Greg Egan - SS - Blood Sisters.pdf - Greg Egan - przemosta

BLOOD SISTERS

Greg Egan

Here’s a haunting glimpse of a crowded, high-tech future that has become

perhaps a little too fond of that dispassionate Long View we hear so much

about…

Born in 1961, Greg Egan lives in Australia, and is certainly in the

running for the title of Hottest New Writer of the Nineties to date.

Although he’s been publishing for a year or two already, 1990 was the year

when Egan suddenly seemed to be turning up everywhere with

high-quality stories, and he continued the streak in 1991. He is a frequent

contributor to Interzone and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine ,

and has made sales as well to Pulphouse, Analog, Aurealis , and Eidolon .

Several of his stories have appeared in various “Best of the Year” series,

including this one; his story “The Caress” and his story “Learning To Be

Me” were in our Eighth Annual Collection, and he was good enough to

place another two stories in this year’s collection as well. He just sold his

first novel, Quarantine , to Legend as part of a package deal that includes a

second novel and a collection of his short fiction—a pretty high-powered

deal for such a young writer. My guess is that you will be seeing a lot more

of Egan as the decade progresses.

When we were nine years old, Paula decided we should prick our thumbs,

and let our blood flow into each other’s veins.

I was scornful. “Why bother? Our blood’s already exactly the same.

We’re already blood sisters.”

She was unfazed. “I know that. That’s not the point. It’s the ritual that

counts.”

We did it in our bedroom, at midnight, by the light of a single candle.

She sterilized the needle in the candle flame, then wiped it clean of soot

with a tissue and saliva.

When we’d pressed the tiny, sticky wounds together, and recited some

ridiculous oath from a third-rate children’s novel, Paula blew out the

candle. While my eyes were still adjusting to the dark, she added a

whispered coda of her own: “Now we’ll dream the same dreams, and share

the same lovers, and die at the very same hour.”

I tried to say, indignantly, “That’s just not true!” but the darkness and

the scent of the dead flame made the protest stick in my throat, and her

words remained unchallenged.

* * *

As Dr Packard spoke, I folded the pathology report, into halves, into

quarters, obsessively aligning the edges. It was far too thick for me to

make a neat job of it; from the micrographs of the misshapen lymphocytes

proliferating in my bone marrow, to the print-out of portions of the RNA

sequence of the virus that had triggered the disease, thirty-two pages in

all.

In contrast, the prescription, still sitting on the desk in front of me,

seemed ludicrously flimsy and insubstantial. No match at all. The

traditional— indecipherable—polysyllabic scrawl it bore was nothing but a

decoration; the drug’s name was reliably encrypted in the barcode below.

There was no question of receiving the wrong medication by mistake. The

question was, would the right one help me ?

“Is that clear? Ms Rees? Is there anything you don’t understand?”

I struggled to focus my thoughts, pressing hard on an intractable crease

with my thumb. She’d explained the situation frankly, without resorting to

jargon or euphemism, but I still had the feeling that I was missing

something crucial. It seemed like every sentence she’d spoken had started

one of two ways: “The virus…”or “The drug…”

“Is there anything I can do? Myself? To… improve the odds?”

She hesitated, but not for long. “No, not really. You’re in excellent

health, otherwise. Stay that way.” She began to rise from her desk to

dismiss me, and I began to panic.

“But, there must be something .” I gripped the arms of my chair, as if

afraid of being dislodged by force. Maybe she’d misunderstood me, maybe

I hadn’t made myself clear. “Should I… stop eating certain foods? Get

more exercise? Get more sleep? I mean, there has to be something that

will make a difference. And I’ll do it, whatever it is. Please, just tell me—”

My voice almost cracked, and I looked away, embarrassed. Don’t ever

start ranting like that again . Not ever .

“Ms Rees, I’m sorry. I know how you must be feeling. But the Monte

Carlo diseases are all like this. In fact, you’re exceptionally lucky; the WHO

computer found eighty thousand people, worldwide, infected with a

similar strain. That’s not enough of a market to support any hard-core

research, but enough to have persuaded the pharmaceutical companies to

rummage through their databases for something that might do the trick.

A lot of people are on their own, infected with viruses that are virtually

unique. Imagine how much useful information the health profession can

give them .” I finally looked up; the expression on her face was one of

sympathy, tempered by impatience.

I declined the invitation to feel ashamed of my ingratitude. I’d made a

fool of myself, but I still had a right to ask the question. “I understand all

that. I just thought there might be something I could do. You say this drug

might work, or it might not. If I could contribute, myself , to fighting this

disease, I’d feel…”

What ? More like a human being, and less like a test tube—a passive

container in which the wonder drug and the wonder virus would fight it

out between themselves. “… better.”

She nodded. “I know, but trust me, nothing you can do would make the

slightest difference. Just look after yourself as you normally would. Don’t

catch pneumonia. Don’t gain or lose ten kilos. Don’t do anything out of

the ordinary. Millions of people must have been exposed to this virus, but

the reason you’re sick, and they’re not, is a purely genetic matter . The

cure will be just the same. The biochemistry that determines whether or

not the drug will work for you isn’t going to change if you start taking

vitamin pills, or stop eating junk food—and I should warn you that going

on one of those ‘miracle-cure’ diets will simply make you sick; the

charlatans selling them ought to be in prison.”

I nodded fervent agreement to that , and felt myself flush with anger.

Fraudulent cures had long been my b ê te noir —although now, for the first

time, I could almost understand why other Monte Carlo victims paid good

money for such things: crackpot diets, meditation schemes, aroma

therapy, self-hypnosis tapes, you name it. The people who peddled that

garbage were the worst kind of cynical parasites, and I’d always thought of

their customers as being either congenitally gullible, or desperate to the

point of abandoning their wits, but there was more to it than that. When

your life is at stake, you want to fight for it—with every ounce of your

strength, with every cent you can borrow, with every waking moment.

Taking one capsule, three times a day, just isn’t hard enough —whereas

the schemes of the most perceptive con-men were sufficiently arduous (or

sufficiently expensive) to make the victims feel that they were engaged in

the kind of struggle that the prospect of death requires.

This moment of shared anger cleared the air completely. We were on

the same side, after all; I’d been acting like a child. I thanked Dr Packard

for her time, picked up the prescription, and left.

On my way to the pharmacy, though, I found myself almost wishing

that she’d lied to me—that she’d told me my chances would be vastly

improved if I ran ten kilometers a day and ate raw seaweed with every

meal—but then I angrily recoiled, thinking: Would I really want to be

deceived “for my own good”? If it’s down to my DNA, it’s down to my

DNA, and I ought to expect to be told that simple truth, however

unpalatable I find it—and I ought to be grateful that the medical

profession has abandoned its old patronizing, paternalistic ways.

I was twelve years old when the world learnt about the Monte Carlo

project.

A team of biological warfare researchers (located just a stone’s throw

from Las Vegas—alas, the one in New Mexico, not the one in Nevada) had

decided that designing viruses was just too much hard work (especially

when the Star Wars boys kept hogging the supercomputers). Why waste

hundreds of PhD-years—why expend any intellectual effort

whatsoever—when the time-honoured partnership of blind mutation and

natural selection was all that was required?

Speeded up substantially, of course.

They’d developed a three-part system: a bacterium, a virus, and a line of

modified human lymphocytes. A stable portion of the viral genome

allowed it to reproduce in the bacterium, while rapid mutation of the rest

of the virus was achieved by neatly corrupting the transcription error

repair enzymes. The lymphocytes had been altered to vastly amplify the

reproductive success of any mutant which managed to infect them,

causing it to out-breed those which were limited to using the bacterium.

The theory was, they’d set up a few trillion copies of this system, like

row after row of little biological poker machines, spinning away in their

underground lab, and just wait to harvest the jackpots.

The theory also included the best containment facilities in the world,

and five hundred and twenty people all sticking scrupulously to official

procedure, day after day, month after month, without a moment of

carelessness, laziness or forgetfulness. Apparently, nobody bothered to

compute the probability of that .

The bacterium was supposed to be unable to survive outside artificially

beneficent laboratory conditions, but a mutation of the virus came to its

aid, filling in for the genes that had been snipped out to make it

vulnerable.

They wasted too much time using ineffectual chemicals before steeling

themselves to nuke the site. By then, the winds had already made any

human action—short of melting half a dozen states, not an option in an

election year—irrelevant.

The first rumours proclaimed that we’d all be dead within a week. I can

clearly recall the mayhem, the looting, the suicides (second-hand on the

TV screen; our own neighbourhood remained relatively tranquil—or

numb). States of emergency were declared around the world. Planes were

turned away from airports, ships (which had left their home ports months

before the leak) were burnt in the docks. Harsh laws were rushed in

everywhere, to protect public order and public health.

Paula and I got to stay home from school for a month. I offered to teach

her programming; she wasn’t interested. She wanted to go swimming, but

the beaches and pools were all closed. That was the summer that I finally

managed to hack into a Pentagon computer—just an office supplies

purchasing system, but Paula was suitably impressed (and neither of us

had ever guessed that paperclips were that expensive).

We didn’t believe we were going to die—at least, not within a week—and

we were right. When the hysteria died down, it soon became apparent

that only the virus and the bacterium had escaped, and without the

modified lymphocytes to fine-tune the selection process, the virus had

mutated away from the strain which had caused the initial deaths.

However, the cosy symbiotic pair is now found all over the world,

endlessly churning out new mutations. Only a tiny fraction of the strains

produced are infectious in humans, and only a fraction of those are

potentially fatal.

A mere hundred or so a year.

On the train home, the sun seemed to be in my eyes no matter which way I

Greg Egan - SS - Blood Sisters.pdf

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