Nanotech

by Gardner Dozois

  "Vergil—"

  "Listen! Think, Edward!" His tone was excited but even. "Something big is happening inside me. They talk to each other across the fluid, through membranes. They tailor something—viruses?—to carry data stored in nucleic acid chains. I think they're saying 'RNA.' That makes sense. That's one way I programmed them. But plasmidlike structures, too. Maybe that's what your machines think is a sign of infection—all their chattering in my blood, packets of data. Tastes of other individuals. Peers. Superiors. Subordinates."

  "Vergil, I still think you should be in a hospital."

  "This is my show, Edward," he said. "I'm their universe. They're amazed by the new scale." He was quiet again for a time. I squatted by his chair and pulled up the sleeve to his robe. His arm was crisscrossed with white lines. I was about to go to the phone when he stood and stretched. "Do you realize," he said, "how many body cells we kill each time we move?"

  "I'm going to call for an ambulance." I said.

  "No, you aren't." His tone stopped me. "I told you, I'm not sick, this is my show. Do you know what they'd do to me in a hospital? They'd be like cavemen trying to fix a computer. It would be a farce."

  "Then what the hell I doing here?" I asked, getting angry. "I can't do anything. I'm one of those cavemen."

  "You're a friend," Vergil said, fixing his eyes on me. I had the impression I was being watched by more than just Vergil. "I want you here to keep me company." He laughed. "But I'm not exactly alone."

  He walked around the apartment for two hours, fingering things, looking out windows, slowly and methodically fixing himself lunch. "You know, they can actually feel their own thoughts," he said about noon. "I mean the cytoplasm seems to have a will of its own, a kind of subconscious life counter to the rationality they've only recently acquired. They hear the chemical 'noise' of the molecules fitting and unfitting inside."

  At two o'clock, I called Gail to tell her I would be late. I was almost sick with tension, but I tried to keep my voice level. "Remember Vergil Ulam? I'm talking with him right now."

  "Everything okay?" she asked.

  Was it? Decidedly not. "Fine," I said.

  "Culture!" Vergil said, peering around the kitchen wall at me. I said good-bye and hung up the phone. "They're always swimming in that bath of information. Contributing to it. It's kind of gestalt thing. The hierarchy is absolute. They send tailored phages after cells that don't interact properly. Viruses specified to individuals or groups. No escape. A rogue cell gets pierced by the virus, the cell blebs outward, it explodes and dissolves. But it's not just a dictatorship. I think they effectively have more freedom than in a democracy. I mean, they vary so differently from individual to individual. Does that make sense? They vary different ways than we do."

  "Hold it," I said, gripping his shoulders. "Vergil, you're pushing me 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. Have you bothered to figure out the consequences yet? What all this means, where it might lead?"

  He walked into the kitchen and drew a glass of water from the tap, then returned and stood next to me. His expression had changed from childish absorption to sober concern. "I've never been very good at that."

  "Are you afraid?"

  "I was. Now, I'm not sure." He fingered the tie of his robe. "Look, I don't want you to think I went around you, over your head or something. But I met with Michael Bernard yesterday. He put me through his private clinic, took specimens. Told me to quit the lamp treatments. He says it all checks out. And he asked me not to tell anybody." He paused and his expression became dreamy again. "Cities of cells," he continued. "Edward, they push tubes through the tissues, spread information—"

  "Stop it!" I shouted. "Checks out? What checks out?"

  "As Bernard puts it, I have 'severely enlarged macrophages' throughout my system. And he concurs on the anatomical changes."

  "What does he plan to do?"

  "I don't know. I think he'll probably convince Genetron to reopen the lab."

  "Is that what you want?"

  "It's not just having the lab again. I want to show you. Since I stopped the lamp treatments, I'm still changing." He undid his robe and let it slide to the floor. All over his body, his skin was crisscrossed with white lines. Along his back, the lines were starting to form ridges.

  "My God," I said.

  "I'm not going to be much good anywhere else but the lab soon I won't he able to go out in public. Hospitals wouldn't know what to do, as I said."

  "You're . . . you can talk to them, tell them to slow down," I said, aware how ridiculous that sounded.

  "Yes, indeed I can, but they don't necessarily listen."

  "I thought you were their god or something."

  "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. It's not all that bad, anyway. If the lab is reopened, I have a home, a place to work." He glanced out the window, 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 anything before." The beatific smile again. "I'm responsible for them. Mother to them all."

  "You have no way of knowing what they're going to do."

  He shook his head.

  "No, I mean it. You say they're like a civilization—"

  "Like a thousand civilizations."

  "Yes, and civilizations have been known to screw up. Warfare, the environment—"

  I was grasping at straws, trying to restrain a growing panic. I wasn't competent to handle the enormity of what was happening. Neither was Vergil. He was the last person I would have called insightful and wise about large issues.

  "But I'm the only one at risk."

  "You don't know that. Jesus, Vergil, look what they're doing to you!"

  "To me, all to me!" he said. "Nobody else."

  I shook my head and held up my hands in a gesture of defeat. "Okay, so Bernard gets them to reopen the lab, you move in, become a guinea pig. What then?"

  "They treat me right. I'm more than just good old Vergil Ulam now. I'm goddamned galaxy, a super-mother."

  "Super-host, you mean." He conceded the point with a shrug.

  I couldn't take any more. I made my exit with a few flimsy excuses, then sat in the lobby of the apartment building, trying to calm down. Somebody had to talk some sense into him. Who would he listen to? He had gone to Bernard . . .

  And it sounded as if Bernard was 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.

  I had a hunch, and I decided to play it. I went to a pay phone, slipped in my credit card, and called Genetron.

  "I'd like you to page Dr. Michael Bernard," I told the receptionist.

  "Who's calling, please?"

  "This is his answering service. We have an emergency call and his beeper doesn't seem to be working."

  A few anxious minutes later, Bernard came on the line. "Who in the hell is this?" he asked. "I don't have an answering service."

  "My name is Edward Milligan. I'm a friend of Vergil Ulam's. I think we have some problems to discuss."

  We made an appointment to talk the next morning.

  I went home and tried to think of excuses to keep me off the next day's hospital shift. I couldn't concentrate on medicine, couldn't give my patients anywhere near the attention they deserved.

  Guilty, angry, afraid.

  That was how Gail found me. I slipped on a mask of calm and we fixed dinner together. After eating, holding onto each other, we watched the city lights come on in late twilight through the bayside window. Winter starlings pecked at the yellow lawn in th
e last few minutes of light, then flew away with a rising wind which made the windows rattle.

  "Somethings's wrong," Gail said softly. "Are you going to tell me, or just act like everything's normal?"

  "It's just me," I said. "Nervous. Work at the hospital."

  "Oh, lord," she said, sitting up. "You're going to divorce me for that Baker woman." Mrs. Baker weighed three hundred and sixty pounds and hadn't known she was pregnant until her fifth month.

  "No," I said, listless.

  "Rapturous relief," Gail said, touching my forehead lightly. "You know this kind of introspection drives me crazy."

  "Well, it's nothing I can talk about yet, so . . ." I patted her hand.

  "That's disgustingly patronizing," she said, getting up. "I'm going to make some tea. Want some?" Now she was miffed, and I was tense with not telling.

  Why not just reveal all? I asked myself. An old friend was turning himself into a galaxy.

  I cleared away the table instead. That night, unable to sleep, I looked down on Gail in bed from my sitting position, pillow against the wall, and tried to determine what I knew was real, and what wasn't.

  I'm a doctor, I told myself. A technical, scientific profession. I'm suppose to be immune to things like future shock.

  Vergil Ulam was turning into a galaxy.

  How would it feel to be topped off with a trillion Chinese? I grinned in the dark and almost cried at the same time. What Vergil had inside him was unimaginably stranger than Chinese. Stranger than anything I—or Vergil—could easily understand. Perhaps ever understand.

  But I knew what was real. The bedroom, the city lights taint through gauze curtains. Gail sleeping. Very important. Gail in bed, sleeping.

  The dream returned. This time the city came in through the window and attacked Gail. It was a great, spiky lighted-up prowler, and it growled in a language I couldn't understand, made up of auto horns, crowd noises, construction bedlam. I tried to fight it off, but it got to her—and turned into a drift of stars, sprinkling all over the bed, all over everything. I jerked awake and stayed up until dawn, dressed with Gail, kissed her, savored the reality of her human, unviolated lips.

  I went to meet with Bernard. He had been loaned a suite in a big downtown hospital; I rode the elevator to the sixth floor, and saw what fame and fortune could mean.

  The suite was tastefully furnished, fine serigraphs on wood-paneled walls, chrome and glass furniture, cream-colored carpet, Chinese brass, and wormwood-grain cabinets and tables.

  He offered me a cup of coffee, and I accepted. He took a seat in the breakfast nook, and I sat across from him, cradling my cup in moist palms. He wore a dapper gray suit and had graying hair and a sharp profile. He was in his mid sixties and he looked quite a bit like Leonard Bernstein.

  "About our mutual acquaintance," he said. "Mr. Ulam. Brilliant. And, I won't hesitate to say, courageous."

  "He's my friend. I'm worried about him."

  Bernard held up one finger. "Courageous—and a bloody damned fool. What's happening to him should never have been allowed. He may have done it under duress, but that's no excuse. Still, what's done is done. He's talked to you, I take it."

  I nodded. "He wants to return to Genetron."

  "Of course. That's where all his equipment is. Where his home probably will be while we sort this out."

  "Sort it out—how? Why?" I wasn't thinking too clearly. I had a slight headache.

  "I can think of a large number of uses for small, superdense computer elements with a biological base. Can't you? Genetron has already made breakthroughs, but this is something else again."

  "What do you envision?"

  Bernard smiled. "I'm not really at liberty to say. It'll be revolutionary. We'll have to get him in lab conditions. Animal experiments have to be conducted. We'll start from scratch, of course. Vergil's . . . um . . . colonies can't be transferred. They're based on his own white blood cells. So we have to develop colonies that won't trigger immune reactions in other animals."

  "Like an infection?" I asked.

  "I suppose there are comparisons. But Vergil is not infected."

  "My test indicate he is."

  "That's probably the bits of data floating around in his blood, don't you think?"

  "I don't know."

  "Listen, I'd like you to come down to the lab after Vergil is settled in. Your expertise might be useful to us."

  Us. He was working with Genetron hand in glove. Could he be objective? "How will you benefit from all this?"

  "Edward, I have always been at the forefront of my profession. I see no reason why I shouldn't be helping here. With my knowledge of brain and nerve functions, and the research I've been conducting in neurophysiology—"

  "You could help Genetron hold off an investigation by the government," I said.

  "That's being very blunt. Too blunt, and unfair."

  "Perhaps. Anyway, yes: I'd like to visit the lab when Vergil's settled in. If I'm still welcome, bluntness and all."

  He looked at me sharply. I wouldn't be playing on his team; for a moment, his thoughts were almost nakedly apparent.

  "Of course," Bernard said, rising with me. He reached out to shake my hand. His palm was damp. He was as nervous us I was, even if he didn't look it.

  I returned to my apartment and stayed there until noon, reading, trying to sort things out. Reach a decision. What was real, what I needed to protect.

  There is only so much change anyone can stand: innovation, yes, but slow application. Don't force. Everyone has the right to stay the same until they decide otherwise.

  The greatest thing in science since . . .

  And Bernard would force it. Genetron would force it. I couldn't handle the thought. "Neo-Luddite," I said to myself. A filthy accusation.

  When I pressed Vergil's number on the building security panel, Vergil answered almost immediately. "Yeah," he said. He sounded exhilarated. "Come on up. I'll be in the bathroom. Door's unlocked."

  I entered his apartment and walked through the hallway to the bathroom. Vergil lay in the tub, up to his neck in pinkish water. He smiled vaguely and splashed his hands. "Looks like I slit my wrists, doesn't it?" he said softly. "Don't worry. Everything's fine now. Genetron's going to take me back. Bernard just called." He pointed to the bathroom phone and intercom.

  I sat on the toilet and noticed the sunlamp fixture standing unplugged nest to the linen cabinets. The blubs sat in a row on the edge of the sink counter. "You're sure that's what you want," I said, my shoulders slumping.

  "Yeah, I think so," he said. "They can take better care of me. I'm getting cleaned up, going over there this evening. Bernard's picking me up in his limo. Style. From here on in, everything's style."

  The pinkish color in the water didn't look like soap. "Is that bubble bath?" I asked. Some of it came to me in a rush then and I felt a little weaker; what had occurred to me was just one more obvious and necessary insanity.

  "No," Vergil said. I knew that already.

  "No," he repeated, "it's coming from my skin. They're not telling me everything, but I think they're sending out scouts. Astronauts." He looked at me with an expression that didn't quite equal concern; more like curiosity as to how I'd take it.

  The confirmation made my stomach muscles tighten as if waiting for a punch. I had never even considered the possibility until now, perhaps because I had been concentrating on other aspects. "Is this the first time?" I asked.

  "Yeah," he said. He laughed. "I've half a mind to let the little buggers down the drain. Let them find out what the world's really about."

  "They'd go everywhere," I said.

  "Sure enough."

  "How . . . how are you feeling?"

  "I'm feeling pretty good now. Must be billions of them." More splashing with his hands. "What do you think? Should I let the buggers out?"

  Quickly, hardly thinking, I knelt down beside the tub. My fingers went for the cord on the sunlamp and I plugged it in. He had hot-wired doorknobs, turne
d my piss blue, played a thousand dumb practical jokes and never grown up, never grown mature enough to understand that he was sufficiently brilliant to transform the world; he would never learn caution.

  He reached for the drain knob. "You know, Edward, I—"

  He never finished. I picked up the fixture and dropped it into the tub, jumping back at the flash of steam and sparks. Vergil screamed and thrashed and jerked and then everything was still, except for the low, steady sizzle and the smoke wafting from his hair.

  I lifted the toilet lid and vomited. Then I clenched my nose and went into the living room. My legs went out from under me and I sat abruptly on the couch.

  After an hour, I searched through Vergil's kitchen and found bleach, ammonia, and a bottle of Jack Daniel's. I returned to the bathroom, keeping the center of my gaze away from Vergil. I poured first the booze, then the bleach, then the ammonia into the water. Chlorine started bubbling up and I left, closing the door behind me.

  The phone was ringing when I got home. I didn't answer. It could have been the hospital. It could have been Bernard. Or the police. I could envision having to explain everything to the police. Genetron would stonewall; Bernard would be unavailable.

  I was exhausted, all my muscles knotted with tension and whatever name one can give to the feelings one has after—

  Committing genocide?

  That certainly didn't seem real. I could not believe I had just murdered a hundred trillion intelligent beings. Snuffed a galaxy. It was laughable. But I didn't laugh.

  It was easy to believe that I had just killed one human being, a friend. The smoke, the melted lamp rods, the drooping electrical outlet and smoking cord.

  Vergil.

  I had dunked the lamp into the tub with Vergil.

  I felt sick. Dreams, cities raping Gail (and what about his girlfriend, Candice?). Letting the water filled with them out. Galaxies sprinkling over us all. What horror. Then again, what potential beauty—a new kind of life, symbiosis and transformation.