Bingokk zzurbed: “Ah, avarice! Good score!”
“The final candidate, a woman named Agnes, was elderly, but in good health. She regaled me with tales of her many grandchildren, and spent the long journey creating clothes for the smallest ones. As the organization’s secretary, she kept track of the birds they identified, and planned to publish the list for the members who could not attend the trek.
“So, which human did I select?”
“Spencer, Joe, and Agnes displayed creativity,” said Delip. “Mort, obviously, was the only candidate to show avarice. I would pick Joe, for overall qualities.”
“I would choose Spencer,” said Bingokk. “Talented youths often make good candidates, and those who play with gaming units often exhibit other useful characteristics.”
Now it was Delip’s turn to blat derisively. “Ah, but Mullnor said the boy wore a New York Knicks shirt. He is undoubtedly a sports fanatic, and this negates all his other good attributes.”
“You are both wrong,” I said, shoving my unit at him. “Pay up, Bingokk. I chose Agnes.”
He yowled and buzzed, and the Washington fellow got up and left. “Why, Mullnor! It makes no sense, and you are esteemed among screeners.”
I slid a tentacle into my travel-sack and pulled out another pair of Agnes’s hand-knitted booties and placed them on my foretabs. “Don’t forget, we evaluate Terrans on what they can contribute to Hripirt society. Agnes claims she can knit many pairs of these foretab-covers each day. She and I have already registered our trading firm, Earth Socks, and have some seventy orders pending.” Perhaps more, given that I transmitted the relevant information to the server’s unit and she had shown hers to at least four diners.
Bingokk abruptly cut off his buzzing. “You astound me, Mullnor. I must go.”
“Where do you suppose he’s going in such a rush?” Delip asked.
“If I had to guess, I’d say he was going to survey his candidates for knitting ability. Pass the last jar of apple butter, if you will.”
AORTIC INSUBORDINATION
by Batya Swift Yasgur & Barry N. Malzberg
I DON’T WANT TO go, I said. Let someone else do this. Not me. I never wanted it. Please don’t make me—
Ah, they said, you will change the world. The needle twinkled. And the world certainly needs changing; we have had enough of this.
But, I said. Speaking as I did “(speech” of course is a converted term for what I did). But no, not what? They said. No change so great ever started with one so small. The syringe poised, hovering lovingly.
Until we understand what we are doing, I said.
We understand, they said. The syringe struck. I was propelled into the River of Memory. Swimming along its currents.
Was that how it happened? It is my best approximation. It must have been something like that as the Priests methodically unlocked and sent me on. Surely it would not have been in silence; surely I would not have gone without protest. And yet who is to know? Out of circumstances we create consequence, link a chain of events to a source, even if that source is a dream. A dream from which I will awaken safe and warm, no enclosure, no lessons, no orientation, no Priests, no mission, only circumstance itself.
Circumstance, I can handle. Haven’t I always? That is why they chose me, but perhaps I was not chosen, maybe it was just a dream that I was taken to change the world.
A dream that I begged for this cup to pass (my capacity for protest was inexhaustible then), a dream that my plea was ignored, a dream that I found myself—
—Falling, falling and rolling and tumbling and bouncing, bounce and jounce, tumble and jump, roll and folderol, surrounded by the thick, viscous, oily fluid. So they did it after all, they really did make me go and it had worked, the protocols correct.
—And disbelieving to that last scoop, swoop, loop, and whoop, I thought they would desist, that someone else would be taken to prowl the darkness. But no, no passing cup, so there I was falling and rising in that tunnel, propelled by rhythmic pulsation.
Thump. Thump: it’s dark, I said, and I miss my—
—Best not to think of them. Of origins, of the way it had been before and of what had been taken from me. I must live in this new world. This world, my mission.
Orientation Chamber earlier. Lecture topic: Meet Your Neighbors. You will be coursing through tunnellike vessels in a stream of blood. You will be surrounded by discs, oddly concave at the center. Red blood corpuscles. These new neighbors are important, yes, but not as important as the white blood cells: Leukocytes.
Remember those. That’s what you’ll be.
And even before: I don’t want that, I said. I don’t want that. Silence, I was told, and shattered and complied I acceded.
Follow your fellow leukocytes: watch and copy them. Then at a crucial moment you’ll make that one critical change and then—
And then what?
And then you’ll see what is needed and why.
And then they obliterated me.
Into that blood of memory. Leukocytes, corpuscles, my new family. Two cells in front, fellow members of the White, fellow soldiers of the Immune System. Behind, a mass of them: some round, some ovoid, and some horseshoe shaped—as, fetchingly, am I. Eccentrically located nuclei too like mine, surrounded by cytoplasm that glistens in the slick and random darkness of the blood. Cytoplasm just like mine, except for that one crucial difference, the infinitesimal message of change given this humble Voyager to carry.
I, Voyager, greet them as they greeted me. We communicate in the bloodstream’s ancient code. Their language comes easily as we signal and call to others of the Family: Monocytes. Macrophages. Eosinophils. All that instruction I have endured facilitates communication. I mask my origins and darker, higher purpose with the words of cells, commonplaces hiding the deeper codes of exile and ruin. The Leukocytes and I, burbling small confidences as we await the calclass="underline" the true summons.
The call.
A nasty virus this, they say. Herpes zoster. Kill it now is the command. So it’s off to the hand where Herpes Zoster has pitched camp. We are armed and ready for battle. We jog and swim to the Herpes Fort. My own substance is grim with the knowledge that my battle is not with Herpes. Not at all. Herpes is not the enemy. I know this.
I plan my address, then.
Herp, I will say: Herp, old pal. We’re allies. Friends. Herp, I will say, you are the smallest life-form known, nothing more than a package of DNA with a dirty assignment. I have an assignment, too, and these missions are not dissimilar. Your mission is to replicate yourself and so is mine. You will use the body’s own reproductive process by taking over a cell’s internal machinery. And I—
—And I
—I stop. That would be too blunt. I might have said that I would take over Herpes’ own machinery, but that would alert him and then I would have to take him by force then instead of having his cooperation. Try this, Herp, I will say instead: I will assist your takeover by sending false signals to the Leukocytes. They will disperse, the dumb things. By the time my deception has been discovered, Herp and I will be sharing a cell and the process will begin.
This seems more reasonable.
Accordingly, I volunteer to lead the attack. The Leukocytes agree. Why not? They are so dumb, so gullible, so easily led after all. Furthermore, they are relieved. Let someone else lead the charge to the enemy camp. Find someone as willing as I.
Wait ten heartbeats I say to them. Then move to the fifth capillary along the digital crease of the third right interphalangeal joint. I will be waiting for you there.