Greg bear, p.1
Greg Bear, page 1
A Warner Communcahons Company
Copyright © 1989 by Greg Bear
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10103
OA Warner Communications Contpany
Printed in the United States of America
First Pnnting: August 1989
1098765432 I
Library of Congress Cataloging-m-Publication Data
Bear, Greg, 1951-Taugents / Greg Bear. p. crli. ISBN 0-446-51401-2 I. Title. 88-40597 PS3552.EI57T3 1989 CIP
813’.54—4c20
Book Design by Nick Mazzella
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Blood Music” appeared in ANALOG. Copyright © 1983 by Oreg Bear.
“Sleepside Story” was originally published by Cheap Street Press in a limited edition in 1988. Copyright © 1988 by Greg Bear.
“Webster” appeared in ALTERNITIES, edited by David Gerrold. Copyright © 1973 by Greg Bear.
“A Martian Ricorso” appeared in ANALOG. Copyright © 1976 by Greg Bear.
“Dead Run” appeared in OMNI. Copyright © 1985 by Greg Bear.
Schrodmger s Plague” appeared in ANALOG. Copyright 1982 by Greg Bear.
“Through Road No Whither” appeared in FAR FRONTIERS, edited by Jerry Poumelle and Jim Baen. Copyright © 1985 by Greg Bear.
“Tangents” appeared in OMNI. Copyright © 1986 by Greg Bear.
“Sisters” appears in this anthology for the first time. Copyright © 1989 by Greg Bear.
“The Machineries of Joy” was first published by the Nesfa Press in EARLY HARVEST Copyright © 1987 by Greg Bear.
This book is for Erik
More wonderful by far than anything contained herein.
CONTENTS
Introduction ·
3
Blood Music ·
11
Sleepside Story · 45
Webster · 101
A Martian Ricorso · 121
Dead Run · 145
Schr(Sdinger’s Plague · 181
Through Road No Whither ·
195
Tangents · 203
Sisters · 227
Introduction to “The Machineries of Ja The Machineries of Joy · 270
,y” · 269
INTRODUCTION
W
at is so fascinating about science fiction? Why o so many feel an attraction to its subjects, and a persistent few continue to think of it as (on the whole) worthless garbage?
The answer, I think, lies in a basic American dichotomy. America has always been a land set firmly not in the past, but in the future. On a recent visit to England, I found dozens of wonderful bookstores chock full of the past—ancient history, rooms full of it, and great literature in such monumental stacks as to be overwhelming. In the usual American bookstore, history might occupy a few bookcases; gte.at literature has its honored place, but this year’s paperbacks dominate. The past is
TANGENTS
not disregarded, but neither does it loom so large and run so deep in our blood.
America is suspended in a continuous grand jetg into the future. People who live in the future have different sophistications than those who are ever looking backward. But many Americans seem to feel this is a disordered way of living and thinking. They yearn for the relatively unchanging pleasures of history, of stories familiar and well told, of nuance over broad sweep; they yearn for an investigation of the problems of the past, still far from solved, but at least giving the appearance of being solvable.
For many, the future is much more frightful than the past. The future is not only filled with problems; the problems cannot be solved because most of them are unknown. The future is not a well-thumbed leather-bound book read before a cozy glowing fireplace. The wisdom of the past tells us that bad things are bound to happen, and our newly acquired powers point to bad things becoming worse. Optimism is a difficult frame of mind when one reads history.
Some Americans pretend that nothing will change, then, or that the best has already been, and what’s to come is best ignored, if only out of politeness. This condition is not unknown elsewhere; but in America, among people so afflicted, the severity is even more pronounced. Having so little past— only a few centuries, as opposed to thousands of years—a few Americans cling to what there is, and in their provincial reactionism outdo the citizens of nations with millennia behind them.
But for those many who embrace the future, who feel—however naively—that there might be wonder and greatness there, a literature has arisen at once young and full o[ energy, brash and often unsophisticated, commercial and designed to appeal to a broad if discerning public.
For decades now, we have dwelled in a ghetto largely of
4
Introduction
our own making. But the walls have been reinforced from the outside by a dwindling yet still influential intellectual elite for whom the forms and subjects of the past are all that can be discussed. Science fiction writers have blithely skipped on, retaining their essential childlike character, but at the same time displaying a remarkable ability to entertain those very people who are making the future. Engineers. Scientists. Computer programmers and designers. Astronauts and the men and women who build their rockets. Motion picture directors. Dreamers for whom the past, however interesting, is a kind of prison from which we must all break free. Revolutionaries. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, imagined a republic, and it came to be. Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, imagined a space program, and it came to be. Writers today envision hundreds of futures a year, thousands a decade, of which most are playful, for the sake of an evening’s thoughtful entertainment; and a few are more than that, are serious extrapolations to be seriously and soberly considered. Science fiction has now grown far beyond its ghetto walls. It has supplied names for history books, clich6s for television advertising, shapes for architecture. The extremes of science cross-fertilize with the imagined technologies of SE It has enraged, shaped, and enlivened world literature. It is truly international, and becoming more so year by year. But why do I write science fiction? Instinct, I suppose. I began writing it when I was eight, after thinking and drawing and telling stories to friends. After seeing a Ray Harryhausen monster from Venus eat sulphur and almost eat Rome. That monster gave me nightmares, and I knew where my particular future lay. I glued myself on to various writers, starting out with the Tom Swift, Jr., adventure novels and moving on to Edgar Rice Burroughs and then to
5
TANGENTS
Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, and through Clarke to Olaf Stapledon, and through Ray Bradbury to Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Wolfe and Nikos Kazantzakis, and through James Blish to James Joyce, and through Robert Silverberg to Joseph Conrad, spreading out roots, always adhering to the path of science fiction until in my growth I peeped beyond the branching pathways and saw the wonders of the past mixing with the future. I suppose this all sounds a little breathless, a little naive. So be it. I do not willingly give up my past, for in it are visions of the future that I continue to cherish, however crude and inadequate. They come to me from men who cared, men with genuine vision. I will not cut myself loose from them simply to be pasted with the label of sophistication. So here’s my challenge. We’re big now. Grown-up. Almost mature. Judge all of science fiction by your most knowing, discerning mental yardstick: you’ll inch and foot and yard (and oh, yes, tneler) yourself past authors who can satisfy most of your demands and requirements. There are great books being written. We’re in the middle of a literary revolution. But this is not a vicious historical tragedy of a revolution; it is a joyous celebration. We celebrate what we fear, as well as what we desire. Science fiction writers, and writers of that all-inclusive category, fantasy, adore strong emotions. Fear. Love. Revulsion. Obsession. I classify sense of wonder as a strong emotion. The modern scientific equivalent of epiphany is what I call the “intellectual high,” when a revelation has been handed down so magnificent, so mind-expanding, that exaltation is the only reasonable response. Science fiction, then, sometimes has the trappings of a modern religion—a cult religion for the skeptical, for the unfettered thinker.
Introduction
It has enthusiasm. All this appealed to me when I very young, and it still does. The stories in this book range from the beginning of my career to the present, and cover a broad variety; that’s the way I like it. While my greatest success has been with large, sprawling science fiction novels of the type loosely described as “hard,” I’m fond of short stories, and of fantasy and magic realism. Perhaps the most famous story collected here is “Blood Music,” first published in 1983. The idea occurred to me within ten minutes of reading an article in New Scientist on biochips, theoretical organic computers that might be as small as a single cell. Even before the story won its share of awards, I realized that it needed expansion, and was working on a novel-length version of the same name. The novel departs substantially from the short story. Both have been reprinted and translated all over the world; I remain a faithful reader of New Scientist. I’m very fond of “Sleepside Story,” perhaps because it differs so greatly from most of my writing. Quite often, between my science fiction novels, I feel the urge to explore a different territory, something I’ve never done before…In this case, an urban fairy tale. “Dead Run,” another fantasy, was turned into a Twilight Zone television episode, brilliantly scripted by Alan Brennert. Because Alan and I are good friends, a rare opportunity arose. For a period of several weeks
7
TANGENTS
the story for this collection, I’ve made some changes. Ina way, without reducing my role one whit, Alan has now collaborated on this printed version. “Sisters” is hard SF with a strong social slant. It’s also a preliminary working out of themes and ideas I’ll be developing more fully in my novel, Queen of Angels. “Sisters” appears for the first time in this collection. “Tangents” was originally written for a computer magazine that decided not to run fiction. I thought of it as an homage to the mathematical fantasies collected by Clifton Fadiman in the 1950s, in particular Martin Gardner’s “The No-Sided Professor,” which introduced me to M6bius strips when I was eleven or twelve. Rudy Rucker’s The Fourth Dimension provided additional fuel. The story gathered more awards, perhaps because, behind the mathematics, there is an angry parable based on the life of the English mathematician Alan Turing…Or perhaps because science fiction readers truly appreciate mathematical fantasies. “Schr6dinger’s Plague” is a jape on physics, something of an in-joke. In fact, the situation described therein—or at least the outcome—is not possible, so several physicists whom I trust have informed me. But finding out why it’s not possible could involve the reader in a solid undergraduate course in quantum mechanics. To my delight, science (and science fiction) writer John Gribbin cited the story as one of several that motivated him to write his book, In Search of Schr6dinger’s Cat. “Webster” and “A Martian Ricorso” were first printed earlier in my career, and still, I think, have their charms. And what else is so attractive about science fiction, especially to younger writers? Here, mired in the future, the short story is alive and well.
Blood Music
T here is a principle in nature I don’t think anyone has pointed out before. Each hour, a myriad of trillions of little live things—bacteria, microbes, “animalcules”are bom and die, not counting for much except in the bulk of their existence and the accumulation of their tiny effects. They do not perceive deeply. They do not suffer much. A hundred billion, dying, would not begin to have the same importance as a single human death. Within the ranks of magnitude of all creatures, small as microbes or great as humans, there is an equality of “elan,” just as the branches of a tall tree, gathered together, equal the bulk of the limbs below, and all the limbs equal the bulk of the trunk.
TANGENTS
That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it. It had been two years since I’d last seen Vergil. My memory of him hardly matched the tan, smiling, well-dressed gentleman standing before me. We had made a lunch appointment over the phone the day before, and now faced each other in the wide double doors of the employees’ cafeteria at the Mount Freedom Medical Center. “Vergil?” I asked. “My God, Vergil!” “Good to see you, Edward.” He shook my hand firmly. He had lost ten or twelve kilos and what remained seemed tighter, better proportioned. At university, Vergil had been the pudgy, shock-haired, snaggle-toothed whiz kid who hot-wired doorknobs, gave us punch that turned our piss blue, and never got a date except with Eileen Termagent, who shared many of his physical characteristics. “You look fantastic,” I said. “Spend a summer in Cabo San Lucas?” We stood in line at the counter and chose our food. “The tan,” he said, picking out a carton of chocolate milk, “is from spending three months under a sunlamp. My teeth were straightened just after I last saw you. I’ll explain the rest, but we need a place to talk where no one will listen close.” I steered him to the smoker’s corner, where three diehard puffers were scattered among six tables. “Listen, I mean it,” I said as we unloaded our trays. “You’ve changed. You’re looking good.” “I’ve changed more than you know.” His tone was motion-picture ominous, and he delivered the line with a theatrical lift of his brows. “How’s Gall?” Gall was doing well, I told him, teaching nursery school. We’d married the year before. His gaze shifted down to his food—pineapple slice and cottage cheese, piece of banana
12
Blood Music
cream pie—and he said, his voice almost cracking, “Notice something else’?” I squinted in concentration. “Uh.” “Look closer.” “I’m not sure. Well, yes, you’re not wearing glasses. Contacts’?” “No. I don’t need them anymore.” “And you’re a snappy dresser. Who’s dressing you now? I hope she’s as sexy as she is tasteful.” “Candice isn’t—wasn’t responsible for the improvement in my clothes,” he said. “I just got a better job, more money to throw around. My taste in clothes is better than my taste in food, as it happens.” He grinned the old Vergil self-deprecating grin, but ended it with a peculiar leer. “At any rate, she’s left me, I’ve been fired from my job, I’m living on savings.” “Hold it,” I said. “That’s a bit crowded. Why not do a linear breakdown’? You got a job. Where?” “Genetron Corp.,” he said. “Sixteen months ago.” “I haven’t heard of them.” ‘You will. They’re putting out common stock in the next month. It’ll shoot off the board. They’ve broken through with MABs. Medical—” “I know what MABs are,” I interrupted. “At least in lheory. Medically Applicable Biochips.” “They have some that work.” “What?” It was my turn to lift my brows. “Microscopic logic circuits. You inject them into the human body, they set up shop where they’re told and troubleshoot. With Dr. Michael Bernard’s approval.” That was quite impressive. Bernard’s reputation was spotless. Not only was he associated with the genetic engineering biggies, but he had made news at least once a year in his
TANGENTS
practice as a neurosurgeon before retiring. Covers on Time, Mego, Rolling Stone.
“That’s supposed to be secret—stock, breakthrough, Bernard, everything.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “But you do whatever the hell you want. I’m through with the bastards.”
I whistled. “Make me rich, huh’?”
“If that’s what you want. Or you can spend some time with me before rushing off to your broker.”
“Of course.” He hadn’t touched the cottage cheese or pie. He had, however, eaten the pineapple slice and drunk the chocolate milk. “So tell me more.”
“Well, in reed school I was training for lab work. Biochemical research. I’ve always had a bent for computers, too. So I put myself through my last two years—”
“By selling software packages to Westinghouse,” I said. “It’s good my friends remember. That’s how I got involved with Genetron, just when they were starting out. They had big money backers, all the lab facilities I thought anyone would ever need. They hired me, and I advanced rapidly.
“Four months and I was doing my own work, I made some breakthroughs’ ‘—he tossed his hand nonchalantly—’ ‘then I went off on tangents they thought were premature. I persisted and they took away my lab, handed it over to a certifiable flatworm. I managed to save part of the experiment before they fired me. But I haven’t exactly been cautious.., or judicious. So now it’s going on outside the lab.”
l’d always regarded Vergil as ambitious, a trifle cracked, and not terribly sensitive. His relations with authority figures had never been smooth. Science, for him, was like the woman you couldn’t possibly have, who suddenly opens her arms to you, long before you’re ready for mature love—leaving you
Blood Music
afraid you’ll forever blow the chance, lose the prize. Apparently, he did. “Outside the lab? I don’t get you.” “Edward, I want you to examine me. Give me a thorough physical. Maybe a cancer diagnostic. Then I’ll explain more.” “You want a five-thousand-dollar exam?” “Whatever you can do. Ultrasound, NMR, thermogram, everything.” “I don’t know if I can get access to all that equipment. NMR full-scan has only been here a month or two. Hell, you couldn’t pick a more expensive way—” “Then ultrasound. That’s all you’ll need.” “Vergil, I’m an obstetrician, not a glamour-boy lab-tech. OB-GYN, butt of all jokes. If you’re turning into a woman, maybe I can help you.” He leaned forward, almost putting his elbow into the pie, but swinging wide at the last instant by scant millimeters. The old Vergil would have hit it square. “Examine me closely and you’ll…” He narrowed his eyes. “Just examine me.” “So I make an appointment for ultrasound. Who’s going to pay?” ‘I’m on Blue Shield.” He smiled and held up a medical credit card. “I messed with the personnel files at Genetron. Anything up to a hundred thousand dollars medical, they’ll never check, never suspect.”
