Vitals (41 page)

It was Rob. He said he was calling from Lee Stocking Island. He said, "Hal, old boy, I've got some news. Do you have the final clues? Shall we visit Dr. Seuss?"

"Goddamn it," I said. "Leave me alone." But I couldn't hang up the phone. After he made sure I was still on the line, he read me a list of numbers.

I still remember those numbers. Every damned one of them.

We kept the coffin closed. I never saw the body. Rob was running Ben, had control of him even at the last, made him see what Rob wanted him to see.

Rob's list--chopper, piecework, regulus--did not stop the others from being tagged on Lemuria. But it could have protected me. Maybe, in his way, he loves me. He wants to keep me around, especially if I'm under his thumb.

Is this crazy thinking or have I finally figured it out?

Rob found a way to turn the tables. He finished his work while everyone thought he was dead, even his brother. After all the different factions had exhausted themselves, he moved in. Cut deals, made promises. Took over. Replaced Golokhov.

35 I

But his hands have the puckering, Irina's disease, Stalin's madness. This morning, I found a pistol under the mat on my front porch. A Clock with a fifteen-shot law-enforcement clip. Lissa's gun. Do I use it on someone else, or on myself? History is my brother's fist smashing into my face forever. My stomach hurts.

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; You've played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:

Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage:

Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.

--Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace

Lynnwood, Washington December 5,2000

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Special Agent Carl Jensen, FBI; Juliann Brunzell, Special Agent, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension; Ed Weber, NOAA; David and Diane Clarke; Yoshihisa Shirayama, Director and Professor of the Seto Marine Biological Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan; Mark E. Minie and Rose James; David Thaler, microbiologist at Rockefeller University; Dr. Karl and Sylvia Anders; Karen Anderson; Ron Drummond; copy editors Bob and Sara Schwager; and to my English-language editors, Shelly Shapiro, Jane Johnson, and Joy Chamberlain. And special thanks indeed to the Extropians, and to Max More and Natasha Vita-More.

The theory of aging described in this book is speculative. The concept of bacterial cooperation, however, is firmly established in scientific papers and books, including Bacteria as MuhiceUular Organisms, edited by James A. Shapiro and Martin Dworkin.

Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel-Aviv University has an excellent Web site devoted to his ground-breaking explorations of bacterial cooperation:

http://star.tau.ac.il/~inon/baccyberO.html

The notion of a distributed bacterial network--a bacterial mind, if you will--is far from fantasy.

Speculations on the ultimate description and relationship of xenophyophores and the Vendobionts are my own. Dr. Mark A. S. McMenamin's The Garden of Ediacara is an excellent personal examination of the Vendobiont fossils and their possible relationships to modern life-forms.

Almost needless to say, I owe a great debt to the work of Lynn Margulis.

None of these fine people, of course, are responsible for any blunders or misconceptions that might remain.

DISCLAIMER

The Waldorf Conference actually took place in New York in 1949. The AP photograph described in the text is real, but the person on the far right of the photograph is not, in fact, Rudy Banning.

Rudy Banning does not exist, nor is he intended to symbolize or represent any person, living or dead. Every other character in this novel is totally fictitious.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg Bear is the author of more than twenty-five books, which have been translated into seventeen languages. He has been awarded two Hugos and five Nebulas for his fiction, including the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novel for Darwin's Radio. He is married to Astrid Anderson Bear. They live with their two children, Erik and Alexandra, in the Pacific Northwest.