would fail. Rhodes picked it up and turned it over and over in his hand like a giant worry bead. BONES. LUNGS. SKIN. Yes. KIDNEYS. HEART. MIND. He stared for a moment or two at mind. Ah, that was the real problem, he thought, the true killer. MIND.
The annunciator flashed again and this time the voice said, “Meshoram Enron, calling on Line Two.”
“Who?”
“Meshoram Enron,” the automaton said again, with great precision. “The Israeli journalist. You’ve agreed to have lunch with him today.”
“Oh. Right.” Rhodes hesitated. He wasn’t ready for Enron either, just this moment—not, at any rate, one- on-one. “Tell him I can’t make lunch, how about dinner?” Rhodes reached without thinking for Van Vliet’s virtuals, put them back, pulled them toward him again, stared at them as though they had only just arrived at his office. “And if he says yes, call Ms. Martine for me and put her through when you have her. I’ll want her to be joining us.”
Back from the android, a few moments later, came the report: Mr. Enron would be happy to make it a dinner meeting. Would Dr. Rhodes care to pick him up at his hotel in San Francisco at half past seven? As for Ms. Martine, she was away from her phone, but a seek-message had been attached to her number. And there was another message from Dr. Van Vliet, who was very much looking forward to the opportunity to discuss his proposals in person with Dr. Rhodes as soon as possible, blah blah, hoping for an early response, blah blah blah —
Yes. Blah blah blah. A busy day, suddenly. Rhodes was starting to feel outnumbered. Van Vliet, turning the pressure on. This Enron, sniffing around wanting to find out God knows what. A spy, no doubt. All Israelis were spies, in one way or another, Rhodes thought. What next? And only ten in the morning. Time for the first drink yet?
No, Rhodes decided crisply. It is not time for a drink yet.
But if it was too soon to have a drink and too soon to deal with Van Vliet’s report, then he was making procrastination the order of the day, and that didn’t feel good either. With sudden manic decisiveness Rhodes overruled himself on everything he had just been telling himself. Total shift of direction, that was the ticket. Reaching under the desk, he deftly disarmed the privacy lock on the liquor drawer, brought forth the cognac, knocked back a quick shot. Pondered a moment, had another, a smaller nip. Then, as the glow began to spread, he picked up Van Vliet’s proposal again and clicked it into the playback slot.
Instantly a virtual Alex Van Vliet stood before him, small as life: trim, wiry little guy, chilly blue eyes, tiny close-clinging goatee, square-shouldered defiant stance that maximized his flimsy frame. Rhodes, a big shambling burly man, mistrusted little agile ones. They made him feel like a beleaguered gorilla surrounded by yapping monkeys. And gorillas were extinct, essentially. Monkeys thrived like mosquitoes in the world’s new jungles.
Behind Van Vliet, reaching its arms forward to surround his image like a sort of open-ended nimbus, was a snaking three-dimensional pattern of colored dots which Rhodes recognized almost instantly as a beta-chain hemoglobin molecule. Van Vliet was saying, “They are conjugated proteins and consist of four heme groups and the globin molecule. The heme component is a porphyrin in which the metal ion that is coordinated is iron in the ferrous state, that is, Fe+2. The globin component consists of four polypeptide chains, which are designated alpha, beta, gamma, and so forth, according to their amino-acid makeup.”
It was the middle of an elementary lecture on the function of hemoglobin. Rhodes realized that he had somehow activated the visual incorrectly and had missed Van Vliet’s introductory remarks. But that was all right. He could pretty well imagine what they were. Best to glide into them in a roundabout fashion.
“—all-important role of the hemoglobin pigment in mammalian respiration is to combine loosely with molecular oxygen, so that it is capable of transporting oxygen from the organism’s intake point to the point of utilization. However, hemoglobin has an affinity for many other molecules: for example, it readily unites with carbon monoxide, with disastrous effects to the body. It bonds easily with nitric oxide as well. Sulfhemoglobin, which is hemoglobin plus hydrogen sulfide gas, is another significant pathological form of the pigment. Hematin, which is the hydroxyl compound of heme—”
While he was speaking, Van Vliet moved briskly around the virtual stage, adjusting the molecular patterns behind his simulated figure with quick confident motions of his hands, like a magician rearranging his props. At his deft touch the bright patterns underwent instant metamorphosis to demonstrate each altered form of hemoglobin Van Vliet summoned forth. The colors were very pretty. Rhodes allowed himself another small drink. It took the edge off. Gradually Rhodes’ attentiveness diminished, not so much on account of the cognac as simply out of boredom and irritation.
Van Vliet went right on, cruising remorselessly through basic biochemical information. This visual was obviously intended for people on higher managerial levels than Rhodes’, where technical expertise was more tenuous. “Ferrous salts— insufficient oxygen supply to the tissues—affinity for carbon, phosphorus, manganese, vanadium, tungsten—iron will form dihalides with all four of the common halogens—”
Yes. Yes. It certainly will.
With a diabolical grin Van Vliet said suddenly, “But of course that will soon be obsolete, so far as the human race is concerned. Since, as I have already indicated, our consensus projections of the makeup of the Earth’s atmosphere circa A.D. 2350 indicate significant replacement of oxygen and nitrogen by complex hydrocarbons and sulfur compounds, as well as a continuing increase in the already critical percentage of carbon dioxide, we will need to adjust the body’s respiration capacity accordingly. The risks of continuing to use the iron-based pigment hemoglobin as the respiratory system’s vital transport protein are manifest. We will have to shatter the human race’s dependence on oxygen. A hydrogen-to-methane cycle is one possible alternative, employing a transport protein that utilizes the locking and unlocking of a double sulfur bond, as can be seen in this diagram.”
The pattern now was that of a tightly coiled serpent in angry reds and slashing violets, head hovering above the tip of its own tail as though getting ready to strike.
Rhodes put Van Vliet’s presentation on hold and backed it up ninety seconds or so.
He’s lost his mind, Rhodes thought.
Right. Right. The visual, rolling onward, had reached the point where Rhodes had reversed it. Once again Van Vliet, like a capering demigod, built his red-and-purple serpent in midair in front of Rhodes’ desk with quick, delicate movements of his hands. Rhodes hunched forward with his chin propped on his fists and watched Van Vliet cruise on to the end of the first capsule, offering more apocalyptic news about the human respiratory system in the coming age of oxygen-deficient air. The second capsule, Van Vliet said by way of teaser, contained the actual technical specifications for the corrective work he proposed to undertake. Rhodes picked up the second capsule but did not insert it for playback.
The backstairs scuttlebutt was true, then.
The little guy was suggesting nothing less than to rearrange the body’s whole respiratory-circulatory works to make human beings capable of breathing a sulfur-dioxide/ methane/carbon-dioxide mix, and to hell with any need for oxygen. Of all the adapto proposals that had been kicked around the Santachiara labs in the past year and a half, this was by far the most radical. By far, by far, by far. No one had ever envisioned attempting such a total transformation. Rhodes doubted, even after having looked through some of Van Vliet’s specs, that the thing could ever be managed. It was wildly out of line with Rhodes’ sense of the possible.
Rhodes felt a muscle pulling itself tight in his cheek, like a tiny acrobat getting itself ready for a long-distance leap, and he pressed the tips of two fingers into it, hard, to discharge the tension that was building up there.
Another drink?
No, Rhodes decided. Not just yet.
Could Van Vliet’s gimmick work?
Not in a million years, Rhodes thought. You’d have to redesign everything, top to bottom, the entire array of organs— lungs and liver and lights too, whatever the hell lights might be, and right on down to the osmotic capacity of the cell walls—a total makeover, in effect a second creation of humanity. It was an absurdly
