Like all mature bean plants, the beanstalk bore both blossoms and fruit. The flowers were pale blue and a foot across. The bean were pods six feet long; they were edible, too, though Jack never touched them. Only foreigners and the hard-shelled poor would do such a thing, and he was scarcely either.
The pumpkin vine bore only the one fruit; the engineers had made it so, not caring to bury the countryside in empty homes. It did have sterile flowers, flaring orange bells the size of tubas. They too were edible, and Petra liked their taste, sliced and dipped in batter and fried in fat. She had tried them only once, though. Eating flowers was weird, after all, and the sheer quantity available was intimidating to boot. Besides, they made good fodder for her husband’s Roachster.
Beanstalk and pumpkin grew in the middle of what had once been a city. Now the concrete had given way to gardens, patches of grass surrounding plots of carefully tilled, weeded, and fertilized earth, life support for ten thousand homes. Only a few old-style buildings still stood, serving functions bioforms could not.
* * * *
Petra was not happy.
Each morning her husband left for his job as an appliance garden buyer. Each morning his Roachster’s insectoid legs clacked against chitinous wheels as the antennae felt for the turn onto the commuter greenway. Each day she faced the tasks of housekeeping, bedmaking, picking up, straightening, checking off the unpaid bills on the computer terminal, pruning new shoots and dead leaves from her vine, reaping fodder, all to the traditional, mesmerizing song of the TV.
Each morning she watched from her window as Jack left his chalet. He rode neatly ensconced in a small gondola slung from the tentacles of a hydrogen-filled medusa, descendant of a common jellyfish. A propellor fanned him through the air toward the labs across town. Petra had heard he was one of the gengineers themselves, an architect of marvels and wealth. She wondered if, like other gengineers, he had worked on his own body. Unlike her dull, pedestrian husband, he glittered in her mind like gold.
He glittered even more in the lights and sounds of his weekend parties. Petra watched from her window as her husband snored, heard laughter and shrieks, heard, she guessed, Jack’s busy pollinating. She ached, she yearned, and one morning, when his medusa failed to leave on time, she resolved to reach for what she most truly desired.
She undressed, bathed, and perfumed herself. She donned a light robe and sandals, armed herself with a beach towel, and went outside. She faced the beanstalk, saw movement behind a chalet window, and smiled to herself. She was still young, and her body was beautiful. Her husband often told her so, and so did her mirror. She would reveal it for Jack. He would see, and come, and carry her away. Then, maybe, just maybe, she could live happily ever after.
She bent a velvety pumpkin leaf to cover a sunny patch of ground. She laid out her bright towel, flowery against the green. She let her robe fall to her feet, raised her arms to accent her breasts, pirouetted, a light breeze against her skin. She lay down, legs spread, pretending to sunbathe.
The beanstalk trembled with movement within the chalet a hundred feet away. Light glinted from something that might have been binoculars. But no one came. Nothing happened. Petra dozed off in the sun with naught but dreams for company.
She did not give up. For a year, she sunbathed whenever she thought Jack had stayed home from work. Her housekeeping suffered. Her husband had to gather pumpkin blossoms himself to feed his Roachster (they didn’t dare turn that giant hybrid of cockroach and lobster loose to fend for itself; it might eat them out of house and home).
But Jack never came down from his beanstalk. An enticing tan was all she gained, and a reproachful husband.
* * * *
Where did Jack find the young women who laughed so loudly at his parties? He never went out at night. He was always alone in his medusa. No other flyers or floaters ever came. Nor did Roachsters, nor even an unmodified horse. Did they walk? Was there perhaps an elevator on the far side of the beanstalk, or in the pillar? Did they climb to the chalet, hand over hand?
Petra would not do the same. If he would not come to her, then she would go to him. But she would do it her way, a new and novel way, a way sure to enchant him.
Over the weeks of spring, she pruned and trained her pumpkin vine until it crossed from her lot to Jack’s and wrapped its first green tendrils around the beanstalk’s trunk. She cut back competing shoots to force the vine’s strength into her chosen branch. She watered and fertilized it assiduously. She even prayed to a God she had almost forgotten, though she had been raised by devout Baptists. She wanted Jack that much. She wanted to escape her pumpkin life, to achieve a time of pampered ease, to have as few worries as the proverbial lily of the field.
Her vine grew quickly, yet it seemed forever before its questing tip touched Jack’s chalet wall. Petra itched with impatience, first for the day her path would be built, then, almost frantically, for a time to use it freely. She refused to leave her home while her husband was in it—how could she leave his bed for that of another man so literally?—and there was little point in going when Jack was not at home. That meant waiting, for a day when Jack stayed home again or for a night when her husband was away.
But the day did come. One Friday breakfast Petra’s husband said to her, “Dear, I’ll be in Chicago for a week. Maybe I’ll bring back one of those new handkerchief bushes.”
“We do keep running out of tissues,” she murmured across the connubial table, sipping at her orange juice.
“If they have any at the show. You’ll be all right?”
“Of course. Have a good trip, sweetie.”
They kissed tenderly at the door, and he was off. And she, she practically danced with eagerness. He was gone! Her vine was grown! And Jack was waiting, if he only knew.
She spent half the day in her tub, and half at her vanity. She cleansed herself, purified herself, and prettified herself. She wished to be perfect, appealing and beautiful and irresistable. To that end, she used all the right soaps and creams, deodorants and perfumes. She brushed her hair until it gleamed like black gold, gathered it, and slung it over one shoulder so that its ends curled about one naked breast. She smoothed her nails into elegant petals. She posed for herself in the mirror, and she liked the effect she had managed. How could he resist? How could any man?
As night fell, she slipped into a nightgown she had worn only once before, and then only for a little while. It had been resting in a box, on a closet shelf, for years, ever since her honeymoon. It smelt as fresh and felt as seductive as it had when new.
She ate lightly, sitting by the window, sipping at a glass of wine, watching the chalet. There were lights, movements, music. There were voices, soft, then growing louder. A party was starting, the guests as much a mystery as ever. But tonight, she thought, tonight she would find out. She would learn so much, satisfy her curiosity and her yearning and, yes, her lust.
The sounds of gaiety grew louder still. There were shrieks, as of sentient flowers being pollinated. She shivered deliciously. She drained her wine glass. She rose, the folds of her gown soft against her skin. She stepped outdoors.
Petra laid one hand on her pumpkin vine, gazing upward. Vaguely, she recalled that once pumpkin leaves and stems had been covered with prickles. But here and now, stem and leaf were smooth and soft, like velvet. The gengineers had achieved so much.
Here, as it arched away from its roots, her vine was as big around as her thigh. She kicked off her sandals and stepped onto the vine, careful of her gown. She gripped the bark with fingers and toes, and she began to climb.
The sounds of the party grew closer. Window light flickered and bounced among leaves of bean and pumpkin. The vine grew narrower and more vertical, but there were leaf stems for her hands and feet. She carefully sought no help from the beanstalk, though it paralleled her vine and sometimes even blocked her climb. She wou
ld do this thing her way, she insisted to herself, and she would win her heart’s desire.
Petra was not particularly fit, but she was well motivated. Miraculously, her hair was not disordered by her efforts. Her gown stayed sleek, untorn, unstained by perspiration. She climbed carefully and slowly, resting often to get her bearings, to listen to the party above, to dream of her future.
The vine was now less thick than her wrist, and the leaf stems were too weak to bear her weight. Rather than shinny and muss the gown, Petra shifted at last to the stouter beanstalk, walking half-upright once more, a few feet from the chalet’s timber base. She reached, she touched, and she was there. A window gaped, open, just above her head. Light poured from it, and music and laughter and, again, shrieks of joy. A musty, exhilarating scent pierced her nostrils.
She pulled herself up, feet moving on the rough bark of the beanstalk, fingers crawling over the cedar shingles of the chalet’s outer wall. She touched the window-sill, gripped it, and pulled her head into the light.
She saw. A golden haze filled the room. Through it she saw women ranked against the walls, beautiful women, more beautiful than even she could call herself. Her heart sank. What chance could she have against the likes of them?
Petra blinked. The women laughed and shrieked. They writhed lasciviously. Yet each stood still, as if rooted. She blinked again. The scent was stronger, and her head seemed numb. Rooted? Their legs were together, tapering into, into huge pots of dirt. Green spilled from their ankles across the floor. Had those flowers of her sex once been plants? Or women? What were they?
Petra shook her head. She tried desperately to dispel the growing numbness. She blinked, and she blinked again. And there was Jack. He had indeed worked upon himself, and he was as different as any gengineer she had ever heard of. He was as nude as his houris, his succubi. He capered, singing, his erect member a golden club shaking clouds of golden dust into the air. The women held out their arms, welcoming his showers of pollen. They writhed and shrieked in joy.
He saw her. All movement stopped. He grinned. Music soared. He stepped toward her, his anther in his hand. He murmured, “Market research,” and he shook it, once, twice.
Scent captured her as his pollen billowed around her head. Her heart leaped. Her hands flapped, trying vainly to push the golden cloud away. She tried to scream, but her brain went dark.
She fell.
* * * *
When she finally woke, dawn was lightening the eastern sky. She stretched tentatively, but nothing hurt. She had landed in the soft, deeply tilled earth at the base of the beanstalk, and she was unharmed. She was hardly even bruised. The only visible mark of her experience was the dirt that smeared her gown and matted her hair.
Wondering, she looked around her. Her pumpkin vine was nowhere near the beanstalk. It ended as it always had, a little short of Petra’s property line, just where she always pruned it back.
She wondered how she had fallen. Had she been climbing the beanstalk? But why? She remembered nothing of the party, nor of her yearnings. She remembered Jack, yes, but only as a mysterious figure who never socialized with his neighbors. She supposed gengineers had other things to occupy their time.
In a week, Petra’s husband returned home. He was quite on schedule, as always. But Petra was not. She exclaimed over the delightful handkerchief bush seedling he had brought, and again over the aquarium tree, already budding its first goldfish, and she thanked him in the best way she knew how.
That is why it did not surprise her when she missed her period. Nor did it surprise her when her belly began to swell.
But then the memories began to return.
LOST LUGGAGE
Roachsters, moving vans…
Wild animals resist perfect control.
Peter Barcano was afraid the litter was about to hit the fan.
American’s Bald Eagle had cut its engines, cupped its wings, and sunk its talons into the Denver airport’s turf. It had walked, as stately as only a modern jetliner could be, to the terminal, taken its position where the gate’s walkway could reach the door on the passenger pod, and dipped its beak into the feeding trough awaiting it. Litterbugs had scurried behind to clean up the wastes it would shortly deposit. The baggage crew had begun to empty the luggage compartment into the necessary train of carts.
And then.…
Peter never wondered how the gengineers had managed to make birds the size of airliners, so huge they could not possibly stand without skeletal reinforcements or fly without their strap-on engines. That was a given of his age, as were the pig-derived litterbugs and the thousand other tailored lifeforms that pervaded society the way machinery once had. Nor did he often think of the problems that could emerge from a technology of life. They too were givens, even if they did sometimes become his problems.
He belonged to the airport’s small corps of security agents. Now, a clipboard thick with papers in his hand, he stood behind the plate glass window of the Complaints office, looking down the line of luggage carousels. It wasn’t his usual post. He had nothing to do with service, or with luggage. But he had his orders: There would shortly be a large number of complaints, and the reason was a matter of security. Not that he could do much about it, but.…
The passengers from flight 316 flocked down the escalators and gathered by the nearest of the carousels, which should be already turning, looking expectant. Others formed small knots of conversation with those who had come to meet them, looking from time to time toward the carousels, as expectant as the rest.
Nothing happened. The carousels did not move. The hatch to the outside of the building, where the luggage carts should be unloading in a storm of rattles and thumps, never twitched. Nor did the airport’s PA system attempt to spread enlightenment in its scratchy voice. Peter knew that he should go out there and tell them the truth and face the music, but he lacked the nerve. He would let them come to him.
And that would be soon enough. He could see the truth beginning to penetrate. The waiting passengers were looking impatient, irritated, and alarmed. One, a burly man, greying hair thick above a face wrinkled by years of sun and wind, a farmer, a rancher, perhaps simply an outdoors enthusiast, was already turning toward the Complaints office.
Peter winced. He dreaded what could all too easily happen now.
The burly passenger opened the office door. “Excuse me,” he said. His voice was softer than Peter had expected, almost tentative, as if the problem, whatever it was, was somehow the passenger’s fault.
“Yes?” said Peter.
“Our luggage doesn’t seem to be coming through. Is anything…?”
“Oh, yes,” said Peter, trying to give the impression that this was an everyday occurrence. He didn’t find the act too difficult, for though the day’s disaster wasn’t quite a daily thing, it wasn’t rare. “Oh, yes.” He nodded reassuringly. “A pack of wild moving vans got it all. The luggage carts, too. And the Mack pulling them.”
“Oh,” said the passenger. He began to back out of the office. “Oh, shit. And I had such lovely fossils in.…”
Peter found his nerve. “Sir!” he cried before the door could close. He waved his clipboard. “I’ve just been getting the forms ready. If you would fill one out? We’ll need a list of… Anything you had that should be identifiable. It gets spilled, you know. We’ll be in touch just as soon as we get your things back. We will, you know. They nest up in the mountains, and we’ll raid the nests as soon as we can, though we may have to wait till they go south in the fall. They’re dangerous, but they can’t stand the winter.” He paused for breath. He knew that the wild vans’ “nests” were not really nests at all. They were simply the places where they stashed their loot; the vans laid their eggs in the air, and their young took care of themselves. “And there will, of course, be some compensation.”
He gave the man
his forms. Then he fled to the now definitely restive crowd around the carousels. He told them the little he could, passed out the forms, and weathered the protests and a bout or two of hysteria.
The worst reaction came from an elderly woman whose Boston bulldog had been in a pet carrier in the luggage hold. “My Twinkletoes!” she screamed. “My baby! I’ll sue!” Peter did his best to placate her by leading her to a nearby executive lounge, handing her the neat gin she requested, and assuring her that the airport would pay for a new Twinkletoes if necessary. As, he did not dare to say aloud, it surely would be.
* * * *
When Peter finally escaped back to the safety of the security office, Dan Brock, his supervisor, was waiting for him. Brock was a paunchy ex-soldier who always had a cigar in the breast pocket of his jacket. No one had ever seen him smoke it. “I watched it all,” that worthy said, gesturing at the array of closed-circuit veedo screens on the operations wall. “You did fine.”
“Not fine enough,” said Peter glumly. “I couldn’t tell them when we’ll get their luggage back.”
Brock took the cigar out of his pocket and stared at it. He sniffed it. Finally he said, “We can’t fly up there now. There’s just too many of the damn vans. They’d get us sure.”
Peter sighed. “We need to get rid of them.”
His boss shrugged. “Every time we try, the Humane Society bleeding hearts jump on us. Cruelty to genimals.” He too sighed. “Maybe the Fish and Game folks will decide they’re a game animal.”
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 5
