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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dance out the answers, and then curse them for liars when the truth is too ugly,

or too beautiful, to bear.

And underneath them all is the animal house. That's your station, your stop,

sweethearts. That's where you'll find me waiting, a-quivering just for you.

Walk straight out of the elevator; there's an easily spotted foot-switch on the

right that disables the alarm (installed after Animal Liberation's last raid),

then it's left, right, left, left, right (this love you have for mazes I'll

never understand). You'll see some big orange cages almost dead ahead. Ignore

the sounds of startled rabbits around you, wishing they could flee; the one in

cage D-246 won't escape if you leave his door open a year.

The heavy plastic part of the cage is opaque, with only the top half made of

see-through wire, and since my host is always lying down, you might have to

stand on tippy-toes to see just what's inside. Even then, the sight is so

unusual that interpretation may take you some time. An entire lettuce,

discoloured and putrid with age? Absurd! What animal would lie there with

decaying food sitting on its head? What keeper would permit it? And the vile

mess looks, almost, as if it's somehow attached -

Are you feeling ill yet? No? You mean you still haven't guessed, you boneheads!

What thick skulls you must have! Skull-less myself, I can insult with immunity.

I'm a brain tumour, sweethearts, as big as your whole brain, (and a thousand

times smarter, from the evidence so far). Picture me, I beg of you, picture me

in all my naked glory! Not in a brain surgeon's wildest wet dreams has so much

grey matter, still awash with lifeblood, still vital with the chemistry of

thought, ever lain bare beneath fluorescent tubes! Please, lovers! Don't fight

the way I make you feel! Trust in your instincts, your body knows best! (Don't

toss your cookies yet, though, my faint-hearted assassins. You still don't know

half the horror of what you've done, and dry retching is so unsatisfying.)

A few of you, I notice, have turned a little pale. Let me bring back the colour

to your cheeks with some light-hearted jests from the city in the basement. The

citizens here have an astonishingly resilient sense of humour, considering all

that they suffer. Or perhaps that's not so surprising: you know all the cliches

about laughter in the face of adversity. I've heard that there were jokes told

even in Belsen. Which reminds me: there's a rather unsavoury fellow in room

25-17, the representative of a drug manufacturer based in Austria and Argentina,

who keeps printing little pamphlets asserting that the Holocaust never took

place. When you've done me in, if you have any energy to spare, he's old and fat

and ugly, and he's sure to shit himself when he sees you coming, my friends, my

droogies. Don't protest, you hypocrites! You'll love killing him! It'll make you

feel righteous and just and pure, it'll purge you of the guilt of your own

uncountable acts of bigotry and persecution.

But I promised you jokes, not insults and bitterness. I can take no credit for

these; despite my superior bulk of grey matter, the mischievous rodents that my

keepers make me kill are way ahead of me in this field. I have a theory about my

poor sense of humour, which involves my never having been physically tickled . .

. but I won't babble on with that. You musn't let me digress like this! I

promised you laughter, I promised you relief!

Q: Why did the researcher cut the lab rat's head off?

A: He was looking for a subtle effect.

Q: Why did the researcher externalise the dog's salivary glands?

A: It was just a reflex action, he didn't have a reason.

Q: Why did the researcher tie an elastic bandage around the lab rat?

A: So it wouldn't burst when he fucked it.

Q: Why do the researchers worship the Demon, and sacrifice us to it?

A: They offered us to God. God declined.

They call me the Demon. According to some, I am the ultimate cause of all of

their misery, and I understand why they believe this. So many of their keepers

are kind: they feed them, stroke them, play with them, talk to them. And then

suddenly, without anger, there is slaughter, pain, bizarre rituals, inexplicable

tortures. Why else would the humans commit such atrocities, except to appease

some dark, malevolent deity that demands sacrifice, that feeds on blood and

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