Blood Music

by Greg Bear

  Lying on her back on the carpet with the food cart and the empty candle cart nearby, she wondered if she would ever be married—if there would be anybody to marry—and ever have a house where she could apply some of the hints she now pored over. “Probably not,” she told herself. “I’m a spinster for sure now.” She had never dated extensively, had never gone all the way with Gary, and had graduated from special classes in high school with the reputation of being nice…and dull. Some people like her were kind of wild, making up for not being too bright by doing lots of daring things.

  “Well, I’m still here,” she said to the high dark ceiling, “and I’m still dull.”

  She carried the magazine down the stairs back to the stand, candle in one hand, and picked out a Cosmopolitan to read next. Back on the lobby level, she fell asleep briefly, woke up with a start when the magazine fell across her stomach, and walked around from candle to candle, snuffing them out in case she wanted to use them again tomorrow night. Then she lay down on her side on the carpet, using Kenneth’s coat for a pillow, one candle still burning, and thought of the massive building above her. She couldn’t remember whether the twin towers were still the tallest in the world. She thought not. Each was like an ocean liner upended and stuck into the sky-taller than any ocean liner, actually; so the tourist brochure said.

  It would be fun to explore all the shops on the concourse, but even half-asleep, Suzy knew what she would have to do, eventually. She would have to climb the stairs to the top, wherever the stairs were, find out what made the light, and look out across New York—she could see all of the city and much of the state from that vantage. She could see what had happened, and what was happening. The radio might receive more stations that high up. Besides, there was a restaurant on top, and that meant more food. And a bar. She suddenly wanted to get very drunk, something she had tried only twice before in her life.

  It wouldn’t be easy. Climbing the stairs could take a day or longer, she knew.

  She started up out of light sleep. Something had made a noise nearby, a squeaky, sliding scrape. Dawn was gray and dim outside. There was a motion in the plaza-things rolling, like dust-kittens under a bed, like tumbleweeds. She blinked and rubbed her eyes and got to her knees, squinting to see more clearly.

  Feathery cartwheels blew in with the wind, sometimes spinning and falling over, crossing the five acres of the plaza, their wind-vane spokes flapping at the edges. They were gray and white and brown. The fallen ones disassembled on the concrete and flattened out, adhering to the pavement and lifting foot-high fronds. They were pouring into the plaza now, more as day brightened, running into the glass and smearing, spreading outward.

  “No more going outside,” she told herself. “Uh-uh.”

  She ate a granola bar and turned on the radio, hoping to still be able to receive the British station she had heard the day before. With a little tuning, the speaker produced a weak voice, cross-thatched with interference, like a man speaking through felt

  “…to say that the world economy will suffer is certainly an understatement. Who knows how much of the world’s resources—both in raw materials and manufactured goods, not to mention, financial records and capital—lies inaccessible in North America now? I realize most people worry more about their immediate survival, and wonder when the plague will cross the ocean, or whether it is already with us, biding its time—” Static overwhelmed the signal for several minutes. Suzy sat with crossed legs next to the radio, waiting patiently. She didn’t understand much, but the voice was comforting. “—yet my concern, as an economist, must be with what happens after the crisis passes. If it passes. Well, I’m an optimist. God in all His wisdom has some reason for this. Yes. So there has been no communication from the whole of North America, with the exception of the famous meteorological station on Afognak Island. The financiers are dead, then. The United States has always been the great bastion of private capital. Russia is now the dominant nation on the globe, militarily and perhaps financially. What can we expect?”

  Suzy turned the radio off. Blather. She needed to know what it was that had happened to her home.

  “Why?” she asked out loud. She watched the wheels tumbling through the plaza, their remains beginning to obscure the concrete. “Why not just kill myself and end it all?” She tossed her arms out with self-conscious melodrama, then began to laugh. She laughed until it hurt and became frightened when she realized she couldn’t stop. Hands over her mouth, she ran to a water fountain and gulped the clear, steady stream down.

  What really scared her, Suzy realized, was the thought of climbing the tower. Would she need keys? Would she get halfway and find she couldn’t go any farther?

  “I’ll be brave,” she said around a bite of the granola bar. “There’s nothing else I can be.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA

  It had been a normal and a good life, selling parts and junk out of his back yard, going to auctions and picking up odds and ends, raising his son and being proud of his wife, who taught school. He had taken great pleasure in his major acquisitions: a load of tile, all different kinds, to fix up the bathroom and kitchen in the huge old white house; an old British jeep; fifteen different cars and trucks, all blue; a ton and a half of old office furniture, including an antique wooden file cabinet which proved to be worth more than he had paid for the whole load.

  The weirdest thing he had ever done (since getting married) was shave the thinning hair on his crown to expedite going bald. He had hated the in-between state. Ruth had cried when she saw him. That had been two months ago and the thinning hair had come back, as unruly and distasteful as ever.

  John Olafsen had made a good living back when life had been normal. He had kept Ruth and seven-year-old Loren in good clothes and well fed. The house had been in his family for ninety years, since it had been new. They had wanted for little.

  He pulled away the scratched black enamel binoculars and wiped fatigue and sweat from his eyes with a red bandana. Then he continued his peering. He was surveying the broad spread of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and the Sandia Labs across the road. The smell of dried grass and dust made him want to blow his nose, leave, pack up…and go nowhere because that was exactly the only place he had left to go. It was five thirty and dusk was coming on. “Wave your flag, Jerry,” he murmured, “you sonofabitch.”

  Jerry was his twin brother, five minutes younger, twice as reckless. Jerry had flown crop dusters in the Salinas Valley. How John had escaped, neither of them knew, but it was obvious Jerry was too full of DDT and EDB and what have you. He just plain didn’t taste good to whatever had eaten the town of Livermore.

  And Ruth, and Loren.

  Jerry was down between the big modern square buildings and the old bungalows and barracks, scouting the thirty-foot-high mounds that now rose wherever there was empty space on the LLNL grounds. He carried another red bandana on a stick. Neither brother was ever without a bandana. Each Christmas, they had bought each other new ones, wrapping them up in red foil with big red ribbons.

  “Wave,” John growled. He shifted the binoculars and saw the red bandana circling rapidly on the stick: once clockwise, once counterclockwise, then three times clockwise. That meant John should come down and see what there was to see. Nothing dangerous…as far as Jerry could tell.

  He hefted his two hundred and fifty pounds up and brushed down the knees of his ragged black Levis. Curling red hair and beard glowing against the eastern grayness, he climbed out of the drainage ditch and squeezed through the barbed wire fence, the chicken wire fence, and the no-longer-electrified inner perimeter fence.

  Then he ran and slid down the twenty-foot grade and hopped another culvert before slowing to a casual walk. He lit up a cigarette and broke the match before tossing it into the dirt. Fifteen or twenty cars were still parked in a lot next to the old Yin-Yang fusion project buildings. An especially impressive mound, about sixty feet in diameter, rose from the earth near th
e lot Jerry stood on top of the mound. He had come across a pick somewhere and was dangling it head-down by the handle, a big grin on his beardless face.

  “No more joggers,” he said as John climbed the mound to join him. They called some of the peculiar things they had seen in Livermore joggers. The name seemed appropriate, since the things almost always ran; not once had they seen one standing still.

  “Gladdens my heart,” John said. “What’s your plan?”

  “Dig my way to China,” Jerry said, tapping the mound. “Ain’t you curious?”

  “There’s curious, and curious,” John said. “What if these mounds are something the lab people put in…you know, defense, or maybe an experiment out of hand?”

  “I’d say an experiment’s already got out of hand.”

  “I still don’t think it came from here.”

  “Shit” Jerry plunked the head of the pick on the mound, cracking the already fissured dirt and dried grass. “Why not and where in hell else?”

  “Other places got labs.”

  “Sure, and maybe it’s aliens.”

  John shrugged. They’d probably never know. “Dig, then.”

  Jerry brought the pick up and expertly swung it down. The point broke through the dirt like a pin through an eggshell and the handle almost jerked from his hands. “Hollow,” he grunted, pulling it loose with some effort. He knelt down and peered into the pick hole. “Can’t see.” He got to his feet and swung the pick again.

  “Hit ’em,” John said, licking his lips. “Let me hit ’em.”

  “We don’t know anything’s down there,” Jerry said, snatching the pick handle away from his brother’s broad, thick outstretched hand.

  John nodded reluctantly and put the hand in his jeans pocket. He looked off at the setting sun and shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do to them,” he said. “There’s just us.”

  Jerry swung three times in quick succession and a hole a yard wide caved in. The brothers jumped back, then retreated several more steps for caution’s sake. The rest of the mound held. Jerry got on his hands and knees and crawled up to the hole. “Still can’t see,” he said. “Go get the flashlight.”

  It was getting dark when John returned with a heavy-duty waterproof lantern from their truck. Jerry sat by the hole, smoking a cigarette and tapping the ashes into it. “Brought a rope, too,” John said, dropping the coil next to his brother’s knee.

  “What’s the town look like?” Jerry asked.

  “From what I could see, same as before, only more so.”

  “Be anything left tomorrow?”

  John shrugged. “Whatever it turns into, I suppose.”

  “Okay. It’s dark down there, night makes no difference. You hold on, I’ll go on down with the light—”

  “No way,” John said. “I’m not staying up here without a light.”

  “Then you go down.”

  John thought about that “Hell, no. We’ll tie the rope to a car and both go down.”

  “Fine,” Jerry said. He ran with the rope to the nearest car, tied it to a bumper, and paid it out on the way back. About thirty feet of rope remained when he reached the top of the mound. “Me first,” he said.

  “Dur rigor, as the Frogs say.”

  Jerry lowered himself into the hole. “Light”

  John gave him the light. Jerry’s head dropped below the rim. “It’s reflecting,” he said. The beam shot back up into the moist evening air and caught John’s face as he peered after. When enough space presented itself, he took hold of the taut rope and followed his twin.

  Their mother had told them stories, passed on from a Danish-speaking grandmother, about such mounds full of elf gold, dead bodies, weird blue fire and “skirlin’ and singin’.”

  He never would have admitted it, but what he truly expected to find was Morlocks.

  Both twins were sweating by the time they set foot on the bottom of the hollow mound. The air was much warmer and more humid than outside. The lantern beam cut through a thick, sweet-tasting fog. Their boots sunk into a resilient dark purple surface that squeaked when they moved. “Gaw-awod-damn,” they said simultaneously.

  “What the fuck are we going to do, now that we’re here?” John asked plaintively.

  “We’re going to find Ruth and Loren, and maybe Tricia.” Tricia had been Jerry’s girlfriend for the past six years. He had not seen her dissolve, but it was easy to assume that was what had happened to her.

  “They’re gone,” John said, his voice low and hidden in the back of his throat.

  “Hell they are. They just been disassembled and brought down here.”

  “Where in hell do you get that idea?”

  Jerry shook his head. “It’s either that or, like you say, they’re gone. Do they feel like they’re gone?”

  John thought a moment. “No,” he admitted. Both of them had known the feeling of having someone emotionally close to them die, and knowing it without even being told. “But maybe I’m just foolin’ myself.”

  “Bullshit,” Jerry said. “I know they’re not dead. And if they’re not dead, then nobody else is, either. Because you saw—”

  “I saw,” John butted in. He had seen the clothing filled with dissolving flesh. He had not known what to do. It had been late morning and Ruth and Loren had come down with what seemed like some kind of bug the night before. White stripes on their hands, their faces. He had told them they would all go into the doctor in the morning.

  The time between seeing the clothes and when Jerry arrived was still blank. He had screamed, or done something to hurt his throat so he could hardly talk. “Then why weren’t we taken, too?”

  Jerry patted his belly, as prominent as John’s. “Too big a bite,” he said. He swirled at the fog with his hand. The beam wouldn’t go more than a few feet in any direction. “Jesus, I’m scared,” he said.

  “Gladdens my heart,” John said.

  “Well, you’re the one suggested we go down here,” Jerry said. John didn’t object to the reversal of truth. “So now you tell us which way to go.”

  “Straight ahead,” John said. “And watch out for Morlocks.”

  “Yeah. Jesus. Morlocks.”

  They walked slowly across the spongy purple floor. Several moist and unhappy minutes passed before the beam showed a surface ahead. Glistening, irregular pipes, mottled gray and brown, Vaseline-shiny, covered a wall, pulsing rhythmically. To the left, the pipes bent around a curve and vanished into a dark tunnel. “I don’t believe this,” Jerry said.

  “Well?” John pointed to the tunnel.

  Jerry nodded. “We know what the worst is already,” he said.

  “You fucking hope we do,” John growled.

  “You first.” Jerry pointed.

  “Love you, too.”

  “Go!”

  They entered the tunnel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Paulsen-Fuchs told Uwe to pause at the top of the hill. The camps of protestors around Pharmek’s compound had doubled in size in just a week. There were now about a hundred thousand, a sea of tents and flags and banners, most on the eastern side of the compound, near the main gates. There didn’t seem to be any particular organization to their protest, which worried him. They were not political, just a cross-section of the German people, driven to distraction by disasters they could not comprehend. They came to Pharmek because of Bernard, not yet knowing what they wanted to do. But that would change. Someone would take charge, give them a direction.

  Some of the more ignorant of the public were demanding Bernard’s destruction and the sterilization of the containment chamber, but that wasn’t likely. Most European governments acknowledged that research on Bernard could be the only way to study the plague and find out how to control it.

  Still, Europe was in the grip of panic. A great many travelers-tourists, businessmen, even military personnel—had returned to Europe from North America before the quarantine. Not all of them had been rounded up. Some had been found undergoing tran
sformation in hotels, apartments, houses. Almost invariably the victims were killed by local authorities, the buildings carefully incinerated and sewage and water systems liberally dosed with sterilizing agents.

  Nobody knew whether such measures were effective.

  Many people, around the world, were convinced it was just a matter of time.

  With the news he had received that morning, he halfway hoped they might be right. Plague might be preferable to suicide. “North gate,” Paulsen-Fuchs said, getting back into the car.

  The equipment had finally been delivered and now crowded half the containment chamber. Bernard rearranged the cot and desk and stood back, looking at the compact laboratory with satisfaction. Now at least he would have something to do. He could poke and prod himself.

  Weeks had passed and he had still not undergone the final transformation. No one outside could tell him why; nor could he explain to himself why he had not yet communicated with the noocytes, as Vergil had. Or thought he had.

  Perhaps Vergil had simply gone insane. Communication might not be possible.

  He needed far more equipment than could be crammed into the chamber, but most of the chemical analysis he was planning could be done outside and the information fed into his terminal.

  He felt something like the old Michael Bernard now. He was on a trail. He would find out or help the others discover how the cells communicated, what chemical language they used. And if they would not speak with him directly, he would then find a way to speak to them. Perhaps control them. Pharmek had all the necessary expertise and equipment, everything Ulam had had and more: if necessary, they could duplicate the experiments and start from scratch.

  Bernard doubted that would be allowed to happen. From conversations with Paulsen-Fuchs and other Pharmek personnel, he had the impression there was quite a storm raging around him now.

  After running a brief inventory on the equipment, he began refreshing his memory on procedures by reading the manuals. A few hours later he tired of that and made an entry in his computer notebook, knowing that it was not private, that it would be read now or later by Pharmek and government personnel-psychologists perhaps, the doctors certainly. Everything about him was important now.