Blood Music

by Greg Bear

  “Could he get you in trouble?”

  Edward hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Coming back what time tonight?”

  “As soon as I can,” he said. He stroked her face with the tips of his fingers. “Don’t be mad,” he suggested softly.

  “Oh, no,” she said emphatically. “Never that.”

  Edward began the drive to La Jolla in an ambiguous mood; whenever he thought about Vergil’s condition, it was as if he entered a different universe. The rules changed, and Edward was not sure he had even the inkling of an outcome.

  He took the La Jolla Village Drive exit and wandered down Torrey Pines Road into the city. Modest and very expensive homes vied for space with three and four-story apartment buildings and condominiums along curving, sloping streets. Bicyclists and the perennial joggers wore brightly colored jumpsuits to ward off the cool night air; even at this hour of the night, La Jolla was active with strollers and exercisers.

  He found a parking space with little difficulty and deftly pulled the Volkswagen in. Locking the door, he sniffed the sea air and wondered if he and Gail could afford to move. The rent would be very steep, the commute would be long. He decided he wasn’t that concerned with status. Still, the neighborhood was nice—410 Pearl Street, not the best the town had to offer, but more than he could afford, now at least. It was simply Vergil’s way to fall into opportunities like the condominium. On the other hand, Edward decided as he buzzed at the ground level door, he wouldn’t want Vergil’s luck if it accompanied the rest of the package.

  The elevator played bland music and displayed little hologram clips advertising condos for sale, various products and social activities for the upcoming week. On the third floor, Edward walked past imitation Louis 15th furniture and gold-marbled mirrors.

  Vergil opened the door on the first ring and motioned him inside. He wore a checked robe with long sleeves and carpet slippers. His fingers twisted an unlit pipe in one hand as he walked into the living room and sat down, saying nothing.

  “You have an infection,” Edward reiterated, showing him the printout.

  “Oh?” Vergil looked the paper over quickly, then set it down on the glass coffee table.

  “That’s what the machine says.”

  “Yes, well, apparently it isn’t prepared for such odd cases.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’d advise—”

  “I know. Sorry to be rude, Edward, but what’s a hospital going to do for me? I’d sooner take a computer into a shop full of cavemen and ask them to fix it. These figures…they undoubtedly show something, but we aren’t able to decide what.”

  Edward removed his coat. “Listen. You have me worried now.” Vergil’s expression changed slowly to a kind of frantic beatitude. He squinted at the ceiling and pursed his lips.

  “Where’s Candice?”

  “Out for the evening. We’re not getting along too well right now.”

  “She knows?”

  Vergil smirked. “How could she not know? She sees me naked every night” He turned away from Edward as he said that. He was lying.

  “Are you stoned?”

  He shook his head, then nodded once, very slow. “Listening,” he said.

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know. Sounds. Not sounds. Like music. The heart, all the blood vessels, the friction of the blood along the arteries, veins. Activity. Music in the blood.” He regarded Edward plaintively. “What excuse did you give Gail?”

  “None, really. Just that you were in trouble and I had to come see you.”

  “Can you stay?”

  “No.” He glanced around the apartment suspiciously, looking for ashtrays, packs of papers.

  “I’m not stoned, Edward,” Vergil said. “I may be wrong, but I think something big is happening. I think they’re finding out who I am.”

  Edward sat down across from Vergil, staring at him intently. Vergil didn’t seem to notice. Some inner process was absorbing him.

  “Is there any coffee?” Edward asked. Vergil motioned to the kitchen. Edward filled a pot of water to boil and took a jar of instant from the fourth cabinet he looked into. Cup in hand, he returned to the seat. Vergil twisted his head back and forth, eyes wide open.

  “You always knew what you wanted to be, didn’t you?” he asked Edward.

  “More or less.”

  “Smart moves. A gynecologist. Never false moves. I was different I had goals, but no direction. Like a map without roads, just places to be. I didn’t give a shit for anything or anybody but myself. Even science. Just a means. I’m surprised I got so far.” He gripped his chair arms. “As for Mother…” The tension in his hand was clear. “Witch. Witch and spook for parents. Changeling child. Where small things make big changes.”

  “Something wrong?”

  They’re talking to me, Edward.” He shut his eyes.

  “Jesus.” There was nothing else he could think of to say. He thought wildly of hoaxes and being made a fool of and Vergil’s unreliability in the past, but he could not get away from the hard facts the diagnostic equipment had shown him.

  For a quarter-hour Vergil seemed to be asleep. Edward checked his pulse, which was strong and steady; felt his forehead—slightly cool—and made himself more coffee. He was about to pick up the phone, undecided whether to call a hospital or Gail, when Vergil’s eyelids flickered open and he shifted his gaze to meet Edward’s.

  “Hard to understand exactly what time is like for them,” he said. “It’s taken them maybe three, four days to figure out language, key human concepts. Can you imagine, Edward? They didn’t even know. They thought I was the universe. But now they’re on to it On to me. Right now.” He stood and walked across the beige carpet to the curtained plate glass window, clumsily reaching behind the drapes to find the cord and pull it A few apartment and house lights descended to the abyss of the night ocean. “They must have thousands of researchers hooked up to my neurons. They’re damned efficient you know, not to have screwed me up. So delicate in there. Making changes.”

  “The hospital,” Edward said hoarsely. He cleared his throat “Please, Vergil. Now.”

  “What in hell can a hospital do? Did you figure out any way to control the cells? I mean, they’re my own. Hurt them, hurt me.”

  “I’ve been thinking.” Actually, the idea had just popped into his head—a sure sign that he was starting to believe Vergil. “Actinomycin can bind to DNA and stop transcription. We could slow them down that way—surely that would screw up this biologic you’ve described.”

  I’m allergic to actinomycin. It would kill me.”

  Edward looked down at his hands. That had been his best shot, he was sure of it. “We could do some experiments, see how they metabolize, differ from other cells. If we could isolate a nutrient they require more of, we could starve them. Maybe even radiation treatments—”

  “Hurt them,” Vergil said, turning toward Edward, “hurt me.” He stood in the middle of the Irving room and held out his arms. The robe fell open and revealed Vergil’s legs and torso. Shadow obscured any visible detail. “I’m not sure I want to be rid of them. They’re not doing any harm.”

  Edward swallowed back his frustration and tried to control a flush of anger, only making it worse. “How do you know?”

  Vergil shook his head and held up one finger. They’re trying to understand what space is. That’s tough for them. They break distances down into concentrations of chemicals. For them, space is a range of taste intensities.”

  “Vergil—”

  “Listen, think, Edward!” His tone was excited but even. “Something is happening inside me. They talk to each other with proteins and nucleic acids, through the fluids, through membranes. They tailor something—viruses, maybe—to carry long messages or personality traits or biologic. Plasmid-like structures. That makes sense. Those are some of the ways I programmed them. Maybe that’s what your machine calls infection—all the new information in my blood. Chatter. Tas
tes of other individuals. Peers. Superiors. Subordinates.”

  “Vergil, I’m listening, but I—”

  “This is my show, Edward. I’m their universe. They’re amazed by the new scale.” He sat down and was quiet again for a time. Edward squatted by his chair and pulled up the sleeve of Vergil’s robe. His arm was criss-crossed with white lines.

  “I’m calling an ambulance,” Edward said, reaching for the table phone.

  “No!” Vergil cried, sitting up. “I told you, I’m not sick, this is my show. What can they do for me? It would be a farce.”

  Then what in hell am I doing here?” Edward asked, becoming angry. “I can’t do anything. I’m one of the cavemen and you came to me—”

  “You’re a friend,” Vergil said, fixing his eyes on him. Edward had the unnerving suspicion he was being watched by more than just Vergil. “I wanted you here to keep me company.” He laughed. “But I’m not exactly alone, am I?”

  “I have to call Gail,” Edward said, dialing the number.

  “Gail, yeah. But don’t tell her anything.”

  “Oh, no. Absolutely.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By dawn, Vergil was walking around the apartment, fingering things, looking out windows, slowly and methodically making himself lunch. “You know, I can actually feel their thoughts,” he said. Edward watched, exhausted and sick with tension, from an armchair in the Irving room. “I mean, their cytoplasm seems to have a will of its own. A kind of subconscious life, counter to the rationality they’ve acquired so recently. They hear the chemical ‘noise’ of molecules fitting and unfitting inside.”

  He stood in the middle of the living room, robe fallen open, eyes dosed. He seemed to be taking brief naps. It was possible, Edward thought, that he was undergoing petit mal seizures. Who could predict what havoc the lymphocytes were wreaking in his brain?

  Edward called Gail again from the kitchen phone. She was preparing for work. He asked her to phone the hospital and tell them he was too ill to come to work. “Cover up for you? This must be serious. What’s wrong with Vergil? Can’t he change his own diapers?”

  Edward didn’t say anything.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, after a long pause.

  Was it? Decidedly not. “Fine,” he said.

  “Culture!” Vergil said loudly, peering around the kitchen divider. Edward said good-by and quickly hung up. “They’re always swimming in a bath of information. Contributing to it. It’s a kind of gestalt thing, whatever. The hierarchy is absolute. They send tailored phages after cells that don’t interact properly. Viruses specified to individuals or groups. No escape. One gets pierced by a virus, the cell blebs outward, it explodes and dissolves. But it’s not just a dictatorship. I think they effectively have more freedom than we do. They vary so differently—I mean, from individual to individual, if there are individuals, they vary in different ways than we do. Does that make sense?”

  “No,” Edward said softly, rubbing his temples. “Vergil, you are pushing me dose to the edge. I can’t take this much longer. I don’t understand, I’m not sure I believe—”

  “Not even now?”

  “Okay, let’s say you’re giving me the right interpretation. Giving it to me straight and the whole thing’s true. Have you bothered to figure out the consequences?”

  Vergil regarded him warily. “My mother,” he said.

  “What about her?”

  “Anyone who cleans a toilet.”

  “Please make sense.” Desperation made Edward’s voice almost whiny.

  “I’ve never been very good at that” Vergil murmured. “Figuring out where things might lead.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Terrified,” Vergil said. His grin became maniacal “Exhilarated.” He kneeled beside Edward’s chair. “At first I wanted to control them. But they are more capable than I am. Who am I, a blundering fool, to try to frustrate them? They’re up to something very important”

  “What if they kill you?”

  Vergil lay on the floor and spread out his arms and legs. “Dead dog,” he said. Edward felt like kicking him. “Look, I don’t want you to think I’m going around you, but yesterday I went to see Michael Bernard. He put me through his private clinic, took a whole range of specimens. Biopsies. You can’t see where he took muscle tissue samples, skin samples, anything. It’s all healed. He said it checks out. And he asked me not to tell anybody.” His expression became dreamy again. “Cities of cells,” he said. “Edward, they push pili-like tubes through the tissues, spread themselves, their information, convert other kinds of cells…”

  “Stop it!” Edward shouted. His voice cracked. “What checks out?”

  “As Bernard puts it I have ‘severely enlarged’ lymphocytes. The other data isn’t ready yet. I mean, it was only yesterday. So this isn’t our common delusion.”

  “What does he plan to do?”

  “He’s going to convince Genetron to take me back. Reopen my lab.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “It’s not just having the lab open again. Let me show you. Since I stopped the lamp treatments, my skin’s been changing again.” He pulled back the robe where he lay on the floor.

  The skin all over Vergil’s body was crisscrossed with white lines. He turned over. Along his back, the lines were starting to form ridges.

  “My God,” Edward said.

  “I’m not going to be much good anywhere else but the lab,” Vergil said. “I won’t be able to go out in public.”

  “You…you can talk to them, tell them to slow down.” He was immediately aware how ridiculous that sounded.

  “Yes, indeed I can, but that doesn’t mean they listen.”

  “I thought you’re their god.”

  “The ones hooked up to my neurons aren’t the big wheels. They’re researchers, or at least serve the same function. They know I’m here, what I am, but that doesn’t mean they’ve convinced the upper levels of the hierarchy.”

  “They’re disputing?”

  “Something like that” He pulled the robe back on and went to the window, peering through the curtains as if looking for someone. “I don’t have anything left but them. They aren’t afraid. Edward, I’ve never felt so close to anyone or anything before.” Again, the beatific smile. “I’m responsible for them. Mother to them all. You know, until the last few days, I didn’t even have a name for them. A mother should name her offspring, shouldn’t she?”

  Edward didn’t answer.

  “I looked all around—dictionaries, textbooks, everywhere. Then it just popped into my head. ‘Noocytes.’ From the Greek word for mind, ‘noos.’ Noocytes. Sounds kind of ominous, doesn’t it? I told Bernard. He seemed to think it was a good name—”

  Edward raised his arms in exasperation. “You don’t know what they’re going to do! You say they’re like a civilization—”

  “A thousand civilizations.”

  “Yes, and civilizations have been known to screw up before. Warfare, the environment—” He was grasping at straws, trying to restrain the panic that had been growing since he arrived. He wasn’t competent to handle the enormity of what was happening. And neither was Vergil. Vergil was the last person Edward would have called insightful and wise with regard to large issues.

  “But I’m the only one at risk,” Vergil said.

  “You don’t know that Jesus, Vergil, look what they’re doing to you!”

  “I accept it,” he said stoically.

  Edward shook his head, as much as admitting defeat. “Okay. Bernard gets Genetron to reopen the lab, you move in, become a guinea pig. What then?”

  “They treat me right. I’m more than just good ol’ Vergil I. Ulam right now. I’m a goddamned galaxy, a super-mother.”

  “Super-host, you mean.”

  Vergil conceded the point with a shrug.

  Edward felt his throat constricting. “I can’t help you,” he said. “I can’t talk to you, convince you, can’t help you. You’re as st
ubborn as ever.” That sounded almost benign; how could “stubborn” describe an attitude like Vergil’s? He tried to clarify what he meant but could only stammer. “I have to go,” he finally managed to say. “I can’t do you any good here.”

  Vergil nodded. “I suppose not. This can’t be easy.”

  “No,” Edward said, swallowing. Vergil stepped forward and seemed about to put his hands on Edward’s shoulders. Edward backed away instinctively.

  “I’d like at least your understanding,” Vergil said, dropping his arms. “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.” His face twisted into a grimace. “I’m not sure how much longer I can face it, face up to it I mean. I don’t know whether they’ll kill me or not. I think not. The strain, Edward.”

  Edward backed away toward the door and put his hand on the knob. Vergil’s face, temporarily creased with an agony of worry, returned to beatitude. “Hey,” he said. “Listen. They—”

  Edward opened the door and stepped outside, closing it firmly behind him. He quickly walked to the elevator and punched the button for the ground floor.

  He stood in the empty lobby for a few minutes, trying to control his erratic breathing. He glanced at his watch: nine in the morning.

  Who would Vergil listen to?

  Vergil had gone to Bernard; perhaps Bernard was now the pivot on which the whole situation turned. Vergil made it seem as if Bernard were not only convinced, but very interested. People of Bernard’s stature didn’t coax the Vergil Ulams of the world along unless they felt it was to their advantage. As Edward pushed through the double glass doors, he decided to play a hunch.

  Vergil lay in the middle of the living room, arms and legs cruciform, and laughed. Then he sobered and asked himself what impression he had made on Edward, or on Bernard for that matter. Not important, he decided. Nothing was important but what was going on inside, the interior universe.

  “I’ve always been a big fellow,” Vergil murmured.

  Everything

  —Yes, I am everything now.

  Explain

  —What? I mean, explain what?