"Honey, like I said, I'm not nice and what's bottled up inside me isn't nice
either. I just don't believe in leaving well enough alone. There are some things
I'd like to do, but I don't tell them to others."
Yvonne regards him with that same appraising stare she used in the Bullpen.
She is jotting up her biological pluses and minuses. She likes this bit of confession;
it ties in with her need for rootlessness right now. She's deciding her
next step. Giffey looks down at the table. He doesn't like the way an attractive
woman--one with any features in her favor--must speck out a sexual situation
with some sort of internal calculator, how she has to weigh and balance and
draw deep conclusions. He has met very few women without this trait, this
set of skills. It's sort of an insult, and it's one of the things that sets women
apart from men in his book. Men are more like puppies--sloppy and sometimes
cruel puppies, but right up front with their needs.
Her counselors would be proud of her. She's looking sbr some sort of quality. But if
she chooses me--she's got it all wrong.
Yvonne's expression changes. She's made her decision, but he can't tell what
it is. She spears a bite of walleye and lifts it, deftly swings the fork, pokes it
into her mouth. "This fish is real good tonight," she says.
"It is," he agrees.
?*
TRIBUTARY FEED
LITVID NOTE: The 1994 film Aerosol you have just seen reveals much about the
time. In the late twentieth, a VIRUS*a4622ais an insidious and incurable presence,
96
GREG BEAR
tion carried hundreds of types of these tiny genetic hitchhikers. Children caught CHICKEN POX$a46*89a, a non-lethal but highly irritating malady that could recur
later in life as the painful SHINGLESS% Many adults as well as children sprouted
sores on lips or moist tissues caused by a herpetic axon creeper, simplex or zoster; blood-to-blood or semen contact carried the dreaded AIDS*12477392 virus,
which spawned the oscillating sexual conservatism of early twenty-one. Viruses
shaped and distorted social attitudes about nearly everything and everybody...
The transformation of the word "virus" during early twenty-one is a marvel.
Today, a virus is no longer virulent, but omnipresent--one of the little servants of
a larger, more intelligent nature. Viruses in human medicine are a template or
tool of major medical treatment. Children proudly say they have a tailored virus that will gradually remove genetic mistakes; viruses are used in nano transformations,
and extended viruses or phage hunters police our tissues, killing the bacteriological
diseases which have proven to be far more insidious and persistent,
though not unbeatable.
(Ironically, it was discovered in 2023 that bacteria are responsible for the production
of many viruses, which they use to target opposing bacterial populations
or to weaken prey hosts.., a kind of microbiological super-warfare that still fascinates
students of evolution and transspecies culture.)
Also in the late twentieth, with the advent of popular computers, dataflow evolvons
were unleashed by pasty, sweating young intellectuals as a kind of game,
and were called viruses. They were quickly and efficiently countered, though
several such outbreaks caused severe economic disruption.
One prominent computer HACKER.5" or CRACKER*2a" was kidnapped from
Los Angeles in 2006 and removed to Singapore, where the death penalty was
imposed and carried out, after extensive torture...
Jonathan sits in the autobus, chin in hand, a little darked by the conversation
(or lack of such) with Chloe. There are days when he wonders where their
marriage is headed, other days when he accepts the changes with a pragmatic
air that could almost be called happiness; but tonight, he feels the institution
stretching to confine him.
That, and he hates having to shout at his children. They evoke such primal
reactions--love without boundaries, helpless pain at their own pains, and then,
whenever he senses Hiram acting beneath his abilities, a flare of fear for his
son, fear that he will end up disaffected and useless, a broken and breaking
failure. He knows he should lighten up, that Hiram is sharp and capable and
will grow out of these awkward doldrums, but the fear remains. Chloe hates
his voice when he shouts... But he is the father, and if he does nothing,
contributes nothing, what will happen?
/
SLANT 97
is surrounded by some unseen distant place, telepresenting. She holds her arms
out and makes small conversational gestures, silent, though her lips move.
He looks away. Lack of contact; disembodied presence. He likes none of it.
Chloe does not understand, but Jonathan wants more touch, more contact, in
his life and work, not less.
The city lights hanging over the old asphalt side streets leading to St. Mark's
Cathedral reflect in the windows and illuminate the faces of his fellow passengers.
Jonathan's mind flips through the familiar catalog of the highlights of
his relationship with Chloe. Her youthful beauty, her vigorous enthusiasm as
they sneak through the rituals of both their families to make love in bathrooms,
hallways, in the backs of empty autobuses, in graveyards on summer evenings;
their mutual maturation and mutual astonishment that, in fact, they would
survive past the age of thirty, despite entanglements with complex intoxicants
and all the other pitfalls of their generation; the one hiatus in their life together
(that he knows about, he thinks with a sudden sourness), before they were
married, when a man (four years older! A veritable ancient of thirty-seven)
charmed Chloe into an abortive affair that left her desperate to secure her
relationship with Jonathan.
And then marriage. The arrival of the children; Chloe's acquiescence in the
face of motherhood and contemporary fashion to forego career and concentrate
on the infants, each comfortably born ex utero, as the women in even the most
conservative families were demanding at the time. Her first flush of maternal
instinct treatments, to which she overreacts, turning her into a protective
tigress who hardly lets Jonathan touch Penelope; the traumatic adjustments
to a second child, all of which they survive, and their marriage survives, and
throughout which their interest in each other continues virtually unabated.
Jonathan adores her; perhaps because of their initial troubles, he thinks
Chloe is the most desirable woman on Earth.
But in the last few years, Chloe has gone internal. Jonathan can't point to
any particular behavior, but to a sum of behaviors and attitudes vhich can just
as easily be described as me/lowing or coming of age, finally or the inevitable settling
down of the passions, or just as easily, she's lost interest.
His reflection stares back at him from the autobus window, a thin face,
forehead high, black hair receding nicely, accenting his small narrow nose and
deepset black eyes and his lips which, he thinks, are still boyish and do not
look at all resolute. He does not think he has changed or aged so drastically
that he is no longer attractive, but hejels that way. He often wonders whether
transform surgery--mild, of course; his social station and employers would
tolerate nothing more--could rekindle Chloe's interest, or whether they should
step into even more experimental territory and encourage each other to take
occasionals. Many do, particularly among the class of women who have given
up careers.
The autobus slows and his seat vibrates faintly to let him know this is his
98 GREG BEAR
rush of wind. Thick clouds blow over the tall steeple and the roofs of nearby
mansions and multis.
The nearest tower is three miles south and west, across the 5; he can see it
through rifts in the cloud deck from where he stands, its flanks glowing with
faint blue lines and red marker sheets like square eyes in the darkness.
His overcoat blows around his legs as he walks up a concrete ramp to the
main entrance. St. Mark's has not been renovated since the late twentieth and
is looking a little dark, a little old, though still dignified and of course traditional;
just the place for the Stoics to have their monthly meetings. All
terribly dull and advantageous, head to head, and he seldom looks forward to
them.
Chloe seems even more stiff on such evenings; perhaps she secretly nurses
resentment, imagines herself in the feed, riding the current of business, part
of the great river of Corridor commerce... Which is of course a laugh. Jonathan
hasn't been awarded significant advancement in years. The economic
squall of 2049 has frozen most lobe-sods, even management, at status revalue
ever since.
Inside the cloakroom, he hands his overcoat to a church daughter, graying
and round-faced and smiling, and strolls with hands in pockets into the nave.
The tall stained glass windows glow with phosphorescence painted on the outer
surfaces, a cool night-ocean light that is strangely soothing. Jonathan walks
down the aisle toward the center, a large gray granite baptismal font on a stone
pedestal.
The arms of the transept lead off into gloom, empty of conversing Stoics,
who gather at the center, in the aisles and near the font. He sees a few he
knows, some fresh-faced recruits a decade younger than he, and then the gray
pate of Marcus Reilly, his sponsor.
Marcus seldom has much to say to Jonathan these days; his interests are not
in Jonathan's line of work, which is nutritional design and supply. Marcus--Jonathan
tries to remember--is increasing his already impressive holdings in
cold ore extraction in Utah and squeezing a few last tons of paydirt out of
Green Idaho.
But Marcus spots him in the aisle, holds up his hand, smiles brightly. He's
going to end this present conversation gracefully, his gestures say, and join
Jonathan in a few moments.
Jonathan stands with hands folded. Marcus is one of the few men of his
acquaintance who can make him sweat, and also make him wait with hands
folded.
"Jonathan! How are you?" Marcus asks expansively, creeping between the
pews and holding out his hand. They shake and Jonathan accepts the upward
curled fingers with the opposite of his own downward curl. Marcus tugs on
the join vigorously, smiling. "How's Chloe? The children?"
"All well. And Beate?"
/
SLANT 99
spends all her time driving chemical futures and screwing up the market. But
she's having fun. And you, dear Jonathan--still frozen?"
Jonathan nods ruefully. Marcus knows something important about everybody.
"No prospects for a thaw?"
"Not so far. Managers can't write their own ticket any more."
"Don't I know it. To tell the truth, Beate's the force in our credit balance
any more. She drives more weather into our account.., good weather, I mean.
Calm seas. Makes her too independent, I think. Doesn't need me any more.
But that's changing. Can we talk after?"
"Sure." Jonathan says. There is always, in meetings between sponsor and
client, an air of informality and equality, belied by the stains under his arm.
Marcus could remove Jonathan from any position in the Corridor in a few
minutes, with a few simple stabs on his pad... Patria potestas.
But Marcus has of course never done that. Perhaps it is Jonathan's own
insecurity that even makes him think of the possibility. When something is not
right at home, all the universe ti/ts.
But then, what is it that is not right at home?
"Grand!" Marcus says. "Do you know anything about this fellow, Torino?"
"No, sir," Jonathan says.
"I hear it was Luke's idea to bring him in. Shake all of us up with some
stimulating big-picture stuff."
"Sounds interesting," Jonathan says. Chao Luke, tall and monkish in his
formal black Stoic's robe, is arranging a podium near the central font. A small,
elfish-looking man in slacks and a sweater, very nineties, stands beside Chao,
calmly ineffectual. This must be Torino. And the lecture--he pulls up the
note on his pad calendar--is about Autopoiesis and the Grand Scheme. He looks
the walls: banks of small projectors that will play out over the crowd, reflective
screens to catch large displays. Like most presentations before the Stoics, the
tech will be distinctly early twentieth--no plugs, no fibe hooks between pads,
all in the spirit of community, not dataflow immersion.
Chao takes the podium and asks the Stoics to sit. The men and women
arrange themselves in the pews before the podium and the fount as Chao smiles
out over them. "We'll bring the February meeting of the Stoics, Seattle chapter,
to order now."
Jonathan sits on the hard wood. Churches seem not to believe in comfort,
the perpetual strain of hardroot American asceticism which he does
not actually oppose, but which still leaves him buttsore by the end of these
meetings.
He glances at Torino as the notes are read and motions proposed, seconded,
and voted upon. The speaker stares up at the dome. His face is childlike, head
small, hair dark and tousled. Torino. Torino.
00 GEG BEA
in scientific circles for his work in bacterial communities. Jonathan does not
have time to follow all these threads through the ribes, but he watches Torino
with more interest. What is it like to be famous--even a little famous? To
have people want to listen to your words, to sit respectfully and await your
wisdom?
Again the suspicion of his own weakness and inferiority, like the little bite
of a spider tangled in his underwear. Jonathan wishes Chloe would have shown
him more warmth this evening, helped him face up to Marcus with self-assurance.
Now it is Torino's turn to speak. Chao introduces him--his full name is
Jerome Torino--and steps aside. The small man grips the sides of the podium
with both hands, and the pickup adjusts to his stature like a metal snake. He
clears his throat.
"It's cold and windy out there. Not good weather for public speaking."
Jonathan smiles politely, as do most of the Stoics around him. Weak intro. He does not feel positively toward this famous person who dresses so informally.
"Tonight I hope to pull asid
e some curtains and dispel a few misconceptions
that haunt our culture, our philosophy, our politics," Torino says. His small
hands swing wide, as if embracing the audience, the church. His eyes are
bright and close together. With a beard he could be a little monkey, Jonathan
thinks.
'I'll have the help of some.., what used to be called media. Everything is
media nowadays, so that word is out of use, like saying 'heat' at the heart of
the sun. Because of your charter, I've been challenged to avoid the more sop
histicated effects I've been known to use to get my points across." He clears
is throat again.
Jonathan prepares to be bored. He shifts in his seat. The woman beside him,
a discreet eighteen inches to his left, glances at him. He feels like a little boy
cautioned to keep still.
"We'll begin with words, words only. Imagine you're in a library and walking
through stacks of books. Let's say you're in the Library of Congress, walking
in a pressure suit through the helium-filled chambers, between miles of shelves,
just staring at the millions upon billions of publications, periodicals, books,
cubes..."
Jonathan hopes for a little visual interest soon. His mind goes back to Chloe. I feel so weak without her support. Why can't she support me strongly, give me her//
UNDIVIDED ATTENTION.///no, not that, but at least leave me J3eling she really
values me.
"Every single one of those books begins, of course, with an act of sex. Are
you offended by the old sexual words? Then use the euphemisms. Men and
women, getting together--"
Christ, is everything sex? Jonathan squirms again, and the woman looks at
/