SLANT 101
irritation that Jonathan is behaving like a little boy. But of course he is not;
he is imagining that she looks at him that way.
He focuses on Torino. Yes, so it all begins in bed.
"--and exchanging ideas."
The meeting laughs with some relief. Torino smiles at them.
"Sex is often confused with reproduction. But bacteria engage in sex for the
sheer desperate necessary joy of it--sex is their visit to the community library,
the communal cookbook. They wriggle themselves through seas of recipes,
little circular bits of DNA called plasmids. When they absorb a plasmid they
don't necessarily reproduce, but they still swap genetic material, and that's
what bacteriologists call sex. Unlike us, however, bacterial sex--this kind of
swap--can even occur between totally different kinds, what we once regarded
as different species. But there are no true species in bacteria. We know now
that bacteria are not grouped into species, as such, but evanescent communities
we call microgens, or even more currently, ecobacters.
"The plasmids contain helpful hints on how to survive, how to make this
or that new defense against an antibiotic, how to rise up as a community against
tailored phages flooding in to eradicate.
"In the very beginning, for bacteria, this was sex. This was how sex began,
as a visit to the great extended library. I call this data sex. No bacterium can
exist for long without touching base with its colleagues, its peers. So how do
we differ from the bacteria?
"Not much. You come to this group, you exchange greetings, arrange meetings,
sometimes you exchange recipes. Sometimes we--and here I don't mean
the members of this club, necessarily--get together, conjugate, to exchange
genetic material, either in a pleasant social jest or joust with biology, or sometimes
in earnest, because it's really time to reproduce.
"Since the days of the bacteria, there are few higher organisms who reproduce
without conjugal sex. This may be because we are far fewer than the
bacteria, who can afford to make many millions of mistakes, and consequently
we are especially protective about the kinds of information that enter our
bodies. We have to check out our potential partners, see if we really want to
refer to their genetic library in creating our offspring--judging them by their
appearance and actions, and initiating in evolution the entire peacock panoply
of ritual and display.
"In the Library of Congress, every single book, every item, began with an
act of reproductive sex, allowing the author to get born and eventually to write
a book. That book now acts as a kind of plasmid, reaching into your mind to
alter your memory, which is the con-template--my word: the template, through
cognition, of behavior. The medium of course is language. Sex is language,
and language is sex, whatever form it takes. Changes in anatomy and behavior
are the ultimate results--and sometimes, coincidentally, reproduction."
Jonathan wonders what in hell Chao was thinking, bringing this man in to
102 GREG BEAR
the Corridor communities--rarely, about science or international affairs. This
is much too abstruse.
"So let's begin where sex began, with the bacteria. How do bacteria remember?
Their behavior is fairly basic, individually."
The transept fills with a writhing torrent of bacteria, just above their heads.
Jonathan does not expect this and jumps, as does the woman on his left. They
smile sheepishly at each other. He tries to remember her name--Henrietta,
Rhetta, something like that. She's involved in economic design. Jonathan congratulates
himself for having such a quick memory.
The torrent of bacteria, blue and green, settles into a gentle flow. Individuals
touch, push thin tubes across to others, congregate, release plasmids and a
variety of molecules that alert each other to the environmental conditions
experienced by "Pickets," so the display marks them; like soldiers foraging.
These molecules, Torino explains, are the precursors to the neural transmitters
within the human brain . ..
"Bacteria have no home, no rest, and their individual existence is fleeting.
a species, but the overall acquired knowledge of the community. Not unlike
our human communities. The result is rapid adaptation throughout the community
to threats--and magnanimously, as if bacteria recognize the impor5
tance of the overall ecosystem--the clues and recipes spread to other types and
other microgens.
"Only in the past half-century have we studied these microgens, and determined
all the ways they share experience. They are not that different from
humans, at least as far as the mathematics of networking is concerned. From
he very bottom, to the very top, webbing or networking--autopoiesis--the
ehavior of self-organizing systems--shares many common characteristics.
So--
"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
/
SLANT 103
acteristics 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
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.
104
GREG BEAR
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 datafiow 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 edu-
c
ation will overcome convention, when logic and knowledge must replace rote
nd automatism. This century can be characterized as a 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
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SLANT 105
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 gerrs," 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 Stoics 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. Totino'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.
Yvonne has made up her mind but Gi pounds ey 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 a 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