Untitled fr12, p.18
Untitled.FR12, page 18
And he would never, never find another chemical like trialine. Trialine—the wonder chemical—and a cluster of paradoxes. Was it a lifeless atomic arrangement of C, H, and N, or was it a living thing, at once malignant and benign? It transformed everything it touched: The Living. The Dead. Even computers were not safe. Of all those it had influenced, Mukerjee would probably best understand it. For it ran the entire gamut of Hindu gods. It was Shiva the Destroyer, for it had killed Viturate and, in a sense Uriah Hight. And certainly it had destroyed Serane’s group. And yet it was also Vishnu the Preserver, for it had saved Kussman, even against his will, and Abrams, and thousands in India, and would continue to save lives through the years. And finally it was Brahma the Creator, for it was directly responsible for that strange computer-reincarnation of Billy that night of May 19.
He pondered the future of the company. In its long history it had survived worse than Kussman. Kussman was a mere insect bite. And what fate awaited the lab director? Here Paul smiled wryly. He expected that loyalty and devotion would be rewarded, and that Kussman would eventually enter the very highest echelons of the company. He’s probably take Pinkster and Humbert with him, and would leave Oldham behind to run the lab. (And the name of the lab might get changed to Kussman Laboratory, or some such thing.)
How could it be otherwise? But it really didn’t matter. He wished them all well.
But it was time to go.
He drove by Rhoda Street to lock up the apartment, pack a bag, and to call Mary. Odd—it was almost as though she had been expecting him. “I’ve followed it all, with Evelyn,” she explained. “Paul, I’m so sorry.”
“You were talking to Evelyn? I don’t have a phone in The Hole, but she’s supposed to take my calls at the old office for the time being. She should have told me you called.”
“I asked her not to bother you. I know you’re having problems there.” Defensive. It must be important.
“So here we are talking, and I’d very much like to know why you called.”
“It’s nothing.”
It’s nothing, he repeated to himself. “You’re pregnant.” It was that afternoon at the C&O Canal. Score one more for trialine.
“But I’ve got the resorbin pills right here,” she said quickly. “Three days … no trace.”
She’s a cool one. He frowned. “But you haven’t started the program yet?”
“No. Thought I’d check with you first.”
He wasn’t sure at first just what he ought to say. He knew the statistics. A substantial and growing number of the emancipated women of this twenty-first century preferred their children via the sperm bank of the Genetics Bureau. They could (with the aid of the computer, of course) select just about what they wanted. IQs exceeding theirs by up to ten points. Potential scientist. Potential musician. Potential artist. Potential athlete. Nearly guaranteed for the top ten percent in grade school, with federally financed scholarships for college. In another hundred years, according to the NAAW, there would be no need for men at all, except a selected few, for stud service.
How did Mary feel about all this?
There was no way to know for sure. (For the mind of woman is basically unknowable.) And yet, she had called him.
“Look,” he said. “I’m driving right over. Meanwhile you can flush those damn pills down the WC.”
And now he suddenly recalled that he had no job, no prospects, and that the idea of living with a woman full time had certain unnerving aspects. And maybe she didn’t want him at all. But he was determined to ask her. She could turn him down, of course. Indeed, logic dictated that she should. And she might even laugh at him. And then again she might not. Actually, there was no way to predict what she might do.
He whistled the prelude to the Song as he strode out to the parking lot with his bag.
As he drove over he found himself thinking about that afternoon at the canal, and then about the broken-down stone building, and that washed-out sign at the entrance, and the odor of ozone. Several times, he had tried to put that sign together in his mind, and he had never quite been able to do it.
Dan
No T
Site of a No
U.S. Office
Was it something he should be concerned with? Should he call the parks department? No, that would be silly. They’d talk to him politely, but they’d think he was crazy.
He toyed with it like a difficult crossword puzzle, or a Sam Lloyd mate in three.
So what was the worst possibility? Could “No—” mean… novarella?
It was popping out at him, letter by letter.
Dan—
No Trespassing
Site of a Novarella—
U.S. Office of—
He swallowed hard and began to sweat Danger
No Trespassing Site of a Novarella Death U. S. Office of Epidemology
And that explained the ozone odor around the little building. It was the residue of a force field—shorted out by the storm.
And now what?
He needed to think. He pulled over onto the shoulder. Was Mukerjee back from Calcutta? He picked up the handset from his dashboard and dialed the National Health Institutes in Washington. To his unutterable relief the biologist was there.
“Paul! How good to hear your voice!”
Paul quickly explained the problem.
Mukerjee was noncommittal. He asked questions.
“How long ago? Do you think Mary is pregnant?” Then he seemed to breathe heavily. “Yes, there was a novarella death there. A tramp—unidentified. We recommended destruction of the building and sterilization of the site. The force field was a temporary measure.”
“I should mention one other thing,” said Paul. “We had sandwiches and tea in the building. Both of us had fifty-milligram doses of ds-trialine in our tea. It was left over from Serane’s patent interference. We tried it for lack of milk or cream, to complex the purines and tannins.”
“Trialine—in your tea!” Mukerjee seemed to take time to marvel about this. “Fifty milligrams within minutes of exposure! Twice what we used in India. Two million doses, and we didn’t lose a single patient. Ah, Paul, old friend, you have absolutely nothing to fear. You did exactly the right thing. You must have a guardian angel protecting you.”
He thought about that for a moment. “How about Mary?”
“She’ll be safe too.”
“And the baby.”
“No effect whatsoever. Remember our experiment?” “Of course. Well, then, there’s nothing we should do? Such as check in at a hospital?”
“Nothing. They’d probably do something to you to make you sick.”
“Should I tell Mary?”
“Not recommended. She might get upset. Possibility of a miscarriage. Who knows?”
“Thanks, Razmic.”
“Always a pleasure to talk to you, Paul.”
“How’s Lilith?”
“Fine. She has lots of friends here.”
They rang off.
He noticed then that he was dripping with perspiration.
26
A Beginning
Mary had a windowless fold-up in Penthouse Views, in upper Manhattan. Despite the minuscule dimensions of her apartment, the rent took one-third of her monthly paycheck. Because of the lack of space nearly everything folded up into the walls when not in use. The stainless-steel combination lavatory and kitchen sink folded down if she wanted to wash her hands, brush her teeth, or wash dishes. The electric hot plate folded down from the “kitchen” wall, as did the two-cubic-foot frij. Only the bathroom was spared these spatial sacrifices, and only because the Manhattan Housing Authority had never been able to invent a reliable method of collapsing a toilet. The furniture (two chairs, kitchen/study table, thirty-six-inch bed) folded out and/or from the walls.
This determined encapsulation of all the amenities of life reduced floor space to sixteen square meters and resulted in the highest density of humanity per unit cubic space in North America. Worldwide it was excelled in this respect only by a suburb in Bombay, where the citizens dwelt in a cluster of large sewer pipes donated by a nervous government.
During the first year of its occupancy, a number of inmates in Mary’s building (originally named Cosy Arms) had been stricken by claustrophobia. There had been several lawsuits, and the resultant publicity had reduced rentals. Whereupon the administration (having duly consulted a firm of industrial psychologists) had installed an artificial multiview system in each apartment. The system consisted of a series of closed-circuit Luminex panels that lined the upper borders of the walls and completely covered the ceiling. These panels were fed from the perle bank of International Computers in Lawrence, Kansas. There were thousands of views available, ranging from Mars- and moonscapes to the District of Columbia as seen from the top of the Washington Monument. The occupant could further select the time of day—or night—or could elect to have the view run continuously for twenty-four hours, showing continuing changes in light and shadows, sun, moon, cloud cover, and (if the night were clear) even overhead motion of the stars. There was no audio, but nobody minded.
The illusion of vast space was startling. The management promptly changed the name of the building to Penthouse Views, and it quickly filled up again.
There was still an occasional problem. One tenant, finding himself apparently atop Mount Everest, had an attack of vertigo, fainted, and cracked his skull on the fold-down snack table. That one was settled out of court. And there were acrophobiacs and agora-phobiacs who absolutely refused to venture into the illusions offered; who indeed had originally moved in because of the closeness of the apartment space, and who demanded that their panels be removed. (They were.)
After things settled down, there had been only one further lawsuit, which the corporation won. A pair of despondent lovers attempted to commit suicide by leaping over the rim of the Grand Canyon, but succeeded only in smashing a series of panels and filling their astonished faces with pieces of glass.
Mary’s favorite was a view of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower. She loved to turn it on in the morning, and to eat her toast while looking out over the sparkling Seine ribbon with its tiny boats. In the evening when she came home, it would be waiting for her, and she would have her TV pop-up and a glass of wine while gazing up the hill at the gray-pink buildings of Montmartre, all clustered lovingly around the white domes of Sacre-Coeur.
Tonight, however, she had turned off the view system. The reasons were various. Firstly, she didn’t know how Paul would react; secondly, she didn’t want any distractions.
This night, in this apartment, they were married.
The ceremony consisted of listening to questions posed in a dry monotone by a tape, operated twenty-four hours a day by the Federal Bureau of Vital Statistics, and then giving the answers after the sound of the bleeps. Name of prospective bridegroom? Bleep. “Paul Henry Blandford.” His Social Security number? Bleep. His date of birth? Bleep. His place of birth? Maiden name of bride? Bleep … (The voice checks had been required for years—ever since a prankster had stolen the mayor’s ID and the computer had married him to the Fat Lady at Ringling Brothers’ Circus.)
Do you take each other in lawful marriage? Bleep. Do you want this marriage retroactively dated? “Yes.” (He thought quickly. The hearing date, the next day, Saturday.) He gave the date: “September—, 2006.”
Place your ID cards in the slots provided in the side of the phone. Ten seconds in required for checking validity of your oral answers and your cards. Check completed. Your marriage registration number is NY-2006-17834. This number now appears impressed on your cards, under “Status,” and will henceforth appear on your payroll and IRS forms. The time is 9:05 p.m. The temperature at city hall is seven degrees Celsius, winds from the northwest eight kilometers per hour, chance of precipitation ten percent tonight. ..
Paul put the receiver back in the cradle. They didn’t even look at their newly modified IDs.
In the semidark Mary went into the bathroom and changed. She came back out after a time, wearing a white satin housecoat, vaguely iridescent, fastened to the waist with magnetic stripping. Her nipples pressed inquisitively against the fabric, as though looking for the hands that would soon be on them.
She faced him full and pulled the magnetic release down, easing the robe off one shoulder and then the other, so that it began to fall. It fell slowly, buoyed by friction and entrapped air. It hung a second at her hips, so that she had to encourage it a little with her palms, and then it floated to the final encircling folds around her ankles. As Paul watched it fall, it seemed to him that it was not truly falling, but rather that she was rising up through it, like Venus rising from the sea. He marveled but a moment at this illusion, because his eyes were immediately transfixed by her body. In all his life he had never seen anything so beautiful. The deadly virus had not touched her. Her birth patch was barely visible in the shadow.
Later, as they lay within the narrow confines of her bed, he thought of lines from The Song of Solomon: How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels … thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies. Her hair, ordinarily straight, flooded out in damp ringlets. Thou art all fair, my love. There is no spot in thee.
(Did we have supper? I can’t remember. / wonder if she’s getting hungry. Maybe 1 should have the White Tower send up some hamburgers.) But even as he was thinking, his free hand began to move slowly again over her hip and breast. She reached with both arms and pulled his body over to smother hers. Again, she moved beneath him.
This was time’s golden gift, to recompense all that had gone before, and all that would follow. He thought of Billy, and there was no past. He would lie with Mary, and there would be only the present, only these moments, which would last forever.
“Now!” he whispered to his wife. Startled. And a jeweled crescendo. And gone. With remembrance of waves that crashed in great seas.
Finally, they slept.
After a time something awakened her. It was a faint light, overhead and encircling the upper wall areas. Had some electronic fault triggered die view circuits?
The panels were indeed coming alive. But the scene was not Paris. It wasn’t anything she recognized, in fact, it wasn’t a view looking down on anything. It was as eye-level scene, and it was moving, as though she were walking through it.
She was so astonished that she didn’t even think to awaken Paul, who lay beside her, sound asleep, breathing in a quiet susurrus.
She carefully disengaged her husband’s arm and squeezed up into a sitting position. The light seemed to be increasing; or perhaps she was becoming adjusted to it. At any rate, she could see fairly clearly now. She seemed to be moving through a sparse patch of trees. She thought immediately of that afternoon on the C&O Canal. Her nose twitched. The odors were the same as those in the abandoned lockhouse on the canal: fresh, green, spicy, aromatic. There, the perfume had been from the willow leaves. But no, this wasn’t the canal. The trees were the same. They were willows. But the place was different—much different. Far off to the right, and looming upward, was some sort of strange skeletal structure. Something built of steel girders. A bridge? Very likely. And now she was at the edge of the little grove, and she had stopped moving. She had stopped, as though to listen. It was deep evening, and she heard the varied gurgles of water flowing. The bridge must cross a little river or creek. She heard frogs croaking; a light breeze riffled the willow leaves behind her. Somewhere ahead a bird chanted its name in mournful repetition: “Whippoor-will.. . whippoorwtff…”
Some distant part of her mind warned her, No sound or odors in these panels. Not programmed for it. She shrugged off the admonition and moved on.
The whole scene belonged to her, and she could move about as she wished. She moved up the little embankment to the railroad tracks and turned and faced out across the bridge span. And there at the
other end she saw the figure, watching her. It was a luminous thing, but she could make out a body with head, arms, and legs.
She was naked, and fresh from her marriage bed, but she knew her nakedness was irrelevant. It was as though she were a nymph or naiad, sharing a pastoral scene with a Greek god.
And now she could make out the features of the face, a face that looked very much like that of Dr. Serane. But it wasn’t Dr. Serane. This face had the same sweep-back hair, parted in the middle, and the same eyes and cheeks, and the same smile. But this face was younger, thinner, and the eyes burned.
She had never seen that face before, but she recognized it.
Paul was now awake, and he saw all of this, and with almost equal wonder. But Mary was completely oblivious to him. She knew only this strange enchanted world of the Bridge.
Chills began to run up and down his spine. For now, all unwitting, the Priestess stood at the entrance of the Bridge, and the Prophet waited on the other side. She didn’t even know she was the Priestess, or that this was the last act of the Song, and that the moment would soon come to present her Petition.
Should he awaken her? That was a silly thought. She was awake—as much as he was. But did she know what to ask for? And indeed, what were the right things to ask for? Health for herself? Her child? He didn’t really know. He felt absolutely helpless.
