Genometry

by Gardner Dozois

  Someday you’ll thank us, Reed had said as he’d left the cell for the last time. Not me, Dave told himself, as he had told Reed. Not me.

  ###

  He grew aware that someone was staring at him. Across the aisle the overweight Hindu sat, hand poised above the pocket printer—but he was not looking at it. Instead his head was turned toward Dave, eyes fixed on him, mouth twisted in a rictus that on his round face looked like childish petulance but that Dave knew was anything but. Startled, he jerked up in the seat, looking away instinctively. When he turned back the man was tapping the keys, face as blank as if he had nothing beyond that on his mind. Dave studied him for a moment then got up and made his way down the aisle toward the rear cabin.

  There was a burst of laughter behind him as he reached the door. He looked back over his shoulder. They were staring at him, smiling maliciously, the African, the Latins, all but the Hindu who remained bent over his paperwork. He felt a sudden rush of fury and swung toward them, but caught himself and halted halfway. “Steady,” he muttered aloud, then turned back and went on through the door. They began laughing again as he left the cabin, but he gave no sign that he’d heard.

  He looked into the rear. Nate was sitting at the far end, staring down at something in front of him, lips moving. Dave frowned, wondering what he was up to, but then Nate raised the mike high enough for him to see it and he realized that he was dictating. Turning his eyes to Bedford he saw he was asleep. Dave shook his head, wondering once again if Art had been with them, and what part he had played, and if so how he had reconciled himself to the results, what he had told himself, in his deepest heart, to make it possible to live on afterward. To go on knowing that the wretched of the earth had been annihilated in a manner beyond belief, that the survivors were living in even greater misery than before, that his own people would be servants to them for a hundred years.

  He had half a mind to go over and shake him awake and ask him . . . Ask him what? If he needed a blanket?

  Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned away. He glanced at the coffee urn. No, tired as he was, he had no more use for that nasty stuff. Besides, the last cup was working on him . . . He looked down the length of the plane then stepped to the rest room.

  The room was minuscule; he was able to rest his head on his arm as he leaned over the bowl. He finished and went to the sink to wash his hands. Plenty of hot water, anyway. Bending over, he splashed some on his face. There was a small mirror above the sink and as he straightened up he saw himself in it, water dripping from nose and chin. His eyes were sunken, with black circles around them. He grimaced and was shocked to see the result: a slack-lipped, vicious leer that he never would have pictured. He dropped his head. Might as well face it: he was through.

  He took some paper towels from the dispenser, coarse brown stuff that started to tear the minute it was damp. Nice, he thought as he dried his face. A hundred-million-dollar space plane and they put this crap in the bathroom.

  Wadding the towels, he tossed them and looked back in the minor, straightening his tie and running a hand over his hair. He tried smiling at himself, but he didn’t much like that effect either.

  Wills had been right. He had no business being on this mission the state he was in. It wasn’t fair to anybody for him to try to stagger through it at this point. He’d call from the cockpit and let Wills know, so that he could arrange things with the team in Delhi.

  That still left Art. He closed his eyes, wishing he’d never gotten on the plane. It was going to be twice as hard now. What could he do, tell him, “They’re going to take a pop at you, buddy. Best of luck, I’m gone”? Maybe he could ask Nate . . . no, that was no good.

  He was working up the nerve to break it to him when he heard a shout.

  He pushed the door open, but it rebounded against something and he kicked it wide. Stepping out into the aisle he saw the African, stunned and off balance against the wall where the door had flung him. Dave gave him only a quick glance before heading to the rear.

  It was the Hindu, as he’d guessed it would be. He was standing with his back to the aisle, waving something with one hand while he shook Bedford with the other, lifting him bodily out of the seat, screaming in a mixture of Hindi and English that Dave couldn’t make any sense of. Bedford was staring up at him, eyes wide.

  Dave reached for his gun but dropped his hand as he touched the grip. He ran down the aisle and as he was reaching for him the Hindu dropped the thing he was waving, grabbing the lapel of Bedford’s coat to shake him harder. Dave could see Art’s head bobbing uncontrollably.

  He slipped his hands underneath the man’s arms and reached up to cup them behind his head. He could smell him, a combination of sweat and some kind of shaving lotion, as he yanked him into the aisle. The Hindu kept his grip on Bedford, dragging him after them. “Get off him,” Dave yelled, inches away from the man’s ear. “Let him go or I’ll snap it.”

  The man hesitated, then released Bedford, who flopped half in the aisle and half in the seat. The Hindu struggled for a moment as Dave pulled him away then went limp, nearly knocking them both flat. “He killed them,” he cried out, his voice thick, then, sobbing, began mumbling in his own language.

  Dave got him turned about and started pushing him down the aisle. They were all standing in the doorway: the African, the Latins, the unidentifiable little Asian. As Dave reached them they parted to let through the orderly, followed by Naqui. The soldier grabbed the man’s arm as Dave released him. Naqui had already waved the others back; he nodded to Dave then turned to help the orderly. As they went through the doorway the Hindu pulled them to a halt and turned back to Bedford. His face was streaked with tears. “You are a very wicked man,” he shouted, then let them lead him away.

  At the other end of the cabin Nate was on his feet, his mouth open. He set the mike down and hurried up the aisle. Turning to Bedford, Dave saw that he had got back into the seat and was lodged against the side, staring wild-eyed at the front cabin. As Dave went over Bedford looked down at the seat next to him and reached out to something lying atop it. He pushed at it, hesitantly, as if afraid to touch it, until it fell into the aisle. Dave picked it up. It was a photograph, wrinkled and split, showing the Hindu man, much thinner and with more hair, sitting next to a young woman in a sari. On their laps was a boy in a sailor suit, his black hair combed forward in bangs. They were smiling.

  He felt Nate come up beside him and handed it to him without a word. Bedford was still crouched in the corner, eyes fixed on the now-empty doorway. As Dave watched his lips drew back from his teeth. “Fucking raghead,” Bedford spat out. “Fucking dot bastard.”

  His eyes swung toward them, focused on Nate. “What are you looking at?”

  Turning to Nate, Dave saw that he was gazing down at Bedford with no expression at all on his face. For a moment he just stood there, saying nothing, then he stepped back and walked toward the front cabin, holding the picture before him.

  Dave turned to Bedford. “You all right?” he said quietly.

  Bedford looked away. “What’s his problem?” he said finally.

  “You wouldn’t know, would you?” Dave settled into the opposite seat and studied the carpet for a few seconds. “Nate’s wife was a sansei, a Japanese-American. Katherine Iroku Weiner. I never met her, but . . .” He stopped speaking and raised his head.

  Bedford was staring into space, his eyes empty. He lifted his hands to his face and pressed himself harder against the cushioned bulkhead as if that would shelter him. A shudder went through him, then he stiffened as if by act of will and slowly pushed himself up in the seat. He dropped his hands and gazed at Dave, his face totally calm. Dave looked back in silence, trying to control his features as Nate had, knowing it was futile; he’d never been any good at hiding what he felt.

  Bedford smiled. “Game of chess?” he said, his voice husky. He eyed Dave for a moment, then laughed, deep in his throat. “No.”

  He got up and stepped into the aisle. “Mayb
e later, Dave,” he said, and walked to the back of the cabin.

  Dave watched him go. Bedford the good guy, Bedford the scapegoat, Bedford the sacrifice.

  The file could be closed now. No more kidding himself, no more pretending that there was an end to it. Even if Bedford was the last of them, there was no exit, no way to lay that burden down. Not for the fat Hindu, not for Nate, not for Dave himself. He would run those dead streets for all the years he had left.

  Bedford had reached the last seat. There he hesitated, raising his head slightly as if to look back at Dave, but instead he merely sat down where he could be seen by no one. Bedford the damned soul.

  I will be your Charon, Dave told him silently. I’ll lead you through it. The demonstrations, the riots, the attempts to kill you before your time, the trial, the undying hatred of the brown people. I’ll be with you every step of the way. I will take you to the other shore.

  He’d have to call Delhi, to tell them what changes to make. As he got up the screen caught his eye. It was no longer totally dark; there was a line of light in the center, red and gold, and he realized that they had caught up with the day. The sky lightened, the clouds taking color far below. He watched until the sun peered over the horizon and, rising quickly with the swiftness of their passage, loomed over the sea. Then he walked to the front of the plane and all the work that lay ahead.

  WRITTEN IN BLOOD

  Chris Lawson

  Here’s an elegant and incisive look at some of the unexpected effects of high-tech bioscience, some of which may reach all the way down to the very marrow of your bones . . . New writer, Chris Lawson, grew up in Papua New Guinea, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife, Andrea. While studying medicine, he earned extra money as a computer programmer, and has worked as a medical practitioner and as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. He’s made short fiction sales to Asimov’s, Dreaming Down-Under, Eidolon, and Event Horizon.

  ###

  CTA TAA CAG TGT AGC GAC GAA TGT CTA

  CAG AAA CAA GAA TGT CAT GAG TGT CTA

  GAT CAT AAC CGA TGT AGC GAC GAA TGT

  CTA CAA GAA AGG AAT TAA GAG GGA TAC

  CGA TGT AGC GAC GAA TGT CTA AAT CAT

  CAA CAC AAA AGT AGT TAA CAT CAG AAA

  AGC GAA TGC TTC TTT

  In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

  These words open the Qur’an. They were written in my father’s blood. After Mother died, and Da recovered from his chemotherapy, we went on a pilgrimage together. In my usual eleven-year-old curious way, I asked him why we had to go to the Other End of the World to pray when we could do it just fine at home.

  “Zada,” he said, “there are only five pillars of faith. It is easier than any of the other pillars because you only need to do it once in a lifetime. Remember this during Ramadan, when you are hungry and you know you will be hungry again the next day, but your haj will be over.”

  Da would brook no further discussion, so we set off for the Holy Lands. At eleven, I was less than impressed. I expected to find Paradise filled with thousands of fountains and birds and orchards and blooms. Instead, we huddled in cloth tents with hundreds of thousands of sweaty pilgrims, most of whom spoke other languages, as we tramped across a cramped and dirty wasteland. I wondered why Allah had made his Holy Lands so dry and dusty, but I had the sense even then not to ask Da about it.

  Near Damascus, we heard about the bloodwriting. The pilgrims were all speaking about it. Half thought it blasphemous, the other half thought it a path to Heaven. Since Da was a biologist, the pilgrims in our troop asked him what he thought. He said he would have to go to the bloodwriters directly and find out.

  On a dusty Monday, after morning prayer, my father and I visited the bloodwriter’s stall. The canvas was a beautiful white, and the man at the stall smiled as Da approached. He spoke some Arabic, which I could not understand.

  “I speak English,” said my father.

  The stall attendant switched to English with the ease of a juggler changing hands. “Wonderful, sir! Many of our customers prefer English.”

  “I also speak biology. My pilgrim companions have asked me to review your product.” I thought it very forward of my father, but the stall attendant seemed unfazed. He exuded confidence about his product.

  “An expert!” he exclaimed. “Even better. Many pilgrims are distrustful of Western science. I do what I can to reassure them, but they see me as a salesman and not to be trusted. I welcome your endorsement.”

  “Then earn it.”

  The stall attendant wiped his mustache, and began his spiel. “Since the Dawn of Time, the Word of Allah has been read by mullahs . . .”

  “Stop!” said Da. “The Qur’an was revealed to Mohammed fifteen centuries ago; the Dawn of Time predates it by several billion years. I want answers, not portentous falsehoods.”

  Now the man was nervous. “Perhaps you should see my uncle. He invented the bloodwriting. I will fetch him.” Soon he returned with an older, infinitely more respectable man with gray whiskers in his mustache and hair.

  “Please forgive my nephew,” said the old man. “He has watched too much American television and thinks the best way to impress is to use dramatic words, wild gestures, and where possible, a toll-free number.” The nephew bowed his head and slunk to the back of the stall, chastened.

  “May I answer your questions?” the old man asked.

  “If you would be so kind,” said Da, gesturing for the man to continue.

  “Bloodwriting is a good word, and I owe my nephew a debt of gratitude for that. But the actual process is something altogether more mundane. I offer a virus, nothing more. I have taken a hypo-immunogenic strain of adeno-associated virus and added a special code to its DNA.”

  Da said, “The other pilgrims tell me that you can write the Qur’an into their blood.”

  “That I can, sir,” said the old man. “Long ago I learned a trick that would get the adeno-associated virus to write its code into bone marrow stem cells. It made me a rich man. Now I use my gift for Allah’s work. I consider it part of my zakât.”

  Da suppressed a wry smile. Zakât, charitable donation, was one of the five pillars. This old man was so blinded by avarice that he believed selling his invention for small profit was enough to fulfill his obligation to God.

  The old man smiled and raised a small ampoule of red liquid. He continued, “This, my friend, is the virus. I have stripped its core and put the entire text of the Qur’an into its DNA. If you inject it, the virus will write the Qur’an into your myeloid precursor cells, and then your white blood cells will carry the Word of Allah inside them.”

  I put my hand up to catch his attention. “Why not red blood cells?” I asked. “They carry all the oxygen.”

  The old man looked at me as if he noticed me for the first time. “Hello, little one. You are very smart. Red blood cells carry oxygen, but they have no DNA. They cannot carry the Word.”

  It all seemed too complicated to an eleven-year-old girl.

  My father was curious. “DNA codes for amino acid sequences. How can you write the Qur’an in DNA?”

  “DNA is just another alphabet,” said the old man. He handed my father a card. “Here is the crib sheet.”

  My father studied the card for several minutes, and I saw his face change from skeptical to awed. He passed the card to me. It was filled with Arabic squiggles, which I could not understand. The only thing I knew about Arabic was that it was written right-to-left, the reverse of English.

  “I can’t read it,” I said to the man. He made a little spinning gesture with his ringer, indicating that I should flip the card over. I flipped the card and saw the same crib sheet, only with Anglicized terms for each Arabic letter. Then he handed me another crib sheet, and said: “This is the sheet for English text.”

  “The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters. Each letter changes form depending on its position in the word. But the rules are rigid, so there is no need to put each variation in the cri
b sheet. It is enough to know that the letter is aliph or bi, and whether it is at the start, at the end, or in the middle of the word.

  “The {stop} commands are also left in their usual places. These are the body’s natural commands and they tell ribosomes when to stop making a protein. It only cost three spots and there were plenty to spare, so they stayed in.”

  My father asked, “Do you have an English translation?”

  “Your daughter is looking at the crib sheet for the English language,” the old man explained, “and there are other texts one can write, but not the Qur’an.”

  Thinking rapidly, Da said, “But you could write the Qur’an in English?”

  “If I wanted to pursue secular causes, I could do that,” the old man said. “But I have all the secular things I need. I have copyrighted crib sheets for all the common alphabets, and I make a profit on them. For the Qur’an, however, translations are not acceptable. Only the original words of Mohammed can be trusted. It is one thing for dhimmis to translate it for their own curiosity, but if you are a true believer you must read the word of God in its unsullied form.”

  Da stared at the man. The old man had just claimed that millions of Muslims were false believers because they could not read the original Qur’an. Da shook his head and let the matter go. There were plenty of imams who would agree with the old man.

  “What is the success rate of the inoculation?”

  “Ninety-five percent of my trial subjects had identifiable Qur’an text in their blood after two weeks, although I cannot guarantee that the entire text survived the insertion in all of those subjects. No peer-reviewed journal would accept the paper.” He handed my father a copy of an article from Modern Gene Techniques. “Not because the science is poor, as you will see for yourself, but because Islam scares them.”