Greg Bear: Blood Music

Genetron’s reception area was a circular extrusion from the ground floor on the east comer, surrounded by picture windows and liberally supplied with aspidistras in chrome ceramic pots. Morning light slanted white and dazzling across the sky-blue carpet as Vergil entered from the lab side. Rita stood up behind her desk as he passed by.

“Vergil—”

“Thanks,” he said. His eyes were on the distinguished-looking gray-haired man standing by the single lobby couch. There was no doubt about it; Michael Bernard. Vergil recognized him from photos and the cover portrait Time Magazine had printed three years before. Vergil extended his hand and put on an enormous smile. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bernard.”

Bernard shook Vergil’s hand but appeared confused.

Gerald T. Harrison stood in the broad double door of Genetron’s fancy for-show office, phone receiver gripped between ear and shoulder. Bernard looked to Harrison for an explanation.

“I’m very glad you got my message…” Vergil continued before Harrison’s presence registered.

Harrison immediately made his farewells on the phone and slammed it on its cradle. “Rank hath its privileges, Vergil,” he said, smiling too broadly and taking a stance beside Bernard.

“I’m sorry—what message?” Bernard asked.

“This is Vergil Ulam, one of our top researchers,” Harrison said obsequiously. “We’re all very pleased to have you visiting, Mr. Bernard. Vergil, I’ll get back to you later about that matter you wanted to discuss.”

He hadn’t asked to talk to Harrison about anything. “Sure,” Vergil said. He rankled under the old familiar feeling: being sidestepped, pushed aside.

Bernard didn’t know him from Adam.

“Later, Vergil,” Harrison said pointedly.

“Sure, of course.” He backed away, glanced at Bernard pleadingly, then turned and shambled back through the rear door.

“Who was that?” Bernard asked.

“A very ambitious fellow,” Harrison said darkly. “But we have him under control.”

Harrison kept his work office in a ground floor space on the west end of the lab building. The room was surrounded by wooden shelves neatly filled with books. The eye-level shelf behind the desk held familiar black plastic ring-bound books from Cold Spring Harbor. Arranged below were a row of telephone directories—Harrison collected antique phone books—and several shelves of computer science volumes. His graph-ruled black desktop supported a leather-edged blotting pad and a computer monitor.

Of the Genetron founders, only Harrison and William Yng had stayed long enough to see the labs begin work. Both were more oriented toward business than research, though their doctorates hung on the wood panel wall.

Harrison leaned back in his chair, arms up and hands clasped behind his neck. Vergil noticed the merest hint of sweat stains in each armpit.

“Vergil, that was very embarrassing,” he said. His white-blond hair was artfully arranged to disguise premature thinning.

“Sorry,” Vergil said.

“No more than I. So you asked Mr. Bernard to visit our labs.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought he would be interested in the work.”

“We thought so, too. That’s why we invited him. I don’t believe he even knew about your invitation, Vergil.”

“Apparently not”

“You went behind our backs.”

Vergil stood before the desk, looking glumly at the back of the VDT.

“You’ve done a great deal of useful work for us. Rothwild says you’re brilliant maybe even invaluable.” Rothwild was the biochips project supervisor. “But others say you can’t be relied upon. And now…this.”

“Bernard—”

“Not Mr. Bernard, Vergil. This.” He swung the monitor around and pressed a button on the keyboard. Vergil’s secret computer file scrolled up on the screen. His eyes widened and his throat constricted, but to his credit he didn’t choke. His reaction was quite controlled. “I haven’t read it completely, but it sounds like you’re up to some very suspect things. Possibly unethical. We like to follow the guidelines here at Genetron, especially in light of our upcoming position in the marketplace. But not solely for that reason. I like to believe we run an ethical company here.”

“I’m not doing anything unethical, Gerald.”

“Oh?” Harrison stopped the scrolling. “You’re designing new complements of DNA for several NIH-regulated microorganisms. And you’re working on mammalian cells. We don’t do work here on mammalian cells. We aren’t equipped for the biohazards—not in the main labs. But I suppose you could demonstrate to me the safety and innocuous nature of your research. You’re not creating a new plague to sell to Third World revolutionaries, are you?”

“No,” Vergil said flatly.

“Good. Some of this material is beyond my understanding. It sounds like you might be trying to expand on our MABs project There could be valuable stuff here.” He paused. “What in hell are you doing, Vergil?”

Vergil removed his glasses and wiped them with the placket of his lab coat. Abruptly, he sneezed—loud and wet.

Harrison looked faintly disgusted. “We only broke the code yesterday. By accident, almost. Why did you hide it? Is it something you’d rather we didn’t know?”

Without his glasses, Vergil looked owlish and helpless. He began to stammer an answer, then stopped and thrust his jaw forward. His thick black brows knit in painful puzzlement.

“It looks to me like you’ve been doing some work on our gene machine. Unauthorized, of course, but you’ve never been much for authority.”

Vergil’s face was now deep red.

“Are you all right?” Harrison asked. He was deriving a perverse pleasure from making Vergil squirm. A grin threatened to break through Harrison’s querying expression.

“I’m fine,” Vergil said. “I was…am…working on biologics.”

“Biologics? I’m not familiar with the term.”

“A side branch of the biochips. Autonomous organic computers.” The thought of saying anything more was agony. He had written Bernard—without result, apparently—to have him come see the work. He did not want to hand all of it over to Genetron under the provisions of the work-for-hire clause in his contract. It was such a simple idea, even if the work had taken two years—two secret and laborious years.

“I’m intrigued.” Harrison turned the VDT around and scrolled through the file. “We’re not just talking proteins and amino acids. You’re messing with chromosomes here. Recombining mammalian genes; even, I see, mixing in viral and bacterial genes.” The light went out of his eyes. They became rocky gray. “You could get Genetron shut down right now, this minute, Vergil. We don’t have the safeguards for this kind of stuff. You’re not even working under P-3 conditions.”

“I’m not messing with reproductive genes.”

“There’s some other kind?” Harrison sat forward abruptly, angry that Vergil would try to bullshit him.

“Introns. Strings that don’t code for protein structure.”

“What about them?”

“I’m only working in those areas. And…adding more non-reproductive genetic material.”

“That sounds like a contradiction in terms to me, Vergil. We have no proof introns don’t code for something.”

“Yes, but—”

“But—” Harrison held up his hand. “This is all quite irrelevant. Whatever else you were up to, the fact is, you were prepared to renege on your contract, go behind our backs to Bernard, and try to engage his support for a personal endeavor. True?”

Vergil said nothing.

“I assume you’re not a sophisticated fellow, Vergil. Not in the ways of the business world. Perhaps you didn’t realize the implications.”