Genometry

  Genometry

  Edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois

  GENOMETRY

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Copyright © 2013 by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

  First printing: January 2001

  Cover art by Walter Velez.

  ISBN: 0-441-00797-X

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-146-7

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:

  “The Invisible Country,” by Paul J. McAuley. Copyright © 1996 by Paul J. McAuley. First published in 1991 in When the Music’s Over (Bantam Spectra). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Kindly Isle,” by Frederik Pohl. Copyright © 1984 by Frederik Pohl. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, November 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Chaff,” by Greg Egan. Copyright © 1993 by Interzone. First published in Interzone, December 1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Stable Strategies for Middle Management,” by Eileen Gunn. Copyright © 1988 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Good with Rice,” by John Brunner. Copyright © 1994 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the agents for that estate, the Jane Judd Literary Agency.

  “Sunken Gardens,” by Bruce Sterling. Copyright © 1984 by Omni Publications International, Ltd. First published in Omni, June 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Other Shore,” by J.R. Dunn. Copyright © 1991 by Omni Publications International, Ltd. First published in Omni, December 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Written in Blood,” by Chris Lawson. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Pipes of Pan,” by Brian Stableford. Copyright © 1997 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Whiptail,” by Robert Reed. Copyright © 1998 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/ November 1998. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Planet Named Shayol,” by Cordwainer Smith. Copyright © 1961 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation; Copyright © 1965 by Cordwainer Smith. First published in Galaxy Magazine, October 1961. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the agents for that estate, The Scott Meredith Literary Associates, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

  PREFACE

  Here on the edge of the twenty-first century, we also stand poised on the brink of a revolution that may change everything about our world as deeply and pervasively as did the Industrial Revolution, and perhaps even as profoundly as did the Neolithic Revolution that changed us from wandering bands of hunter-gatherer nomads and gave us agriculture and towns: the Genetic Revolution.

  Bioscience—genetic technology—may be the science that will shape our lives in the most significant ways during the twenty-first century, probably having an even more significant impact than the evolution of computer technology has had in the closing decades of the twentieth. Already, we’ve seen our daily lives changed by early manifestations of genetic technology, sometimes in behind-the-scenes ways that we hardly recognize. Everyone has heard about the controversy about cloning raised by the production of Dolly, history’s most famous sheep, but fewer realize that similar bioscience is behind the development of human-derived insulin and a dozen similar drugs on the cutting edge of medicine, or that they already live in a world where organisms created in a laboratory can be patented, or where genetically altered foods are available in every supermarket.

  And this is just the thin edge of the wedge. Just ahead, perhaps in the next few decades, are changes driven by bioscience and genetic technology that will transform our daily lives almost beyond recognition, and perhaps even change us beyond recognition, that could change forever our ideas about what it means to be human. All our definitions of what makes a human being human, all of our “eternal verities,” all of the deep truths about human nature that have remained fundamentally the same since we came down from the trees at the dawn of time, all may be about to melt like snow—or, perhaps a better analogy, become molten and reshapable, like hot plastic, into any pattern we desire.

  The prospect is both exhilarating and deeply terrifying.

  Wonders and terrors await us ahead that, from our current perspective, are almost unimaginable.

  In the anthology that follows, some of the world’s most expert dreamers take their best shot at imagining those coming wonders and terrors, doing a better job of pointing out the pitfalls and promise, the marvels and horrors, of the coming (hell, already almost here!) Genetic Revolution than you’re going to be able to find anywhere else. So, to buffer yourself from the oncoming tsunami of culture shock as well as anybody can be buffered, and also, not at all incidentally, to have a great time reading some of the most entertaining, colorful, and wildly inventive cutting edge speculations that science fiction has to offer, turn the page, while you’re still recognizably human (do you think you’ll still have fingers twenty years from now?), and enjoy!

  For more speculations about how the Genetic Revolution will reshape our society and ourselves, check out the Ace anthologies Immortals, Clones, Nanotech, Hackers, and Future War.

  THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY

  Paul J. McAuley

  Born in Stroud, England, in 1955, Paul J. McAuley now makes his home in London. A professional biologist for many years, he sold his first story in 1984, and has gone on to be a frequent contributor to Interzone, as well as to markets such as Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, When the Music’s Over, and elsewhere. He is considered to be one of the best of the new breed of British writers (although a few Australian writers could be fit in under this heading as well) who are producing that sort of revamped, updated, widescreen space opera sometimes referred to as “radical hard science fiction.” His first novel, Four Hundred Billion Stars, won the Philip K. Dick Award, and his acclaimed novel, Fairyland, won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Award in 1996. His other books include the novels Of the Fall, Eternal Light, and Pasquale’s Angel; two collections of his short work, The King of the Hill and Other Stories and The Invisible Country; and an original anthology coedited with Kim Newman, In Dreams. His most recent books are Child of the River and Ancients of Days, the first two volumes of a major new trilogy of ambitious scope and scale, Confluence, set ten million years in the future. Currently he is working on a new novel, Life on Mars.

  Here he takes us to a haunted future London in which nearly every aspect of daily life has been transformed almost beyond recognition by biological science and genetic technology—but where many of the old, cold choices you need to make in order to survive remain unsettlingly familiar . . .

  ###

  Cameron was discharged from the black clinic with nothing more than his incubation fee and a tab of painkiller so cut with chalk it might as well have been aspirin. Emptied of the totipotent marrow that had been growing there, the long bones of his thighs ached with fierce fire, and he blew twenty pounds on a pedicab that took him to the former department store on Oxford Street where he rented a cubicle.

  The building’s pusher, a slender Bengali called Lost In Space, wa
s lounging in his deckchair near the broken glass doors, and Cameron bought a hit of something called Epheridrin from him.

  “Enkephalin-specific,” Lost In Space said, as Cameron dry-swallowed the red gelatin capsule. “Hits the part of the brain that makes you think you hurt. Good stuff, Doc. So new the bathtub merchants haven’t cracked it yet.” He folded up his fax of yesterday’s Financial Times—like most pushers, he liked to consider himself a player in the Exchange’s information flux—and smiled, tilting his head to look up at Cameron. There was a diamond set into one of his front teeth. “There is a messenger waiting for you all morning.”

  “Komarnicki has a job for me? It’s been a long time.”

  “You are too good to work for him, Doc. You know there is a place for you in our organization. There is always need for collectors, for gentlemen who have a persuasive air.”

  “I don’t work for the Families, OK? I’m freelance, always will be.”

  “Better surely, Doc, than renting your body. Those kinky cell lines can turn rogue so easily.”

  “There are worse things.” Cameron remembered the glimpse he’d had of the surrogate ward, the young men naked on pallets, bulging bellies shining as if oiled and pulsing with the asynchronous beating of the hearts growing inside them. The drug was beginning to take hold, delicate caresses of ice fluttering through the pain in his legs. He looked around at the dozen or so transients camped out on the grimy marble floor and said loudly, “Where’s this messenger?”

  A skinny boy, seven or eight years old, came over. All he wore were plastic sandals and tight-fitting shorts of fluorescent orange waterproofed cotton. Long greasy hair tangled around his face; his thin arms were ropey with homemade tattoos. A typical mudlark. Homeless, futureless, there had to be a million of them in London alone, feral as rats or pigeons, and as little moved. He handed Cameron a grubby strip of paper and started to whine that he hadn’t been paid.

  “You’ve a lot to learn, streetmeat,” Cameron said, as he deciphered Komarnicki’s scrawled message. “Next time ask me before you hand over the message.” He started for the door, then turned and knocked the shiv from the boy’s hand by pure reflex.

  The blade had been honed from the leaf of a car spring: when Cameron levered it into a crack in the marble floor it bent but would not snap. He tossed it aside and the boy swore at him, then dodged Cameron’s half-hearted cuff and darted through the broken doors into the crowded street. Another enemy. Well, he’d just have to take his turn with the rest.

  Lost In Space called out, “Your soft heart will get you in trouble one day, Doc.”

  “Fuck you. That blade was probably all that poor kid had in the world. Sell a working man a couple more of those capsules and save the opinions.”

  Lost In Space smiled up lazily. “It is always a pleasure doing business with you, Doc. You are such a regular customer.” The diamond sparkled insincerely

  ###

  Cameron checked his gun harness out of storage and hiked around Wreckers Heaps to Komarnicki’s office. The shantytown strung along the margin of the Heaps was more crowded than ever. When Cameron had lived there, his first days in the city after the farm, after Birmingham, there had still been trees, even a little grass. The last of Hyde Park. No more. Naked children chased each other between tents and shanty huts, dodging around piles of rubbish and little heaps of human shit that swarmed with flies. Smoke from innumerable cooking fires hazed the tops of the Exchange’s far-off riverfront ribbon of glittering towers, the thread of the skyhook beyond. Along the street, competing sound systems laid overlapping pulses of highlife, rai, garage dub, technoraga. Hawkers cried their wares by the edge of the slow-moving stream of bubblecars, flatbed trucks crowded with passengers, pedicabs, bicycles. Occasionally, a limo of some New Family or Exchange vip slid through the lesser vehicles like a sleek shark. And over all this, ad screens raised on rooftops or cantilevered gantries straddling the road or derelict sites glowed with heartbreakingly beautiful faces miming happiness or amazement or sexual ecstasy behind running slogans for products that no one on the street could possibly afford, or for cartels only the information brokers in the Exchange knew anything about.

  A couple of mudlarks were stripping a corpse near the barricades at the southern corner of the Heaps. Riot cops guarding the gibbets where the bodies of a dozen felons hung watched impassively, eyes masked by the visors of their helmets, Uzis slung casually at their sides. They stirred the usual little frisson of adrenaline in Cameron’s blood, a reflex that was all that was left of his days on the run, a student revolutionary with an in absentia sentence of treason on his head. But he was beyond the law now. He was one of the uncountable citizens of the invisible country, for whom there were only the gangs and posses and the arbitrary justice of the New Families. Law was reserved for the rich, and fortress suburbia, and the prison camps where at least a quarter of the population was locked away, camps Cameron had avoided by the skin of his teeth.

  Inside the barricades, things were cleaner, quieter. The plate-glass windows of Harrods displayed artful arrangements of electronics, biologics, the latest Beijing fashions. Japanese and Brazilian businessmen strolled the wide pavements, paced by tall men in sleeveless jackets cut to show off their fashionably shaped torsos—like a blunt, inverted triangle—and the grafted arm muscle and hypertrophied elbow and shoulder joints. Some had scaly spurs jutting from wrists or elbows. A league away from Cameron’s speed. He relied on his two meters and muscles shaped by weight-training, not surgery, to make a presence. Consequently, he got only the lesser members of visiting entourages, translators, bagmen, gofers: never the vips. As Lost In Space had said, he was getting old. And worse than old, out-of-date. Even though Komarnicki’s protection agency had never been anything but a marginal affair just one step ahead of the law, Cameron was hardly getting any work from it anymore.

  Komarnicki’s office was in a Victorian yellow brick townhouse in the warren of streets behind the V&A, as near to Exchange as he could afford, three flights up stairs that wound around a defunct lift shaft at least a century old. Cameron swallowed another of the capsules and went in.

  Komarnicki was drinking rice tea from a large porcelain cup, feet up on his steel and glass desk. A fat man with long white hair combed across a bald spot, his gaze shrewd behind old-fashioned square-lensed spectacles. “So you are here at last,” he said briskly. “Doc, Doc, you get so slow I wonder if you can anymore cut the mustard.”

  “Next time try employing a real messenger.”

  Komarnicki waved that away. “But you are here. I have a special job for you, one requiring your scientific training.”

  “That was another life. Twenty years ago, for Christ’s sake.” In fact, Cameron had hardly started his thesis work when the army had been sent in to close down the universities, and besides, he had been loo involved with the resistance to do any research.

  “Still, you are all I have in the way of a biologist, and the client is insistent. He wants muscle with a little learning, and who am I to deny his whim?” Komarnicki took his feet off the desk. Tea slopped over the rim of his cup as he leaned forward and said in a hoarse whisper, “All he wants is back up at a meeting. Nothing you haven’t done before and good money when the deal goes through. You get your usual cut, ten percent less agency fee. Plenty of money, Cameron. Maybe enough for me to pay for my heart.”

  “Your body would probably reject a human heart,” Cameron said. It was well known that Komarnicki had the heart of a pig, a cheap but safe replacement for his own coronary-scarred pump, and was buying a surrogate human heart on an installment plan from the same black clinic which had rented space in Cameron’s bones. It was also well known that Komarnicki was an artist of the slightly funny deal, and this one seemed to have more spin on it than most. Running flack for a simple meeting was hardly worth the price of a human heart, and besides, what did biology have to do with it? Cameron was sure that he wasn’t being told everything, but smiled and agreed to Komarnicki’
s terms. It wasn’t as if he had any choice.

  ###

  The client was a slight young man with a bad complexion and arrogant blue eyes, and long hair the dirty blond color of split pine. You wouldn’t look at him twice in the street, wouldn’t notice the quality of his crumpled, dirty clothes. A loose linen jacket, baggy raw cotton trousers crisscrossed with loops and buckles, Swiss oxblood loafers, the kind of quality only a cartel salary could pay for, but rumpled and stained by a week or more of continuous wear. He was a defector, a renegade R&D biologist on the run from his employers with bootlegged inside information, the real stuff, not the crap printed in the Financial Times. The kind of stuff the New Families paid well for. Dangerous stuff. His name, he said, was David Holroyd. He kept brushing back his long blond hair as he walked beside Cameron along the street and explained what he wanted.

  “There’s a meeting where I get paid in exchange for . . . what I have. Only I don’t really trust these people, you see?” Nervous sideways smile. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he held himself as though trying not to tremble. “It could be that I’m being followed, so maybe you should drive me around first. I have plenty of cash. What sort of biologist were you?”