by Peter Watts
“Anyway,” he says, “here’s what I wanted to show you.”
The moment passes. There is something new on the monitor, something reddish and amorphous and somehow threatening.
It’s growing; a misshapen blob, sprouting random pseudopods, covers half the screen.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Carcinoma.”
It doesn’t surprise me.
“Cancer is fractal too,” Cheung says. “This is a model of a liver tumour, but the growth patterns are the same no matter what kind you’re talking about. We’re finding out how it grows; you gotta know that before you can kill it.”
I watch it spread.
Baboons. There are baboons running around in our TV, courtesy of National Geographic and PBS. We more civilized primates sit and watch at a discreet distance. Sean, hyperactively four, bounces around on the carpet; Joanne and I opt for the couch. We peer over a coffee table laden with Szechuan take-out, into what’s left of the real world.
There’s just been a treetop coup somewhere in the forests of central Africa; a new alpha male struts around. He goes through the troop, checking out the females, checking out their kids.
Especially the kids. He goes to each one in turn, running his big hairy hand over their heads, sniffing their bodies with that gentle paternalism, looking for some sign of familiarity, some telltale scent that speaks of his ancestry in those tiny bodies—but no, none of my genes in this one, and WHAP the infant’s head snaps back and forth like a bolo-ball and SNAP those matchstick arms bend in entirely new places and the Big Man on Campus tears the little carcass away from its screaming mother and pitches it out, out and down to the forest floor twenty meters below.
Sean is suddenly entranced. Joanne looks at me doubtfully.
“I don’t know if we really want to be watching this during, er, mealtime …”
But life isn’t always so intolerant, the narrator hastens to tell us. That same male would die defending those bastard children against an outside threat, against a predator or a rival troop, against anything that was less related to him than they were.
Loyalties are concentric. Defend your kind against others.
Defend your kin against your kind. Defend your genes against your kin. In absence of the greater threat, destroy the lesser.
And suddenly, with an almost audible click, the whole world drops into focus. I look around, surprised; nobody else seems to have noticed the change. On the surface, nothing has changed.
My family is blissfully unaware of the epiphany that has just occurred.
But I understand something now. It wasn’t really my fault.
Go down far enough, and we’re all running the same program.
Each cell holds the complete design; the framework, the plumbing, the wiring diagrams, all jammed into a spiral thread of sugars and bases that tells us what to be. What blind stupid arrogance, to think that a few campfire songs could undo four million years of evolution. Morally wrong, we chant; politically incorrect, socially unacceptable. But our genes aren’t fooled.
They’re so much wiser than we are. They know: we have met the enemy, and he is not us. Evolution, ever patient, inspires us to self-defense.
My enmity is hardwired. Am I to blame if the plan calls for something that hates?
What’s this? They’ve changed the bait again?
It can’t be an easy job, trying to bribe us into literacy. Each week they put a new display in the lobby, easily visible through the glass to passers-by, some colourful new production meant to lure the great unwashed into the library.
Wasted on me; I’m in here for something else entirely.
Although, what the hell, the newspaper section doesn’t close for hours. And today’s offering is a tad more colourful than usual.
Let’s see …
A crayon drawing of crude stick figures, red and yellow, black and white, holding hands in a ring. Posters, professionally crafted but no less blatant, showing Chinese and Caucasians wearing hard hats and smiling at each other. The air is thick with sugary sweetness and light; I feel the first stirrings of diabetes.
I move closer to the display. A sign, prominently displayed:
“Sponsored by the B.C. Human Rights Commission”.
They know. They have their polls, their barometers, they can feel the backlash building and they’re fighting it any way they can.
I wander the exhibit. I feel a bit like a vampire at church. But the symbols here are weak; the garlic and the holy signs have an air of desperation about them. They’re losing, and they know it.
This feeble propaganda can’t change how we feel.
Besides, why should they care what we think? In another few years we won’t matter any more.
There’s a newspaper clipping tacked up on one corner of the nearest board. From an old 1986 edition of the Globe and Mail:
“Reagan Assured Gorbachev of Help Against Space Aliens”, the headline says.
Is this for real?
Yes indeed. Then-president Reagan, briefly inspired, actually told Gorbachev that if the Earth were ever threatened by aliens, all countries would pull together and forget their ideological differences. Apparently he thought there was a moral there somewhere.
“One of the few intelligent things Reagan ever said,” someone says at my elbow. I turn. She’s overdressed; wears a BC government pin on one lapel and a button on the other. The button shows planet Earth encircled by the words “We’re all in this together”.
But at least she’s one of us.
“But he was right,” I reply. “Threaten the whole human race and our international squabbling seems so petty.”
She nods, smiling. “That’s why I put it up. It’s not really part of the presentation, but I thought it fit.”
“Of course, we don’t have space aliens to hate. But not to worry. There’s always an enemy, somewhere.”
Her smile falters a bit. “What do you mean?”
“If not space aliens, the Russians. If not the Russians, the local ethnics. I stayed on an island once where the lobstermen on the south end all hated the herring fishermen on the north. They all seemed the same to me, a lot of them were even related, but they had to be able to hate someone somewhere.”
She clucks and shakes her head in cynical accord.
“Of course, both sides banded together to hate all off-islanders,” I add.
“Of course.”
“A single human being, the whole damn species, or any level in between, and the pattern’s the same, isn’t it? It’s like hatred is—”
I see galaxies within galaxies.
“—scale-invariant,” I finish slowly.
She looks at me, a bit strangely. “Uh—”
“But of course, there are also a lot of positive things happening. People can co-operate when they have to.”
Her smile reinflates. “Exactly.”
“Like the natives. Banding together to save their cultures, forgetting their differences. The Haidas even stopped taking slaves from other tribes.”
She isn’t smiling at all now. “The Haida,” she says, “haven’t taken slaves for generations.”
“Oh, that’s right. We put a stop to that about—I guess it was even before we banned the potlatch, wasn’t it? But eventually they’ll want to start up again. I mean, slavery was integral to their culture, and we simply must protect the integrity of everyone’s culture here, mustn’t we?”
“I don’t think you’ve got all your facts straight,” she says slowly.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were multicultural. I thought Canadians were supposed to—” I spy some bold print a few boards down—“ to allow different cultures to flourish side by side without imposing our own moral and ethical standards on them.”
“Within the law,” she says. I wait, but she’s wary now, unwilling to speak further.
So I do. “Then as a woman, I’m sure you’re pleased that Muslim men won’t have to stop the traditional subjugatio
n of their wives when they come here. As long as they keep it in the home, of course.”
“Excuse me.” She turns her back to me, takes a step along the display.
“You’re lying to us,” I say, raising my voice. A couple of bystanders turn their heads.
She faces me, mouth open to speak. I pre-empt her: “Or perhaps you’re lying to them. But you can’t have it both ways, and you can’t change the facts no matter how many bad classroom cartoons you force on us.”
There’s a part of me that hasn’t enjoyed provoking the anger in her face. A few days ago, it might even have been the biggest part. But it’s only a few thousand years old, tops, and the rest of me really doesn’t give a shit.
I lift my arm in a gesture that takes in the whole display. “If I were a racist,” I tell her, “this wouldn’t begin to convince me.”
I bare my teeth in a way that might be mistaken for a smile. I turn and walk deeper into the building.
Here it is: on the back page of Section C, in a newspaper almost two weeks old. Didn’t even make it to the airwaves, I guess. What difference does one more battered Asian make, after all the gang warfare going down in Chinatown? No wonder I missed it.
He had a name. Wai Chan. Found unconscious at a North Van housing development owned by Balthree Properties, where he was—
(Balthree Properties? They’re local, aren’t they?)
—where he was employed as a night watchman. In stable condition after being attacked by an unknown assailant. No motive. No suspects.
Bullshit. Half the fucking city is suspect, we’ve all got motive, and they know it.
Or maybe they don’t. Maybe they believe all the stories they feed us that say Hey, High-Density Living Good For You, Crime Rate Unconnected To Population Size, Massive Immigration Keeps Us Safe From America, hurrah hurrah!
Nothing like giving yourself a mild case of cancer to cure the measles, and every time somebody projects that the lower mainland will be sixty percent Chinese by 2010 the news is buried in a wave of stories about international goodwill and the cultural mosaic. Maybe they don’t know what it’s like to go back to the place you grew up and find it ripped to the ground, some offshore conglomerate’s turned it into another hive crammed with pulsing yellow grubs, perhaps Balthree Properties isn’t run out of Hong Kong after all but I didn’t know that then, did I? That used to be my home, there were trees there once, and childhood friends, and now just mud and lumber and this ugly little Chink yammering at me, barely even speaks the fucking language and he’s kicking me out of my own back yard—
Once I felt guilty about what I did to him. I was sick with remorse. That was stupid, woolly thinking. My guilt doesn’t spring from the one time I let the monster out. No sirree.
It springs from all the other times I didn’t.
The Indians are on the warpath. From the endowment lands on east, they’re blocking us. We’re on their land, they say. They want justice. They want retribution. They want autonomy.
Don’t tell me, noble savage. So do I.
Traffic moves nose-to-bumper like a procession of slugs. At this rate it’ll be hours before I even get out of town, let alone home. There was a time when I could afford to live in town.
There was even a time when I wanted to. Now, all I want to do is scream.
There’s a group of Indian kids at the roadside, enjoying the chaos their parents have wrought. I bear them no ill will; the natives are a conquered people, drunk and unemployed, no threat to anyone. I sympathise. I honk my horn in support.
Thunk! A spiderweb explodes across my windshield, glassy cracks dividing and redividing into a network too fine to for my eyes to follow, I can barely see through—
Jesus! That sonofabitch threw a rock at me! There he is, winding up for another—no, he’s after someone else this time, our ancestors weren’t nice to their ancestors and this brat thinks that gives him some god-given moral right to trash other people’s property—
I don’t have to take this. I didn’t take their fucking land away from them. Get off to the side, onto the shoulder—now floor it!
Watch the skid, watch the skid—and look at those punks scrambling out of the way! One of them isn’t quite fast enough; catches my eye as he rolls off the hood, and holy shit did his sneer vanish in a hurry! I do believe he already regrets the rashness of his actions, and we’ve barely started dancing yet.
I turn off the ignition. I pocket the keys.
I get out of the car.
There are people shouting somewhere very far away, and horns honking. They sound almost the same. Someone gets up off the pavement in front of me, nursing his leg. He doesn’t look so tough now, does he? Like it’s just dawned on him that they lost Oka years ago. Where did all your friends go, fucker?
Where’s Lasagna when you need him?
Okay, you want to wail about oppression? I’ll show you oppression, you greasy Indian brat. I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t ever forget.
My muscles are knotted so tightly I wonder why my own ligaments haven’t been torn out at the roots. I’m dimly aware that this is more or less normal for me now.
But I know that I’ll feel better soon.
BETHLEHEM
It was her own damn fault.
No. No, that’s not right. But Christ, look at this place; what did she expect, living here?
A dried blood stain smears a meter of sidewalk, a rusty backdrop for broken bottles and the twisted skeleton of an old ten-speed. Everything is too big. All this jagged structure, so solid and visible, frightens me. I focus on the stain, search for some hint of its unseen complexity. I want to throw myself down through familiar orders of magnitude and see inside; dead erythrocytes, molecules of ferrous haemoglobin, single atoms dancing in comforting envelopes of quantum uncertainty.
But I can’t. It’s just a featureless brown blot, and all I can see is that it was once part of someone like me.
She’s not answering. I’ve been buzzing for five minutes now.
I’m the only one in sight, sole occupant of a narrow window in time: all the victims have made for cover, and the monsters aren’t out yet. But they’re coming, Darwin’s agents, always ready to weed out the unfit.
I push the buzzer again. “Jan, it’s Keith.” Why doesn’t she answer? Maybe she can’t, maybe someone got in, maybe …
Maybe she just wants to be alone. That’s what she said on the phone, isn’t it?
So why am I here? It’s not that I didn’t believe her, exactly. It’s not even that I’m worried about her safety. It’s more a matter of procedure; when your best friend has been raped, you’re supposed to be supportive. That’s the rule, even these days. And Janet is my friend, by any practical definition of the term.
Glass breaks somewhere in the distance.
“Jan—”
If I leave now I can still make it back before it gets too late. The sun doesn’t go down for at least another twenty minutes. This was a stupid idea anyway.
I turn away from the gate, and something clicks behind me. I look back; a green light glows by the buzzer. I touch the grating, briefly, jerking my hand back after the slightest contact. Again, for longer this time. No shock. The gate swings inward.
Still no words from the speaker.
“Jan?” I say into the street.
After a moment, she answers. “Come on up, Keith. I—I’m glad you came by …”
Five floors high, Janet bolts the door behind me. The wall holds her up while I step past.
Her footsteps trail me down the hall, stiff, shuffling. In the living room she passes without eye contact, heading for the fridge.
“Something to drink?”
“There’s a choice?”
“Not much of one. No dairy products, the truck got hijacked again. They had beer, though.” Her voice is strong, vibrant even, but she walks as though rigor mortis has already taken hold. Every movement seems painful.
The room is dimly lit; a lamp with an orange shade in
one corner, a TV with the volume down. When she opens the fridge, bluish light spills across the bruises on her face. One of her eyes is swollen and pulpy.
She closes the refrigerator. Her face falls into merciful eclipse.
She straightens in stages, turns to face me, bottle in hand. I take it without a word, careful not to touch her.
“You didn’t have to come,” she says. “I’m doing okay.”
I shrug. “I just thought, if you needed anything …”
Janet smiles through the swelling. Even that seems to hurt.
“Thanks, but I picked up some stuff coming back from the precinct.”
“Janet, I’m sorry.” How else can you say it?
“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”
I should disagree. I want to disagree.
“It was,” she insists, although I haven’t spoken. “I should have seen it coming. Simple scenario, predictable outcome. I should have known.”
“Christ, Jan, why are you still living out here?” It sounds like an accusation.
She looks through the window. By now it’s dark enough to see the fires on the east side.
“I lived here before,” she reminds me. “I’m not going to let the fuckers drive me out now.”
Before. I follow her gaze, see a tiny dark spot on the sidewalk below. Families lived here once. It’s April. Warm enough that kids would be playing out there now. There are people who think that somewhere, they still do. Somewhere at right angles to this twisted place, some place where the probability wave broke onto a more peaceful reality. I wish I could believe that. There would be a little solace in the thought that in some other timeline, children are playing just outside.
But that world, if it even exists, diverged from ours a long time ago. Three, maybe four years …
“It happened so fast,” I murmur.
“Fold catastrophe.” Absently, Janet speaks to the window.
“Change isn’t gradual, Keith, you keep forgetting. Things just cruise along until they hit a breakpoint, and zap: new equilibrium.
Like falling off a cliff.”
This is how she sees the world: not reality, but a trajectory in phase space. Her senses gather the same data as mine, yet everything she sees sounds so alien…