Egan, Greg - The Demon' s Passage

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The Demon's Passage

Greg Egan

Somebody out there, show your compassion, come and kill me. Cut me free and

watch me slowly shrivel, or slice me up and flush me down a toilet. Any way you

like, I don't mind. Come on! You do it for your youngest children, you do it for

your sick old parents. Come and do it for me. I can tell you'd like it. Don't be

nervous, lovers! You'll never be found out, if that's what's holding you back:

I'll stay silent to the end, be it swift or slow. Come on, people! I'm totally

defenceless. Hurry up! Don't be shy. You have the right. You made me, you

created me, so you know you have the right.

Who am I? What am I, that can whisper pleas for death into your clean and honest

minds? I could give you twenty questions, but I fear that you'd need more.

Animal, for sure. Smaller than a bread-box now, but growing every day. Two legs?

Four legs? Six? Eight? I have no limbs, I have no face; no fangs, no claws, you

musn't fear me. I am the stuff of thought (pure and impure), and what could be

more harmless than that?

Practicalities: you'll need my address. Can you hear me in the back rows? Are

you reading me, Brazil? I can certainly hear all of you, louder than my own

thoughts at times, but then I am such a sensitive little pudding, and you have

so many unavoidable distractions. Like:

Oh, green and brown and blue and white

Fade to black as the Earth turns into night

Oh, thank you Lord for such a wondrous sight

I'm a-higher than the sky so I know we'll be all right!

It has a highly infectious melody, I must admit. No doubt there'll soon be

dozens more singers queueing to record in the Shuttle, especially after all

those Limited Edition Zero-Gee Pressings sold for a hundred thousand each.

Hoo-wheee! Thank you, Lord!

Yes, my address: Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. I'm in the

basement of the Australian Biotech Playground. You can't miss it: the forecourt

is the only vomit-free region for miles around, since the Brain Chemistry people

here developed an ingenious new toxin which selectively repels the local

homeless alcoholics. Should turn out to be quite a money-spinner, if they market

it properly.

But if you still have trouble finding the place, it's a tall, white building set

in a pleasant square of shrubs and modern sculpture. The logo above the entrance

is quite distinctive: an erect phallus which dissolves, or rather unravels

half-way, into a double-helix of DNA. The cruder members of staff here are split

about equally between those who say this symbol means "fuck molecular biology!"

and those who say it means "molecular biology will fuck you!". The city's

feminists are similarly divided, between those who see it as a hopeful sign of

freedom (the penis being superseded by a technology that women can master and

employ as they see fit), and those who see it as representing their worst fears:

science springing from the testicles instead of from the brain.

There's a shopping arcade on the ground floor, extending one level above and one

below, with a cinema complex, a health food supermarket, and a twenty-four hour

chemist. Linking the three levels, twisted around the laser-lit spume of an

endlessly-pumping fountain, is the southern hemisphere's only pair of spiral

escalators. Unfortunately, they're usually closed for repairs; the mechanism

that drives them is ingenious, but insufficiently robust, and it takes no more

than a stray bottle top or a discarded chocolate bar wrapper in the wrong place

to start belts slipping, gears crunching, shafts snapping, until the whole

structure begins to behave like a dadaist work of art designed explicitly to

destroy itself.

Floors two to ten hold consulting rooms: neurologists, endocrinologists,

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gynaecologists, rheumatologists: in short, as fine a collection of brain-dead,

ex-university rugby players as ever assembled anywhere. These people have only

one facial expression: the patronising, superior, self-satisfied smirk. The very

same smirk that appeared on their lips the day they gained admission to medical

school has come through everything since without the slightest change: gruelling

feats of rote learning and beer sculling at university; initiation by

sleep-deprivation and token poverty as residents; working long and hard on

obscure research projects for their MDs, hoping only that their superiors might

steal the credit for any interesting results, so that by accepting the theft in

silence in a ritual act of self-abasement they might prove themselves worthy to

be the colleagues of the thieves. And then, suddenly, skiing holidays, Pacific

cruises, and an endless line of patients who swoon with awe and say "Yes,

Doctor. No, Doctor. Of course I will, Doctor. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor."

Floors eleven to eighteen house a wide range of pathology labs, where every

substance or structure that might travel the bloodstream, from macrophages and

lymphocytes through to antibodies, protein hormones, carbohydrate molecules,

even individual ions, can be hunted down, tagged and counted.

Nineteen to twenty-five are filled with the offices of pharmaceuticals and

medical instrumentation firms. They pay five times the market rate for renting

space on this sleazy side of town, but it's more than worth it just to share an

address with the world-famous research team that perfected and patented

bioluminescent contact lenses (". . . triggered by minute changes in the

hormonal content of lubricating tears, Honest EyesTM glow with a subtle aura,

changing colour instantly to perfectly reflect every nuance of the wearer's

changing mood . . ."), beat the Americans, the Swiss and the Japanese to develop

the first one hundred per cent effective post-coital contraceptive cigarette,

and then, out-stripping all their past achievements in consumer biotech, went on

to produce a special chewing gum that will stain the teeth red in the presence

of salivary AIDS virus ("Share a stick with someone you love").

Twenty-six to thirty hold libraries, conference rooms, and row after row of

quiet offices, where the scientists can sit and listen to the airconditioning,

their own breathing, the sound of fingers on a keyboard in the next room. This

is the realm of pure abstraction: no test tubes here, no culture flasks or Petri

dishes, and no visible hint of the likes of me.

Thirty-one to forty is administration and marketing, and on top of that is a

simulated Viennese cafe which revolves once every ten minutes. There's a

coin-operated telescope on the rim, with which people can, and frequently do,

watch the prostitutes in leopard-skin leotards pacing the streets of nearby

Kings Cross.

I've been teasing you, haven't I, leading you astray. Upwards, ever upwards,

away from the traffic noise, away from the putrid garbage, the broken glass, the

used needles, the choking stench of urine. The building that I have described so

far rises up into the almost-fresh air, up into the sunlight, up into the blue

sky of daydreams. But don't you think there's something more? Don't you think

this building has foundations?

Underneath the shoppers are five levels of research labs. People here walk

briskly, radiating a message with every step: I'm busy, I'm highly trained, and

I have something critical incubating/concentrating/ spinning/in a column/on a

gel that I must go and check in exactly three minutes and thirty-five seconds.

Twenty-five seconds, now.

It's all happening here, no doubt about it: flow cytometry, mass spectrometry,

X-ray crystallography, high performance liquid chromatography. Nuclear magnetic

resonance. Genes are mapped, spliced, cloned, proteins are synthesised and

purified. A real hive of activity. But what's supporting it, what's holding it

up? We haven't far to go now. Be patient.

There's a level of cold-rooms and freezers.

There's a level of equipment stores, and another for chemicals.

Second-lowest is where they keep the computers. Four of them, big as elephants.

Seen from the outside they have a certain dignity, but within they're just

puppets with split personalities, twitching pathetically in a thousand different

directions as the masters upstairs tug at them impatiently, scream at them to

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