Vitals. Greg Bear

       CHAPTER ONE San Diego, California May 28

      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 had divorced ages ago. 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 had died even before the nurses checked in. Sixty-five years old.

      It had been a sad, bad death, the end of a rough road on which Dad had deliberately hit every bump. My brother had taken it hard.

      ‘You’re tired, Rob,’ I said. The airport, miles of brushed steel and thick green-edged glass, swam like a fish tank around me.

      ‘That’s true,’ he replied. ‘Aren’t you?’

      I had been in Hong Kong just the night before. I hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. I can never sleep in a plane over water. A haze of names and ridiculous meetings and a stomach ache from French airline food were all I had to show for my trip. I felt like a show dog coming home without a ribbon.

      ‘No,’ I lied. ‘I’m doing fine.’

      Rob mumbled on for a bit. Work was not going well. He was having trouble with his wife, Lissa, a blond, leggy beauty more than a few steps out of our zone of looks and charm. He sounded as tired as I was and even more confused. I think he was holding back about how bad things were. I was his younger brother, after all. By two minutes.

      ‘Enough about me,’ he said. ‘How goes the search?’

      ‘It goes,’ I said.

      ‘I wanted to let you know.’ Silence.

      ‘What?’ I hated mystery.

      ‘Watch your back.’

      ‘What’s that mean? Stop screwing around.’

      Rob’s laugh sounded forced. Then, ‘Hang in there, Prince Hal.’

      He called me that when he wanted to get a rise out of me.

      ‘Ha,’ I said.

      ‘If Dad phones,’ he said, ‘tell him I love him.’

      He hung up. I stood in a corner of the high, sunny lobby with the green glass and blinding white steel all around, then cursed and dialed the cell-phone number – no go – and all his other numbers.

      Lissa answered in Los Angeles. She told me Rob was in San Jose, she didn’t have a local number for him, why? I told her he sounded tired and she said he had been traveling a lot. They hadn’t been talking much lately. I spoke platitudes in response to her puzzlement and hung up.

      Some people believe that twins are always close and always know what the other is thinking. Not true, not true at all for Rob and me. We fought like wildcats from the time we were three years old. We believed we were twins by accident only and we were in this long road race separately, a fair fight to the finish, but not much fraternizing along the way.

      Yet we had separately chosen the same career path, separately become interested in the same aspects of medicine and biology, separately married great-looking women we could not keep. I may not have liked my twin, but I sure as hell loved him.

      Something was wrong. So why didn’t I cancel my flight and make some attempt to find him, ask him what I could do? I made excuses. Rob was just trying to psych me out, as always. Prince Hal, indeed.

      I flew to Seattle.