Free Blood Music by Greg Bear Page A

suspect And it has to be absolutely confidential.”
    Edward shook his head. “You’re asking for a lot, Vergil.”
    “Do you want to make medical history, or not?”
    “Is this a joke?”
    Vergil shook his head. “Not on you, roomie.”
    Edward made the arrangements that afternoon, filling in the forms himself. From what he understood of hospital paperwork, so long as everything was billed properly, most of the examination could take place without official notice. He didn’t charge for his services. After all, Vergil had turned his piss blue. They were friends.
    Edward stayed past his usual hours. He gave Gail a bare outline of what he was doing; she sighed the sigh of a doctor’s wife and told him she’d leave a late snack on the table for when he came home.
    Vergil returned at ten P.M. and met Edward at the appointed place, on the third floor of what the nurses called the Frankenstein Wing. Edward sat on an orange plastic chair, reading a desk copy of My Things magazine. Vergil entered the small lobby, looking lost and worried. His skin was olive-colored under the fluorescent lighting.
    Edward signaled the night supervisor that this was his patient and conducted Vergil to the examination area, hand on his elbow. Neither spoke much. Vergil stripped and Edward arranged him on the paper-covered padded table. “Your ankles are swollen,” he said, feeling them. They were solid, not puffy. Healthy, but odd. “Hm,” Edward said pointedly, glancing at Vergil. Vergil raised his eyebrows and cocked his head; his “you ain’t seen nothing yet” look.
    “Okay. I’m going to run several scans on you and combine the results in an imager. Ultrasound first” Edward ran paddles over Vergil’s still form, hitting those areas difficult for the bigger unit to reach. He then swung the table around and inserted it into the enameled orifice of the ultrasound diagnostic unit—the hum-hole, so-called by the nurses. After twelve separate sweeps, head to toe, he removed the table. Vergil was sweating slightly, his eyes closed.
    “Still claustrophobic?” Edward asked.
    “Not so much.”
    “NMR is a little worse.”
    “Lead on, Mac Duff.”
    The NMR full-scan unit was a huge chrome and sky-blue mastaba-shaped box, occupying one small room with barely enough space to wheel in the table. “I’m not an expert on this one, so it may take a while,” Edward said, helping Vergil into the cavity.
    “High cost of medicine,” Vergil muttered, dosing his eyes as Edward swung down the glass hatch. The massive magnet circling the cavity buzzed faintly. Edward instructed the machine to send its data to the central imager in the next room and helped Vergil out.
    “Holding up?” Edward asked.
    “Courage,” Vergil said, pronouncing it as in French.
    In the next room, Edward arranged a large-screen VDT and ordered the integration and display of the data. In the half-darkness, the image took a few seconds to flow into recognizable shapes.
    “Your skeleton first,” Edward said. His eyes widened. The image then displayed Vergil’s thoracic organs, musculature, and finally vascular system and skin.
    “How long since the accident?” Edward asked, stepping closer to the screen. He couldn’t quite conceal the quiver in his voice.
    “I haven’t been in an accident,” Vergil said.
    “Jesus, they beat you, to keep secrets?”
    “You don’t understand me, Edward. Look at the images again. That’s not trauma.”
    “Look, there’s thickening here,” he indicated the ankles, “and your ribs—that crazy zigzag interlocking. Broken somewhere, obviously. And—”
    “Look at my spine,” Vergil suggested. Edward slowly rotated the image on the screen.
    Buckminster Fuller came to mind immediately. It was fantastic. Vergil’s spine was a cage of triangular bones, coining together in ways Edward could not even follow, much less comprehend. “Mind if I feel?”
    Vergil shook his head. Edward reached through the slit in the robe and