The Flavors of Other Worlds

by Alan Dean Foster

  As a chastened Gustafson headed the truck back toward the military base on the outskirts of the city she leaned forward to have a look at the sky through the windshield. Overcast, as always. The usual tepid rain on tap for the evening. Other than that the weather report was promising. Temperatures in the low nineties and humidity down to seventy-five percent. Things were a lot worse the closer one got to the now nearly uninhabitable tropics, she knew. The tech journals were full of reports of new threats emerging from the depths of the impenetrable Amazon. Ten-foot carnivorous beetles. Deadlier scorpions. Six-inch long fire ants …

  Home and business owners might fret over giant centipedes and spiders with three-foot leg spans, but as a military-trained specialist she worried far more about the ants. All ants. Not because they were prolific and not because they could bite and sting, but because they cooperated. Cooperation could lead to bigger problems than any sting. In terms of sheer numbers, the ants had always been the most successful species on the planet. Let them acquire a little of the always paranoid Gustafson’s hypothetical intelligence to go with their new size and …

  She checked the weather a last time. Atmospheric oxygen was up to forty-one percent give or take a few decimals. It was continuing its steady rise, as it had over the preceding decades. How big would the bugs get if it reached forty-five percent? Or fifty? How would the fire brigades cope with the increasingly ferocious firestorms that had made wooden building construction a relic of the past?

  Rolling down her window she removed her mask and stuck her head out into the lugubrious wind. Gustafson gave her a look but said nothing, focused on his driving. Overhead and unseen, another giant dragonfly dropped lower, sized up the potential prey, and shot away. A human was still too big for it to take down. But if its kind kept growing …

  Lissa inhaled deeply of the thick, moist air. It filled her lungs, the oxygen boost reinvigorating her after the confrontation in the basement. Drink of it too much and she would start feeling giddy. There were benefits to the increased oxygen concentration. Athletes, at least while performing in air-conditioned venues, had accomplished remarkable feats. Humanity was adapting to the changed climate. It had always done so. It would continue to do so. And in a radically changed North America, at least, the military would ensure that it would be able to do so.

  As an exterminator non-com charged with keeping her city safe, her only fear was that something else just might be adapting a little faster.

  9

  Rural Singularity

  Country folk often tend to come off badly in science-fiction stories that actually deal with science. They’re often portrayed as ignorant rubes or used for comic relief. Exceptions would be much of the work of Clifford Simak, who is not as well-known as he ought to be today. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with a lot of what we would call country folk, both in this country and elsewhere. What they tend to lack is education. But not necessarily inspiration.

  There are always exceptions to preconceived notions. And they can be found in the darndest places.…

  * * *

  Gilcrease mopped his brow with the halfway clean rag he had scrounged from the trunk of the car. The only extant war between New Mexico and Texas was between ranchers and oilmen who each claimed that their side of the border was the one that was hottest in mid-August. Having driven all the way from Albuquerque, Gilcrease was happy to call it a tie and offer a plague on both their hothouses.

  Not that it wasn’t warm in Albuquerque this time of year, too. It was just that everything seemed hotter in the greater desolation that lay to the east of the Sacramento foothills. This was country that made the high desert terrain around Albuquerque seem positively arctic. With every passing moment he looked forward to the return drive and his nice, cool cubby in the newspaper office.

  This was a fool’s errand for a slow day, he knew. “Human interest,” these occasional excursions into the creases of an anomalous body politic were called. Just his luck to be nominated to do the follow-up on this one.

  His first glimpse of the Parkers’ “ranch” did not inspire confidence. Furnished in half twenty-first, half nineteenth-century fashion, the single-story rock and wood structure scrunched back against a succession of rising rounded granite hillocks like a bear scratching its ass. There was a windmill that on a good day supplied water to the dwelling. Behind and off to the left side of the house was a traditional barn belted by wooden timbers designed to restrain more cattle than ever roamed this particular homestead.

  When Gilcrease drove up in a cloud of dust and muttered adjectives, Walt Parker was working under the hood of that undying icon of mobile American steel known as a full-size pickup truck. With the heavy hood raised it looked as if the truck was saying “ahhh.” Parking nearby, the reporter took one last optimistic rag-swipe at his forehead and climbed out. The “keep off the grass” sign posted in the dirt driveway made him smile. The only grass for many miles around was to be found high up in the mountains behind the house.

  “Walter Parker? I’m Pat Gilcrease, from the Albuquerque Journal.”

  Weather-beaten and bank-battered, Parker looked ten years older than the fifty-one to which he would admit. There was more oil in the old towel he was using to clean his hands than in the dusty ground beneath his feet. Gilcrease winced slightly when the man extended a welcoming hand, but seeing no choice he took the greasy fingers firmly. Parker squinted up at the taller, younger man.

  “You’re here about the two-headed chickens, I expect.”

  Gilcrease nodded, then found himself frowning. “You have more than one?”

  “Whole flock.” The rancher shook his head. “People. You show them something you’re proud of, tell them to keep it to themselves, and they promptly go and call the media.” He shook his head regretfully. “Well, you’re here, and you’ve come all the way from the city, so I expect it would be impolite not to show you.”

  Gilcrease didn’t even take out his camera as the rancher guided his visitor around the house and toward the barn. Between the two stood an enclosure fashioned from wood posts and chicken-wire fencing. Gilcrease prepared himself for the worst. More than likely he would be shown a badly stitched-and-sewn fake. If he was lucky, one of the rancher’s birds might have hatched an authentic mutation. One realistic enough to justify a quick snapshot or two and a short article for the People section of the paper. It really had been a slow news week.

  “Here ’tis.” Parker unlatched the door to the coop. As he did so, twenty or more clucking chickens came running. They were accompanied by a snowstorm of at least twice as many chicks. Gilcrease eyed them, and his jaw promptly dropped.

  Every one of them had two heads. Every one. And they looked as healthy as any comparable flock of normal chickens.

  Having anticipated his guest’s reaction, Parker was grinning. “Didn’t believe, did you, Mr. Gilcrease?”

  Having finally succeeded in fumbling his camera out of its pouch, the flabbergasted reporter was snapping pictures like mad. “How—I’ve seen pictures of two-headed animals before. But it’s always only one or two individuals at a time. A two-headed snake, or a two-headed turtle. Even a two-headed sheep. But this …” Holding the camera in one hand he gestured with the other. “How did this happen?”

  “Want to see something else interesting?” A grinning Parker raised a hand. “Wait here.”

  Gilcrease continued to fire off shots while his host disappeared into the long, low henhouse. When the rancher returned he was holding several eggs. Double-shelled eggs, like perfect little white dumbbells. He handed one to the dumbfounded reporter.

  “That’s how you get two-headed chickens. You get them to lay double eggs.” Like light behind a t-shirt, pride began to show through his initial reticence. “My daughter Suzie bred them.”

  “Your daughter?”

  Parker nodded. “She’s one clever little girl. Special.” His expression faded somewhat. “You know: ‘special.’ Home-schooled. Has to be.”

&nbs
p; Staring at the back of his camera, Gilcrease was reviewing the pictures he had just taken. They were as real as the two-headed chicks presently peep-peeping around his ankles.

  “Why is that?” he asked absently, his present attention more focused on the pictures.

  “She’s addled. Clever, but addled. When she was a lot younger—eleven, I think she was—we took her to see a doctor in El Paso. Specialist. He examined her, did some tests. Said she was what you call an idiot savant. I was gonna punch the guy out until my wife told me what that meant. My wife’s the smart one in the family, Mary is. Visiting her mother in Amarillo this week. She wouldn’t like it if she knew there was a reporter out here learning about Suzie. But after the neighbors called your paper …” He shrugged. “I thought it better to come clean about the chickens to a real paper than wait for some tabloid free-lancer to come snooping around.”

  “I’m flattered. My paper is flattered, I mean.” Gilcrease holstered his camera. He had his pictures and his article, but still … “Could I meet your daughter? I promise I won’t take any photos without your permission and a signed release. Anything else would be an invasion of privacy.”

  Parker scrutinized his visitor closely. “You seem like a pretty straight guy, Pat. All right, you can say hi. But be careful what you say and how you say it. Keep things—you know. Simple. And don’t touch anything. Especially her toys.” Gilcrease nodded.

  Parker led him out of the coop and into the barn. It was a spacious construction. Ranch equipment was scattered everywhere. All of it looked well-used. Two of the horse stalls were occupied and one of the occupants neighed inquisitively at their approach. Seeing that both animals had only one head apiece, Gilcrease was mildly disappointed. A quick scan of his surroundings revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Suzie’s in back,” Parker told him. “We fixed up a little playroom and workshop for her. It’s where she spends most of her time, puttering around.” Near the rear of the barn they halted outside a closed door and his tone darkened. “Promise now: no pictures.” Gilcrease reaffirmed his earlier commitment whereupon his host opened the door.

  The interior of the corner room was flooded with light from multiple double-paned windows. Surprisingly, there was also a skylight. More surprisingly, the light from both sources fell upon what looked like several folds of dark purple, foot-wide wrapping ribbon suspended in mid-air. At the center of the winding ribbons several yard-long coils of copper wire protruded from the top of a metal ovoid. Cables from the ovoid led to a bank of batteries. The entire setup emitted a very faint hum.

  “Amplified solar generator.” Parker spoke as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “Another of Suzie’s putterings.” He jerked a thumb toward the front of the property. “We got another one powers the whole house.”

  Gilcrease swallowed. His camera was burning a hole in its pouch, but he had promised. “Another one? The same size?” His host nodded. “That’s a lot of wattage to come out of such a small solar array. I’d think you’d have to cover the whole building with panels to get enough juice to run a house.”

  “That’s what I’d think, Mr. Gilcrease. But Suzie says these are 120% efficient.”

  Gilcrease frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  His host grinned. “Neither does Suzie.” He raised his voice. “Suzie! We got company! Where are you, girl?”

  A figure rose from behind a heavy wooden workbench piled to overflowing with devices, instruments, bottles, beakers, and what to Gilcrease’s eyes appeared to be just plain scrap. She was pudgy, overweight but not obese, with pale blue eyes and blonde hair cut in a crude pageboy that suggested her mother did all the girl’s styling and trimming. She looked at her father, then turned a shy stare on their visitor.

  “Say hello, Suzie. This is Mr. Gilcrease. He’s come from Albuquerque just to see your chickens.” Parker gestured encouragingly. “Come on, girl. He won’t hurt you.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, the adolescent edged around from behind the workbench. Her downcast eyes only occasionally rose to glance fitfully at the two men. Her hands remained behind her back. She wore scruffy jeans, a very thin and worn flannel shirt, and unusually for a girl of her apparent age, no makeup or jewelry. Keeping her eyes on the ground, she halted in front of her father.

  “Say hello, Suzie,” he prompted her gently.

  An awkward silence ensued. Finally the girl stuck out one hand, keeping the other behind her and her eyes aimed downward. “Hullo,” she mumbled. “I’m Suzie.”

  Gilcrease took the proffered fingers and squeezed gently. As soon as she let go, her hand vanished behind her back to rejoin its companion. The reporter was at once uncomfortable and fascinated.

  “Hi Suzie. If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” she whispered. Gilcrease had to strain to hear. Looking and listening, he immediately understood and sympathized with the rancher’s family circumstances. This girl might be seventeen chronologically, but socially and probably emotionally she was maybe nine. And might forever remain nine. He tailored his tone and words accordingly.

  “I liked your chickens, Suzie.”

  A hint of a shy, withdrawn smile. “Thank you.”

  “Your dad said that you bred them?”

  She nodded, showing a little more interest.

  “Can you tell me how you did that?” Gilcrease asked softly.

  For the first time, she looked up to meet his gaze. “It wasn’t hard. I just had to induce the appropriate mutation and then crossbreed the relevant haploids until the desired dominant characteristic replaced the recessive. Mendel coulda done it but he didn’t have the right tools for microscopic genetic manipulation.” Her eyes dropped again, along with her voice. “Mom and Dad like the eggs, so I kept breeding them.”

  Gilcrease felt as if he had been hit with a hammer. Not knowing what else to say, he turned to indicate the ostensible solar generator. “And—you made that, too?”

  She nodded and her head came up again. “Had to. The power goes out a lot here and there are unpredictable surges that are bad for my computers. I hacked the inputs and the relevant software but this is better. It’s cleaner power, too. Daddy asked me to make him one for the house, so I did.”

  Parker forced a smile as he struggled to stay on top of what was becoming an increasingly absurdist conversation. “Your dad says your generator’s panels—I’m guessing they’re those windy purple things—are 120% efficient.” He leaned toward her and put his hands on his knees. “Now Suzie, how can that be? How can you get more energy out of something than goes into it from the sun?”

  Putting a finger in her mouth, she began sucking on the tip. “I made a photon multiplier. It works real good.”

  By now Gilcrease desperately wanted to take out his camera, but he held off. Promise or no promise, he was going to get some pictures here before he left. And some video. No matter how crazy this adolescent girl was, the story would play wonderfully in the paper’s People section. Perhaps not flatteringly, but it would sell ads and maybe even drive a small if temporary uptick in circulation.

  “Now Suzie, I’m no scientist, but even I know you can’t get more energy out of something than what goes into it.”

  Her voice rose in protest, almost irritably. “Not if you access the photonic flow from a second dimension.”

  It was at this point that Gilcrease knew he was being had. It wouldn’t be the first time. Living in New Mexico, there was at least one good Roswell story to be exploited every year. Not to mention the inevitable wild tales of mutants born of the early atomic bomb tests running wild and free within the state forests. But this one, featuring a simple-minded teenage girl as its protagonist, was smarter by half than most. Whether she was faking her illness or not he didn’t know. If not, then extra points to her clever father for figuring out how to program her pseudo-scientific responses. It was all based on getting someone to report on the two-headed chickens, of course. They were real en
ough. But the rest of this was an obvious con in the making. Pulling out a small, brightly lit pad, he eyed the father. If this was a scam, the old man should be ready to fill in the details about now. And ask for money, of course.

  “I’m just going to make some notes, Mr. Parker. No photos. Maybe some quick sketches. Would that be okay?”

  His host hesitated, eyed his daughter. “Suzie? Is it all right with you if our guest makes some drawings?”

  More mumbling. “Don’t care. He don’t understand what he’s seeing anyway.”

  Gilcrease was not offended. “Thank you, Suzie. I appreciate your courtesy.”

  She went silent, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. After he had been writing and drawing for a couple of minutes she looked up again. “Want to see what I’m working on now?”

  He didn’t look up from his pad. Using the stylus he was trying to make a decent rendition of the impossible “solar generator.”

  “Sure Suzie, why not?”

  “Okay.” She brought her left hand around from behind her back. Intent on his work, Gilcrease almost didn’t look at it. When he finally did, he dropped the pad. He was fortunate the screen didn’t crack.

  Hovering above her pale smooth-skinned palm was a model of the solar system. In perfect miniature it depicted the sun, the planets, the asteroid belt, and an occasional visiting comet. The proportions were not correct. They could not be. But the visual representation was astonishing. Forgetting his dropped pad, he bent closer, staring in fascination. Small clouds could be seen moving above the Earth. Jupiter’s bands rotated. And the sun—the sun was hot to the touch. He swallowed.

  “Suzie what—how did you—you made this?”

  She nodded proudly. “It’s not to scale, of course. If it was, the sun would be too big and too hot and Pluto’s orbit would be away out past where your car came in. It’s just a toy. Our home system. All of it is our home. Not just the Earth.” She smiled shyly. “Wanna see something really neat?”