Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

“We still don’t. An’ it’s worse than that.”

“You knew all this?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. I told you, I had to check you out. But now there’s stuff I don’t know, an’ I’m hopin’ you do. You feelin’ okay?”

I was feeling, if not okay, a good deal better. I had hands again, and my chest no longer hurt.

“Paradoxically,” I said, “I am feeling sleepy. Apparently five years and more are not enough.”

“You can follow all right, if I talk?”

“I think so. Nudge me if I drop off.”

“Trust me. You won’t.”

He told me little about the general events of the past six years, and rather a lot about Supernova Alpha. I assume that any reader will already know what he said, and I will not record it here. (Yes, of course I assume there will be readers. Did any diarist, no matter how the material was hidden or encoded, not assume that the entries would someday be read? A secret diary can be many things, but unless it is destroyed there is one thing it can never be, and that is secret. You still do not agree, although your unseen presence at my shoulder provides the ultimate proof that I am right? Then ask yourself why Samuel Pepys wrote all sexually explicit material of his diaries in Latin, rather than in English.)

I was shocked by what he told me. I was also relieved. My implant, with an operating lifetime designed to allow authority to track me to and beyond my final release, surely depended on working microchips. And amid global turmoil and deaths numbered in the millions or billions, my own little misdemeanors would never be noticed.

I was free, as never before. Or I would be, provided that I practiced suitable restraint and patience.

“Let me summarize,” I said, when Seth reached a suitable breakpoint in his narrative. No matter how long he spoke, we both realized that he could never tell me everything that had happened. For one thing, he had limited information sources. “You had been monitoring your own status with the help of a full genome sequencer. Now the sequencers are useless. You want an alternative technology that will allow you to continue to monitor your condition, and provide telomerase inhibitor or stimulator as needed.” “You got it. Question is, can you do it?” “I would logically say yes, wouldn’t I, regardless of truth? But I will do more than say, I will tell you how. Let me begin with a question. What do you know of the history of sequencing the human genome?”

“I know it was done over twenty years ago.” “Correct. But what you may not know is how major an effort it required at that time. The tools were restriction enzymes, chemical tests, chromosome sequence matching, partial data bases, and a limited knowledge of molecular biology; crude and primitive by today’s standards, but all that were available. Hundreds of groups worked together to produce the sequencing of the three billion nucleotide bases in the human genome. It took over twenty years of steady work. At the end of that time one — one! — individual genome had been mapped.”

“You tryin’ to discourage me and get yourself in real trouble?”

“Not at all. I am pointing out that modern sequencers, all dry and all digital, represent a marvel of twenty more years of progress in both medicine and technology. A genome, any genome, can be totally mapped in a few hours by a modern sequencer. Unfortunately, all such devices became brain dead the moment that the gamma pulse from Supernova Alpha created its EMP. I feel sure that when you discovered this, you were in despair.”

“For ten minutes.” He sounded like a man who was not exaggerating. “I been through despair before, an’ I didn’t like it.”

“So let me offer you reason for optimism,” I said. “You and your friends were given sequencers because it is much cheaper and easier to offer a standard mass-produced instrument than it is to produce a made-to-order device. But of course, you had no call for the full power of a genome sequencer. All you wished, to know was the condition and length of the telomeres, those tiny fragments at the very ends of each chromosome. You didn’t care what bases were in them, only their length. A full sequencer is huge overkill for such a task. I can show you how to accomplish the same result with the aid of five standard wet chemistry procedures, tests which can be applied to anyone after fifteen minutes of instruction. I will do this, provided that you are able to offer me a suitable quid pro quo.”

He nodded. It was clear that despite his deliberate pose of the barbarian at the gates, he had understood every word that I said. I wondered again about his background. There was more here than the good ol’ boy pose. In the hours that we had been talking, the sun had moved around so that it was directly in our faces. In its afternoon light his eyes seemed wolf eyes, more yellow than brown. I was exhausted. But an absolute need to match him drove me to alertness.

“Here’s the deal, Doc,” he said confidentially. “You show me an’ Art an’ Dana — yeah, I know, but I might need ’em later. This ain’t a game to play solo. Anyway, you show us what we need, how to keep the treatments goin’, how to know they’re working. An’ after that you’re a free agent. We won’t tell anybody you’re out. We won’t ever look for you.”

“Unless something goes wrong, and you need me again.”

“Well, yeah.” He grinned. “I won’t say no to that. We all do what we hafta do.”

“About your two companions. Are you suggesting that they have already agreed to the terms that you propose?”

“No. And I’m not sure they would. They’re different from me — from you, too, Doc. But you don’t need worry about them. I’ll handle ’em if I have to, once you and me have an understanding”

He held out a dirty, broken-nailed hand. “I’m Seth Parsigian. Do we have a deal?”

After a moment I took his hand and shook it. “We have a deal.”

I trusted Seth — trusted him to pursue his own interests, to the exclusion of everything else. I knew exactly what he was like.

And I knew one more thing, with certainty. When the right time came, when I was no longer dependent on his assistance and his special knowledge, I would send Seth Parsigian beyond this vale of joy and tears. I would kill him. We would see, paraphrasing his earlier crude parlance, who was eviscerated and lacked an epidermis.

I stood up, stretched my tired limbs, and looked around at the scattered clouds of the late afternoon sky. I hurt in half a dozen places where IVs and catheters had been removed. My muscles were weak. However, all those effects of my long coma were minor and predictable. They should soon vanish.

It was good to be alive, awake, and on the way back to normal.

At one o’clock exactly Saul stepped onto the south lawn of the White House.

The flight from Indian Head aboard the Sea Stallion had been breathtakingly fast. A formation of bright blue Air Force jets — old F-16s, Saul thought, though he was not sure — had accompanied them for the last few miles along the Potomac, before dipping wings in unison salute and peeling off to the west.

Dinner with Tricia was not until six. No one should be waiting to see him, since he was not expected back until late afternoon. He had five free hours, time he had gained by rapid travel from Indian Head.

Saul headed straight indoors, reflecting how age changed a man. He remembered an afternoon, forty-five years ago, when the electronic teaching system had failed and he and half a dozen other kids were released early. They stood in a ring and speculated how they would use the time. The afternoon stood open, an endless stretch in which they could do anything they liked.