by Greg Egan
Madhusree regarded him nervously. ‘It might have no effect. Sometimes the cell just chops up the oligonucleotides – the pieces of DNA – before they can interfere.’
Prabir snorted, unimpressed. ‘They couldn’t manage that with the São Paulo gene, could they? Will this have agonising side effects?’
‘I doubt it. But I can’t be sure.’
‘No one can. This is all new.’
‘I’m out of my depth,’ she confessed.
He said, ‘It’s my decision. Let’s try it.’
Madhusree synthesised and packaged the antisense DNA. Prabir injected it, followed by a new set of growth factor blockers. Then he sat back in the dinghy and waited.
The sun was high now, the heat was surreal. The boats seesawed mechanically in the swell; it was like being strapped to some laboratory device for ensuring a thorough mixing of reagents. Prabir was amazed at the clarity of his senses, the sharpness to everything. It was the opposite of the suffocating blackness he’d felt when he’d willed himself towards death: in the bathtub in Toronto, in the swamp when he’d lost all hope against the snake, in the kampung as he’d strode towards the minefield. He thought savagely: I am not going to die in front of her. It’s not going to happen.
His skin had begun to itch and chafe, so he’d removed his jeans; he was wearing nothing but shorts and his life jacket. As he tried to move his legs to shift position, he discovered that he couldn’t. Where one ankle had rested on top of the other foot, the skin had glued itself together.
Prabir swore softly, and probed the weld with his hand. It seemed the plaques had broken through the skin above and merged, though he hadn’t felt a thing. He almost didn’t want to tell her, but he could hardly conceal it indefinitely. He called out, ‘Maddy!’ When she turned, he smiled and raised his conjoined feet for inspection. ‘One of us might finally have to wield a knife, or I’m going to need crutches on Yamdena.’
She leant across the gap for a better look. Then her face contorted suddenly and she started weeping.
Prabir said, ‘Hey! Ssssh! Stop that!’ He reached out a hand towards her face, not close enough to touch her, but the gesture alone made him feel as if they’d made contact.
He said, ‘You know what we’re doing next year, to get away from Toronto? Now that we’ve joined the jet-setting class?’
‘No.’
‘The IRA parade in Calcutta. You promised you’d help me pull the truck.’
Madhusree looked away. ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘You’re a bad liar.’
‘Your skin grafts won’t be healed.’
Prabir shook his head, laughing. ‘You’re not squirming out of this. I did the kebab skewer through my cheeks. You’re helping me pull the truck!’
Prabir was unable to take the noon blood sample. The second set of growth factor blockers hadn’t worked; the plaques had meshed and solidified across his shoulders, and though he could still bend his elbows, he didn’t have enough movement overall for the task. Madhusree put on surgical gloves, stepped across between the boats, and pushed an empty tube into the hypodermic’s receptacle.
She surveyed him unhappily. ‘It really doesn’t hurt? It’s beginning to look like acute psoriasis.’
‘It just itches a bit.’
‘Try to move as much as you can. I don’t want you getting pressure sores from lying on one spot.’
‘I’ll try. I don’t think this stuff could form ulcers, though.’
As she jumped back, Prabir said, ‘Hey! You know what we’re missing? Radio Lausanne. The Furtado verdict.’
Madhusree nodded unenthusiastically. She picked up her notepad and went to the Lausanne site.
Prabir couldn’t read the screen, so he watched her face. Finally she admitted, ‘The synthetic chromosome came through randomised, like the test sequences. Not conserved, like the real one from the pigeon. So the theory hasn’t been falsified.’ She regarded Prabir warily. ‘There might be something missing in the chemistry, though, something we can’t characterise about the natural DNA. It took a long time to understand methylation tags. There could be another modification, even subtler than that.’
Prabir said nothing, but he knew she was clutching at straws, the way he and Grant had when they’d first heard the theory and far too many things had fallen into place. Furtado was right: the gene could look sideways across a virtual family tree and quantify the usefulness of every potential change.
No treatment would ever destroy it. It couldn’t literally foresee Madhusree’s assault with the growth factor blockers and the antisense DNA, but it would always be prepared for whatever she injected, ready to make the best possible choice at the next replication.
It wouldn’t kill him, though. His condition could not be an accident, a random side effect of the gene’s naivety in the body of a man. It had done this to him because it would benefit, somehow.
‘How many tranquilliser darts do you have left?’ he asked.
Madhusree was alarmed. ‘Why? Are you in pain?’
Prabir almost lied, but he said, ‘No.’
He’d sworn he wouldn’t die on the boat. How could he ask her to kill him, knowing what it would do to her?
But this would be different in every way. She would do it by choice, out of love. Not through stupidity and cowardice.
He explained calmly, ‘It wants to change me, Maddy. It wants to take me apart and build something new.’
She stared at him, horrified. ‘I don’t believe that.’
‘It’s making a chrysalis. The covering is there to immobilise me, and it’s started on all the other tissues now. It knows it’s never going to have offspring if it leaves me unchanged, but all that’s done is make it look further for ways to escape. It’s found some kind of human cousin that undergoes metamorphosis. And I doubt there’ll be anything left of me with the power of veto when I emerge as the reproductive stage.’
Madhusree shook her head fiercely. ‘You’re jumping to conclusions! You have a skin condition. An accidental product of the gene. That’s all.’
Prabir said gently, ‘OK. Let’s wait for the next results.’
The fraction of infected cells had almost levelled off for his skin, but it had risen in every other tissue type. The antisense DNA had made no difference.
Madhusree added hurriedly, ‘I’ll give you another dose. I’ll change the lipid package.’
Prabir agreed. ‘Give it one more try.’
As she crouched over him with the vial, struggling to keep her balance on the swaying dinghy, Prabir said, ‘You know, if I’d been alone on the island when they died, I would never have left. I wouldn’t have got away at all, without you to keep me going.’
She said angrily, ‘Don’t talk like that.’
He laughed. ‘Like what?’
‘You know exactly what I mean, you shit.’ Madhusree pulled the empty syringe away, refusing to look at him.
‘You even hooked me up with Felix. I’d never have managed that alone.’
‘Don’t, Prabir.’
‘If I ask you to do this, it’ll be my responsibility. I can’t stop it hurting you, but don’t let it damage you.’
Madhusree met his eyes; her face was burning with resentment.
He said, ‘No one in the world could have done more for me.’
She spat back angrily, ‘How can you say that? You’re already writing off everything I’m trying!’
He shook his head as far as he could; his neck was almost rigid now. ‘It might work, but if it doesn’t, you have to be ready. You’re going to have to be strong for more than this. The gene is going to try to take everything. All it cares about is reproducing. Everything that matters to us: love, honesty, intelligence, reflection – they’re all just accidents. A few freak waves swept them up on to the beach. Now the tide’s coming in, to wash them away again.’
Prabir could see nothing but the cloudless sky. His sense of the heat of the sun was gone, and the motion of the boat had almos
t receded from consciousness. Fear and claustrophobia came in slower, deeper waves. He wanted more of everything. More knowledge, more friendship, more sex, more music. He wanted to see the revolution, he wanted to see the battle won. His sense of loss merged with the sense of confinement; he was buried alive and he could still see the sky. When the wave retreated he could almost laugh: he had nothing to fear from death now, he’d just been through the worst part of dying. A minute later, this observation was no comfort at all.
Madhusree moved into view. Prabir said, ‘At least it put the adult butterflies into diapause. You’d think it could cook up something for me.’
‘I’ll tranquillise you now. Do you want that?’ There wasn’t much skin left where they could be sure of a dart penetrating, but the venous line was still open.
‘Yeah. Then the rest of your supply. Then burn the body. Whatever fuel you can spare. Right?’
Madhusree nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Prabir said, ‘I’m sorry to put you through this, but there’s no other way. Don’t ever blame yourself.’
She turned away. ‘Who’ll pull the truck with me now?’
‘What about Felix?’
She laughed. ‘Felix with hooks through his back?’
‘He’d love it. He’d see fireworks with every step.’
As she looked down at him, half smiling, wiping away tears, something tore open behind his eyes and he was flooded with joy. It was everything he’d felt for Felix that was more than desire, everything he remembered inside himself as his father or mother had spun him in their arms, everything he’d seen on their faces, gazing up at him as they held him to the sky.
He didn’t care any more where it came from. He didn’t care if he’d stolen it or not, earned it or not. If he loved her like this and she felt some part of it, it was not selfish, it was not evil, it was not dishonest. And however ancient it was, however mindless, he’d torn it out by its billion-year-old roots, dragged it into the full light of consciousness, and claimed it as his own.
He said, ‘Gather up the good things, and run.’
As he heard the needle pierce the vial and felt the first cool touch of liquid in his vein, Prabir saw the sea from above. Madhusree leant back, her hair flying in the wind, and cut the rope between them. She broke free and sped away, leaving the burning boat behind.
15
Madhusree leant over the side of the dinghy and vomited into the water. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. ‘I’m sorry, bhai, I’m sorry. I mess everything up. I fuck everything up.’ She checked again, but Prabir was still breathing. After six doses.
She fitted the last vial into the hypodermic. It was impossible. His brain should be flooded now, every tissue poisoned. Nothing could allow him to metabolise so much of it, so fast.
She hit the injection button then rocked back on her haunches, tearing at her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ She wiped mucus from her face on to her shoulder. She shouldn’t touch herself with the gloves.
She waited, humming to herself, trying not to weep. Later. She’d mourn him later, when she’d done what he’d wanted.
She started sobbing. ‘Why did you follow me? Why did you come here? You stupid shit! I should have gone to the island. It should have been me.’
She bent forward and touched the still human skin of his neck. Even through the gloves, she could feel its ordinary softness. His pulse had slowed, but it hadn’t weakened. She lifted her hand to his nostrils, and felt the fine film of polymer quiver against her fingertips.
Nothing she pumped in would kill him. And even if that wasn’t true, she couldn’t sit here trying poisons, dose after dose, until the thing metabolised the tranquilliser away so completely that Prabir woke, in agony from whatever she’d poured into his veins.
He couldn’t be conscious, he couldn’t be sensate. He was in the deepest of comas; he’d feel nothing. She tried to peel back one eyelid, but it was frozen in place. She turned away, choking, her throat knotted. ‘I can’t! I can’t do it!’
She stared out across the sea, breathing deeply, trying to grow calm enough to finish this. If he lived through the metamorphosis, he would not be her brother. Worse, he’d not be anything he’d wanted to be. When the truth had become plain, she’d almost offered to follow him. You don’t have to do it alone. I’ll inject some of your blood, we’ll change together. But then she’d realised that even if she’d meant it at the time, she would have backed out later. It was not impossible that the gene would give benefits to its host that they’d find worthwhile themselves, but she wasn’t betting her soul on someone else’s card game, however well it cheated for itself.
Not her own, and not Prabir’s.
She turned without looking at him and picked up one of the fuel cans. She unscrewed the cap and tossed it into the sea. ‘OK, OK. He won’t feel it.’
She squatted down. He was still wearing the life jacket; she couldn’t stand the thought of the burning plastic clinging to him, even if the dinghy was made of almost the same thing. She undid the straps and pulled it off.
‘OK. There now.’ She poured some diesel on to his chest.
Where the fuel touched the carapace, it blistered instantly, spitting a visible puff of vapour. Madhusree backed away, wailing with distress. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ She crouched at Prabir’s feet, covering her head. ‘I can’t do it! I’ve fucked up!’ She drove the heels of her hands into her eyes, then started punching her forehead.
She waited to grow numb. Just for a few minutes, long enough to finish it. She hummed to herself. ‘You’ve gone into my head. You’ve gone into my memories.’
That wasn’t enough.
But it was more than the gene would leave of him.
She opened her eyes and stood up wearily. ‘OK. We’ll do this together.’ She looked down; she could still recognise his face beneath the plaques. There was a blister full of grey fluid where the diesel had splashed his chest, but there was no blood in it. No Prabir. She didn’t believe he’d felt any pain at all.
‘Why did you take him? What do you want from us?’
Nothing at all. It had no purpose for anyone, no destiny. No journey in mind, no endpoint. It wanted nothing but itself. More of the same.
It didn’t want him.
She’d been fighting it the wrong way.
She turned his frozen body over and searched his back. There had to be another blister, a boil, or a pustule, however tiny, in a place the fuel hadn’t touched. Nothing was perfect, nothing. Some tiny fraction of the infected cells must have made the kind of mistake that let his body drag them to the surface in the hope of disposing of them.
Why hadn’t the São Paulo gene hatched itself into a virus? Because a viral genome would be too remote to register as a cousin to any of its hosts, the changes required were too extreme. It thought it would lose by leaving his body; it thought it could only perish. All she had to do was prove otherwise – in a way that wouldn’t give it the power to spread.
There. In a patch of real skin, a tiny boil.
Madhusree turned and leapt to the front dinghy, picked up a fresh hypodermic and an empty culture flask, then jumped back. She squatted down and pierced the boil, then drew up a few millilitres of grey fluid. She squirted it into the culture flask, then leapt the gap again and filled the flask with growth medium.
‘If you learn to come, I’ll give you what you want. Just a couple of the right mutations, and you can surface like pus. My brother will do the work for you; you just have to surrender. I’ll give you more of the same than you’ve ever dreamt of.’
How much of his body weight did it actually have now? Five per cent? Three or four kilograms? She had enough medium to support about the same weight in tissue culture, for maybe half a day. Enough to distract it, enough to hold it in check.
If it was omniscient, she could never win: it would see beyond the lure and continue to reprogramme his body for the greater long-term gain of reproduction. But any offspring it could produce t
hat way were still hundreds of cellular generations into the future, a distant peak in a desolate landscape of extinction. It could see far enough to know that a burst of somatic cell division would simply kill its host: it had no choice but to find a way to make that host go forth and multiply. But once she offered it a path into a sheltered environment where it could feed and reproduce, cell by cell, without facing the same limits, a new feature would appear on the landscape of possibilities. A new peak, not as tall, but far closer.
She’d have to make that new peak as high as she could. High enough to draw the gene away from the route to freedom. High enough to hide Prabir’s children.
She couldn’t hope to do that with the supplies she had on board. But by midnight, she’d reach Yamdena. She could synthesise all the exotic peptides for the medium herself, the growth factors, the cell adhesion modulators. What about the base, the matrix? What could she make do with? Gelatin? Agar? She’d kick down the door of every shop in town until she found what she needed.
As they approached Darwin harbour, Prabir opened his eyes. He took in the sight of Madhusree, the culture flasks and pickle jars and other scavenged glassware spread all around her on the deck of the trawler, the needle drawing pus from his arm.
She asked him, ‘Are you in there? Is it still you?’
She watched his face. The skin was sagging and full of lymphatic fluid, where the cells of the carapace had stretched it before deserting his body for an easier life, but she believed she could read his expression in the tightening of the muscles below.
He drooled, ‘Calcutta. Next year. You’re not getting out of it.’
Madhusree wrapped her arms around him, shaking from exhaustion. ‘Welcome back.’
She clung to him, selfish with joy, but she’d won back more than her brother. What had worked for him should work again, in the next infected human. They’d never be free of the gene, they could never hope to eradicate it. As long as they were made from DNA, as long as they were part of nature, they would remain vulnerable.
But they’d tricked it, this once.
