Slant Page 15

  “What makes us special? Like the bacteria, as social animals, we engage in communal sharing of information. We call it education, and the result is culture. The shape of our society relies on spoken and written language, the language of signs, the next level of language above the molecular. Some insert another level between these two, that of instinctual behavior, but I believe that’s really just another kind of language of signs.

  “Culture from very early times was as much a factor in human survival as biology, and today, culture has subsumed biology. The language of signs inherent in science and mathematics has co-opted the power of molecular language. We begin with molecules and molecular instructions, but now the instructions feed back upon themselves, and we govern the molecules.

  “In nature, we’re the first to do that—since the bacteria!”

  Jonathan catches himself listening. There is nothing else to do; he wonders what Torino is really on about.

  “For centuries, in trying to understand our own nature and behavior, we made basic categorical errors. We persistently tried to separate certain characteristics and study them in isolation, or to rank our characteristics in terms of fundamental importance. Nature or nurture—which is fundamental?” Torino chuckles. “Chicken or egg. Which came first? Throw out the question and the wrong-headed philosophy behind it, and start again.

  “Today, in mass education and LitVid—and especially in that cultural stew called the Yox—these wrong-headed assumptions still flourish, proving that human knowledge—like human DNA—can be filled with useless, outmoded garbage. We don’t prune efficiently at either level, because we can never be quite sure when we might need that so-called useless data, that useless guideline, that outmoded way of thinking. In other words, neither our brains nor our genes know the overall truth. We are always in the middle of an experiment whose limits we do not understand, and whose end results are completely unknown. We carry our errors around with us as a kind of safety net, even though they slow us down.”

  Jonathan feels a little hypnotized by the projected flow of microbes. Then they vanish.

  “Now, let’s leap to a larger view,” Torino says. “We’ll dispose of another error. Can we separate human activity, cultural or biological, from bacterial action? Are we a higher-order phenomenon?”

  The woman next to Jonathan—Rhetta or Henrietta—nods. Jonathan thinks they are about to be disabused of an illusion, and playing that game for a moment, shakes his head. Besides, he remembers a little high school biology.

  “Evolution is a kind of thought, a making of hypotheses to solve the problems posed by a changing environment. Bacteria operate as an immense community, not so much evolving as exchanging recipes, both competing and cooperating. We are comprised of alliances of cells that are made up of old alliances between different sorts of bacteria. We are, in effect, colonies of colonies of bacteria that have learned many new tricks; including slavish cooperation. Does the brick house think itself superior to the grain of sand? Or the mountain to the pebble?”

  The nave, this time, fills with dancing diagrams and dramas of cellular evolution, differentiation of kingdoms, phyla, orders, all in rapid-fire. Jonathan finds himself intrigued by the creation of the first complex, nucleated cell—a huge factory in comparison to a bacterium. Bacterial engines, fragments, even whole bacteria, sublimated and subordinated, evolve over billions of years to create this next stepping stone.

  “We are now taking complete charge of those processes once the domain of the bacteria, on a technological level. In a sense, nanotechnology is the theft of ideas from the molecular realm, the cellular and bacterial domain, to power our new cultural imperatives. Earth has become a gigantic, complex, not yet unified but promisingly fertile single cell.

  “And now—we’re back to sex again—it’s time to move outward and reproduce.

  “Unfortunately, in the ocean of empty space, we have yet to receive packets of data from other planetary cells. We are like a single bacterium squirming through a primordial sea, hoping to find others like itself, or at least find recipes and clues about what to do next.”

  Transept and nave fill with a loneliness of night, clouds of stars, all brilliant, and silent. Jonathan loses himself for a moment in the extraordinary image.

  “We send out spaceships between the planets, the stars, containing our own little recipes, our own clues, like hopeful plasmids. We have found other living worlds, but none yet as complex as Earth, not yet rising above the level of molecular language. We know there are billions of worlds out there, hundreds of millions similar to Earth in our galaxy alone…

  “We are patient.

  “In the meantime, until we find that other community to which we must eventually adapt and belong, that larger network of autopoiesis in which we will become a node, we labor to improve ourselves. We seek to lift ourselves by our bootstraps, so to speak, to new levels of efficiency and understanding.

  “The imperative for the dataflow culture is to remove old errors and inefficiencies—to improve our information through continuing research, and to improve our minds through deeper education and therapy, to improve our physical health by removing ourselves from the old cycles of predation and disease, no longer capable of pruning the human tree. We hope to unite human cultures so we will end our internal struggles, and work together for larger goals. We engage in the equivalent of historical and political therapy.

  “All separation is a convenient illusion, all competition is the churning of the engines of sex. Our social conventions give our culture shape, just as a cell wall holds in the protoplasm; but we are soon approaching a time when education will overcome convention, when logic and knowledge must replace rote and automatism. This century can be characterized as time of conflicts between old errors, old patterns of thinking, and new discoveries about ourselves. We have no big father in the sky, at least none that is willing to talk with us on any consistent basis.”

  The woman on Jonathan’s left frowns and shakes her head. The Stoics tend to shy away from deism, much less atheism. Torino, to Jonathan’s relief, seems to be winding up his presentation.

  “But there is promise in what we have learned so far—promise that can be shared between all cultures, in recognition that change and pluralism are essential.

  “If we all think alike, if we all become uniform and bland, we shrivel up and die, and the great process shudders to an end. Uniformity is death, in economics or in biology. Diversity within communication and cooperation is life. Everything your forebears, your ancestors, everything you have ever done, will have been for naught, if we ignore these basic bacterial lessons.”

  He nods and the projectors fall dark. The nave and transept return to shadowy recesses. There is scattered polite applause. Torino may be famous, but he does not fool this tough audience. Jonathan feels a perverse sympathy for the man, who stares a little owlishly at the small crowd, some of whom are already standing and stretching.

  Behind Jonathan, a man in his sixties whose name he does not know—but whose face is familiar from past meetings—harrumphs and smiles slyly as he shakes his head. “Science is the art of making us think we’re germs,” he says. “My God, did I drive all the way from Tacoma to hear this kind of drivel? I hope Chao puts something more substantial on the menu next time.”

  Jonathan decides against approaching Torino and asking a few questions. No sense standing out from the crowd before a meeting with Marcus.

  But as he turns, Marcus is there beside him, staring at him intently. “Not bad,” he says to Jonathan. Jonathan smiles and agrees, a little confused; he would have thought the philosophy of someone like Torino would deeply irritate Marcus Reilly.

  Marcus walks past Jonathan, down the aisle, and stands beside Torino, shaking his hand and conversing. Torino seems relieved that someone has listened.

  Jonathan arrives in time to hear Marcus say: “—and that’s why I told Chao to invite you. We all need to be shaken up a little, brought up to date. Sometimes the S
toics are a stuffy lot. You’ve thrown open a few of our windows. Thank you, Mr. Torino.”

  “My pleasure,” Torino says.

  Chao smiles and nods. Jonathan wishes he had listened more closely to what Torino said. Torino’s eyes meet Jonathan’s. Jonathan can’t think of anything to say.

  Marcus turns and seems surprised to find Jonathan beside him. “There you are,” he says, and his grandfatherly face turns serious. “Have time to talk?”

  “Yes,” Jonathan says.

  “Good. Let’s get some coffee at Thirteen Coins. We’ll take my car. I hope it’s outside—it’s been acting up lately… getting a mind of its own, I fear.”

  Jonathan laughs, and Marcus grins as they separate from the Stoics and leave the building.

  Jonathan’s mood is lifting; Marcus seems so positive. Maybe he’s going to offer a change to Jonathan; that in turn might cheer Chloe, increase her respect for him, and her affection, as well.

  Jonathan is startled to see a bright blue-green flash of lightning through the clouds above the cathedral. Then, from the south, an orange flash seems to post an answer to the first. The wind freshens; it’s getting warmer.

  16

  Yvonne has made up her mind but Giffey is not so sure what, he intends, now. The dinner is over and they are on his third bourbon and her fourth beer, and Yvonne has talked about her upbringing in Billings and the move to Moscow. Giffey has said nothing about his upbringing because that of all things is nobody’s business; it is the root of all he is, particularly his anger. He feels no need to show Yvonne any anger; she is too young and obvious to hurt him.

  At any rate, the woman has decided she wants Giffey to make love to her, but has now withdrawn from giving any overt sign that this is so, waiting for him to make the defining move. Giffey dislikes this in women, their retreat or cowardice in the face of desire. Such a safe redoubt from which to lob shells of ridicule should the situation come a-cropper.

  But he has been very pleasant with her, playing the man’s game, subduing his irritations not to drive her away as he waits for all the calculations of his own desire to tot up to one or zero, go or no go.

  He watches her face in the diffuse light from the lantern hanging over their heads, its little mock flame flickering dull orange. Her skin is sweetly pale and clear of blemishes, her nose is something he would like to sidle up against with his own nose, her jaw is little heavy but her lips are very sweet, particularly when she pauses and gives him her expectant look, those lips parted, small white teeth just inside.

  Most of all it is a personal wager that those breasts are as lovely as he suspects, and that though her legs are thin in the calves and her waist too waspish for his tastes, that the conjunction of inner thighs and mons, pieced together, make a comely triskelion and she will not have messed with her pubic hair except perhaps to trim the boundaries in case Bill takes her swimming in the summer (but now that grooming might be neglected). All of this is in the background as he asks for the check. He will pay. She does not object.

  “I’ve been talking your ear off,” she says as they walk to the door. Outside, on the street, they are side by side and the moment has come to shove off or play the old game to the end. Giffey hopes his technique has not gotten feeble; it’s been over a year and a half since he last played.

  “Thank you for your company,” he says. Then a pause. “I like the sound of your voice,” he says. “It’s the prettiest I’ve heard in a good while.”

  “Well, thank you, Jack.”

  They face each other. It is really damned cold out here and the streetlights cast long shadows where they stand. He can barely see her face and his own face is starting to hurt. “You do a lot of things to me, Yvonne.”

  That doesn’t sound perfect, but she’s not critical.

  “Yes, well you listen nice and you’re no grandpa.”

  Giffey reaches out and strokes her arm. The fur collar is rising with her hair and making that dark halo again, and within, the center of a target, the oval of her face. Her very pretty face. Hell, it was all a pretense. All his doubts were faking him. He wants this woman and he even needs her because he is afraid of going up against Omphalos in the next few days. There probably isn’t much time left. He can say farewell to the good food, the drinks, the landscapes and the skies; he can say farewell to the eyes and noses and breasts and hips, too.

  He doesn’t give a damn about Bill who does not take care of this woman the way she wishes and who is far away diddling himself with his Yox buddies and some karaoke cuties in Thailand or India.

  “You raise a powerful need,”, he says softly. “I’d like to make you think a little better of at least one man.”

  “Oh,” she says. She’s nervous now. The last man she played this game with was probably poor self-diddling Bill. “I don’t dislike men, not at all. Don’t mistake me. But you’re special. You listen. I—”

  She’s starting with the words again. Giffey takes her arm and pulls her toward him, gauging by her automatic resistance to that pull the measure of how much more persuasion she will need before she admits she is committed. Not much. He zeroes into the pale oval within the halo and kisses her.

  The kiss starts off gentle, and then she finally offers open lips and her tongue. He doesn’t much like tongue kissing, but he plays that move through, and then up to the regions he is much more fond of, her eyes and her nose. She clings to him tightly, accepting this hungrily. No more resistance, at least as long as they do only this, with their clothes on, in a public place.

  “Let’s go,” Giffey says.

  “All right,” Yvonne says.

  “Over to my apartment,” Giffey says. “It’s too cold to get naked here on the street.”

  “Yeah,” Yvonne says. She chuckles—not a giggle, but a genuine, almost masculine chuckle, and that’s fine.

  She’s added it all up and her answer is one.

  Tributary Feed

  LitVid Search Fulfillment (Backdata: FREE by bequest of the author): Text column of Alexis de Tocqueville II (pseudonym-?-) March 25 2049

  The growing disAffected in America merit our concern. How do we describe them succinctly? Discouraged, cut loose from the cultures for which their intellect and character destine them, those cultures of spiritual conservatism and Bucktail bigotry which have been shown again and again to be politically incapable and bankrupt—they no longer vote. They seldom participate in the dataflow economy. Their refusal to take advantage of educational opportunities, which they regard as corrupting, leaves them little to do but join the ominous numbers on the New Dole. Here, they sit with their families locked into specially tailored and highly “moral” Yox feeds, funneling their few resources into an obsequious entertainment industry that has ever believed “a hundred million people cannot be wrong.” Here they relive the glory days of elitism and bigotry, or golden dreams of blue-collar solidarity and dominance. They hand their hearts and minds over to demagogues like spoiled children, They are a dead people, but still dangerous.

  17

  Alice orders the limo to let her out three blocks before her home. She is suffocating in the artificial lavishness of the limo cabin. Her eyes fill with tears. She feels insulted and abused and, for the first time in many long years, soiled. Flashes of hatred mingle with jagged, unhappy memories and a long-quiet sense of shame.

  She walks along the deserted street, following the glowing lines in the walkway and the curb. A warmer wind is cutting between the buildings and the few houses, and brilliant, scary flashes of lightning play silently above the clouds.

  She does not want to be protected. She feels the power of the wind and the clouds, thrills a little at the orange and blue effulgences, begins to reassemble her pride and her armor.

  But at the front door, there are tears in her eyes again. She shivers at the thought of the faceless man trying to pry her loose from her protections, like a cruel beachcomber working at a limpet. “Why does he want to know anything about me?” she mutters. “What
a creep. What a monster.”

  She spends thirty minutes in the shower, alternating between sonic micro-spray and steady stream. She feels as if she should scrub off all her skin and grow it new and clean. She feels between her legs briefly, wishing she could shed all her insides, everything the faceless monster’s flesh and semen touched. She has never felt this way about a man before, and in a far recess of her self, she worries about the frightening strength of her revulsion.

  It’s only sex and it was only once and he got nothing special; he didn’t even ask for anything special. He didn’t care. He wanted to ask questions.

  Alice feels the sparks of anger fade, damped by exhaustion. All she wants now is to crawl into bed and sleep, straight sleep, without the pie-dream child vid she often uses, just simple sleep.

  Slide, slip, simple sleep.

  And then she sees that dreadful facelessness again. Her breath quickens and she moans. She gets out of bed and walks in her thin silk robe into the living room, the spare and unadorned place where she seldom spends much time. Right now she wishes she had artwork all over the walls, a pet or a friend to talk to; all of her friends, until now, it seems, need her more than she needs them.

  She has a few articles on a shelf that give her some comfort: a ceramic poodle, pink and ridiculous, that belonged to her grandmother; an antique folding razor her father gave to her when he first learned she was going on call-ins as a teenager (“to protect yourself,” he said, “because the only thing that hurts worse than knowing what you’re doing is the thought of losing you altogether”) that she had never carried on her person; a miniature plastic spray of flowers; a picture of her parents and brother. She has not thought of her brother in months. She picks up the picture and stares at it.

  Carl is eleven years old in the picture and she is nine. Carl did not know what to think of his sister. He was straight-arrow, knightly. He signed up with the Marines to go to the Moon as part of a settlement effort and died in a pressure drop five years ago.