Powers, Richard - Orfeo

Els proposed biography. The life of Thomas Merton — the contemplative mystic who inspired millions with his thoughts on inner divinity but who never contacted his own illegitimate child. Bonner shot down the idea without explanation. Els then suggested the chemist Gerhard Domagk, who tested his newly discovered sulfa drug on his dying daughter, was arrested by the Gestapo for winning a Nobel, and ended up aiding the Nazi cause.

Where do you come up with these things? Bonner asked.

A guy can read a lot when he lives alone.

Bonner plowed through the drifts, considering. At last he said, No touching human intimacy. Let’s face it, Maestro. Neither one of us knows shit about being a human. Not our thing.

Richard knew only that he wanted something epic — a story that swept the cast up into a collective fate. Something that would shatter the audience. Something with sweep.

Historical drama , Els said. People at war with things as they are .

That’s it, Richard declared. I knew you were my monkey.

In the snow, dotted by long stretches of silence, Bonner’s vague fancies solidified. Els listened, now and then interrogating. He led them up to a ledge overlooking Crawford Notch. They stopped to share hot noodle soup right out of the thermos. The gorge was luminous, blanketed with snow. Els kept telling Bonner to look, but Richard was busy.

Maybe the Challenger explosion, he said. No, okay, you’re right. How about the fall of one of these Eastern strongmen? Ceauşescu. Honecker.

After half a dozen slugs of soup and several more proposals — Jonestown, the Red Brigade — Bonner grew fidgety. I’m dying here, man. And you aren’t helping.

You want ecstasy, Els said. Transcendence.

Is that asking too much?

You want real opera.

Bonner nodded.

Real, all-out, outrageous opera, a hundred years out of date. But you’re trapped in current events.

The words struck Bonner like a revelation. Jesus, you’re right. I’m stuck in the damn headlines.

In the death grip of the present. When what you really want is Forever.

Maestro. Bonner put down the thermos. I’m listening.

Els gazed out on the pristine vista. No contemporary politics. Something old. Alien. Uncanny .

Go on, Bonner commanded. And Els did.

Siege of Münster, 1534.

Bonner held his frozen hands in the soup’s steam and grinned. Let’s hear.

They broke camp and headed back. The snow started up again, and darkness fell well before they reached the car. But by then both men were deep in details, lost to the clock. When they got back to the house, Bonner was faint with hunger. But he refused to break for dinner until Els finished the story.

Els sent him to bed with books. Richard read all night and didn’t wake until noon the next day. Despite the hour, he insisted on his loping workout before the day could begin. Afterward, the two men began to outline a three-act libretto.

When they finished the outline two days later, red-eyed and covered in salt-and-pepper stubble, they looked like twin prophets of their own deranged sect.

I knew this already , Bonner said, tapping the sheaf of paper and shaking his head. I was looking for this, before I even knew I was looking .

He was still mystified as they packed the car. This is it, Peter. Euphoria versus the State. Like the damn thing was waiting for us. How the hell did you ever come across it?

I told you. Live alone, and you come across a lot.

The two men stood by the rental in puffy down coats, planning to meet again in another month, after Bonner had briefed the City Opera brass. Bonner wanted to draft the libretto himself. Using primary sources, he could have a first draft in three months. Els assured him that there was plenty of music to write, even in advance of the first words.

Richard got in the car and started it. The rental’s tailpipe spit a plume into the clear air. Then the director got back out and grabbed the composer, as if they were still young.

Peter? Thank you.

Els waved him away. He stood until the car disappeared down the tree-lined road. Then he went back inside the cabin to the piece he’d been working on for months — the stacks of staff paper on his drawing table with their hundreds of sketches for the first act of that same opera the two men had just mapped out together.

Life fills the world with copies of itself. Music and viruses both trick their hosts into copying them.

The radio names him twice in the first two hours out of Champaign. A government spokesperson says that scientists are trying to determine if the bacteria taken from the home of Peter Els, the so-called Biohacker Bach, have in fact been genetically altered. Els waits for the speaker to admit that the strain that killed the patients in Alabama wasn’t his. Instead, the announcer returns to say that, in yet more bacterial news, the deadly outbreak of E. coli in Germany may have come from tainted Spanish vegetables.

Through the Fiat’s windows, miles of stark black tillage begin to green. Nothing about the spare beauty looks like a country under any kind of threat. But at ten a.m., on a syndicated public radio interview program, Els learns just what he has unleashed.

The show is on the dangers of garage biology. A rash of hospital deaths , the host begins. Supermarket contaminations in several countries. A do-it-yourself genetic engineer working with toxic microbes, now on the run from the authorities . The sounds reach Els from a great distance, as if the whole segment is one of those sampled, chopped-up, looped, and reassembled song quilts that are again all the rage, half a century after their invention. How scared by all of these stories should you be?

For insight, the host welcomes a Bay Area writer whose book on the growing amateur microbiology movement Els has read. The man talks of garage scientists numbering in the thousands.

Who are these people? the host asks.

The writer gives a frustrated chuckle. Lots of folks. Libertarians, hobbyists, students, entrepreneurs, activists. They’re old-style citizen scientists in the spirit of Jenner and Mendel. This is cheap, democratic, participatory biotech. Closing it down would be a mistake.

The show turns to the director of a safety watchdog group, who maps out the worst-case scenario. The problem is , she says, between mail-order synthetic DNA and a kitchen stocked with a thousand dollars of gear, an amateur could create a new lethal pathogen. Given how many people want to harm this country, biopunk is one of the greatest threats facing us .

The writer laughs her off. Skiing is hundreds of times more dangerous.

A bipartisan Washington commission on WMDs and terrorism predicts a major bioterror attack in the next couple of years , the watchdog says.

The host asks, What can we do to prevent that?

We need to build on the success of the TSA , the watchdog answers.

The writer howls. The TSA hasn’t detected a single terrorist action since its inception!

That proves their effectiveness .

The host throws open the call-in lines. The first caller asks if this killer E. coli in Europe is a terrorist act. Both experts say no. The caller hangs up unconvinced.

Els hears the next caller’s fury before she speaks three words. This man, she says, creating germs in his own laboratory — people have died, and this man needs to be found and stopped before he harms anyone else.