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Vitals
Greg Bear
For Poul Anderson,
my friend, who decided long ago 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, microtubules, 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
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You’ve played, and loved, and ate, and drunk your fill:
Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age
Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage:
Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE San Diego, California May 28
CHAPTER TWO The Juan de Fuca Trench June 18
CHAPTER TWELVE Seattle, Washington
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Coral Gables, Florida June 27
CHAPTER NINETEEN Berkeley, California July
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE San Francisco
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Thuringia, California
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX San Jose, California
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN El Cajon, California June 6
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT San Diego/El Cajon June 10-11
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE San Diego/Los Angeles
CHAPTER THIRTY Imperial Valley, California August 10
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE South-Central California
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Manhattan June 20
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Arizona August 13
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Manhattan The Jenner Building, ‘Anthrax Central’ 8:00 P.M. August 14