by John Helfers
‘‘You’re not still upset about that little mix-up in D Town, are you?’’ said Sam, still bravely smiling. ‘‘That was just a little pinch from Green Man. We only held the city for three days.’’
‘‘During which time your group killed more than a thousand people, stole a half ton of precious metals, and abused God knows how many women,’’ commented Mr. Jones, who certainly was not smiling. ‘‘I think I understand. Your group only wanted to show who is really in charge. Similar atrocities occur in other cities several times every year. Of course, while you were showing the Universal Union who is really the boss, your group figured they might as well kill me in the bargain.’’
‘‘I wouldn’t call them ‘my group,’ ’’ objected Sam, and for the first time he noticed the machine pistol Mr. Jones carried in his right hand. ‘‘The Green Man’s people pressured me to go visit you, out there in the desert. They threatened my family.’’
‘‘You don’t have a family,’’ said Mr. Jones.
‘‘I’ve got a mother,’’ said Sam.
‘‘And eight years ago you robbed her home in New-ark. Records show she testified against you. I doubt she will mourn you for long.’’
‘‘I can show you where the Green Men people have some of their money stashed,’’ suggested an increasingly anxious Samuel Cutler, rising to his knees and causing Mr. Jones to take a couple steps away from him.
‘‘I told you before: we already have plenty of money,’’ said Mr. Jones.
‘‘What about Jon Savage? You just going to let him go?’’ asked Sam, slowly getting his feet under him.
‘‘I strongly suspect Mr. Savage, or whatever his true name is, has no real connection to the Green Man and his minions, or at least he has no more ties to the sect than you do.’’
‘‘I can help you find the Green Man himself,’’ said Sam, fixating upon the gun in Mr. Jones’ hand.
‘‘You don’t know where he is,’’ said Mr. Jones and dared to smile. ‘‘No one does. I have heard he is a prisoner in a maximum-security facility and runs his operation from his cell. Another rumor has the Green Man having his headquarters in some obscure heartland town. I’ve likewise been told he is, in fact, a high-ranking government official or a member of one of the Nine Families, and thus is a protected man. We in the Steens Mountain Association don’t care where he is. We know one day we will find him, just as we found you. Until we get our hands on him, we will deal with the Green Man’s sect by practicing retribution.’’
‘‘What’s that about?’’ asked Sam, slowly getting his feet under him.
‘‘We kill five hundred of the Green Man’s people for every one he kills of us,’’ explained Mr. Jones. ‘‘For every attempted murder, we kill only fifty.’’
‘‘You’d bump off fifty guys just because they tried to whack you?’’ said Sam, again venturing to emit an abrupt laugh.
‘‘Since that night in Denver I’ve hunted down only forty-nine of you,’’ said Mr. Jones, and held the pistol at his side at a thirty-degree angle.
‘‘You’re not helping us out here!’’ shouted Sam. ‘‘We can still make a deal!’’
‘‘Here’s my deal: you get three steps,’’ said Mr. Jones and waited for Sam to make his move.
UNLIMITED
by Jane Lindskold
Jane Lindskold is the author of eighteen novels and over fifty short stories. Although most of her fiction is fantasy, she loves science fiction, and is delighted when the opportunity arises to write about spaceships, computers, and alien worlds. Visit her at www.janelindskold.com.
FIRST CAME SMILODON, or, as most people still call it, the saber-toothed tiger.
We tried to convince her otherwise, but in this, as in so many, many other things, Dr. Keisha Dejesus overruled us.
‘‘It has to be something spectacular,’’ she said.
‘‘What about the Synthetoceras?’’ suggested Dr. Smith—Smitty—as we called him, at first behind his back because he was an intimidating, impressive type, with a list of publications longer than I’m tall—and later to his face because it turned out he liked having a nickname. ‘‘The Synthetoceras is rather spectacular. In particular, that nose horn on what is otherwise a mild deer’s face catches the eye.’’
Dr. Dejesus shook her head. The cut-crystal beads strung in her dreadlocks caught the overhead light in the lab and split the glow into rainbows.
‘‘Outré, perhaps, but not spectacular. We’ll do Synthetoceras later, Andrew. I know you like creatures with horns.’’
‘‘Well, then,’’ persisted Dr. Smith, ‘‘what about Gigantopithecus? That’s spectacular.’’
‘‘Too familiar. Too like a gorilla,’’ countered Dr. Dejesus. ‘‘Besides, primates make humans nervous. Too like us. I want to inspire wonder, not fear.’’
‘‘Elasmotherium?’’ Dr. Smith said, but something in his tone said he knew arguing was useless. ‘‘That horn . . .’’
‘‘Is spectacular,’’ Dr. Dejesus said, and for a moment Dr. Smith’s face brightened. ‘‘But the rest of it isn’t. Face it, Andrew, most people don’t bond with rhinoceri, not even giant ones with horns the length of their faces.’’
‘‘They’ll bond with a saber-toothed tiger?’’ Dr. Smith said, but there was resignation in his voice.
He knew they would. We all did, every intern and scientist gathered in the conference room at Dejesus Dreams Unlimited.
‘‘Yes,’’ Dr. Dejesus responded. ‘‘The strangest thing about wonder is that it grows most easily when it is touched with danger. Without danger, wonder quickly becomes routine.’’
So it was Smilodon who started it all—and not a one of us, except for Dr. Dejesus herself, had the least idea where it would take us.
All the fuss over stem cell research and genetic engineering at the beginning of the twenty-first century, all the attempts to ban and limit, all the withholding of federal funding had an effect none of the politicians anticipated.
Those restrictions drove the most intensely creative research in these areas into the private sector.
New laws protecting the end results of private research grew out of some really nasty court cases about twenty-five years later. Try telling someone who has created a private foundation in order to search for the cure to some disease—a disease that no big concern cares to investigate because it only affects three percent of the population, and that on alternate Tuesdays—that they can’t use the cure they’ve found, and you’re going to find people willing to fight, literally, for their lives.
Those cases fought, and especially those cases won, created the precedent that was extended when genetic engineering and cloning moved beyond end results that would find test tubes and syringes roomy to things that could potentially run around your backyard.
But even though the law asserted that you could make anything you wanted for your own use and with your own money and on your own property, there were still restrictions. The one that hamstrung most efforts was the one that stated that not only couldn’t state or federal funding be employed in these research efforts, but also no funding from an institution that received state or federal Funding.
If any contaminated funding was
found, private ownership of the project was forfeit. The project then would be subjected to review by various government agencies. As anyone knows who has ever waited for an experimental drug to be cleared, those reviews can last a lifetime.
Another restriction—one that pretty much finished off most private sector efforts in the subsection of genetic engineering where Dejesus Dreams Unlimited would later become a star—were zoning regulations forbidding keeping any nonhuman creature—even on private property—without proper permits.
Restrictive zoning laws have been in existence for centuries. Like most laws, they were initially beneficial to the populace at large. Eventually restrictive zoning became an easy way for politicians to cater to special interest groups motivated by fear—and genetically engineered wildlife trumps pitbull terriers and hybrid-wolves hands down when it comes to generating fear.
But Dr. Keisha Dejesus not only found a way around both of these problems, later she would find a way to make them work in her favor. I think she was already thinking in that direction, back when she told us we were going to create a Smilodon.
Considerable private wealth smoothed Dr. Dejesus’ ventures into genetic engineering, making it possible for her to pursue her interests without needing outside funding.
Dr. Dejesus’ father was an out-of-the box thinker— the man whose work on computer hardware and software is why you don’t encounter the names ‘‘Microsoft’’ or ‘‘Apple’’ anymore except in business histories.
Her mother was an artist who specialized in installment pieces. When the fad for private ranches among the wealthy went the way of most fads, there was a lot of empty land for sale. Dr. Dejesus’ mother went out and bought it as another artist might have bought paints at a hobby center’s going out of business sale.
Fairly late in life, these two remarkable people had their only child, a daughter they named Keisha. In many ways, Keisha didn’t follow in her parents’ footsteps at all, moving from an early interest in conservation into a specialization in genetic engineering.
In other ways, Keisha—always Dr. Dejesus to me— was very much like her parents. She shared with both of them a strong refusal to let other people tell her how to think, combined with the type of visionary attitude that’s usually seen only in religious reformers or insane artists.
Her parents, relieved that unlike the children of so many of the wealthy, Keisha had dreams, encouraged her to follow them. They just might have been the only people who realized how big those dreams were. Despite pressure to do otherwise, they arranged their estate to support Keisha in whatever venture she pursued, along the way teaching her that the law works for those who know how to work the loopholes.
Due to her mother’s real-estate buying spree, Dr. Dejesus owned the entire landmass of two or three counties in several western states. That ended any problems with zoning boards. Essentially, she was the zoning board.
Due to her father, she had a firm belief that the best way to program was from the base code up.
So when Dr. Keisha Dejesus announced that she wanted to make a Smilodon, there was nothing but the genetic engineering complications to stop her.
I’m not going to pretend the creation of Smilodon was either fast or easy. During those long years when we succeeded first in cloning kittens, then an extinct black-maned lion, then even a few less complex creatures taken from the fossil record, many of us would have given up—except that Dr. Dejesus refused to let us despair.
I’ll never forget the day I was standing alone at the grave of a Smilodon that had died two weeks into gestation—our best effort yet.
‘‘Think we can’t do it, Lindberg?’’ Dr. Dejesus said, walking up to me so quietly I didn’t hear her bare feet on the paving stones.
‘‘I’ve been wondering,’’ I admitted.
‘‘Want to quit?’’
I blinked at her, horrified. I was in grad school by then, had even had a few good offers for internships at various labs, but I’d never considered leaving Dejesus Dreams Unlimited. What I was considering was asking to be moved to another project, one that didn’t involve working with DNA from fossilized and partially fossilized sources.
‘‘I . . .’’ I started to babble incoherently, afraid of being fired.
Dr. Dejesus cut me off with a gesture whose abruptness was moderated by the warmth of her smile.
‘‘I know. You don’t want to leave. It’s just that this is so discouraging. You’ve heard people—some here, some elsewhere—saying that what we’re trying to do is impossible.
‘‘Personally, I think ‘impossible’ might be the nastiest word in the language. It’s murderous. It shuts doors. Kills potential. It says that the world as we know it is cast in stone and there’s nothing we can do to change it.’’
She leaned forward. Although she had to look up at me to meet my eyes—my Scandinavian ancestors granted me genes that make me tall and lean—I had the sensation of being reprimanded by someone of almost godlike stature.
‘‘Remember this, Lindberg Anders. Even when something is cast in stone, you can always take a sledgehammer to it. Don’t say my dreams are impossible—say your desire to participate is over. But don’t you apply that dirty word to me!’’
I didn’t. Not then, and not ever after.
When Project Longtooth started, I was an undergraduate intern. By the time we all gathered to watch Stripes and Spots, our twin Smilodons, take their first deer without any help from us, I was a newly graduated Ph.D.
Smitty’s hair had retreated to the point that he looked like a newly tonsured monk. Dr. Dejesus looked pretty much as she had. She was little thicker around the middle, maybe, but still the only thing more dynamic than our big kittens out in that meadow was her.
To me, after that lecture in the cemetery, she’d never ceased to be a bit larger than life. Later, I learned she held the same stature with most of us who worked with her. It couldn’t have been easy being the focus of so much hope and faith, but like every other challenge she faced, Dr. Dejesus accepted the burden.
Stripes and Spots were grooming each other, managing to do a really good job despite those long fangs when Dr. Dejesus turned to Dr. Smith.
‘‘Now, Smitty,’’ she said, having given up calling him Andrew like all the rest of us, ‘‘we’ll start on your Synthetoceras. Do you have your initial materials in place?’’
His answer was a sly grin.
‘‘For at least six months now,’’ he admitted, merriment lighting his face.
‘‘This time we won’t focus just on one creature,’’ Dr. Dejesus said with a crisp nod of approval. She turned to me. ‘‘Lindberg, you’ve been noodling around with Epigaulus. We’re going to need something little and cute to balance Smitty and my inclination toward megafauna. I can’t think of anything much cuter than Epigaulus, with those little horns over that prairie dog face.’’
I agreed. I’d been fascinated by these primitive rodents even since I first saw a picture of a small colony in a coloring book when I was a kid. The horns were cute, but devilish at the same time, an impression reinforced by the pitchfork sharpness of Epigaulus’ digging claws.
‘‘Jonesy . . .’’ Dr. Dejesus turned to another specialist, this one senior to me, although junior to Smitty.
Jonesy was an Eastern European refugee with a surname so long and devoid of vowels that even a group of people who could manage words like ‘‘Chalicotherium’’ and ‘‘Phorusrhacos’’ before they had their first cup of coffee had trouble pron
ouncing her name.
Dr. Smith nicknamed her Jones. When Smith became Smitty, Jones inevitably had become Jonesy.
‘‘Jonesy,’’ Dr. Dejesus said, her eyes sparkling, ‘‘what about Macrauchenia? They’re pretty outlandish. I’d like something that doesn’t look even remotely like anything that exists now.’’
None of us asked why, maybe because we were busy envisioning Macrauchenia. Take a camel, remove the hump. Give it feet that are a cross between hooves and a llama’s foot. Add a nose that reminds you of an old-style borsch-belt comedian, and you’re still only halfway there. Outlandish.
‘‘I can do Macrauchenia,’’ Jonesy said. ‘‘We’ve got some great samples. I’d enjoy the challenge.’’
‘‘Good,’’ said Dr. Dejesus, rubbing her hands together in delight. ‘‘Very, very good.’’
While we were delighting in our Synthetoceras, our Epigaulus, our Macrauchenia, while a team was working on a second round of Smilodons, because Stripes and Spots were too closely related to breed, and all our research showed that Smilodons were highly social creatures, Dr. Dejesus was busy setting the next stage of her grand plan.
Not that she wasn’t involved with our various projects. She was in and out of the labs, consulting over microscopes, offering encouragement, cheering when something went right, consoling when something went wrong.
One day after Smitty had gone through a particularly bad time with some fertilized Synthetoceras eggs that wouldn’t take in their host mother, I heard her saying to him, ‘‘It’s only impossible if you quit, Andrew. But if you need a break, a fresh approach . . .’’
‘‘I’ll stick with it,’’ he said.
