‘That’s very interesting, Dixy. But I think there’s an important difference between a tulip bulb and a half-liter of quality-assured blood. And it’s this. A bulb has no real intrinsic value. The most it can ever be is a tulip. But blood, well that’s something else. Blood performs a number of vital physiological functions that make it much more precious than any bulb. It’s the very stuff of life itself. And besides, markets are made by the laws of supply and demand. With eighty percent of the world’s population afflicted with P2, the demand for quality-assured blood far outstrips the supply. That’s why the price keeps rising. It’s a matter of simple scarcity.’
‘But isn’t it a fact that there’s enough blood on deposit in banks to reduce by half the number of people suffering from P2? And that it’s only the artificially high price of blood that prevents it being used to cure people?’
‘Well, that may be so,’ admitted Dallas. ‘But no one’s going to do it. No one’s going to help that spawning rabble out there. Pigs, most of them. You know, sometimes I think it would be nice if God were to send another flood and drown the world. At least that part where the pestilential hordes are living.’
‘But if they were gone,’ said Dixy. ‘The “pestilential hordes,” as you call them. Then surely the price of blood would collapse. If all the sick people were removed from the world, then quality-assured blood would hardly be scarce anymore, would it? And you’d be out of a job.’
Dallas frowned. ‘What’s gotten into you, Dixy?’ he asked. ‘What do you care what happens to the swarming masses?’
She shrugged back. ‘Oh, nothing at all, of course. It’s you I care about, Dallas. I just wouldn’t like the same thing to happen to you as happened to all those seventeenth-century Dutchmen.’
Dallas nodded his appreciation. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Look, nothing’s going to happen to me. Nothing’s going to go wrong. Believe me, Dixy. It’s very sweet of you, but really, there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.’
2
It was more chateau than country house. Not a grand romantic chateau, white-towered and turreted like a Chenonceau or Chambord, but rather a modern castle-keep occupying an imposing position on the island, empty of all else save the trees that surrounded the wide snow-covered plot. It was a heavenly, magical spot with not a soul in sight, and only the peculiar shape of Dallas’s gyrocopter and the ever-present hum of the swimming pool filter to remind Aria that this was the twenty-first century.
The gyro was fueled and getting ready for takeoff. Dallas was already aboard, carefully going through his preflight checks even though the computer had already checked everything. But Dallas was nothing if not thorough and distrusted a machine to do something he thought he could do equally well himself. Aria approached the gyro, carrying her sickly daughter in her arms. She always hated returning to the city, for here in the midst of their secluded hundred acres, it was possible to forget that beyond the tree line lay a world of disease and despair. Back in the city, even in the exclusive apartment block where they lived, the external world was clamorous and demanding, even dangerous — so much so that whenever they were there, both she and Dallas carried guns. But Aria had never before left the country with such terrible premonition. She felt sure that the doctors who had summoned them back to the city to explain at last what they thought was wrong with Caro and how they proposed to treat her were going to destroy everything she and Dallas had worked so hard to acquire. Their life in the country had been so perfect, the place such an Edenic paradise, that she had begun to believe something dreadful must happen to interrupt their private idyll. And such is the nature of motherhood that it never occurred to her to think that her own daughter’s illness was that same dreadful thing she feared.
As she climbed aboard the gyrocopter, Aria was pale with worry and remained silent despite her husband’s best efforts to sound optimistic. Perhaps she merely saw through his show of confidence, for the truth was, he was just as anxious as Aria. Maybe more so, since it was Dallas who had made the greatest effort to have a child: Like most men, Dallas was more or less completely infertile, and in order to father a child, he had undergone a lengthy period of treatment involving spermatid extraction.[35] Certainly he had no wish to go through all that again.
‘From here on in, things are going to get better,’ he declared, mostly for her benefit. ‘Not knowing what’s been wrong with her has been the worst thing. Now at least we’ll know what’s wrong and what needs to be done about it.’ Dallas nodded firmly and started up the engine. He kept his eyes on what was happening outside the canopy as they shot suddenly up into the air. After a minute or so, he added, ‘Whatever needs to be done will be done. She’ll have the best treatment there is, no matter what it costs, I promise. Even if I have to devise the treatment myself.’
Aria glanced sideways at her husband and smiled in spite of herself. She didn’t doubt that Dallas was being perfectly serious. He was a skilled artist, architect, engineer, and inventor, and she felt quite sure that it wouldn’t have taken him very long to have added ‘doctor’ to his list of skills. It was this capacity for applying himself to new disciplines that had made him so attractive to her in the first place. Had he not learned Italian in only three months just so he could speak to Aria’s mother? In a world of unremarkable men, Aria knew how fortunate she had been to find a husband as extraordinary as Dallas.
They were soon at the hospital. Located in a large park on the edge of the Zone and surrounded by monumental sculptures, one of them by Aria’s own father, the large glass building had the air of a Greek temple — an effect that was enhanced by the presence of a smaller altarlike blood transfusion center opposite the main entrance.
The little trio presented itself at an informal reception area that occupied a vast open space at the center of the building. There, a pleasant if slightly overweight woman, wearing a white paper dress, greeted the three individually by name and asked if they had enjoyed a comfortable journey.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Dallas, although he could not remember the smallest detail of the flight. Not the route they had taken, nor the traffic they had encountered. It was as if he had suffered a forty-five-minute amnesia.
‘Did you bring your digital thought recording?’ asked the woman.
Dallas handed over a gold disc that was about the size of an old-fashioned coin. It contained thoughts of Dallas’s father, for a Motion Parallax. For legal and insurance reasons, doctors were forbidden to communicate directly with patients, and all consultations were normally handled by a diagnostic computer. A Motion Parallax program using the image of a person who was familiar to a patient was held to be the best way of making the resulting dialogue seem less impersonal.
‘Please follow me,’ said the woman.
She led them to the long edge of the building and a private space with a couple of easy chairs.
‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘I’ll leave you now, to set up the Motion Parallax. It’ll be a minute or two before you can interact with the program that’s been dealing with your daughter’s case.’
They sat down and waited. Aria had never met Dallas’s father. These days he spent most of his time traveling outside of the States. But the impression she had gained of him from a variety of recorded images was of a handsome, immensely distinguished man with silver hair and a golden voice — like some grand old actor instead of a university professor.
35