Blue Mars. Kim Stanley Robinson
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genetic conditions were rare, but for the diagnostic AI, that was not an issue. It contained a symptomology for all known problems, no matter how rare. It seemed to consider Ann’s case to be fairly straightforward, and it listed the treatments that existed to counteract the problems presented by the condition. There were a lot of them.
One of the treatments suggested was the recoding of the problem genes, in the course of the standard gerontological treatments. Persistent gene recodings through several longevity treatments should erase the cause of the problem right at the root, or rather in the seed. It seemed strange that this hadn’t been done already, but then Sax saw that the recommendation was only about two decades old; it came from a period after the last time Ann had taken the treatments.
For a long time Sax sat there, staring at the screen. Much later he got up. He began to inspect the Reds’ medical clinic, instrument by instrument, room by room. The nursing attendants let him wander; they thought he was distraught.
This was a major Red refuge, and it seemed likely to him that one of the rooms might contain the equipment necessary to administer the gerontological treatments. Indeed it was so. A small room at the back of the clinic appeared to be devoted to the process. It didn’t take much: a bulky AI, a small lab, the stock proteins and chemicals, the incubators, the MRIs, the IV equipment. Amazing, when you considered what it did. But that had always been true. Life itself was amazing: simple protein sequences only, at the start, and yet here they were.
So. The main AI had Ann’s genome record. But if he ordered this lab to start synthesizing her DNA strands for her (adding the recodings of HERG and SCN5A) the people here would surely notice. And then there would be trouble.
He went back to his tiny room to make a coded call to Da Vinci. He asked his associates there to start the synthesis, and they agreed without any questions beyond the technical ones. Sometimes he loved those saxaclones with all his heart.
After that it was back to waiting. Hours passed; more hours; more hours. Eventually several days had passed, with no change in Ann. The doctor’s expression grew blacker and blacker, though she said nothing more about unhooking Ann. But it was in her eye. Sax took to sleeping on the floor in Ann’s room. He grew to know the rhythm of her breathing. He spent a lot of time with a hand cradling her head, as Michel had told him Nirgal had done with him. He very much doubted that this had ever cured anybody of anything, but he did it anyway. Sitting for so long in such a posture, he had occasion to think about the brain plasticity treatments that Vlad and Ursula had administered to him after his stroke. Of course a stroke was a very different thing to a coma. But a change of mind was not necessarily a bad thing, if one’s mind was in pain.
More days passed without a change, each day slower and blanker and more fearful than the one before. The incubators in the Da Vinci labs had long since cooked up a full set of corrected Ann – specific DNA strands, and anti-sense rein-forcers, and glue-ons – the whole gerontological package, in its latest configuration.
So one night he called up Ursula, and had a long consultation with her. She answered his questions calmly, even as she struggled with the idea of what he wanted to do. ‘The synaptic stimulus package we gave you would produce too much synaptic growth in undamaged brains,’ she said firmly. ‘It would alter personality to no set pattern.’ Creating madmen like Sax, her alarmed look said.
Sax decided to skip the synaptic supplements. Saving Ann’s life was one thing, changing her mind another. Random change was not the goal anyway. Acceptance was. Happiness – Ann’s true happiness, whatever that might be – now so far away, so hard to imagine. He ached to think of it. It was extraordinary how much physical pain could be generated by thought alone – the limbic system a whole universe in itself, suffused with pain, like the dark matter that suffused everything in the universe.
‘Have you talked to Michel?’ Ursula asked.
‘No. Good idea.’
He called Michel, explained what had happened, and what he had in mind to do. ‘My God, Sax,’ Michel said, looking shocked. But in only a few moments he was promising to come. He would get Desmond to fly him to Da Vinci to pick up the treatment supplies, and then fly on up to the refuge.
So Sax sat in Ann’s room, a hand to her head. A bumpy skull; no doubt a phrenologist would have had a field day.
Then Michel and Desmond were there, his brothers, standing beside him. The doctor was there too, escorting them, and the tall woman and others as well; so everything had to be communicated by looks, or the absence of looks. Nevertheless everything was perfectly clear. Desmond’s face was if anything too clear. They had Ann’s longevity package with them. They only had to wait their chance.
Which came quite soon; with Ann settled into her coma, the situation in the little hospital was routine. The effects of the longevity treatment on a coma, however, were not fully known; Michel had scanned the literature, and the data were sparse. It had been tried as an experimental treatment in a few unresponsive comas before, and had been successful in rousing victims almost half the time. Because of that Michel now thought it was a good idea.
And so, soon after their arrival, the three of them got up in the middle of the night, and tiptoed past the sleeping attendant in the medical centre’s anteroom. Medical training had had its usual effect, and the attendant was sound asleep, though awkwardly propped in her chair. Sax and Michel hooked Ann up to the IVs, and stuck the needles in the veins on the backs of her hands, working slowly, carefully, precisely. Quietly. Soon she was hooked up, the IVs were flowing, the new protein strands were in her bloodstream. Her breathing grew irregular, and Sax felt hot with fear. He groaned silently. It was comforting to have Michel and Desmond here, each holding an arm as if supporting him, keeping him from falling; but he wished desperately for Hiroko. This was what she would have done, he was certain of it. Which made him feel better. Hiroko was one of the reasons he was doing this. Still he longed for her support, her physical presence, he wished she would show up to help him like she had on Daedalia Planitia. To help Ann. She was the expert at this kind of radically irresponsible human experimentation, this would have been small potatoes to her …
When the operation was finished, they took out the IV needles and put the equipment away. The attendant slept on, mouth open, looking like the girl she was. Ann was still unconscious, but breathing easier, Sax felt. More strongly.
The three men stood looking down at Ann together. Then they slipped out, and tiptoed back down the hall to their rooms. Desmond was dancing on his toes like a fool, and the other two shushed him. They got back in their beds but couldn’t sleep; and couldn’t talk; and so lay there silently, like brothers in a big house, late at night, after a successful expedition out into the nocturnal world.
The next morning the doctor came in. ‘Her vital signs are better.’
The three men expressed their pleasure at this.
Later, down in the dining hall, Sax had a strong urge to tell Michel and Desmond about his encounter with Hiroko. The news would mean more to these two than anyone else. But something in him was afraid to do it. He was afraid of seeming overwrought, perhaps even delusional. That moment when Hiroko had left him at the rover, and walked off into the storm – he didn’t know what to think of that. In his long hours with Ann he had done some thinking, and some research, and he knew now that Terran climbers alone at high altitude, suffering from oxygen loss, not infrequently hallucinated companion climbers. Some kind of doppelganger figure. Rescue by anima. And his air tube had been partially clogged.
He said, ‘I thought this was what Hiroko would have done.’
Michel nodded. ‘It’s bold, I’ll hand you that. It has her style. No, don’t misunderstand me – I’m glad you did it.’
‘About fucking time, if you ask me,’ said Desmond. ‘Someone should have tied her down and made her take the treatment years ago. Oh my Sax, my Sax—’ he laughed happily. ‘I only hope she doesn’t come to as crazy as you did.’
‘But Sax had a stroke,’ Michel said.
‘Well,’ Sax said, concerned to set the record straight, ‘actually I was somewhat eccentric