by Brian Aldiss
He felt paralyzed by indecision and fear. If he was quiet, if he did nothing, the Investors might arrive at any moment. He could tell the Ring Council anything he wanted about Mirny’s death; if he had the genetics with him, no one would quibble. He did not love her; he respected her, but not enough to give up his life, or his faction’s investment. He had not thought of the Ring Council in a long time, and the thought sobered him. He would have to explain his decision…
He was still in a brown study when he heard a whoosh of air as his living airlock deflated itself. Three warriors had come for him. There was no reek of anger about them. They moved slowly and carefully. He knew better than to try to resist. One of them seized him gently in its massive jaws and carried him off.
It took him to the alates’ chamber and into the guarded tunnel. A new, large chamber had been excavated at the end of the tunnel. It was filled almost to bursting by a black-splattered white mass of flesh. In the center of the soft speckled mass were a mouth and two damp, shining eyes, on stalks. Long tendrils like conduits dangled, writhing, from a clumped ridge above the eyes. The tendrils ended in pink, fleshy pluglike clumps.
One of the tendrils had been thrust through Mirny’s skull. Her body hung in midair, limp as wax. Her eyes were open, but blind.
Another tendril was plugged into the braincase of a mutated worker. The worker still had the pallid tinge of a larva; it was shrunken and deformed, and its mouth had the wrinkled look of a human mouth. There was a blob like a tongue in the mouth, and white ridges like human teeth. It had no eyes.
It spoke with Mirny’s voice. ‘Captain-Doctor Afriel…’
‘Galina…’
‘I have no such name. You may address me as Swarm.’
Afriel vomited. The central mass was an immense head. Its brain almost filled the room.
It waited politely until Afriel had finished.
‘I find myself awakened again,’ Swarm said dreamily. ‘I am pleased to see that there is no major emergency to concern me. Instead it is a threat that has become almost routine.’ It hesitated delicately. Mirny’s body moved slightly in midair; her breathing was inhumanly regular. The eyes opened and closed, ‘Another young race.’
‘What are you?’
‘I am the Swarm. That is, I am one of its castes. I am a tool, an adaptation; my specialty is intelligence. I am not often needed. It is good to be needed again.’
‘Have you been here all along? Why didn’t you greet us? We’d have dealt with you. We meant no harm.’
The wet mouth on the end of the plug made laughing sounds. ‘Like yourself, I enjoy irony,’ it said. ‘It is a pretty trap you have found yourself in, Captain-Doctor. You meant to make the Swarm work for you and your race. You meant to breed us and study us and use us. It is an excellent plan, but one we hit upon long before your race evolved.’
Stung by panic, Afriel’s mind raced frantically. ‘You’re an intelligent being,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason to do us any harm. Let us talk together. We can help you.’
‘Yes,’ Swarm agreed. ‘You will be helpful. Your companion’s memories tell me that this is one of those uncomfortable periods when galactic intelligence is rife. Intelligence is a great bother. It makes all kinds of trouble for us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You are a young race and lay great stock by your own cleverness,’ Swarm said. ‘As usual, you fail to see that intelligence is not a survival trait.’
Afriel wiped sweat from his face. ‘We’ve done well,’ he said. ‘We came to you, and peacefully. You didn’t come to us.’
‘I refer to exactly that,’ Swarm said urbanely. ‘This urge to expand, to explore, to develop, is just what will make you extinct. You naively suppose that you can continue to feed your curiosity indefinitely. It is an old story, pursued by countless races before you. Within a thousand years – perhaps a little longer – your species will vanish.’
‘You intend to destroy us, then? I warn you it will not be an easy task –’
‘Again you miss the point. Knowledge is power! Do you suppose that fragile little form of yours – your primitive legs, your ludicrous arms and hands, your tiny, scarcely wrinkled brain – can contain all that power? Certainly not! Already your race is flying to pieces under the impact of your own expertise. The original human form is becoming obsolete. Your own genes have been altered, and you, Captain-Doctor, are a crude experiment. In a hundred years you will be a relic. In a thousand years you will not even be a memory. Your race will go the same way as a thousand others.’
‘And what way is that?’
‘I do not know.’ The thing on the end of the Swarm’s arm made a chuckling sound. ‘They have passed beyond my ken. They have all discovered something, learned something, that has caused them to transcend my understanding. It may be that they even transcend being. At any rate, I cannot sense their presence anywhere. They seem to do nothing, they seem to interfere in nothing; for all intents and purposes, they seem to be dead. Vanished. They may have become gods, or ghosts. In either case, I have no wish to join them.’
‘So then – so then you have –’
‘Intelligence is very much a two-edged sword, Captain-Doctor. It is useful only up to a point. It interferes with the business of living. Life, and intelligence, do not mix very well. They are not at all closely related, as you childishly assume.’
‘But you, then – you are a rational being –’
‘I am a tool, as I said.’ The mutated device on the end of its arm made a sighing noise. ‘When you began your pheromonal experiments, the chemical imbalance became apparent to the Queen. It triggered certain genetic patterns within her body, and I was reborn. Chemical sabotage is a problem that can best be dealt with by intelligence. I am a brain replete, you see, specially designed to be far more intelligent than any young race. Within three days I was fully self-conscious. Within five days I had deciphered these markings on my body. They are the genetically encoded history of my race… within five days and two hours I recognized the problem at hand and knew what to do. I am now doing it. I am six days old.’
‘What is it you intend to do?’
‘Your race is a very vigorous one. I expect it to be here, competing with us, within five hundred years. Perhaps much sooner. It will be necessary to make a thorough study of such a rival. I invite you to join our community on a permanent basis.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I invite you to become a symbiote. I have here a male and a female, whose genes are altered and therefore without defects. You make a perfect breeding pair. It will save me a great deal of trouble with cloning.’
‘You think I’ll betray my race and deliver a slave species into your hands?’
‘Your choice is simple, Captain-Doctor. Remain an intelligent, living being, or become a mindless puppet, like your partner. I have taken over all the functions of her nervous system; I can do the same to you.’
‘I can kill myself.’
‘That might be troublesome, because it would make me resort to developing a cloning technology. Technology, though I am capable of it, is painful to me. I am a genetic artifact; there are fail-safes within me that prevent me from taking over the Nest for my own uses. That would mean falling into the same trap of progress as other intelligent races. For similar reasons, my life span is limited. I will live for only a thousand years, until your race’s brief flurry of energy is over and peace resumes once more.’
‘Only a thousand years?’ Afriel laughed bitterly. ‘What then? You kill off my descendants, I assume, having no further use for them.’
‘No. We have not killed any of the fifteen other races we have taken for defensive study. It has not been necessary. Consider that small scavenger floating by your head, Captain-Doctor, that is feeding on your vomit. Five hundred million years ago its ancestors made the galaxy tremble. When they attacked us, we unleashed their own kind upon them. Of course, we altered our side, so that they were smarter, tougher, and, natural
ly, totally loyal to us. Our Nests were the only world they knew, and they fought with a valor and inventiveness we never could have matched… Should your race arrive to exploit us, we will naturally do the same.’
‘We humans are different.’
‘Of course.’
‘A thousand years here won’t change us. You will die and our descendants will take over this Nest. We’ll be running things, despite you, in a few generations. The darkness won’t make any difference.’
‘Certainly not. You don’t need eyes here. You don’t need anything.’
‘You’ll allow me to stay alive? To teach them anything I want?’
‘Certainly, Captain-Doctor. We are doing you a favor, in all truth. In a thousand years your descendants here will be the only remnants of the human race. We are generous with our immortality; we will take it upon ourselves to preserve you.’
‘You’re wrong, Swarm. You’re wrong about intelligence, and you’re wrong about everything else. Maybe other races would crumble into parasitism, but we humans are different.’
‘Certainly. You’ll do it, then?’
‘Yes. I accept your challenge. And I will defeat you.’
‘Splendid. When the Investors return here, the springtails will say that they have killed you, and will tell them to never return. They will not return. The humans should be the next to arrive.’
‘If I don’t defeat you, they will.’
‘Perhaps.’ Again it sighed. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to absorb you. I would have missed your conversation.’
Blood Music
GREG BEAR
There is a principle in nature I don’t think anyone has pointed out before. Each hour, a myriad of trillions of little live things – bacteria, microbes, ‘animalcules’– are born and die, not counting for much except in the bulk of their existence and the accumulation of their tiny effects. They do not perceive deeply. They don’t suffer much. A hundred billion, dying, would not begin to have the same importance as a single human death.
Within the ranks of magnitude of all creatures, small as microbes or great as humans, there is an equality of ‘elan,’ just as the branches of a tall tree, gathered together, equal the bulk of the limbs below, and all the limbs equal the bulk of the trunk.
That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it.
It had been two years since I’d last seen Vergil. My memory of him hardly matched the tan, smiling, well-dressed gentleman standing before me. We had made a lunch appointment over the phone the day before, and now faced each other in the wide double doors of the employee’s cafeteria at the Mount Freedom Medical Center.
‘Vergil?’ I asked. ‘My God, Vergil!’
‘Good to see you, Edward.’ He shook my hand firmly. He had lost ten or twelve kilos and what remained seemed tighter, better proportioned. At the university, Vergil had been the pudgy, shock-haired, snaggle-toothed whiz kid who hot-wired doorknobs, gave us punch that turned our piss blue, and never got a date except with Eileen Termagent, who shared many of his physical characteristics.
‘You look fantastic,’ I said. ‘Spend a summer in Cabo San Lucas?’
We stood in line at the counter and chose our food. ‘The tan,’ he said, picking out a carton of chocolate milk, ‘is from spending three months under a sun lamp. My teeth were straightened just after I last saw you. I’ll explain the rest, but we need a place to talk where no one will listen close.’
I steered him to the smokers’ corner, where three die-hard puffers were scattered among six tables.
‘Listen, I mean it,’ I said as we unloaded our trays. ‘You’ve changed. You’re looking good.’
‘I’ve changed more than you know.’ His tone was motion-picture ominous, and he delivered the line with a the atrical lift of his brows. ‘How’s Gail?’
Gail was doing well, I told him, teaching nursery school. We’d married the year before. His gaze shifted down to his food – pineapple slice and cottage cheese, piece of banana cream pie – and he said, his voice almost cracking, ‘Notice something else?’
I squinted in concentration. ‘Uh.’
‘Look closer.’
‘I’m not sure. Well, yes, you’re not wearing glasses. Contacts?’
‘No. I don’t need them anymore.’
‘And you’re a snappy dresser. Who’s dressing you now? I hope she’s as sexy as she is tasteful.’
‘Candice isn’t – wasn’t – responsible for the improvements in my clothes,’ he said. ‘I just got a better job, more money to throw around. My taste in clothes is better than my taste in food, as it happens.’ He grinned the old Vergil self-deprecating grin, but ended it with a peculiar leer. ‘At any rate, she’s left me, I’ve been fired from my job, I’m living on savings.’
‘Hold it,’ I said. ‘That’s a bit crowded. Why not do a linear breakdown? You got a job. Where?’
‘Genetron Corp.,’ he said. ‘Sixteen months ago.’
‘I haven’t heard of them.’
‘You will. They’re putting out common stock in the next month. It’ll shoot off the board. They’ve broken through with MABs. Medical –’
‘I know what MABs are,’ I interrupted. ‘At least in theory. Medically Applicable Biochips.’
‘They have some that work.’
‘What?’ It was my turn to lift my brows.
‘Microscopic logic circuits. You inject them into the human body, they set up shop where they’re told and troubleshoot. With Dr Michael Bernard’s approval.’
That was quite impressive. Bernard’s reputation was spotless. Not only was he associated with the genetic engineering biggies, but he had made news at least once a year in his practice as a neurosurgeon before retiring. Covers on Time, Mega, Rolling Stone.
‘That’s supposed to be secret – stock, breakthrough, Bernard, everything.’ He looked around and lowered his voice. ‘But you do whatever the hell you want. I’m through with the bastards.’
I whistled. ‘Make me rich, huh?’
‘If that’s what you want. Or you can spend some time with me before rushing off to your broker.’
‘Of course.’ He hadn’t touched the cottage cheese or pie. He had, however, eaten the pineapple slice and drunk the chocolate milk. ‘So tell me more.’
‘Well, in med school I was training for lab work. Biochemical research. I’ve always had a bent for computers, too. So I put myself through my last two years –’
‘By selling software packages to Westinghouse,’ I said.
‘It’s good my friends remember. That’s how I got involved with Genetron, just when they were starting out. They had big money backers, all the lab facilities I thought anyone would ever need. They hired me, and I advanced repidly.
‘Four months and I was doing my own work. I made some breakthroughs,’ he tossed his hand nonchalantly, ‘then I went off on tangents they thought were premature. I persisted and they took away my lab, handed it over to a certifiable flatworm. I managed to save part of the experiment before they fired me. But I haven’t exactly been cautious… or judicious. So now it’s going on outside the lab.’
I’d always regarded Vergil as ambitious, a trifle cracked, and not terribly sensitive. His relations with authority figures had never been smooth. Science, for him, was like the woman you couldn’t possibly have, who suddenly opens her arms to you, long before you’re ready for mature love – leaving you afraid you’ll forever blow the chance, lose the prize, screw up royally. Apparently, he had. ‘Outside the lab? I don’t get you.’
‘Edward, I want you to examine me. Give me a thorough physical. Maybe a cancer diagnostic. Then I’ll explain more.’
‘You want a five-thousand-dollar exam?’
‘Whatever you can do. Ultrasound, NMR, thermogram, everything.’
‘I don’t know if I can get access to all that equipment. NMR full-scan has only been here a month or two. Hell, you couldn’t pick a more expensive way –’
‘Then ult
rasound. That’s all you’ll need.’
‘Vergil, I’m an obstetrician, not a glamour-boy lab-tech. OB-GYN, butt of all jokes. If you’re turning into a woman, maybe I can help you.’
He leaned forward, almost putting his elbow into the pie, but swinging wide at the last instant by scant millimeters. The old Vergil would have hit it square. ‘Examine me closely and you’ll…’ He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Just examine me.’
‘So I make an appointment for ultrasound. Who’s going to pay?’
‘I’m on Blue Shield.’ He smiled and held up a medical credit card. ‘I messed with the personnel files at Genetron. Anything up to a hundred thousand dollars medical, they’ll never check, never suspect.’
He wanted secrecy, so I made arrangements. I filled out his forms myself. As long as everything was billed properly, most of the examination could take place without official notice. I didn’t charge for my services. After all, Vergil had turned my piss blue. We were friends.
He came in late at night. I wasn’t normally on duty then, but I stayed late, waiting for him on the third floor of what the nurses called the Frankenstein wing. I sat on an orange plastic chair. He arrived, looking olive-colored under the fluorescent lights.
He stripped, and I arranged him on the table. I noticed, first off, that his ankles looked swollen. But they weren’t puffy. I felt them several times. They seemed healthy, but looked odd. ‘Hm,’ I said.
I ran the paddles over him, picking up areas difficult for the big unit to hit, and programmed the data into the imaging system. Then I swung the table around and inserted it into the enameled orifice of the ultrasound diagnostic unit, the hum-hole, so called by the nurses.
I integrated the data from the hum-hole with that from the paddle sweeps and rolled Vergil out, then set up a video frame. The image took a second to integrate, then flowed into a pattern showing Vergil’s skeleton.