Greg Bear - Blood Music

“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.”

The angle of Edward’s brows steepened. “Jesus, Vergil. Bernard’s almost a saint. He’s had his picture on the cover of Mega and Rolling Stone just the last month or two. Why are you telling me all this?”

“It’s supposed to be secret-stock, breakthrough, everything. I have my contacts inside the place, though. Ever heard of Hazel Overton?”

Edward shook his head. “Should I?”

“Probably not. I thought she hated my guts. Turns out she had grudging respect for me. She gave me a call two months back and asked if I wanted to front a paper for her on F-factors in E. coli genomes.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “But you do whatever the hell you want. I’m through with the bastards.”

Edward whistled. “Make me rich, huh?”

“If that’s what you want. Or you can spend some time listening to me before rushing off to your broker.”

“Of course. So tell me more.”

Vergil hadn’t touched the cottage cheese or pie. He had, however, eaten the pineapple slice and drunk the chocolate milk. “I got in on the ground floor about five years ago. With my medical school background and computer experience, I was a shoo-in for Enzyme Valley. I went up and down North Torrey Pines Road with my resumes, and I was Weed by Genetron.”

“That simple?”

“No.” Vergil picked at the cottage cheese with a fork, then laid the fork down. “I did some rearranging of the records. Credit records, school records, that sort of thing. Nobody’s caught on yet. I came in as hot stuff and I made my mark early with protein assemblies and the preliminary biochip research. Genetron has big money backers, and we were given as much as we needed. Four months and I was doing my own work, sharing a lab but allowed to do independent research. I made some breakthroughs.” He tossed his hand nonchalantly. “Then I went off on tangents. I kept on doing my regular work, but after hours…The management found out, and fired me. I managed to…save part of my experiments. But I haven’t exactly been cautious, or judicious. So now the experiment’s going on outside the lab.”

Edward had always regarded Vergil as ambitious and more than a trifle cracked. In their school years, Vergil’s relations with authority figures had never been smooth. Edward had long ago concluded that science, for Vergil, was like an unattainable woman, who suddenly opens her arms to him before he’s ready for mature love—leaving him afraid he’ll forever blow the chance, lose the prize, screw up royally. Apparently, he had. “Outside the lab? I don’t get you.”

“I want you to examine me. Give me a thorough physical. Maybe a cancer diagnostic. Then I’ll explain more.”

“You want a ten thousand dollar exam?”

“Whatever you can do. Ultrasound, NMR, PET, thermogram, everything.”

“I don’t know if I can get access to all that equipment, Vergil. Natural-source PET full-scan has only been here a month or two. Hell, you couldn’t pick a more expensive—”

Then ultrasound and NMR. That’s all you need.”

“I’m an obstetrician, Vergil, not a glamour-boy lab tech, OB-GYN, butt of all jokes. If you’re turning into a woman, maybe I can help you.”

Vergil 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 and NMR. Who’s going to pay?”

“I have medical. I messed with the personnel files at Genetron before I left. Anything up to a hundred thousand dollars and they’ll never check, never suspect And it has to be absolutely confidential.”

Edward shook his head. “You’re asking for a lot, Vergil.”

“Do you want to make medical history, or not?”

“Is this a joke?”

Vergil shook his head. “Not on you, roomie.”

Edward made the arrangements that afternoon, filling in the forms himself. From what he understood of hospital paperwork, so long as everything was billed properly, most of the examination could take place without official notice. He didn’t charge for his services. After all, Vergil had turned his piss blue. They were friends.

Edward stayed past his usual hours. He gave Gail a bare outline of what he was doing; she sighed the sigh of a doctor’s wife and told him she’d leave a late snack on the table for when he came home.

Vergil returned at ten P.M. and met Edward at the appointed place, on the third floor of what the nurses called the Frankenstein Wing. Edward sat on an orange plastic chair, reading a desk copy of My Things magazine. Vergil entered the small lobby, looking lost and worried. His skin was olive-colored under the fluorescent lighting.

Edward signaled the night supervisor that this was his patient and conducted Vergil to the examination area, hand on his elbow. Neither spoke much. Vergil stripped and Edward arranged him on the paper-covered padded table. “Your ankles are swollen,” he said, feeling them. They were solid, not puffy. Healthy, but odd. “Hm,” Edward said pointedly, glancing at Vergil. Vergil raised his eyebrows and cocked his head; his “you ain’t seen nothing yet” look.

“Okay. I’m going to run several scans on you and combine the results in an imager. Ultrasound first” Edward ran paddles over Vergil’s still form, hitting those areas difficult for the bigger unit to reach. He then swung the table around and inserted it into the enameled orifice of the ultrasound diagnostic unit—the hum-hole, so-called by the nurses. After twelve separate sweeps, head to toe, he removed the table. Vergil was sweating slightly, his eyes closed.

“Still claustrophobic?” Edward asked.

“Not so much.”

“NMR is a little worse.”

“Lead on, Mac Duff.”

The NMR full-scan unit was a huge chrome and sky-blue mastaba-shaped box, occupying one small room with barely enough space to wheel in the table. “I’m not an expert on this one, so it may take a while,” Edward said, helping Vergil into the cavity.

“High cost of medicine,” Vergil muttered, dosing his eyes as Edward swung down the glass hatch. The massive magnet circling the cavity buzzed faintly. Edward instructed the machine to send its data to the central imager in the next room and helped Vergil out.

“Holding up?” Edward asked.

“Courage,” Vergil said, pronouncing it as in French.

In the next room, Edward arranged a large-screen VDT and ordered the integration and display of the data. In the half-darkness, the image took a few seconds to flow into recognizable shapes.

“Your skeleton first,” Edward said. His eyes widened. The image then displayed Vergil’s thoracic organs, musculature, and finally vascular system and skin.

“How long since the accident?” Edward asked, stepping closer to the screen. He couldn’t quite conceal the quiver in his voice.

“I haven’t been in an accident,” Vergil said.

“Jesus, they beat you, to keep secrets?”

“You don’t understand me, Edward. Look at the images again. That’s not trauma.”

“Look, there’s thickening here,” he indicated the ankles, “and your ribs—that crazy zigzag interlocking. Broken somewhere, obviously. And—”

“Look at my spine,” Vergil suggested. Edward slowly rotated the image on the screen.

Buckminster Fuller came to mind immediately. It was fantastic. Vergil’s spine was a cage of triangular bones, coining together in ways Edward could not even follow, much less comprehend. “Mind if I feel?”