Edward drove to the La Jolla Museum of Modern Art and walked across the concrete to a payphone near a bronze drinking fountain. Fog drifted in from the ocean, obscuring the cream-plastered Spanish lines of the Church of St. James by the Sea and beading on the leaves of the trees. He inserted his credit card into the phone and asked information for the number of Genetron, Inc. The mechanical voice replied swiftly and he dialed through.
“Please page Dr. Michael Bernard,” he told the receptionist.
“Who’s calling, please?”
“This is his answering service. We have an emergency call and his beeper doesn’t seem to be working.”
A few anxious minutes later, Bernard came on the line. “Who the hell is this?” he asked quietly. “I don’t have an answering service.”
“My name is Edward Milligan. I’m a friend of Vergil Ulam’s. I think we have some problems to discuss.”
There was a long silence on the other end. “You’re at Mount Freedom, aren’t you, Dr. Milligan?”
“Yes.”
“Staying down here?”
“Not really.”
“I can’t see you today. Would tomorrow morning be acceptable?”
Edward thought of driving up and back, of time lost and of Gail, worrying. It all seemed trivial. “Yes,” he said.
“Nine o’clock, at Genetron. 60895 North Torrey Pines Road.”
“Fine.”
Edward walked back to his car in the morning grayness. As he opened the door and slid into the seat, he had a sudden thought. Candice hadn’t come home last night.
She had been in the apartment that morning.
Vergil had been lying about her; he was sure of that much. So what role was she playing?
And where was she?
12
Gail found Edward lying on the couch, sleeping fitfully as a chill freak winter breeze whistled outside. She sat down beside him and stroked his arm until his eyes opened.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi to you.” He blinked and looked around. “What time is it?”
“I just got home.”
“Four-thirty. Christ. Have I been asleep?”
“I wasn’t here,” Gail said. “Have you?”
“I’m still tired.”
“So what did Vergil do this time?”
Edward’s face assumed a patent mask of equanimity. He caressed her chin with one finger—”Chin chucking,” she called it, finding it faintly objectionable, as if she were a cat.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Are you going to tell me, or just keep acting like everything’s normal?”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Edward said.
“Oh, Lord,” Gail sighed, standing. “You’re going to divorce me for that Baker woman.” Mrs. Baker weighed three hundred pounds and hadn’t known she was pregnant until her fifth month.
“No,” Edward said listlessly.
“Rapturous relief.” Gail touched his forehead lightly. “You know this kind of introspection drives me crazy.”
“Well, it’s nothing I can talk about, so…” He took her hand in his and patted it.
“That’s disgustingly patronizing,” she said. “I’m going to make some tea. Want some?” He nodded and she went into the kitchen.
Why not just reveal all? he asked himself. An old friend was turning himself into a galaxy.
He cleared away the dining table instead.
That night, unable to sleep, Edward looked down on Gail from his sitting position, pillow against the wall, and tried to determine what he knew was real, and what wasn’t.
I’m a doctor, he told himself. A technical, scientific profession. Supposed to be immune to things like future shock.
Vergil Ulam was turning into a galaxy.
How would it feel to be topped off with a trillion Chinese? He grinned in the dark, and almost cried at the same time. What Vergil had inside him was unimaginably stranger than Chinese. Stranger than anything Edward—or Vergil—could easily understand. Perhaps ever understand.
What kind of psychology or personality would a cell develop—or a cluster of cells, for that matter? He tried to recall all his schooling on cell environments in the human body. Blood, lymph, tissue, interstitial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid… He could not imagine an organism of human complexity in such surroundings not going crazy from boredom. The environment was simple, the demands relatively simple, and the levels of behavior were suited to cells, not people. On the other hand, stress might be the major factor—the environment was benign to familiar cells, hell on unfamiliar cells.
But he knew what was important, if not necessarily what was reaclass="underline" the bedroom, streetlights and tree shadows on the window curtains, Gail sleeping.
Very important. Gail, in bed, sleeping.
He thought of Vergil sterilizing the dishes of altered E. coli. The bottle of enhanced lymphocytes. Perversely, Krypton came to mind—Superman’s home world, billions of geniuses destroyed in an all-encompassing calamity. Murder? Genocide?
There was no barrier between sleeping and waking. He was watching the window, and city lights glared through as the curtains opened. They could have been living in New York (Irvine nights were never that brightly illuminated) or Chicago; he had lived in Chicago for two years and the window shattered, soundless, the glass peeling back and falling away. The city crawled in through the window, a great, spikey lighted-up prowler growling in a language he couldn’t understand, made up of auto horns, crowd noises, construction bedlam. He tried to fight it off, but it got to Gail and turned into a shower of stars, sprinkling all over the bed, all over everything in the room.
He jerked awake to the sound of a gust of wind and the windows rattling. Best not to sleep, he decided, and stayed awake until it was time to dress with Gail. As she left for the school, he kissed her deeply, savoring the reality of her human, unviolated lips.
Then he made the long drive to North Torrey Pines Road, past the Salk Institute with its spare concrete architecture, past the dozens of new and resurrected research centers which made up Enzyme Valley, surrounded by eucalypti and the new hybrid fast-growing conifers whose ancestors had given the road its name.
The black sign with red Times Roman letters sat atop its mound of Korean grass. The buildings beyond followed the fashion of simple planar concrete surfaces, except for the ominous black cube of the defense contracts labs.
At the guardhouse, a thin, wiry man in dark blue stepped out of his cubicle and leaned down to the Volkswagen’s window level. He stared at Edward with an air of aloofness. “Business, sir?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Bernard.”
The guard asked for ID. Edward produced his wallet. The guard took it to his phone in the cubicle and spent some time discussing its contents. He returned it, still aloof, and said, “There ain’t any visitor’s parking. Take space 31 in the employee lot, that’s around this curve and on the other side of the front office, west wing. Don’t go anywhere but the front office.”
“Of course not,” Edward said testily. “Around this curve.” He pointed. The guard nodded curtly and returned to the cubicle.
Edward walked down the flagstone path to the front office. Papyrus reeds grew next to concrete ponds filled with gold and silver carp. The glass doors opened at his approach, and he entered. The circular lobby held a single couch and table of technical journals and newspapers.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked. She was slender, attractive, hair carefully arranged in the current artificial bun that Gail so fervently eschewed.
“Dr. Bernard, please.”
“Dr. Bernard?” She looked puzzled. “We don’t have—”
“Dr. Milligan?”
Edward turned to see Bernard entering the automatic doors. “Thank you, Janet,” he said to the receptionist. She returned to her switchboard to route calls. “Please come with me, Dr. Milligan. We’ll have a conference room all to ourselves.” He led Edward through the rear door and down the concrete path flanking the west wing’s ground floor.