Greg Bear - Blood Music

He carried them down the hall and poured them one by one into the tub, avoiding Vergil’s sightless pale eyes. Fumes hissed up and he dosed the door behind him coughing.

Someone softly called Vergil’s name. Edward carried the empty bottles into the master bathroom, where the voice was louder. He stood in the doorway, one plastic jug brushing the frame, and cocked an ear, frowning.

“Hey, Vergil, that you?” the voice asked dryly. It came from the shower stall. Edward took a step forward, then paused. Enough, he thought. Reality had been twisted enough and he didn’t really want to go any farther. He took another step, then another, and reached for the door of the shower stall.

The voice sounded like a woman, husky, strange, though not in distress.

He grasped the handle and tugged. With a hollow click , the door swung open. Eyes adjusting to the darkness, he peered into the shower.

“Jesus, Vergil, you’ve been neglecting me. We’ve got to get out of this hotel. It’s dark and small and I don’t like it”

He recognized the voice from the phone, though he could not possibly have recognized her by appearance, even had he seen a photograph.

“Candice?” he asked.

“Vergil? Let’s go.”

He fled.

The phone was ringing as Edward came home. He didn’t answer. It could have been the hospital. It could have been Bernard—or the police. He envisioned having to explain everything to the police. Genetron would stonewall; Bernard would be unavailable.

Edward was exhausted, all his muscles knotted with tension and whatever name one could give to the feelings one has after-

Committing genocide?

That certainly didn’t seem real. He could not believe he had just murdered a trillion intelligent beings. “Noocytes.” Snuffed a galaxy. That was laughable. But he didn’t laugh.

He could still see Candice, in the shower.

Work had proceeded on her much more rapidly. Her legs were gone; her torso had been reduced to an impressionistic spareness. She had lifted her face to him, covered with ridges as if made from a stack of cards.

He had left the building in time to see a white van speed around the curve and park In front, with Bernard’s limousine not far behind. He had sat in his car and watched men in white isolation suits climb out of the van, which, he noted, was unmarked.

Then he had started his car, put it in gear, and driven away. Simple as that. Return to Irvine. Ignore the whole mess as long as he could, or he would very soon be as crazy as Candice.

Candice, who was being transformed over an open shower drain. Let the little buggers out, Vergil had said. Show them what the world’s about.

It was not at all hard to believe that he had just killed one human being, a friend. The smoke, the melted lamp cover the drooping electrical outlet and smoking cord.

Vergil.

He had dunked the lamp into the tub with Vergil.

Had he been thorough enough to kill all of them in the tub? Perhaps Bernard and his group would finish what he had started.

He didn’t think so. Who could encompass it understand it all? Certainly he couldn’t; there had been horrors, fearsome things for the mind to acknowledge, to see , and he did not believe he could predict what was go-big to happen next, for he hardly knew what was happening now.

The dreams. Cities raping Gail. Galaxies sprinkling over them all. What anguish…and then again, what potential beauty—a new kind of life, symbiosis and transformations.

No. That was not a good thought Change—too much change—and

so where did his objections begin, his objections to a new order, a new trans

formation because he well knew that humans weren’t enough that there had to be more Vergil had made more; in his clumsy unseeing way he had initiated the next stage.

No. Life goes on no period no end no change, no shocking things like Candice in the shower or Vergil dead in the tub. Life is the right held by an individual to normality and normal progress normal aging who would take away that right who in their right minds would accept and what was it he was thinking was going to happen that he would have to accept?

He lay down on the couch and shielded his eyes with his forearm. He had never been so exhausted in his life—drained physically, emotionally, beyond rational thought. He was reluctant to sleep because he could feel the nightmares building up like thunderheads, waiting to shower refractions and echoes of what he had seen.

Edward pulled away his forearm and stared up at the ceiling. It was just barely possible that what had been started could be stopped. Perhaps he was the one who could trigger the chain of actions which could stop it. He could call the Centers for Disease Control (yes, but were they the ones he wanted to talk to?). Or perhaps the defense department? County health first, work through channels? Maybe even the VA hospital or Scripps Clinic in La Jolla.

He put his arm back over his eyes. There was no clear course of action.

Events had simply exceeded his capacity. He imagined that had happened often in human history; tidal waves of events overwhelming crucial individuals, sweeping them along. Making them wish there was a quiet place, perhaps a little Mexican village where nothing ever happened and where they could go and sleep just sleep.

“Edward?” Gail leaned over him, touching his forehead with cool fingers. “Every time I come home, here you are—sacked out. You don’t look good. Feeling okay?”

“Yes.” He sat on the edge of the couch. His body was hot and wooziness threatened his balance. “What have you planned for dinner?” His mouth wasn’t working properly; the words sounded mushy. “I thought we’d go out.”

“You have a fever,” Gail said. “A very high fever. I’m getting the thermometer. Just stay there.”

“No,” he called after her weakly. He stood and stumbled into the bathroom to look in the mirror. She met him there and stuck the thermometer under his tongue. As always, he thought of biting it like Harpo Marx, eating it like a piece of candy. She peered over his shoulder into the mirror.

“What is it?” she asked.

There were lines under his collar, around his neck. White lines, like freeways.

“Damp palms,” he said. “Vergil had damp palms.” They had already been inside him for days. “So obvious.”

“Edward, please, what is it?”

“I have to make a call,” he said. Gail followed him into the bedroom and stood as he sat on the bed and punched the Genetron number. “Dr. Michael Bernard, please,” he said. The receptionist told him, much too quickly, there was no such person at Genetron. “This is too important to fuck around with,” he said coldly. “Tell Dr. Bernard this is Edward Milligan and it’s urgent.”

The receptionist put him on hold. Perhaps Bernard was still at Vergil’s apartment, trying to sort out the pieces of the puzzle; perhaps they would simply send someone out to arrest him. It really didn’t matter either way.

“Bernard here.” The doctor’s voice was flat and serpentine—much, Edward imagined, like he himself sounded.

“It’s too late, Doctor. We shook Vergil’s hand. Sweaty palms. Remember? And ask yourself whom we’ve touched since. We’re the vectors now.”

“I was at the apartment today, Milligan,” Bernard said “Did you kill Ulam?”

“Yes. He was going to release his…microbes. Noocytes. Whatever they are, now.”

“Did you find his girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do with her?”

“Do with her? Nothing. She was in the shower. But listen—”

“She was gone when we arrived, nothing but her clothes. Did you kill her, too?”