The Nirvana Plague (41 page)

This was far from being Marley’s first encounter with this material. Standard life-sciences textbook stuff. But Roger recounted the history of life on earth as if it were his personal story. His life
was
the earth’s life.

“Yes,” Delacourt said.

She looked completely absorbed in the story, her pretty eyes big and glassy. She looked almost childlike.

“My story is too tidy, of course. I didn’t talk about bacteria. But they might be the most important part. Or maybe viruses. Bacteria might have invented viruses. But it’s hard to say. Stories are always tidier than realities. They have to be. That’s what good they are.”

Newsline was showing overhead shots of the street now. They must have had a camera crew hanging out a window. Main Street was filled with people. Where were all these people coming from? The wet grey air seemed to blend them all together into one swelling mass — two swelling masses, one either side of the police cordon outside the Pony — like a fat grub cut in half. They seemed to pulse and surge — as if the halves, trying to reunite, were blindly groping for each other.

Marley’s sense of doom grew stronger with every passing moment. He wanted everything to stop. But he wanted everything to hurry.

“IDD, Roger. What about IDD?”

But Roger made no reply. He sat back, watching Marley and Delacourt. Was he finished? Just as Marley opened his mouth to ask, Roger began again: “Fast forward now, a few hundred million years. To the invention of
mind
. Here’s how it happened. Just the broad strokes. By now we are not only multi-cellular, we are multi-multi-cellular. We have organs, parts, systems. There’s a circulatory system, and a digestive system, a muscular system, a reproductive system, and so on. Earthworms have all these systems. But they don’t have minds. Depends where you want to draw the line, of course, but it doesn’t help us to blur the distinction between any sort of nervous system at all and actual
mind
. We had to have a nervous system for all these organs to communicate with one another, to stay in sync. The nervous system was a very important invention. Before that, the coordination of our internal organs was pretty rudimentary, mediated by chemical interactions. Each organ lived in the stew of chemical expressions produced by the other organs within the body. That was its
environment
. It’s not a very good analogy, but Dr. Marley needs for me to be brief.”

Marley started. Had something happened? No. Where had he been? Staring at the screens. Why wasn’t Benford saying anything?

“But the nervous system made these internal communications
electrical
,” Roger said. “And that—”

“Why don’t you try Karen again now?”

“Why?”

“Maybe she was just in the shower or something.”

“No,” Roger said firmly.

Liar.
He knows it’s a lie. — Marley’s head was swimming. He felt hot. — He knows I’m a lie.

Roger continued, unrelentingly, speaking only to Delacourt: “The nervous system made internal communications
electrical
, rather than chemical. And that meant speed. Things were changing
faster
again. We call the parts of our bodies ‘organs.’ But organs have parts too. The heart has chambers, for example. The lung has lobes. The nervous system has nerves, ganglia, and, eventually, for some of us, brains. Without brains there is no mind. But without nerves there is no brain. Without bodies there is no nervous system. Each is built up from the other. The brain brings nerves from all over the body close together. This innovation made it possible for the body to coordinate its organs with more sophistication and subtlety. Speed and efficiency. Faster and faster. Then, not exactly all at once, but rather suddenly, mind happened. Though it took millions of years, it was sudden in terms of the pace of change up till then. — Faster and faster!”

The dreaded voice came at last:
“The tranq shooter is in position. Can you get Sturgeon out?”

Marley glanced at Delacourt quickly. She didn’t know anything about the plan. She wouldn’t have any idea what Benford was talking about. But Delacourt showed no reaction. She was giving Roger her full attention, her dark eyes shining. Benford must have had them cut Delacourt out of the channel.

Marley didn’t know what to do. Delacourt was out of the loop. Benford could hear everything going on. She knew they’d gotten nowhere with Roger.
Can you get him out?
Was she kidding? How the hell was he supposed to answer her? Mind rays? Jesus Christ almighty!

Roger was watching Marley now. “The development of mind,” he said, “was as revolutionary as anything that had come before it, but it wasn’t magical.”

He’s watching me, Marley thought. He’s been watching me all along. He knows what’s going on.

“Mind is as natural as anything else,” Roger said. “But it
seems
different because that’s what it is
made
to do. It’s meant to make things
seem
. Complex brains create metaphors, symbols. Symbols are notions that stand for real objects. Symbols allow brains to think about the world without acting on the world. Less developed organisms can’t
think
at all. They can only act. But animals with complex central nervous systems, brains, can act symbolically. Thinking is acting symbolically. If you can do that, you can make maps of the world, and solve more complex problems. A rat can run a maze because it makes a map of the maze as it explores it. All territorial animals have some kind of map in their brains. See what I mean?”

He was looking at Marley, but he was speaking to Delacourt. Or was he?

Delacourt nodded.

Benford was in his ear again:
“Dr. Marley, the situation out here is deteriorating. You’ve got to try to get Sturgeon moving.”

Deteriorating? What the hell did that mean? — Marley looked at the screens again. The crowd, though half obscured by the thin veil of rain, seemed more active, more mobile than before.

“Still listening, Carl?” Roger said.

Marley’s attention snapped back to Roger like he’d jerked its leash. “Yes, Roger! Yes, but where are you going with all this?”

“Well, since symbols aren’t physical they are not bound by physical constraints. Symbols can do anything, be anything. But they are constrained nevertheless by the physicality of the body that thinks them. If the body acts on thoughts that lead to its death, those thoughts die. A new kind of evolution then appeared. Symbolic evolution. Symbolic evolution is very, very fast. And very deadly. You don’t want to just think anything at all, you want to think things that are good for your body. But how do you know what’s good for your body? How do you know what is you and what isn’t you? And so mind discovered — or invented — consciousness. Consciousness is the
idea of you
. What you are is what you’re conscious of. Your personality, your self, is a construct, an imagined thing. It’s a
virtual
organism playing by
virtual
rules. But those rules must be mappable to the real world. Otherwise the virtual organism has no real value to the
actual
organism. When the map fails, when the model can’t accommodate the actual, you call that a mental disorder. It’s something like a scientific theory being shattered by a major anomaly. So here’s my question for the psychiatrist: what determines what you’re conscious of?”

Delacourt looked at him too. Marley felt like he was being attacked. He didn’t have time for guessing games. And why hadn’t Roger asked Delacourt this pointless question anyway? It was her area! And why wasn’t she saying anything? She hadn’t said a word.

Roger wasn’t going to let it go.

“What determines what a person can be conscious of, Dr. Marley?” he said.

“The brain,” Marley said irritably. “The body.”

Roger smiled. “No,” he said. “Consciousness isn’t physical. That’s
awareness
. Consciousness applies only within the symbolic realm of the mind itself. True, that’s ultimately founded upon bodily awareness, but consciousness isn’t that much help dealing with the physical world. We were doing a damn fine job of that without consciousness.” Roger looked at him sympathetically. Just a moment more, he seemed to say. Hang on. “It was a trick question,” he said. “Life moves faster now, you see. But it also moves in a much larger perceptual universe. Those early capsules floating about, what did they know about the universe? The range of their contact with it was limited to whatever they happened to float up against. That was all they were capable of knowing. The conceptual universe has been getting bigger and bigger ever since. The invention of consciousness vastly expanded that universe.”

Benford in his ear again:
“Dr. Marley, can you bring him out or not?”

“I’m working on it!” Marley said loudly.

Delacourt and Roger both looked at him curiously, amused. The voices! The voices! He wanted to grab Roger and throw him out the door physically. But he also wanted to tell Roger it was all a trap.

“Goddamn it, Roger!” he said. “What is IDD?”

“The earth invented life,” Roger said, unperturbed. “Or discovered it. Both words are wrong. The earth
did
it. That’s not much better. Let me put it this way: the world is what is happening, and what is happening is alive.” His eyes burned into Marley. “You and I are what the world is doing. Don’t you see? We’re not
on
the world, we’re
in
it.”

“
IDD
, Roger. What is
IDD
?”

“It’s the next thing. It’s what the world is doing with consciousness. It’s what the world is doing on top of consciousness. Human consciousness has only just arrived on the scene. A few thousand years ago. Maybe a few tens of thousands of years. A blink in time. Faster and faster. Already the next thing is happening. Faster and
bigger
. Bigger than us. Bigger than what we think the universe is. Bigger than what we imagine.”

Marley felt dizzy. “What’s bigger than the universe?”

“Bigger than the
human
universe, doc. The world is opening her eyes. She’s looking out. Out.”

Roger’s eyes were lit like lasers. He looked all around — not at the room — beyond it. His sight passed through the walls of silly décor around them.

“She’s looking out into the void,” he said. “Out into space.”

“But what is IDD, Roger?” Marley said, desperately. “What
is
it?”

“We are how she’s waking up. We are becoming her. We are how she is becoming herself.”

Marley looked at Delacourt. She was glassy-eyed, seeing nothing he could see. She was gone. She was sitting beside him, breaking with IDD. She looked like Fred Peters had looked that horrible night in the tomb.

He tried to stand up, suddenly, but banged his thigh against the table, and fell awkwardly off the bench onto the floor. He was yelling. Yelling at Roger, at everyone. “But I don’t want to!” he cried. “I don’t want to become anything else! You’ve got to make it stop! For Christ’s sake, you’ve got to stop it!”

He sounded like a child.

“Carl!”
Benford said,
“what the hell is going on?”

He scrambled to his feet again. “Xan has it!” he said. “Xan has IDD!”

“Carl, it’s breaking out in the crowd!”

He whirled and looked at the screens.

The crowd was surging through the police barriers.

They were coming for him!

He looked at Roger and Delacourt, still sitting in the booth seats. Roger had his hand on Delacourt’s arm — comforting her? — but he was looking at Marley, eyes full of light and sorrow, excitement and sympathy. His eyes overwhelmed him. Marley had to look away.

“Carl, are you all right? Answer me!”

Through the violet-tinted windows at the front of the diner, he saw the crowd swarming through the cordoned area. Vaguely human figures flickered rapidly back and forth like shadow puppets.

My God, are they fighting?

He felt nauseous, drunk. He staggered forward. He looked back again.

Roger was getting up. He was helping Delacourt to her feet.

“Carl, we’ve got to pull out! I can’t get through the crowd! If you’re still there, answer me!”

Marley couldn’t find his voice. He grunted something. He didn’t know what. He couldn’t think in words anymore. Was this it? Was this what it was like?

He stumbled forward, fleeing from Roger. He had to escape from Roger. Before it was too late. But where could he go? Into the madness in the street?

Roger took Delacourt by the hand, drew her to her feet. They started toward him, hand in hand.

Marley backed away down the bar, closer to the windows, struggling not to give in to panic.

Not now, he thought. Not yet. Not here.

He stopped at the end of the bar. Roger smiled at him and turned toward the door. They were going to leave him in the bar. They were going outside.

Marley reached to grab Delacourt’s arm, to stop her, but hesitated. He was afraid to touch her now.

“Xan!” he said, his voice a weak rasp. “Xan, don’t.”

She looked through him, her dark eyes sparkling. Her lips moved slightly, but she said nothing.

Roger still had her hand. He opened the inner door, and she followed him into the vestibule.

The sounds from the riot in the street came through — a weird, vaguely musical ooling like a whale song.

Suddenly Marley remembered the sniper with the tranquilizer gun.

“Wait!” he shouted.

But it was too late, they were outside. The outer door swung closed behind them.

He ran into the vestibule, but he was afraid to go outside. He tried to see them through the tinted glass, but they had already disappeared into the crowd.

No one shouted or reacted. The sniper must have pulled out with Benford and the rest of them. Or joined the crowd.

And now he was alone. He backed out of the vestibule, back into the faux saloon. What if they start coming inside? What could he do? He didn’t see any way to lock the door without a key.

“Colonel Benford, are you there?”

The comm was dead. Nothing but crackling static.

On the screens over the bar the street scene outside was being displayed in a box while the talking heads silently narrated.