Collected short fiction.., p.92
Collected Short Fiction of Greg Egan, page 92
I spot the graffitist from a block away. He looks about twelve years old. He’s dressed in black, but otherwise doesn’t seem too worried about being seen—and his brazenness is probably justified; cyclists go by, ignoring him, and patrol cars are scarce around here. At first, I’m simply irritated; it’s late and I’ve got work to do. I’m not in the mood for confrontation. The easiest thing, by far, might be to wait until he’s gone.
Then I catch myself. Am I that apathetic? I couldn’t care less if graffiti artists redecorate every last building and train in the city—but this is racist poison. Racist poison that I waste twenty minutes cleaning away, every morning.
I draw closer, still unnoticed. Before I can change my mind, I slip through the wrought iron gate, which he’s left ajar; the lock was smashed months ago, and we’ve never bothered replacing it. As I move across the courtyard, he hears me and spins around. He steps towards me and raises the paint gun to eye level, but I knock it out of his hand. That makes me angry; I could have been blinded. He runs for the fence, and gets half-way up; I grab him by the belt of his jeans and haul him down. Just as well—the spikes are sharp, and rusty.
I let go of his belt and he turns around slowly, glaring at me, trying to look menacing but failing badly. “Keep your fucking hands off me! You’re not a cop.”
“Ever heard of citizen’s arrest?” I step back and push the gate shut. So, what now? Invite him inside so I can phone the police?
He grabs hold of a fence railing; clearly, he’s not going anywhere without a struggle. Shit. What am I going to do—drag him into the building, kicking and screaming? I don’t have much stomach for assaulting children, and I’m on shaky legal ground already.
So it’s stalemate.
I lean against the gate.
“Just tell me one thing.” I point at the wall. “Why? Why do you do it?”
He snorts. “I could ask you the same fucking question.”
“About what?”
“About helping them stay in the country. Taking our jobs. Taking our houses. Fucking things up for all of us.”
I laugh. “You sound like my grandfather. Them and us. That’s the kind of twentieth-century bullshit that wrecked the planet. You think you can build a fence around this country and just forget about everything outside? Draw some artificial line on a map and say: people inside matter, people outside don’t?”
“Nothing artificial about the ocean.”
“No? They’ll be pleased to hear that in Tasmania.”
He just scowls at me, disgusted. There’s nothing to communicate, nothing to understand. The anti-refugee lobby are always talking about preserving our common values; that’s pretty funny. Here we are, two Anglo Australians—probably born in the very same city—and our values couldn’t be further apart if we’d come from different planets.
He says, “We didn’t ask them to breed like vermin. It’s not our fault. So why should we help them? Why should we suffer? They can all just fuck off and die. Drown in their own shit and die. That’s what I think, okay?”
I step away from the gate and let him pass. He crosses the street, then turns to yell obscenities. I go inside and get the bucket and scrubbing brush, but all I end up doing is smearing wet paint across the wall.
By the time I’ve plugged my lap-top into the office machine, I’m not angry—or even depressed—any more; I’m simply numb.
Just to complete the perfect evening, half-way through transferring one of my files, the power fails. I sit in the dark for an hour, waiting to see if it will come back on; but it doesn’t, so I walk home.
· · · · ·
Things are looking up; there’s no doubt about it.
The Allwick Bill was defeated—and the Greens have a new leader, so there’s hope for them yet.
Jack Kelly is in prison for arms smuggling. Sweet F.A. still put up their moronic posters—but there’s a group of antifascist students who spend their spare time tearing them down. Since Ranjit and I scraped up enough money for an alarm system, there’s been no more graffiti; and lately even the threatening letters have become rare.
Loraine and I are married now. We’re happy together, and happy in our jobs. She’s been promoted to laboratory manager, and the work at Matheson & Singh is booming—even the kind that pays. I really couldn’t ask for more. Sometimes we talk about adopting a child, but the truth is we don’t have the time.
We don’t often talk about the night I caught the graffitist. The night the inner city was blacked-out, for six hours. The night several freezers full of forensic samples were spoiled. Loraine refuses to entertain any paranoid theories about this; the evidence is gone, she says. Speculation is poindess.
I do sometimes wonder, though, just how many people there might be who hold the very same views as the screwed-up child. Not in terms of nations, not in terms of race; but people who’ve marked their very own lines to separate us and them. Who aren’t buffoons in jackboots, parading for the cameras; who are intelligent, resourceful, far-sighted. And silent.
And I wonder what kind of fortresses they’re building.
The Moral Virologist
From the online version at Eidolon: SF Online — http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Moral%20Virologist&pagetitle=The+Moral+Virologist§ion=fiction — First published in Pulphouse #8, Summer 1990.
* * * * *
Out on the street, in the dazzling sunshine of a warm Atlanta morning, a dozen young children were playing. Chasing, wrestling, and hugging each other, laughing and yelling, crazy and jubilant for no other reason than being alive on such a day. Inside the gleaming white building, though, behind double-glazed windows, the air was slightly chilly—the way John Shawcross preferred it—and nothing could be heard but the air-conditioning, and a faint electrical hum.
The schematic of the protein molecule trembled very slightly. Shawcross grinned, already certain of success. As the pH displayed in the screen's top left crossed the critical value—the point at which, according to his calculations, the energy of conformation B should drop below that of conformation A—the protein suddenly convulsed and turned completely inside-out. It was exactly as he had predicted, and his binding studies had added strong support, but to see the transformation (however complex the algorithms that had led from reality to screen) was naturally the most satisfying proof.
He replayed the event, backwards and forwards several times, utterly captivated. This marvellous device would easily be worth the eight hundred thousand he'd paid for it. The salesperson had provided several impressive demonstrations, of course, but this was the first time Shawcross had used the machine for his own work. Images of proteins in solution! Normal X-ray diffraction could only work with crystalline samples, in which a molecule's configuration often bore little resemblance to its aqueous, biologically relevant, form. An ultrasonically stimulated semi-ordered liquid phase was the key, not to mention some major breakthroughs in computing; Shawcross couldn't follow all the details, but that was no impediment to using the machine. He charitably wished upon the inventor Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine; viewed the stunning results of his experiment once again, then stretched, rose to his feet, and went out in search of lunch.
On his way to the delicatessen, he passed that bookshop, as always. A lurid new poster in the window caught his eye: a naked young man stretched out on a bed in a state of postcoital languor, one corner of the sheet only just concealing his groin. Emblazoned across the top of the poster, in imitation of a glowing red neon sign, was the book's title: A Hot Night's Safe Sex. Shawcross shook his head in anger and disbelief. What was wrong with people? Hadn't they read his advertisement? Were they blind? Stupid? Arrogant? Safety lay only in the obedience of God's laws.
After eating, he called in at a newsagent that carried several foreign papers. The previous Saturday's editions had arrived, and his advertisement was in all of them, where necessary translated into the appropriate languages. Half a page in a major newspaper was not cheap anywhere in the world, but then, money had never been a problem.
ADULTERERS! SODOMITES!
REPENT AND BE SAVED!
ABANDON YOUR WICKEDNESS NOW
OR DIE AND BURN FOREVER!
He couldn't have put it more plainly, could he? Nobody could claim that they hadn't been warned.
· · · · ·
In 1981, Matthew Shawcross bought a tiny, run-down cable TV station in the Bible belt, which until then had split its air time between scratchy black-and-white film clips of fifties gospel singers, and local novelty acts such as snake handlers (protected by their faith, not to mention the removal of their pets' venom glands) and epileptic children (encouraged by their parents' prayers, and a carefully timed withdrawal of medication, to let the spirit move them). Matthew Shawcross dragged the station into the nineteen eighties, spending a fortune on a thirty-second computer-animated station ID (a fleet of pirouetting, crenellated spaceships firing crucifix-shaped missiles into a relief map of the USA, chiselling out the station logo of Liberty, holding up, not a torch, but a cross), showing the latest, slickest gospel rock video clips, "Christian" soap operas and "Christian" game shows, and, above all, identifying issues—communism, depravity, godlessness in schools—which could serve as the themes for telethons to raise funds to expand the station, so that future telethons might be even more successful.
Ten years later, he owned one of the country's biggest cable TV networks.
John Shawcross was at college, on the verge of taking up paleontology, when AIDS first began to make the news in a big way. As the epidemic snowballed, and the spiritual celebrities he most admired (his father included) began proclaiming the disease to be God's will, he found himself increasingly obsessed by it. In an age where the word miracle belonged to medicine and science, here was a plague, straight out of the Old Testament, destroying the wicked and sparing the righteous (give or take some haemophiliacs and transfusion recipients), proving to Shawcross beyond any doubt that sinners could be punished in this life, as well as in the next. This was, he decided, valuable in at least two ways: not only would sinners to whom damnation had seemed a remote and unproven threat now have a powerful, worldly reason to reform, but the righteous would be strengthened in their resolve by this unarguable sign of heavenly support and approval.
In short, the mere existence of AIDS made John Shawcross feel good, and he gradually became convinced that some kind of personal involvement with HIV, the AIDS virus, would make him feel even better. He lay awake at night, pondering God's mysterious ways, and wondering how he could get in on the act. AIDS research would be aimed at a cure, so how could he possibly justify involving himself with that?
Then, in the early hours of one cold morning, he was woken by sounds from the room next to his. Giggling, grunting, and the squeaking of bed springs. He wrapped his pillow around his ears and tried to go back to sleep, but the sounds could not be ignored—nor could the effect they wrought on his own fallible flesh. He masturbated for a while, on the pretext of trying to manually crush his unwanted erection, but stopped short of orgasm and lay, shivering, in a state of heightened moral perception. It was a different woman every week; he'd seen them leaving in the morning. He'd tried to counsel his fellow student, but had been mocked for his troubles. Shawcross didn't blame the poor young man; was it any wonder people laughed at the truth, when every movie, every book, every magazine, every rock song, still sanctioned promiscuity and perversion, making them out to be normal and good? The fear of AIDS might have saved millions of sinners, but millions more still ignored it, absurdly convinced that their chosen partners could never be infected, or trusting in condoms to frustrate the will of God!
The trouble was, vast segments of the population had, in spite of their wantonness, remained uninfected, and the use of condoms, according to the studies he'd read, did seem to reduce the risk of transmission. These facts disturbed Shawcross a great deal. Why would an omnipotent God create an imperfect tool? Was it a matter of divine mercy? That was possible, he conceded, but it struck him as rather distasteful: sexual Russian roulette was hardly a fitting image of the Lord's capacity for forgiveness.
Or—Shawcross tingled all over as the possibility crystalised in his brain—might AIDS be no more than a mere prophetic shadow, hinting at a future plague a thousand times more terrible? A warning to the wicked to change their ways while they still had time? An example to the righteous as to how they might do His will?
Shawcross broke into a sweat. The sinners next door moaned as if already in Hell, the thin dividing wall vibrated, the wind rose up to shake the dark trees and rattle his window. What was this wild idea in his head? A true message from God, or the product of his own imperfect understanding? He needed guidance! He switched on his reading lamp and picked up his Bible from the bedside table. With his eyes closed, he opened the book at random.
He recognised the passage at the very first glance. He ought to have; he'd read it and reread it a hundred times, and knew it almost by heart. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
At first, he tried to deny his destiny: He was unworthy! A sinner himself! An ignorant child! But everyone was unworthy, everyone was a sinner, everyone was an ignorant child in God's eyes. It was pride, not humility, that spoke against God's choice of him.
By morning, not a trace of doubt remained.
Dropping paleontology was a great relief; defending Creationism with any conviction required a certain, very special, way of thinking, and he had never been quite sure that he could master it. Biochemistry, on the other hand, he mastered with ease (confirmation, if any was needed, that he'd made the right decision). He topped his classes every year, and went on to do a PhD in Molecular Biology at Harvard, then postdoctoral work at the NIH, and fellowships in Canada and France. He lived for his work, pushing himself mercilessly, but always taking care not to be too conspicuous in his achievements. He published very little, usually as a modest third or fourth co-author, and when at last he flew home from France, nobody in his field knew, or would have much cared, that John Shawcross had returned, ready to begin his real work.
Shawcross worked alone in the gleaming white building that served as both laboratory and home. He couldn't risk taking on employees, no matter how closely their beliefs might have matched his own. He hadn't even let his parents in on the secret; he told them he was engaged in theoretical molecular genetics, which was a lie of omission only—and he had no need to beg his father for money week by week since, for tax reasons, twenty-five percent of the Shawcross empire's massive profit was routinely payed into accounts in his name.
His lab was filled with shiny grey boxes, from which ribbon cables snaked to PCs; the latest generation, fully automated, synthesisers and sequencers of DNA, RNA, and proteins (all available off the shelf, to anyone with the money to buy them). Half a dozen robot arms did all the grunt work: pipetting and diluting reagents, labelling tubes, loading and unloading centrifuges.
At first Shawcross spent most of his time working with computers, searching databases for the sequence and structure information that would provide him with starting points, later buying time on a supercomputer to predict the shapes and interactions of molecules as yet unknown.
When aqueous X-ray diffraction become possible, his work sped up by a factor of ten; to synthesise and observe the actual proteins and nucleic acids was now both faster, and more reliable, than the hideously complex process (even with the best short-cuts, approximations and tricks) of solving Schrödinger's equation for a molecule consisting of hundreds of thousands of atoms.
Base by base, gene by gene, the Shawcross virus grew.
· · · · ·
As the woman removed the last of her clothes, Shawcross, sitting naked on the motel room's plastic bucket chair, said, "You must have had sexual intercourse with hundreds of men."
"Thousands. Don't you want to come closer, honey? Can you see okay from there?"
"I can see fine."
She lay back, still for a moment with her hands cupping her breasts, then she closed her eyes and began to slide her palms across her torso.
This was the two hundredth occasion on which Shawcross had paid a woman to tempt him. When he had begun the desensitising process five years before, he had found it almost unbearable. Tonight he knew he would sit calmly and watch the woman achieve, or skilfully imitate, orgasm, without experiencing even a flicker of lust himself.
"You take precautions, I suppose."
She smiled, but kept her eyes closed. "Damn right I do. If a man won't wear a condom, he can take his business elsewhere. And I put it on, he doesn't do it himself. When I put it on, it stays on. Why, have you changed your mind?"
"No. Just curious."
Shawcross always paid in full, in advance, for the act he did not perform, and always explained to the woman, very clearly at the start, that at any time he might weaken, he might make the decision to rise from the chair and join her. No mere circumstantial impediment could take any credit for his inaction; nothing but his own free will stood between him and mortal sin.
Tonight, he wondered why he continued. The "temptation" had become a formal ritual, with no doubt whatsoever as to the outcome.
No doubt? Surely that was pride speaking, his wiliest and most persistent enemy. Every man and woman forever trod the edge of a precipice over the inferno, at risk more than ever of falling to those hungry flames when he or she least believed it possible.
Shawcross stood and walked over to the woman. Without hesitation, he placed one hand on her ankle. She opened her eyes and sat up, regarding him with amusement, then took hold of his wrist and began to drag his hand along her leg, pressing it hard against the warm, smooth skin.
Just above the knee, he began to panic—but it wasn't until his fingers struck moisture that he pulled free with a strangled mewling sound, and staggered back to the chair, breathless and shaking.
