Blood Music

Europe, is very ugly.

—I have no power to stop them.

PERSUASION?

Another inner chuckle.—No; I’m what they want destroyed. And you.

You are far less influential in your realm than we are here.

—Oh, yes, of course.

For a long period, no messages issue from the command cluster. There is even less time. We are transferring you now.

He feels a subtle shift in the voice as he is moved by flagellates away from the command cluster. Follow. He realizes that a group of clusters has broken away from the command cluster. They are communicating with him, and their voice seems oddly familiar, more direct and accessible.

—Who is guiding me?

The response is chemical. An identifying string is brought to him by a flagellate, and suddenly be knows he is being guided by four clusters of primary B-lympho-cytes, the earliest versions of the noocytes. Primary B- lymphocytes are accorded a place in most command clusters, and treated with great respect; they are the precursors, even though their activities are limited. They are primitive in both meanings of the word; less sophisticated in design and function than recently created noocytes, and the ancestors of all.

You may enter THOUGHT UNIVERSE.

The voice fades in and out like a bad telephone connection. Choppy, incomplete.

The sensation of being in a noocyte cluster ended abruptly. Now Bernard was neither embodied nor shrunk to the noocyte scale. His thoughts simply were, and the place where they were was excruciatingly beautiful

If there was any extension in space, it was illusory. Dimensions seemed to be defined by subject; information relevant to his current thinking was close at hand, other subjects were farther away. The overall impression was of a vast, many layered library, arranged in a sphere around him. He shared this center with another presence.

Humans, human form, the presence said. A scurry of information surrounded Bernard, giving him arms, legs, a body and face. Beside him, apparently sitting in a reclining chair, was a wispy image of Vergil Ulam. Ulam smiled without passion or conviction.

“I am your cellular Vergil. Welcome to the inner circle of the command clusters.”

“You’re dead,” Bernard said, his voice an imperfect approximation.

“So I understand.”

“Where are we?”

“Roughly translating the noocyte descriptive string, we are in a Thought Universe. I call it a noosphere. In here, all we experience is generated by thinking. We can be whatever we wish, or learn whatever we wish, or think about anything. We won’t be limited by lack of knowledge or experience; everything can be brought to us. When not used by the command dusters, I spend most of my time here.”

A granite dodecahedron, its edges decorated with gold bars, formed between them. It rolled this way and that for a moment then addressed Vergil’s pale, translucent form. Bernard did not understand the communication. The dodecahedron vanished.

“We all take characteristic shapes here, and most of us add textures, details. Noocytes don’t have names, Mr. Bernard; they put together sequences of identifying amino acids. Sounds complicated, but really much simpler than a fingerprint. In the noosphere, all active researchers must have definite identifying symbols.”

Bernard tried to find traces of the Vergil Ulam he had met and shaken hands with. There didn’t seem to be many. Even the voice lacked the accent and slight breath-lessness he remembered. “There’s not very much of you here, is there?”

Vergil’s ghost shook its head. “Not all of me was translated to the noocyte level before my cells infected you. I hope there’s a better record somewhere. This one is hardly adequate. I’m only about one third here. What is here, however, is cherished and protected. Shade of honored ancestor, vague memory of creator.” Its voice faded in and out omitting or sliding over certain syllables. The image moved sparingly. The hope is they will connect with noocytes back home, find more of me. Not just fragments of a broken vase.”

The image became more transparent “Must go now. Supplements coming. Always part of me here; you and I, we’re the models. I suspect you have precedence now. Be seeing you.”

Bernard stood alone in the noosphere, surrounded by options he hardly knew how to take advantage of. He held his hand out toward the surrounding information. It rippled all around him, waves of light spreading from nadir to zenith. Ranks of information exchanged priorities and his memories stacked up around him like towers of cards, each represented by a line of light.

The lines cascaded.

He had been thinking

“Just another day for you, isn’t it?” Nadia turned and stepped gracefully onto the courtroom escalator.

Not the most pleasant” he said. Down they went.

“Yes, well, just another.” She smelled of tea roses and something else quiet and clean. She had always been beautiful in his eyes, no doubt in the eyes of others; small, slender, black-haired, she did not draw immediate stares, but a few minutes alone in a room with her and there was no doubt: most men would want to spend many hours, days, months.

But not years. Nadia was quickly bored, even with Michael Bernard.

“Back to business, then,” she said halfway down. “More interviews.”

He did not respond. Nadia, bored, became a baiter.

“Well, you’re rid of me,” she said at the bottom. “And I am rid of you.”

“I’ll never be rid of you,” Bernard said. “You always represented something important to me.” She swiveled on her high heels and presented die rear of an immaculately tailored blue suit He grabbed her arm none too gently and brought her around to face him. “You were my last chance at being normal. I’ll never love another woman like I did you. You burned. I’ll like women, but I’ll never commit to them; I’ll never be naive with them.”

“You’re babbling, Michael,” Nadia said, lips tightening on his name. “Let me go.”

“Like hell,” he said. “You have one and a half million dollars. Give me something in return.”

“Fuck off,” she said.

“You don’t like scenes, do you?”

“Let go of me.”

“Cool, dignified. I can take something now, if you want. Take it out in trade.”

“You bastard.”

He trembled and slapped her. “For tire last of my naivete. For three years, the first wonderful. For the third a royal misery.”

“I’ll kill you,” she said. “Nobody—”

He brought his leg around behind her and tripped her. She fell back on her ass with a shriek. Legs sprawled, hands spread on stiff arms behind her, she looked up at him with lips writhing. “You—”

“Brute,” he said. “Calm, cold, rational brutality. Not very different from what you put me through. But you don’t use physical force. You just provoke it.”

“Shuttup.” She held out her hand and he helped her to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Not once, during their three years together, had he ever struck her. He felt like dying.

“Bullshit. You’re everything I said you were, you bastard. You miserable little boy.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. The crowds of people in the hall watched them warily, murmuring disapproval. Thank God there were no reporters.

“Go play with your toys,” she said. “Your scalpels, your nurses, your patients. Go ruin their lives and just stay away from me.”

An older memory.

“Father.” He stood by the bed, uncomfortable at the reversal of roles, no longer the doctor but now a visitor. The room smelled of disinfectant and something to hide the smell of disinfectant, tea-roses or something sweet the