whether he needed to take anything else with him. He thought not. He had copies of Ulam’s floppy diskettes in his briefcase. He had Ulam’s organisms within his blood.
Surely that would be enough to keep him busy for a while.
People? Anyone he should warn?
Any of his three ex-wives? He didn’t even know where they lived now. His accountant sent them their alimony checks. There was really no practical way—
Anybody he truly cared for, who truly cared for him?
He had last seen Paulette in March. The parting had been amicable. Everything had been amicable. They had orbited around each other like moon and planet, never really touching. Paulette had objected to being the moon, and quite rightly. She had done very well in her own career, chief cytotechnologist at Cetus Corporation in Palo Alto.
Now that he thought of it, she had probably been the one who had initially suggested his name to Harrison at Genetron. After they broke up. No doubt she had thought she was being very fair-minded and objective, helping all concerned.
He couldn’t fault her for that. But there was nothing in him that urged a call to her, a warning.
It just wasn’t practical.
His son he hadn’t heard from in five years. He was in China someplace on a research grant.
He put the notion out of his head.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
They nearly died. Within minutes, Edward was too weak to move. He watched as she called his parents, different hospitals, her school. She was frantic with fear that she might have infected her students. He imagined a ripple of news going out, being picked up. The panic. But Gail slowed, became dizzy, and lay down on the bed next to him.
She struggled and cursed, like a horse trying to right itself after breaking a leg, but the effort was useless.
With her last strength she came to him and they lay in each other’s arms, drenched in sweat. Gail’s eyes were closed, her face the color of talcum. She looked like a corpse in an embalming parlor. For a time Edward thought she was dead and sick as he was, he raged, hated, felt tremendous guilt for his weakness, his slowness to understand all the possibilities. Then he no longer cared. He was too weak to blink, so he closed his eyes and waited.
There was a rhythm in his arms, in his legs. With each pulse of blood, a kind of sound welled up within him as if an orchestra were performing thousands strong, but not in unison; playing whole seasons of symphonies at once. Music in the blood. The sensation become more coordinated; the wave-trains finally canceled into silence, then separated into harmonic beats.
The beats melted into the sound of his own heart.
Neither of them had any feel for the passage of time. It could have been days before he regained enough strength to go to the faucet in the bathroom. He drank until his stomach could hold no more and returned with a glass of water. Lifting her head with his arm, he brought the edge of the glass to Gail’s mouth. She sipped at it. Her lips were cracked, her eyes bloodshot and ringed with yellowish crumbs, but there was some color in her skin. “When are we going to die?” she asked, her voice a feeble croak. “I want to hold you when we die.”
Minutes later, he was strong enough to help her into the kitchen. He peeled an orange and shared it with her, feeling the pulse of the sugar and juice and acid down his throat. “Where is everybody?” she asked. “I called hospitals, friends. Where are they?”
The harmonic orchestral sensation returned, beats coordinating into recognizable fragments, the fragments coalescing, coming into a focus of meaning, and suddenly—
Is there DISCOMFORT?
—Yes.
He answered automatically and in kind, as if he had expected the exchange and was ready for a long conversation.
PATIENCE. There are difficulties.
—What? I don’t understand—
*Immune response* *Conflict*. Difficulties.
—Leave us, then! Go away!
Not possible. Too INTEGRATED.
They weren’t recovering, not to the extent they were free of the infection. Any feeling of returning freedom was illusory. Very briefly, saying what his strength would allow, he tried to explain to Gail what he thought they were experiencing.
She propped herself up out of the chair and went to the window, where she stood on shaking legs, looking out at green commons, other rows of apartments. “What about other people?” she asked. “Have they got it, too? That’s why they’re not here?”
“I don’t know. Probably soon.”
“Are they…the disease. Is it talking to you?”
He nodded.
“Then I’m not crazy.” She walked slowly across the living room. “I’m not going to be able to move much longer,” she said. “How about you? Maybe we should try to escape.”
He held her hand and shook his head. “They’re inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape?”
“Then I’d like to be in bed with you, when we can’t move any more. And I want your arms around me.”
They lay back on the bed and held each other.
“Eddie…”
That was the last sound he heard. He tried to resist, but waves of peace rolled over him and he could only experience. He floated on a wide blue-violet sea. Above the sea, his body was mapped onto a seemingly limitless plane. The noocyte endeavors were charted there, and he had no problem understanding their progress. It was obvious that his body was more noocyte than Milligan now.
—What’s going to happen to us?
No more MOTION.
—Are we dying?
Changing.
—And if we don’t want to change?
No PAIN.
—And fear? You won’t even allow us to be afraid?
The blue-violet sea and the chart faded into warm darkness.
He had plenty of time to think things through, but not nearly enough information. Was this what Vergil had experienced? No wonder he had seemed to be going crazy. Buried in some inner perspective, neither one place nor another. He felt an increase in warmth, a closeness and compelling presence.
•Edward…
—Gail? I can hear you-no, not hear you—
•Edward, I should be terrified. I want to be angry but I can’t.
Not essential.
—Go away! Edward, I want to fight back
—Leave us, please, leave us!
PATIENCE. Difficulties.
