Distress

by Greg Egan

  Would I have been happier?

  Maybe. But then, happiness was overrated.

  Kuwale’s software chimed success. I walked over and accepted the data ve’d unlocked, tight-beam infrared flowing between our notepads.

  I said, “I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you know about these people? Or how I’m meant to verify what you say about them?”

  “That’s what Sarah Knight asked me.”

  “I’m not surprised. And now I’m asking.”

  Kuwale ignored me; the subject was closed. Ve gestured at my abdomen with vis notepad, and instructed me solemnly, “Move everything in there, first chance you get. Perfect security. You’re lucky.”

  “Sure. While one EnGeneUity assassin is running around Stateless with your notepad, trying to find the right geographical coordinates, the others will be saving time by carving me open.”

  Kuwale laughed. “That’s the spirit. You may not be much of a journalist, but we’ll make a revolutionary martyr out of you yet.”

  Ve pointed across the expanse of reef-rock, glistening green and silver in the morning sun. “We should return to the city by separate routes. If you head that way, you’ll hit the south-west tram line in twenty minutes.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t have the energy to argue. As ve turned to leave, though, I said, “Before you vanish, will you answer one last question?”

  Ve shrugged. “No harm in asking.”

  “Why are you doing this? I still don’t understand. You say you really don’t care whether Violet Mosala is the Keystone or not. But even if she’s such a great human being that her death would be a global tragedy … what makes that your personal responsibility? She knows exactly what she’s buying into, moving to Stateless. She’s a grown woman, with resources of her own, and more political clout than you or I could ever hope for. She’s not helpless, she’s not stupid – and if she knew what you were doing, she’d probably strangle you with her bare hands. So … why can’t you leave her to take care of herself?”

  Kuwale hesitated, and cast vis eyes down. I seemed to have hit a nerve, at last; ve had the air of someone searching for the right words with which to unburden verself.

  The silence stretched on, but I waited patiently. Sarah Knight had extracted the whole story, hadn’t she? There was no reason why I couldn’t do the same.

  Kuwale looked up and replied casually, “Like I said: no harm in asking.”

  Ve turned and walked away.

  Chapter 18

  I viewed the data Kuwale had given me while I waited for the tram. Eighteen faces, but no names. The images were standardized 3D portraits: backgrounds removed, lighting homogenized, like police mug shots. There were twelve men and six women, of diverse ages and ethnicities. It seemed a curiously large number; Kuwale hadn’t suggested that every one of them was actually on Stateless – but how, exactly, could ve have got hold of portraits of the eighteen corporate assassins most likely to be sent to the island? What kind of source, what kind of leak, what kind of data theft could have yielded precisely this much, and no more?

  In any case, I had no intention of letting the ACs know if I spotted one of these faces in a crowd – less out of fear that I might be putting myself at risk by siding with radical technolibérateurs against powerful vested interests, than out of a lingering suspicion that Kuwale might yet prove to be entirely off the planet – as paranoid a Mosala fan as I’d first imagined, and more. Without any way of confirming vis story, I could hardly unleash an unknown retribution on some total stranger who happened to stray too close to Violet Mosala. For all I knew, this was a gallery of innocent Ignorance Cultists, snapped as they disembarked from a charter flight. The fact that Mosala had no shortage of potential enemies didn’t prove that Kuwale knew who they were – or that ve’d told me the truth about anything.

  Even the version of Anthrocosmology I’d been fed sounded far too reasonable and dispassionate to be true. The Keystone is just another person, honestly – all our concern for Violet Mosala is due to her numerous other good points. Why go to the trouble of inventing a cult which elevates someone to the status of Prime Cause for Everything – and then treat that fact as all but insignificant? Kuwale had protested too much.

  By the time I reached the hotel, the ATM software lecture was almost over, so I sat in the lobby to wait for Mosala to emerge.

  The more I thought about it, the less I was prepared to trust anything Kuwale and Conroy had told me – but I knew it could take months to find out what the Anthrocosmologists were really about. Other than Indrani Lee, there was only one person who was likely to hold the answers – and I was sick of remaining ignorant out of sheer dumb pride.

  I called Sarah. If she was in Australia, it was broad daylight on the east coast by now … but the same answering system responded as before.

  I left another message for her. I couldn’t bring myself to come right out and say it in plain English: I abused my position with SeeNet. I stole the project from you, and I didn’t deserve it. That was wrong, and I’m sorry. Instead, I offered her participation in Violet Mosala in whatever role now suited her, on whatever terms we could agree were mutually fair.

  I signed off, expecting to feel at least some small measure of relief from this belated attempt to make amends. Instead, a powerful sense of unease descended on me. I looked around the brightly lit lobby, staring at the dazzling patches of sunshine on the ornately-patterned gold-and-white floor – Stateless-spartan as ever – as if hoping that the light itself might flood in through my eyes and clear the fog of panic from my brain.

  It didn’t.

  I sat with my head in my hands, unable to make sense of the dread I felt. Things weren’t that desperate. I was still in the dark about far too much – but less so than four days ago.

  I was making progress, wasn’t I?

  I was staying afloat.

  Barely.

  The space around me seemed to expand. The lobby, the sunlit floor, retreated – an infinitesimal shift, but it was impossible to ignore. I glanced down at my notepad clock, light-headed with fear; Mosala’s lecture was due to end in three minutes – but the time seemed to stretch out ahead of me, an uncrossable void. I had to make contact with someone, or something.

  Before I could change my mind, I had Hermes call Caliban , a front end for a hacking consortium. An androgynous grinning face appeared – mutating and flowing, changing its features second-by-second as it spoke; only the whites of its eyes stayed constant, as if peering out from behind an infinitely malleable mask.

  “Bad weather coming down, petitioner. There’s ice on the signal wires.” Snow began to swirl around the faces; their skin tones favored grays and blues. “Nothing’s clear, nothing’s easy.”

  “Spare me the hype.” I transmitted Sarah Knight’s communications number. “What can you tell me about that, for … one hundred dollars?”

  Caliban leered. “The Styx is frozen solid.” Frost formed on its various lips and eyelashes.

  “A hundred and fifty.” Caliban seemed unimpressed – but Hermes flashed up a window showing a credit transfer request; I okayed it, reluctantly.

  A screenful of green text, mockingly out-of-focus, appeared to illuminate the software faces. “The number belongs to Sarah Alison Knight, Australian citizen, primary residence 17E Parade Avenue, Lindfield, Sydney. En-fem, date-of-birth 4th April, 2028.”

  “I know all that, you useless shit. Where is she now – precisely? And when did she last accept a call, in person?”

  The green text faded, and Caliban shivered. “Wolves are howling on the steppes. Underground rivers are turning to glaciers.”

  I restrained myself from wasting more invective. “I’ll give you fifty.”

  “Veins of solid ice beneath the rock. Nothing moves, nothing changes.”

  I gritted my teeth. “A hundred.” My research budget was vanishing fast – and this had nothing to do with Violet Mosala . But I had to know.

  Orange symbols danced across gr
ay flesh. Caliban announced, “Our Sarah last accepted a call – in person, on this number – in the central metropolitan footprint for Kyoto, Japan, at 10:23:14 Universal Time, on 26th March, 2055.”

  “And where is she now?”

  “No device has connected to the net under this ID since the stated call.” Meaning: she hadn’t used her notepad to contact anyone, or to access any service. She hadn’t so much as viewed a news bulletin, or downloaded a three-minute music video. Unless—

  “Fifty bucks – take it or leave it – for her new communications number.”

  Caliban took it, and smiled. “Bad guess. She has no new number, no new account.”

  I said numbly, “That’s all. Thank you.”

  Caliban mimed astonishment at this unwarranted courtesy, and blew me a parting kiss. “Call again. And remember, petitioner: data wants to be free!”

  Why Kyoto? The only connection I could think of was Yasuko Nishide. Meaning what? She’d still planned to cover the Einstein Conference, after all – but with a rival profile of a rival theorist? And the only reason she wasn’t yet on Stateless was Nishide’s illness?

  Why the communications blackout, though? Kuwale’s grim unspoken conclusion made no sense. Why would biotech interests want to harm Sarah Knight, if she’d shown every sign of abandoning Violet Mosala for another – thoroughly apolitical – physicist?

  People began to cross the lobby, talking excitedly. I looked up. The auditorium down the corridor was emptying. Mosala and Helen Wu emerged together; I met up with them.

  Mosala was beaming. “Andrew! You missed all the fun! Serge Bischoff just released a new algorithm which is going to save me … days of computer time!”

  Wu frowned and corrected her. “Save all of us days, please!”

  “Of course.” Mosala stage-whispered to me, “Helen still doesn’t realize that she’s on my side, whether she likes it or not.” She added, “I have a summary of the lecture, if you want to see it—?”

  I said tonelessly, “No.” I realized how blunt that sounded, but I felt so spaced-out, so disconnected, that I really didn’t care. Mosala gave me a curious look, more concerned than angry.

  Wu left us. I asked Mosala, “Have you heard any more about Nishide?”

  “Ah.” She became serious. “It seems he’s not going to make it to the conference, after all. His secretary contacted the organizers; he’s had to be hospitalized. It’s pneumonia again.” She added sadly, “If this keeps up … I don’t know. He may retire altogether.”

  I closed my eyes; the floor began to tilt. A distant voice asked, “Are you all right? Andrew?” I pictured my face, glowing white hot.

  I opened my eyes. And I thought I finally understood what was happening.

  I said, “Can I talk to you? Please?”

  “Of course.”

  Sweat began running down my cheeks. “Don’t lose your temper. Just hear me out.”

  Mosala leaned forward, frowning. She hesitated, then put a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up. You need to see a doctor, straight away.”

  I screamed at her hoarsely, “Just listen! Listen to me! ”

  People around us were staring. Mosala opened her mouth, outraged, ready to put me in my place – but then she changed her mind. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “You need blood tests, a full … micropathology report … everything. You’re asymptomatic, now, but … however you feel … do it … there’s no way of knowing what the incubation period might be.” I was dripping sweat, and swaying on my feet; every breath felt like a lungful of fire. “What did you think they were going to do? Send in a hit squad with machine guns? I doubt … I was meant to get sick … at all … but the thing must have mutated on the way. Keyed to your genome … but the lock fell off, en route.” I laughed. “In my blood. In my brain.”

  I sagged, and dropped to my knees. A convulsion passed through my whole body, like a peristaltic spasm trying to squeeze the flesh right out of my skin. People around me were shouting, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I struggled to lift my head – but when I succeeded, briefly, black and purple bruises flowered across my vision.

  I stopped fighting it. I closed my eyes and lay down on the cool, welcoming tiles.

  #

  In the hospital ward, for a long time, I paid no attention to my surroundings. I thrashed about in a knot of sweat-soaked sheets, and let the world remain mercifully out of focus. I sought no information from the people around me; in my delirium, I believed I had all the answers:

  Ned Landers was behind everything. When we met, he’d infected me with one of his secret viruses. And now, because I’d traveled so far to escape it … although Helen Wu had proved that the whole world was nothing but a loop, and everything led back to the same point … now I was coming down with Landers’ secret weapon against Violet Mosala, Andrew Worth, and all his other enemies.

  I was coming down with Distress.

  A tall Fijian man dressed in white poked a drip into my elbow. I tried to shake it out; he held me still. I muttered triumphantly, “Don’t you know there’s no point? There’s no cure!” Distress was nowhere near as bad as I’d imagined; I wasn’t screaming like the woman in Miami, was I? I was nauseous and feverish – but I felt sure that I was headed for some form of beautiful, painless oblivion. I smiled up at the man. “I’m gone forever now! I’ve gone away!”

  He said, “I don’t think so. I think you’ve been there, and you’re coming back.”

  I shook my head defiantly, but then cried out in surprise and pain. My bowels had gone into spasm, and I was emptying them, uncontrollably, into a pan I hadn’t even noticed beneath me. I tried to stop. I couldn’t. But it wasn’t the incontinence that horrified me, as much as the … consistency. This wasn’t diarrhea; it was water.

  The motion stopped eventually, but I kept shuddering.

  I pleaded for an explanation. “What’s happening to me?”

  “You have cholera. Drug-resistant cholera. We can control the fever, and keep you hydrated – but the disease is going to have to run its course. So you’re in for a long haul.”

  Chapter 19

  As the first wave of delirium subsided, I tried to assess my position dispassionately, to arm myself with the facts. I was not an infant, I was not old. I was not suffering from malnutrition, parasite infestation, an impaired immune system, or any other complicating factor. I was in the care of qualified people. My condition was being monitored constantly by sophisticated machines.

  I told myself that I was not going to die.

  Fever and nausea, absent in “classical” cholera, meant that I had the Mexico City biotype – first seen in the aftermath of the quake of ’15, long since distributed globally. It entered the bloodstream as well as the gut, producing a wider range of symptoms, a greater risk to health. Nevertheless, millions of people survived it every year – often in much worse circumstances: without antipyretics to control the fever, without intravenous electrolytes, without any antibiotics at all – making drug resistance academic. In the largest metropolitan hospitals, in Santiago or Bombay, the particular strain of Vibrio cholerae could be sequenced completely, and a de novo drug designed and synthesized in a matter of hours. Most people who contracted the disease, though, had no prospect whatsoever of receiving this luxurious miracle cure. They simply lived through the rise and fall of the bacterial empire inside them. They rode it out.

  I could do the same.

  There was only one small flaw in this clear-eyed, optimistic scenario: Most people had no reason to suspect that their guts were full of a genetic weapon which had detonated one step short of its target. Engineered to mimic a natural strain of cholera as closely as possible – but engineered to push the envelope of plausible symptoms far enough to kill a healthy, twenty-seven-year-old woman, receiving the best care that Stateless could provide.

  #

  The ward was clean, bright, spacious, quiet. I spent most of my time screened off from the other patie
nts, but the white translucent partitions let the daylight through – and even when my skin was on fire, the faint touch of radiant warmth reaching my body was strangely comforting, like a familiar embrace.

  By late afternoon on the first day, the antipyretics seemed to be working. I watched the graph on the bedside monitor; my temperature was still pathological, but the immediate risk of brain damage had passed. I tried to swallow liquids, but nothing stayed down – so I moistened my parched lips and throat, and let the intravenous drip do the rest.

  Nothing could stop the cramps and the bowel spasms. When they came, it was like demonic possession, like being ridden by a voodoo god: an obscene bear-hug by something powerful and alien constricting inside my flesh. I couldn’t believe that any muscle in my own rag-doll body could still be so strong. I tried to stay calm – to accept each brutal convulsion as inevitable, to keep my mind fixed on the sure and certain knowledge that this too would pass – but every time, the surge of nausea swept away my laboriously composed stoicism like a house of matchsticks beneath a tidal wave, and left me shuddering and sobbing, convinced that I was finally dying, and half-believing that that was what I wanted more than anything else: instant release.

  My melatonin patch had been removed; the abyssal sleep it generated was too dangerous, now. But I couldn’t begin to tell the difference between the erratic rhythms of melatonin withdrawal, and my otherwise natural state: long stretches of half-sensate paralytic stupor, broken up by brief, violent dreams – and moments of panic-stricken clarity each time I believed my intestines were about to rupture and wash out of me in a red and gray tide.

  I told myself that I was stronger and more patient than the disease. Generations of bacteria could come and go; all I had to do was hang on. All I had to do was outlive them.