, more reserved and instructional. Love, and new varieties of passion, it seemed, would find many new uses in Shevite society, and the homes had to reflect these novelties.
Kaye’s thoughts darted back to the one thing she did not want to think about, not now. She lifted her eyes to the dark sky. She wanted to be around for her daughter, to be useful to Mitch and to Stella for many years. But the CDC had confirmed that there was indeed a post-SHEVA syndrome. Luella Hamilton had it; so did many others.
The tips of Kaye’s fingers and portions of her calves were growing numb as the months passed, her walk less quick, her strength and stamina waning.
She had told nobody at Oldstock, though Mitch knew. Kaye could seldom hide important things from Mitch. Except, of course, for what he did not want to hear.
The caller had touched her just a week ago. A short visit, pleasant but not conclusive; a social call. She had asked if she might be allowed to live to see her grandson born.
As before, no answers.
Inside the delivery room, Stella was surrounded by all the females in her deme. They alternately sang and read stories from old children’s books and put their heads together, rubbing their damp palms on hers to calm her and relieve her pain.
Stella leaned back at the last and her eyes seemed to slip up into her head. She gave a long, loud shriek, operatic in its intensity, and the room smelled like saltwater and violets. Everyone moaned together, no signal, just the way it was, would be, moaning in an over-under song of sympathy and greeting.
Stella gave a vigorous wriggle and then a shove, and her son came into the larger world. The moaning softened as the child was examined, and then changed to delighted coos and chuckles.
Yevgenia and Kaye cooperated in lifting the baby onto Stella’s stomach. Yevgenia smiled at Kaye. “Now you are truly grandmother,” she said.
The afterbirth came. Yuri moved them urgently to one side and caught it in a steel basin lined with a plastic bag. To Kaye’s surprise, Yuri insisted on cutting the cord, then wrapping and removing the placenta right away. He cleaned up all the blood with a sponge soaked in bleach, then brought basins of soapy water and insisted the helpers wash their hands.
He bathed Stella solicitously. “It might be dangerous, no touching,” Yuri insisted, and left the infirmary with the tissue.
Kaye was beyond analysis or caring. She huddled with her daughter and the females in the deme, and Mitch, and one young male, the stand-in for Will, looking confused and bewildered at this unexpected role.
The infant, wrinkled and small, squirmed slowly in Stella’s arms, seeking the breast, then looked up at them all, drawing back his eyelids until it seemed his face was all eyes, wide, mobile, focused. His cheeks flared golden and pink, melanophores shaping at first a series of flower-petal rawshocks. All those in the room, except for Kaye and Mitch, responded to the newborn with the same colors and patterns, flower petals and butterflies, sparks and flares, and the baby saw this and smelled their pleasure and delight. He smiled with saintly ease and reassurance as he took the nipple.
That smile took Kaye’s breath away. She squeezed Mitch’s hand. Ever the anthropologist, Mitch was watching the deme, the side mothers, all the Shevites in the room, with a quizzical expression.
“Do you have a name yet?” Kaye asked Stella.
Stella shook her head dreamily. “Give us time. Something nice.”
Moments later, suckling her son, Stella relaxed and slept. Her cheeks kept showing patterns. Even asleep, the new mother could sign her love.
The infant released his mother’s nipple and looked up at Mitch. “Sing,” he said.
The deme laughed, and the young man who was standing in for Will, in a burst of emotion, hugged them and shook Mitch’s hand. Kaye touched his shoulder and smiled up at him, and Mitch knelt beside the bed and sang the alphabet song, the same he had sung for Stella. “Ah, beh, say, duh, eh, fuh, guh, huh, kuh, ih, juh, em…”
Mitch’s grandson relaxed and took Stella’s nipple. His large purple-flecked eyes became heavy-lidded, and then closed. He joined his mother in sleep before Mitch got to wuh.
EPILOGUE
SHEVA2 + 1
LONE PINE, CALIFORNIA
Kaye tried to move her lips. Such wonderful thoughts. So simple, so clear. If she could only speak to her husband.
Mitch looked at the lamp on the table, brows knit; he could hear his wife’s steady breath and the hum of the medical monitor and little more. When her breath changed its rhythm, he slowly turned his head and saw her lips move. He leaned forward, wondering if she was coming back, but her eyes stared out into space and blinked only once while he watched.
Still, the lips moved. That hurt. Any expectations were painful. Kaye’s periods of paralysis had been coming with greater frequency. He leaned forward, hoping with childish hope to see his wife, his woman, return to him, beginning with that small motion. He brought his ear down to her lips and felt the breath against the little hairs on the skin of his lobe. Kaye’s breath puffed, worked, to shape a few words.
Mitch could not be sure what he heard, if he heard anything at all. He pulled back to look at Kaye’s face and realized she was trying with superhuman effort to communicate something she thought was important. The slightest coming together of her brows, stiffening of her cheeks, set of her eyelids, reminded him of earnest conversations years past, when she struggled to convey something not quite within her grasp or authority. That had been his Kaye, always reaching beyond what words could do.
He placed his ear close, almost blocking her lips. He fancied he heard, for a moment, his name, and then,
“Something’s… going on.”
He listened again.
“Something’s… happening.”
Then she lay still. Breath lifted the sheets but her eyes were still. Her face was blank.
She seemed to be listening.
She felt the love rolling over her in waves, the yearning that was at once so powerful and frightening, the sweetness that lay behind the power. Her death would not come yet, not this minute, not this hour, this she knew, but she was no longer much of this world.
And so she could be embraced and told all.
No fear of addiction now.
Stella brought the baby and sat with them. She wore simple clothes and held the boy in a loose knit wrap, because, she said, he was such a warm-blooded creature, he hardly ever got chilly and fussed if he was covered.
“We’ve chosen a talking name,” Stella said. Then, looking at her mother, she asked Mitch if Kaye could hear them.
“I don’t know,” Mitch said. His face was so lost. Stella let him hold his grandson and adjusted her mother’s covers.
“Nothing’s fair, is it?” she asked Kaye softly, leaning over, her cheeks golden. “She looks peaceful. I think she can hear us.”
Mitch watched Kaye breathe in and out, slowly, simply.
“What’s his name?” he asked.
“We’re going to call him Sam,” Stella said. “I can’t think of anything better. The deme thinks it’s good.”
Sam was Mitch’s father’s name. “Not Samuel?”
“Just Sam. He likes the name already. It’s strong and short and do
esn’t interfere with saying other things.”
Sam squirmed and wanted to get down. At six months, he was already walking a little, and speaking, of course; but only when he wanted to, which was seldom.
Mitch tried to find a little of Kaye in Sam’s features, but there was too much eyebrow. Sam looked too much like Mitch.
“He looks like Will, I think,” Stella said. She touched her mother’s cheek, gripped her hand. “She has a scent. It’s her, but different. I’m not sure I’d recognize her. Can you smell it?”
Mitch shook his head. “Maybe she smells ill,” he said darkly.
“No.” Stella bowed to sniff her mother from breast to crown. “She smells like smoke from a wood fire, and flowers. We need her to teach us. Mother, you could teach me so much.”
Sam walked around the bed, gripping the covers and making sounds of discovery.
Kaye’s face did not change expression, but Stella saw the tiny freckles darken under her mother’s eyes. Even now, Kaye could show her love.
The memories fall away. We are shaped, but in ways we do not understand. Know that thinking and memory are biology, and biology is what we leave behind. The caller speaks to all of our minds, and they all pray; to all of our minds, from the lowest to the highest, in nature, the caller assures us that there is more, and that is all the caller can do. It is important that each mind be created with absolute freedom of will. That freedom is precious; it enriches and quickens that which the caller loves.
Mind and memory make up the precious rind of the even more precious fruit.
We are sculpted as the embryo is made; we die and cells die that others may take a shape; the shape grows and changes, visible only to the caller; ultimately all must be chipped away, having made their contributions.
The memories fall away. We are shaped. There is no judgment, for in life there is no perfection, only freedom. To succeed or to fail is all the same—it is to be loved.
To die, to fall silent, is not to be forgotten or lost.
Silence is the beacon of past love and painful labor.
Silence is also a signal.
Mitch sat by Kaye as the doctors and nurses came and went. He watched her grow more at ease, if that was possible, while breath still came and heart still beat with a slow, pattering softness.
He finished that night, before he napped off, by kissing her forehead and saying, “Good night, Eve.”
Mitch slept in the chair. Quiet filled the room.
The world seemed empty and new.
Silence filled Kaye.
In a dream, Mitch walked over the high rocky mountains, and met a woman on the snows.
Lynnwood, Washington
2002
CAVEATS
Much of the science in this novel is still controversial. Science usually begins with speculation, but must in time be confirmed by research, empirical evidence, and scientific consensus. However, all of the speculations found here are supported, to one degree or another, by research published in texts and in respected scientific journals. I have gone to great pains to solicit scientific criticism and make corrections where experts feel I have strayed over the line.
No doubt errors remain, but they are my responsibility, not the responsibility of the scientists or other helpful readers listed in the acknowledgments.
The theological speculations presented here are also based on empirical evidence, personal and culled from a number of key books. But that evidence is remarkably and uniquely difficult to present scientifically, since it is necessarily anecdotal. That does not make its truth any less apparent to the witnesses; it simply puts this type of life experience in the same category as other human events, such as love, abstract and creative thought, and artistic inspiration.
All of these experiences are personal and anecdotal, yet almost universal; none are easily quantified or understood by current science.
In answer to the obvious questions about evolution, do I support neo-Darwinian randomness or theistic external design? The answer must be neither. Do I support fundamentalist or Creationist views of our origins? I do not.
My view is that life on Earth is constituted of many layers of neural networks, all interacting to solve problems in order to get access to resources and continue to exist. All living things solve problems posed by their environments, and all are adapted to attempt, with reasonable success, to solve such problems. The human mind is just one variety of this natural process, and not necessarily the most subtle or sophisticated. See my novel, Vitals.
I also make a distinction between self-aware personality and mind. Human self-awareness is a psycho-social phenomenon resulting from feedback in modeling the behavior of one’s neighbors, and, almost coincidentally, modeling one’s own behavior to make sure we’ll fit into social activities. One offshoot of this ability is the writing of novels.
Self is not an illusion; it’s real. But it’s not unitary, it’s not primary, and it’s not always in charge.
It seems apparent that God does not micromanage either human history or nature. Evolutionary freedom is just as important as individual human freedom. Does God interfere at all? Other than my affirming, along with many others, that the presence of something we could call God is made known—a kind of interference, undoubtedly—I do not know.
As Kaye experiences her epiphany, she is made aware that her “caller” is not talking just to her, but to other minds within and around her. Epiphany is not limited to our conscious selves, or even to human beings.
Imagine epiphany that touches our subconscious, our other internal minds—the immune system—or that reaches beyond us to touch a forest, or an ocean… or the vast and distributed “minds” of any ecological system.
If the only honest approach to understanding both nature and God is humility, then surely this should help by making us feel humble.
A SHORT BIOLOGICAL PRIMER
Humans are metazoans, that is, we are made up of many cells. In most of our cells there is a nucleus that contains the “blueprint” for the entire individual. This blueprint is stored in DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA and its complement of helper proteins and organelles make up the molecular computer that contains the instructions necessary to construct an individual organism.
Proteins are molecular machines that can perform incredibly complicated functions. They are the engines of life; DNA is the template that guides the manufacture of those engines.
DNA in eukaryotic cells is arranged in two interwoven strands—the “double helix”—and packed tightly into a complex structure called chromatin, which is arranged into chromosomes in each cell nucleus. With a few exceptions, such as red blood cells and specialized immune cells, the DNA in each cell of the human body is complete and identical. Researchers currently estimate that the human genome—the complete collection of genetic instructions—consists of approximately thirty thousand genes. Genes are heritable traits; a gene has often been defined as a segment of DNA that contains the code for a protein or proteins. This code can be transcribed to make a strand of RNA, ribonucleic acid; ribosomes then use the RNA to translate the original DNA instructions and synthesize proteins. Some genes perform other functions, such as making the RNA constituents of ribosomes.
Many scientists believe that RNA was the original coding molecule of life, and that DNA is a later elaboration.
While most cells in the body of an individual carry identical DNA, as the person grows and develops, that DNA is expressed in different ways within each cell. This is how identical embryonic cells become different tissues.
When DNA is transcribed to RNA, many lengths of nucleotides that do not code for proteins, called introns, are snipped out of the RNA segments. The segments that remain are spliced together; they code for proteins and are called exons. On a length of freshly transcribed RNA, these exons can be spliced together in different ways to make different proteins. Thus, a single gene can produce a number of products at different times.
Bacteria are tiny single-cel
led organisms. Their DNA is not stored in a nucleus but is spread around within the cell. Their genome contains no introns, only exons, making them very sleek and compact little critters. Bacteria can behave like social organisms; different varieties both cooperate and compete with each other to find and use resources in their environment. In the wild, bacteria frequently come together to create biofilms; you may be familiar with these bacterial “cities” from the slime on spoiled vegetables in your refrigerator. Biofilms can also exist in your intestines, your urinary tract, and on your teeth, where they sometimes cause problems, and specialized ecologies of bacteria protect your skin, your mouth, and other areas of your body. Bacteria are extremely important and though some cause disease, many others are necessary to our existence. Some biologists believe that bacteria lie at the root of all life forms, and that eukaryotic cells—our own cells, for example—derive from ancient colonies of bacteria. In this sense, we may simply be spaceships for bacteria.
Bacteria swap small circular loops of DNA called plasmids. Plasmids supplement the bacterial genome and allow them to respond quickly to threats such as antibiotics. Plasmids make up a universal library that bacteria of many different types can use to live more efficiently.
Bacteria and nearly all other organisms can be attacked by viruses. Viruses are very small, generally encapsulated bits of DNA or RNA that cannot reproduce by themselves, Instead, they hijack a cell’s reproductive machinery to make new viruses. In bacteria, the viruses are called bacteriophages, (“eaters of bacteria”) or just phages. Many phages carry genetic material between bacterial hosts, as do some viruses in animals and plants.
It is possible that viruses originally came from segments of DNA within cells that can move around, both inside and between chromosomes. Viruses are essentially roving segments of genetic material that have learned how to “put on space suits” and leave the cell.
