Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Four
Chapter 32
Part Five
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilog
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Greg Bear
Copyright
For Poul Anderson,
my friend, who decided
not to
Our bodies are made of cells. Mitochondria are the parts of our cells that generate the energy-rich molecules we use every instant of our lives.
Billions of years ago, mitochondria were bacterial invaders, parasites of early cells. They joined forces with their hosts; now they are essential.
“My mitochondria compose a very large proportion of me.
I cannot do the calculation, but I suppose there is almost
as much of them in sheer dry bulk as there is the rest of
me. Looked at in this way, I could be taken for a large, motile colony of bacteria, operating a complex system of nuclei, micro-
tubules, and neurons, for the pleasure and sustenance of their families, and running, at the moment, a typewriter.”
—Lewis Thomas,
“Organelles as Organism,” 1974
“We love Comrade Stalin more than Mommy and Daddy. May Comrade Stalin live to be one hundred! No, two hundred! No, three hundred!”
—Song sung by Soviet children,
early 1950s
PART ONE
HAL COUSINS
1
MAY 28 • SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
The last time I talked to Rob, I was checking my luggage at Lindbergh Field to fly to Seattle and meet with an angel. My cell phone beeped and flashed Nemesis, code for my brother. We hadn’t spoken in months.
“Hal, has Dad called you?” Rob asked. He sounded wrung out.
“No,” I said. Dad had died three years ago in a hospital in Ann Arbor. Cirrhosis of the liver. He had choked on his own blood from burst veins in his esophagus.
“Somebody called and it sounded like Dad, I swear,” Rob said.
Mom and Dad were divorced and Mom was living in Coral Gables, Florida, and would have nothing to do with our father even when he was dying. Rob had stood the death watch in the hospice. Before I could hop a plane to join them, Dad had died. He had stopped his pointless cursing—dementia brought on by liver failure—and gone to sleep and Rob had left the room to get a cup of coffee. When he had returned, he had found our father sitting up in bed, head slumped, his stubbled chin and pale, slack chest soaked in blood like some hoary old vampire. Dad was dead even before the nurses checked in. Sixty-five years old.
