Ronica opened her mouth to utter the correct response, but found she could not remember the words. It had been a long time since she had heard anyone voice the First Principles of Immunology, which were the very basis of modern blood banking. And she was a little surprised to discover that the director seemed actually to believe in those first principles: The way he had spoken, like some teacher in a mission church, instructing his native catechumen, had convinced her of that.
‘Blessed...’ Ronica paused again and swallowed, a little unnerved by this show of blood orthodoxy. For a long time now she had regarded the hermetic world in which she lived from the point of view of pragmatism, and not as a matter of creed. Quite simply, it made scientific sense for society to enforce autologous blood donation so long as diseases like P2 existed. That was just good phlebotomy.[53] But to treat the donor screening process and the practice of permanent deferral for those suffering from infectious diseases as articles of religious faith was discomforting. Ronica didn’t like to think she was working for a man who was like her parents and actually believed in this shit. Of course, that was it. It was an age thing. The director was old enough to be her father. And what else could he say? Simon King was of the same generation who had originated these first principles. So let him believe what he liked. What did it matter to her? And if it might help to advance her, then she could even pay lip service to what he held to be fundamental truth. Why not? Where was the harm?
Ronica cleared her throat, as if this was the real reason she had hesitated before making the appropriate response. Then she apologized.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, swallowing the remainder of her doubt. Then, smiling with the sanctimony of the saved, she added the words the director was still awaiting. ‘Blessed Are the Pure in Blood.’
‘Be it so in truth,’ he replied, and then dismissed her with a quickly given sign of the circulation,[54] which ended up pointing the way out of his office.
IV
Normal peripheral blood is composed of three types of cells, red cells, white cells, and platelets, suspended in a pale yellow fluid called plasma. The blood performs a number of vital physiological functions: as a respiratory gas transport; as nutrient and waste product transport; handling and distributing heat energy; maintaining fluidity but at the same time stanching blood loss following injury; and acting as a source of, and transport system for, immunocompetent cells and the effector substances of the immune system. Blood provides the first line of defense against microbial invasion, but when this is breached it is the same frail blood that transports the corruption of infection and disease around the body. This very corruption has been a major factor in the decline of all civilization. Recently, molecular biologists have been able to determine that the reason Neanderthal man vanished around thirty-five thousand years ago was because of yellow fever, a parasitic blood-borne disease. The decline and fall of ancient Rome is now believed to have been precipitated by the use of lead in water pipes,[55] which brought about a high incidence of chronic anemia and dementia. The final collapse of the Roman Empire and the advent of the Dark Ages was due, in no small measure, to the so-called Plague of Justinian, which, by the year 600, had reduced the population of Europe by as much as half. As Edward Jenner, discoverer of the vaccination for smallpox, recognized, as long ago as 1798, ‘the deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of diseases.’ Man has been shaped by his diseases — not just in his numbers, but in his own biochemical and immunological diversity. At the same time he has had to become more ingenious in divorcing himself from the world of disease that continues to surround him. Compulsory isolation, detention, or even exclusion to prevent the spread of contagion or infection has always existed in human society.[56] Today, however, health provides its own exclusion and uncontaminated blood its own invisible quarantine. Like Prince Prospero and his courtiers in Poe’s story ‘The Masque of the Red Death,’ the wealthy can seclude themselves in their private health-care systems, ‘bid defiance to contagion’ through the practice of autologous blood donation, and leave the external world to take care of itself But none of this is very surprising. It is human nature to take precautions against the hand of future infection. However, in this context I cannot help but recall the words of the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk: ‘Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stabiliseth a city by iniquity!’[57]
Oh dear. I had hoped to avoid a demonstration of the kind of irritating omniscience that afflicts so many literary narrators — even the unreliable ones. That’s the trouble with knowing what’s going to happen next. It makes you feel like God. I suppose that’s why most writers write in the first place, although it’s not true of me. I felt like God a long time before I started to tell this story. Anyway, as I was saying, none of this modern-day obsession with blood is that surprising — after all, the goal of transfusion medicine is the delivery of the safest and most efficacious product to the patient. Quality begins with the donor and ends with the patient and cannot be confined to the walls of a blood bank. What does surprise me, however, even now, is that I, who am immune to P2 (although not to other viruses — not content with all the existing pathogens, the human race has felt the necessity of bringing some new ones into being; was there ever such foolishness?), should have required so much blood myself. As Lady Macbeth says in that eponymous and very bloody play, ‘Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?’
V
Rimmer stared at the faux fenêtre, attempting to make sense of what the metaprogram was telling him. Not that this was difficult. Most of the time Rimmer felt more comfortable with computers than he did with people. He was not unusual in this respect. It was true of lots of people: the people who stayed at home to do their work and for whom the computer was their only companion, and their only interest. Like them, Rimmer saw nothing wrong with this. People worried too much about the mathematization of the world and the preeminence of computing. Who cared if machines ended up ruling the world? No one could argue that man had made a particularly good job of it so far. What did it matter who ruled the world as long as you made more money for less effort? What difference did it make?
‘Well, well,’ said Rimmer. ‘Looks like Dallas called in just before we arrived. And he downloaded a lot of stuff into his breastpocket machine.’
‘There’s an ostiary[58] program to prevent that kind of thing happening,’ said Dixy. ‘As security head you should know that.’
‘We both know that wouldn’t have stopped Dallas. The man is talented, I’ll give him that.’ Rimmer sighed. ‘But so am I. Once I have all his personal details, I’ll be able to track him down easily enough. Just as soon as he has to pay for something. You want to help me out here, Dixy? Only I’m a little short of time. It’s going to take this metaprogram a while to factor those big numbers that’ll crack Dallas’s personal encryption scheme.’
54
56
58