The image changed to a greater magnification, showing only a few of the organisms swimming together. They were beautiful. Scarlet and turquoise and sky blue flecked with silver and ebony and a deep forest green. One of the amoebas swam into another; they combined for a moment, creating a long abacus-like life-form that glimmered for a brief time. Then the amoebas flowed out of each other. This process was repeated six or seven times among the three beings, and then they flowed away from one another.
“They have all the appearance of the basis of animal life,” Wheeler continued, “but the makeup of their basic DNA is much closer to that of bacteria.”
“Impossible!” a man shouted.
“We thought so, too,” Dr. Wheeler agreed. “But the evidence is irrefutable. You are welcome, Dr. Hingis, to evaluate our studies for yourself.”
“And where do you suppose such an impossible life-form emerged?” Dr. Hingis asked.
The image on the screen was replaced by a three-dimensional image of a planet, a huge globe that might have been the earth at one time. A small object was depicted moving toward the planet, and when it collided, a great cloud rose in the northern hemisphere of the gray and blue world. The image switched to a close-up of the depth of damage incurred.
“A billion years ago,” Wheeler intoned, “more, a meteorite struck our planet and drove a significant portion of rudimentary life deep into the crust of the earth. There this life clung to existence. For eons it struggled against and then finally mastered its environment.”
“How?” a woman asked.
“By developing a means of merging and measuring, of combining with its mates, of defining its surroundings and then altering structurally to survive. This was a very early form of life and not easily retarded by extreme temperatures or the lack of sun. These creatures learned to live on the minerals and elements of the earth.”
The image began going through a series of different phases, all of them contained by the same globe. A purple cloud formed far below the surface, and as one image replaced the other, the cloud changed hue—growing sometimes larger, sometimes smaller—and began a slow migration toward the surface.
I remembered GT’s explanation of the Wave and its movement toward his grave. I gave in completely then to the idea that he was, or at least had been, my father. While representatives of every major nation and corporation pondered the so-called threat to our species, I lamented my words to the man whom I had denied. I’d been given a second chance to have him in my life, and I’d turned away.
“The communal organism moved for millennia toward the surface of the planet—”
“You believe that this—this mass of microscopic creatures has intelligence?” Dr. Hingis asked.
“Not exactly,” Wheeler replied. “These beings’ existence has developed around an intense struggle for survival. You have seen how three XTs spend ninety-four seconds merging and sharing calculations. We have recorded images of millions of such transitions. The XT has developed the ideal society. An environment in which all experience is shared—physically. It wasn’t until the colony had migrated to the DNA of simple creatures and maybe even the corpses of dead animals that they began to develop what we call intelligence. Their form of survival gave them the ability to digest the genome and to repeat it. This is life using the basic trait of life to merge with and dominate the environment.”
The hush in the hall was almost maddening. Even I understood the ramifications of the scientist’s claims. This new life-form, the XT, had the ability to read DNA and every other quantifiable thing about a human being. Thoughts, dreams, instincts, images, emotions—everything that made up life could be quantified and repeated.
If the XT was our enemy, we would be defenseless against it. It was too small to shoot, resistant to heat and cold, seemingly impervious to poison or lack of air. And if every cell knew everything—or even almost everything—that all other cells knew, then it was nearly immortal in a real way.
“You say colony,” a woman said. “Singular. Do you believe that there is only one mass of this contagion?”
“It’s likely,” Dr. Gregory said, stepping up to the podium. “There may have been many such groups at first, but we believe they were all in the same area and that they ultimately either perished or merged. It would be improbable for them to be more widely dispersed because of the impediment of stone.”
“What about reproduction, David?” someone asked even as the question was forming in my mind.
“A good question, Mr. Tron,” the host replied. “Using the most advanced computer system in the world, the Japanese Nine-two, we have continuously observed twelve million individual cells for over seven months. In that time there have been only fourteen hundred and ninety-eight reproductions and nearly a thousand deaths.”
“These beings can die?”
“So it seems, my friend.” Again the screen changed images. Whoever was at the video controls had worked so closely with Gregory and Wheeler that he knew instinctively what to put up on the screen.
This new picture was a microphotographic image of one of the XTs. At first it was swimming along just fine, but then it began to vibrate. The tremors became more and more violent until finally the triangular head vaporized, leaving the tentacles to wilt into dust.
“What causes this demise?” Dr. Hingis asked.
“We believe,” Dr. Wheeler said, “it has something to do with the atmosphere. Methane, ammonia, and alcohol. We’ve tried to reproduce the toxin, but our studies have so far proved fruitless.
“The reason we have called together this eminent body of scientists and ambassadors is therefore twofold. First, you must convince your governments that this threat is real and must be dealt with before it is too late. Second, you must take our studies and help us create the toxin to destroy this menace.”
The discussion became more and more complex after that. Hingis and Tron and many other scientists started asking questions that I didn’t understand. For a while everyone spoke in French and then in equations and calculations. Their communication was so technical that they seemed to me somewhat like the XTs they were so frightened of.
After another ten minutes, I got up and walked out of the auditorium.
I was met at the exit by the two soldiers who had driven me to the compound.
“Please come with us, Mr. Porter,” the taller one said.
There was no option for me to refuse.
21
They showed me to a small apartment far removed from the scientific center and the seemingly endless number of cells for the XTs.
There was a bedroom, a toilet with a shower stall, and a combination kitchen-sitting room. The refrigerator contained a dozen eggs, a package of processed cheese slices, a pillowy loaf of white bread, some sliced ham, and a jar of grape jelly. In the cabinet was government-issue peanut butter, instant coffee, and a big bottle of nondairy creamer.
There were no books, no television, no radio. There was a desk next to my bed, which was only a cot. A desk drawer contained a ream of white typing paper and a yellow plastic disposable mechanical pencil. No more than five minutes after I entered into the apartment-cell, I began to write this history.
I wrote obsessively, putting down every experience, every word that I could remember. I had scrawled over the front and back of almost twenty sheets when somebody knocked. I hurriedly shoved the pages into the top drawer of the desk and said, “Yes?”
“May I come in, Mr. Porter?” David Wheeler asked pleasantly.
I opened the door and ushered my jailer into the room.
“Not much of a home, but you won’t be here long,” he said, looking around the bleak chamber. He sat on the small bed, and I settled back into my chair.
“It’s illegal for you to hold me like this, against my will,” I said.
“Not when it comes to Homeland Security,” he said with an ironic smile.
“You can hardly call amoebas terrorists.”
“What did she say to yo
u?” he asked.
It might have seemed like a non sequitur, but I knew what he was talking about.
“Who?”
“That thing who called herself MaryBeth. You know what I mean, Errol.”
“No, David,” I said. “No, I don’t. She screamed and called us scum or something like that. But she didn’t say anything to me specifically.”
“She looked you in the eye.”
“Maybe she could tell that I didn’t want her to come to harm.”
“Maybe. What were you writing?”
“Are you having me watched?”
“Every room in this facility is monitored, Errol,” he said. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. When you come to stay at my home, you’ll have a bit more privacy.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Wheeler smiled. He held up his hands and hunched his shoulders, telling me that he understood but there was nothing that he or I could do about the situation.
In a flash, I understood the difference between human beings and the cellular life that made up the XTs’ reanimations. There was no inflection for those tiny beasts. They merged, shared completely. Such communication was a kind of surrender that had no use for subterfuge or misdirection. All knowledge for the XT was concrete and complete. All intelligence was also instinct. How amazing it must have been for them to discover a life-form that used primitive gestures and sounds to communicate. How lonely we must have seemed in our separateness.
“I just came by to ask you about that look,” David said. “Gregory wants to hold you for further study, but that’s useless. We’ve already examined you, and there’s no sign of any XT activity in your systems.”
“Are they deadly?” I asked, worried about the wounds that had healed overnight.
“To living beings?” Wheeler asked rhetorically. “We don’t know. Certain soldiers have volunteered for living XT cells to be introduced to their systems. So far the cells have remained separate from their internal biology. They are very brave men and women, knowing that if we are unable to remove the alien cells from their systems, they will have to be destroyed, along with the rest of the infestation, when we develop a toxin to kill them off.”
“That doesn’t sound very scientific, Doctor,” I said. “I mean, don’t you believe in the sanctity of life?”
“Yes, I do, Errol. But if I look up and see a tiger stalking me, the first thing I do is open fire. The most precious life is my own.”
“But you have no proof that these organisms are stalking us.”
“They are taking over the bodies of our dead, rising from the graves, and they’re all but indestructible,” he said very reasonably. “We must strike before we are destroyed by them.”
I felt a thrill of fear while he spoke. After all, he was the expert, while I was just an unemployed computer programmer turned potter. Maybe the fate of humanity was at stake.
Maybe I shouldn’t have lied to my captors.
Wheeler chose that moment to rise from the cot.
“I’ll leave you now, Errol. You are invited to join me for breakfast in the morning.”
He left before I could speak up. Maybe the future of the world would have been altered if he hadn’t had somewhere to be just then.
Maybe.
I fell asleep at the desk writing. I knew that the pages would be confiscated, but there was no other way to occupy my time. I roused somewhere in the night and crawled into the bed, falling into a deep slumber. I don’t know the time, because I didn’t have a watch and there was no clock in my cell.
In my dreams, I was floating in the earth, moving through stone as if it were air. Sensations came from all around me: gravities and vibrations (not sounds) and other events that had no other correlation to my corporeal existence. I was immense, moving leisurely through solid stone at the rate of an inch a century. Time passed. Time stayed the same. But every micron was filled with the ecstasy of numbers and sameness and matchless difference. I was many and one. I was forever, remembering back before I was conceived, into the far reaches of the beginning. There was joy and the anticipation of a light of exquisite brightness waiting above.
And then there were small single-celled moments of life that began and ended but stayed the same. They moved so quickly through the soil and waters. They devoured and digested, multiplied and died. There was experience, separate and alone. And there was loneliness breaking upon stone.
The life-forms became more complex until one day I found myself a man. He had died, was killed (murdered), and was thrown into a deep pit. He made sounds rather than merging. He multiplied far faster than we could imagine. He moved through openness and had senses that amazed me. That was over 412,362 times around the firmament. His name was Veil, and he was the first man we became.
I fell back into stone, moving slowly upward, creeping toward—the sun?
22
The sun was shining on my face. I thought of GT lying out naked on his back, cold and alone and remembering more years than any other living being in the cosmos. Older than dirt. Older than God. Immortal despite my mortality. No wonder he had been so afraid those first days in the graveyard.
“Good morning,” a woman said.
I opened my eyes and realized that the sun was not part of the dream. The woman who had been working in the garden the day before was standing at the foot of a large four-poster bed.
I was under a thick down comforter.
“You were crying in your sleep,” she said.
“Where am I?”
“Back at the house you left yesterday.”
She was lovely and sad, wearing a button-down tan blouse and a tight black skirt. The hem came to her knees but flared, seeming like it wanted to ride up.
“David asked me to look in on you,” she said.
“Dr. Wheeler?”
She smiled. “My husband.”
“You’re keeping me prisoner,” I told her.
“What else is new?” She looked at me from behind those adorable freckles. “Breakfast is in half an hour.”
“How did I get here?” I asked.
“They brought you in last night. You were unconscious. Nobody said so, but I think they might have drugged you.”
She shrugged and began to turn away.
“What’s your name?” I asked her back.
“Krista,” she said. “Krista Arnet-Wheeler.”
I found my clothes in the closet. They had been washed and pressed and hung from a wire hanger.
The breakfast room was like a finger jutting out into what was left of the orange grove. Instead of walls, it had light gray netting pulled tight from ceiling to floor. The long dining table was made from dark wood. At the farthest end, Krista Arnet-Wheeler and David Wheeler sat before a set of plates. A black woman was hovering around them, putting down dishes filled with various breakfast foods.
David stood up when he saw me. He gestured for me to come over. “Come have breakfast with us, Errol.”
“Thanks.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Nor could I remember the last time I’d eaten.
I was ravenous.
Wheeler pulled out a chair for me.
It was a family-style breakfast. Scrambled eggs, French toast, fat pork sausage seasoned with thyme, fresh-squeezed orange juice.
The coal-black servant was tall and severe, ageless beyond sixty, and wearing a powder-blue dress that seemed somehow powerless on her.
“Thalia, this is Errol Porter,” David Wheeler said. “He’ll be staying with us for a while.”
Thalia’s eyes took me in. I don’t think she meant to show contempt, it’s just that she had an imperious mien.
“Your sister is out of the ICU,” Krista said as I swallowed the first bite of egg.
It embarrassed me that I hadn’t thought about my sister yet this morning.
“And her baby?”
“Fine,” Krista said with a kindly smile. “She’s still in an incubator, but the reports said t
hat they expect her to survive.”
“Coffee?” Thalia said. It was only a word, but there was Texas all through it.
“Thank you,” I replied.
When she had left the finger-room, I asked David, “So am I a prisoner here?”
“Yes,” he said without shame. “This house has a twenty-four-hour guard around it. If you are found trying to escape, you will be caught or killed.”
Krista was looking down at her juice.
“You’re kidding.”
“I don’t have a sense of humor. Do I, dear?” He reached out for Krista’s hand and pressed it.
“No, he doesn’t,” she said, giving me a wan, humorless smile.
“The whole world is at stake, Errol. You and I, Krista and Thalia don’t matter in that. We are all prisoners of war.”
“What war?” I asked the slender scientist. “I didn’t see anybody fighting you. Those prisoners were just sitting there—being tortured.”
“You mistook those husks for human beings because that’s how they present themselves,” he said. “They might just as well become a bear or a bird. We apprehended an infected man and dog in downtown L.A. just a couple of weeks ago.”
The radio news item came back to me.
“The man who pushed the policemen off the roof downtown?”
“Yes,” Wheeler said, “a man who died thirteen years ago. His dog died the next day, and there was such a bond between them that the family got special permission to allow them to be buried together.”
“GT never sounded like he wanted to hurt anyone,” I said. “He talked about togetherness.”
“They’re parasites, Errol. We are the hosts. That’s the kind of togetherness he was talking about.”
Krista stood up then.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I have to go shopping.”
As she left, Thalia returned with a chrome pitcher. She poured me a cup of coffee and asked, “Cream?”
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