The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  Incorrect blends give results that are to say the least spectacular; only certain parts of the body are stormed by the telekinetic drugs. And arms disappear, skin bursts, guts explode, leaving a cavity that is empty, clean: arteries empty of their blood, ocular orbs are driven out of their sockets, cerebral matter gushes out of the nostrils, the ears; and the travellers, always just as calm and serene, seem to be watching their favorite television program, listening to their favorite record, while their vanished organs decay on distant planets.

  —

  When Anton Ravon died, crushed by his coat and his hat, there was a certain period of respite, punctuated by a few infrequent reversals. Clothing took possession of bodies; networks of wool became intrications of muscular fibers, silk shirts a tapestry of nerves, cravats and bow ties metamorphosed into arteries, into veins, watches ossified, handkerchiefs became inlaid with fingernails, lace with pulmonary tissue. And bodies flattened. Empty. Crushed by the clothing of the flesh. Initially, clothing was rapidly abandoned, then replaced by protective gear made of copper, the only element resistant to the reversals. And men in armor strode across the desert, looking for a watering hole, sometimes getting bogged down in the furniture zones. Prisoners of their heavy coppered skins, they were eaten alive by the animals of the sand.

  Many preferred to remain naked.

  Nobody was ever able to discern the exact origin of the bottle-men. The most generally accepted theory is that which consists of comparing their “fabrication” to that of fruit in liqueur. In the same way that the fruit, still attached to the tree, fattens up inside of a bottle, the babies, after delivery, are placed in large bottles, where they develop to an adult stage. Then, they are thrown in the sea. Is this a punishment? A method of fleeing an island battered by the storm? No one can affirm it. They come to wash up on the beaches, are shattered on the rocks; and their occupants are always dead.

  I think, as for me, that it’s a matter of messages, of genetic information perhaps. The bottle-men all have the same face. That of Anton Ravon on the day of his death.

  —

  The hives of homunculi were born out of necessity. The occupants of the nuclear bunkers were found, for the most part, buried under hundreds of meters of sand. Initially, the women, crushed by a powerful lethargy, saw their volume increase considerably; their limbs atrophied, and only their head remained, at the tip of a gigantic flaccid body. Inversely, the men decreased in volume and started to live in the folds of flesh of the female bodies.

  But it was a matter of becoming animal only in appearance, cerebral functions diminishing not at all. Except the social instinct, of collective life, was intensified. The first eggs were tended in doubt and fear. Then the first larvae made their appearance. And, supplied with burrowing snouts, they set about fighting their way towards the surface. The desert is now a gigantic network of tunnels and reproduction chambers. The hives presently stage the form of life that is the most evolved, most adapted, of the planet. All things considered, the homunculi would prefer to remain underground, and come out only very rarely, mainly to hunt.

  Strange coral structures are starting to come up to the surface of the new seas. Again an inevitable mutation. Will the adaptation of the submarine prisoners be as favorable as that of the prisoners of the desert?

  —

  The majority of mountains of bodies are living. They feed through their thousands of mouths. A real osmosis, permeability, is embodied at the level of the welds. They reproduce by scissiparity. The new hills are very beautiful.

  A stratification of organs and of limbs seems to be being carried out. The latest births have given rise to relatively differentiated mounds. The base is an amalgamation of legs; then come the stomachs with a few ectopic digestive organs, then the arms, followed by torsos working the cardiopulmonary organs in unison. The beating of a marching army.

  Near the surface, the heads, sheltered behind forests of hair, and, finally, at the summit, the genital organs. The intestines finish their course underground, sheltered in the final meters of the path by a hedge of legs.

  At this rate, I truly believe that we will soon witness the birth of a new race of giants. And I am uncertain already of knowing the appearance of their faces. The death of Anton Ravon is going perhaps to save us all.

  Blood Music

  GREG BEAR

  Greg (Gregory) Bear (1951– ) is an award-winning US writer best known for his science fiction short stories and novels. Bear’s first published fiction, “Destroyers,” appeared in Famous Science Fiction in 1967, when he was sixteen. The son-in-law of the famed SF writer Poul Anderson, Bear would go on to become one of the best-known hard science fiction writers of the 1980s, with such classics as Eon (1985) and Eternity (1988). He has won five Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. Other novels include the Forge of God series, the Way series, Queen of Angels, and the duology Darwin’s Radio and Darwin’s Children. He has most recently written several fascinating novels set in the universe of the Halo video game.

  Bear’s activities outside of writing have included serving as the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1988 to 1990 and cofounding San Diego Comic-Con. His early artwork appeared as covers for the magazines Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He also serves on the board of advisers for the Museum of Science Fiction.

  Bear has had a fascinating tendency to explore both the microscopic and macroscopic worlds to excellent effect. Novels such as Eon are dramatic showcases for Bear’s talent for cosmological space opera, including large-scale ideas like hollowed-out asteroids. But he has been equally adroit at balancing a sense of awe about the universe with interesting details of characterization and science aimed at exploring the life within us. Case in point: the nanotechnology in the classic Nebula and Hugo Award–winning “Blood Music,” first published in Analog (1983). Bear expanded it into a novel that was published in 1985. Much about the way Bear uses the science of transforming RNA molecules into living computers is groundbreaking and breathtaking all on its own. But “Blood Music” showcases how Bear, unlike many other writers, manages to incorporate the hardest and most cognitively demanding of hard science fiction premises into stories whose protagonists display far greater complexity than anything unliving. Bear clearly understands that human beings are just as difficult to understand as physics or any other branch of hard science. In linking science and humanity, “Blood Music” remains one of the most important stories hinting at the posthuman condition.

  BLOOD MUSIC

  Greg Bear

  There is a principle in nature I don’t think anyone has pointed out before. Each hour, a myriad of trillions of little live things—bacteria, microbes, “animalcules”—are born and die, not counting for much except in the bulk of their existence and the accumulation of their tiny effects. They do not perceive deeply. They do not suffer much. A hundred billion, dying, would not begin to have the same importance as a single human death.

  Within the ranks of magnitude of all creatures, small as microbes or great as humans, there is an equality of “élan,” just as the branches of a tall tree, gathered together, equal the bulk of the limbs below, and all the limbs equal the bulk of the trunk.

  That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it.

  —

  It had been two years since I’d last seen Vergil. My memory of him hardly matched the tan, smiling, well-dressed gentleman standing before me. We had made a lunch appointment over the phone the day before, and now faced each other in the wide double doors of the employees’ cafeteria at the Mount Freedom Medical Center.

  “Vergil?” I asked. “My God, Vergil!”

  “Good to see you, Edward.” He shook my hand firmly. He had lost ten or twelve kilos and what remained seemed tighter, better proportioned. At university, Vergil had been the pudgy, shock-haired, snaggletoothed whiz kid who hot-wired doorknobs, gave us punch that turned our piss blue, and never got a date except with Eileen T
ermagent, who shared many of his physical characteristics.

  “You look fantastic,” I said. “Spend a summer in Cabo San Lucas?”

  We stood in line at the counter and chose our food. “The tan,” he said, picking out a carton of chocolate milk, “is from spending three months under a sunlamp. My teeth were straightened just after I last saw you. I’ll explain the rest, but we need a place to talk in private.”

  I steered him to the smoker’s corner, where three die-hard puffers were scattered among six tables.

  “Listen, I mean it,” I said as we unloaded our trays. “You’ve changed. You’re looking good.”

  “I’ve changed more than you know.” His tone was motion-picture ominous, and he delivered the line with a theatrical lift of his brows. “How’s Gail?”

  Gail was doing well, I told him, teaching nursery school. We’d married the year before. His gaze shifted down to his food—pineapple slice and cottage cheese, piece of banana cream pie—and he said, his voice almost cracking, “Notice something else?”

  I squinted in concentration. “Uh.”

  “Look closer.”

  “I’m not sure. Well, yes, you’re not wearing glasses. Contacts?”

  “No. I don’t need them anymore.”

  “And you’re a snappy dresser. Who’s dressing you now? I hope she’s as sexy as she is tasteful.”

  “Candice isn’t—wasn’t responsible for the improvement in my clothes,” he said. “I just got a better job, more money to throw around. My taste in clothes is better than my taste in food, as it happens.” He grinned the old Vergil self-deprecating grin, but ended it with a peculiar leer. “At any rate, she’s left me, I’ve been fired from my job, I’m living on savings.”

  “Hold it,” I said. “That’s a bit crowded. Why not do a linear breakdown? You got a job. Where?”

  “Genetron Corp.,” he said. “Sixteen months ago.”

  “I haven’t heard of them.”

  “You will. They’re going public next month. The stock will shoot right off the board. They’ve broken through with MABs. Medical—”

  “I know what MABs are,” I interrupted. “At least in theory. Medically Applicable Biochips.”

  “They have some that work.”

  “What?” It was my turn to lift my brows.

  “Microscopic logic circuits. You inject them into the human body, they set up shop where they’re told and troubleshoot. With Dr. Michael Bernard’s approval.”

  That was quite impressive. Bernard’s reputation was spotless. Not only was he associated with the genetic engineering biggies, but he had made news at least once a year in his practice as a neurosurgeon before retiring. Covers on Time, Mega, Rolling Stone.

  “That’s supposed to be secret—stock, breakthrough, Bernard, everything.” Vergil looked around and lowered his voice. “But you do whatever the hell you want. I’m through with the bastards.”

  I whistled. “Make me rich, huh?”

  “If that’s what you want. Or you can spend some time with me before rushing off to your broker.”

  “Of course.” He hadn’t touched the cottage cheese or pie. He had, however, eaten the pineapple slice and drunk the chocolate milk. “So tell me more.”

  “Well, in med school I was training for lab work. Biochemical research. I’ve always had a bent for computers, too. So I put myself through my last two years—”

  “By selling software packages to Westinghouse,” I said.

  “It’s good my friends remember. That’s how I got involved with Genetron, just when they were starting out. They had big-money backers, all the lab facilities I thought anyone would ever need. They hired me, and I advanced rapidly.

  “Four months and I was doing my own work. I made some breakthroughs.” He tossed his hand nonchalantly. “Then I went off on tangents they thought were premature. I persisted and they took away my lab, handed it over to a certifiable flatworm. I managed to save part of the experiment before they fired me. But I haven’t exactly been cautious…or judicious. So now it’s going on outside the lab.”

  I’d always regarded Vergil as ambitious, a trifle cracked, and not terribly sensitive. His relations with authority figures had never been smooth. Science, for him, was like the woman you couldn’t possibly have, who suddenly opens her arms to you, long before you’re ready for mature love—leaving you afraid you’ll forever blow the chance, lose the prize. Apparently, he did. “Outside the lab? I don’t get you.”

  “Edward, I want you to examine me. Give me a thorough physical. Maybe a cancer diagnostic. Then I’ll explain more.”

  “You want a five-thousand-dollar exam?”

  “Whatever you can do. Ultrasound, NMR, thermogram, everything.”

  “I don’t know if I can get access to all that equipment. NMR full-scan has only been here a month or two. Hell, you couldn’t pick a more expensive way—”

  “Then ultrasound. That’s all you’ll need.”

  “Vergil, I’m an obstetrician, not a glamour-boy lab tech. OB-GYN, butt of all jokes. If you’re turning into a woman, maybe I can help you.”

  He leaned forward, almost putting his elbow into the pie, but swinging wide at the last instant by scant millimeters. The old Vergil would have hit it square. “Examine me closely and you’ll…” He narrowed his eyes. “Just examine me.”

  “So I make an appointment for ultrasound. Who’s going to pay?”

  “I’m on Blue Shield.” He smiled and held up a medical credit card. “I messed with the personnel files at Genetron. Anything up to a hundred thousand dollars medical, they’ll never check, never suspect.”

  He wanted secrecy, so I made arrangements. I filled out his forms myself. As long as everything was billed properly, most of the examination could take place without official notice. I didn’t charge for my services. After all, Vergil had turned my piss blue. We were friends.

  He came in late at night. I wasn’t normally on duty then, but I stayed late, waiting for him on the third floor of what the nurses called the Frankenstein wing. I sat on an orange plastic chair. He arrived, looking olive colored under the fluorescent lights.

  He stripped, and I arranged him on the table. I noticed, first off, that his ankles looked swollen. But they weren’t puffy. I felt them several times. They seemed healthy but looked odd. “Hm,” I said.

  I ran the paddles over him, picking up areas difficult for the big unit to hit, and programmed the data into the imaging system. Then I swung the table around and inserted it into the enameled orifice of the ultrasound unit, the humhole, so-called by the nurses.

  I integrated the data from the humhole with that from the paddle sweeps and rolled Vergil out, then set up a video frame. The image took a second to integrate, then flowed into a pattern showing Vergil’s skeleton. My jaw fell.

  Three seconds of that and it switched to his thoracic organs, then his musculature, and, finally, vascular system and skin.

  “How long since the accident?” I asked, trying to take the quiver out of my voice.

  “I haven’t been in an accident,” he said. “It was deliberate.”

  “Jesus, they beat you to keep secrets?”

  “You don’t understand me, Edward. Look at the images again. I’m not damaged.”

  “Look, there’s thickening here”—I indicated the ankles—“and your ribs, that crazy zigzag pattern of interlocks. Broken sometime, obviously. And—”

  “Look at my spine,” he said. I rotated the image in the video frame. Buckminster Fuller, I thought. It was fantastic. A cage of triangular projections, all interlocking in ways I couldn’t begin to follow, much less understand. I reached around and tried to feel his spine with my fingers. He lifted his arms and looked off at the ceiling.

  “I can’t find it,” I said. “It’s all smooth back there.” I let go of him and looked at his chest, then prodded his ribs. They were sheathed in something tough and flexible. The harder I pressed, the tougher it became. Then I noticed another change.

>   “Hey,” I said. “You don’t have nipples.” There were tiny pigment patches, but no nipple formations at all.

  “See?” Vergil asked, shrugging on the white robe. “I’m being rebuilt from the inside out.”

  In my reconstruction of those hours, I fancy myself saying, “So tell me about it.” Perhaps mercifully, I don’t remember what I actually said.

  He explained with his characteristic circumlocutions. Listening was like trying to get to the meat of a newspaper article through a forest of sidebars and graphic embellishments.

  I simplify and condense.

  Genetron had assigned him to manufacturing prototype biochips, tiny circuits made out of protein molecules. Some were hooked up to silicon chips little more than a micrometer in size, then sent through rat arteries to chemically keyed locations, to make connections with the rat tissue and attempt to monitor and even control lab-induced pathologies.

  “That was something,” he said. “We recovered the most complex microchip by sacrificing the rat, then debriefed it—hooked the silicon portion up to an imaging system. The computer gave us bar graphs, then a diagram of the chemical characteristics of about eleven centimeters of blood vessel…then put it all together to make a picture. We zoomed down eleven centimeters of rat artery. You never saw so many scientists jumping up and down, hugging each other, drinking buckets of bug juice.” Bug juice was lab ethanol mixed with Dr Pepper.

  Eventually, the silicon elements were eliminated completely in favor of nucleoproteins. He seemed reluctant to explain in detail, but I gathered they found ways to make huge molecules—as large as DNA, and even more complex—into electrochemical computers, using ribosome-like structures as “encoders” and “readers” and RNA as “tape.” Vergil was able to mimic reproductive separation and reassembly in his nucleoproteins, incorporating program changes at key points by switching nucleotide pairs. “Genetron wanted me to switch over to supergene engineering, since that was the coming thing everywhere else. Make all kinds of critters, some out of our imagination. But I had different ideas.” He twiddled his finger around his ear and made theremin sounds. “Mad scientist time, right?” He laughed, then sobered. “I injected my best nucleoproteins into bacteria to make duplication and compounding easier. Then I started to leave them inside, so the circuits could interact with the cells. They were heuristically programmed; they taught themselves. The cells fed chemically coded information to the computers, the computers processed it and made decisions, the cells became smart. I mean, smart as planaria, for starters. Imagine an E. coli as smart as a planarian worm!”