Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  “I expect they’ll have him very soon.”

  The other drained his glass abruptly. “It would be a shame if anything happened to Emily. You have a child …?”

  They chatted for a few moments more while they emptied their plates. Then Chowdhury left, saying he wanted to find a sweet. Nick remained by the wall, watching the crowd, glancing from time to time toward Bernie Fischer, who in turn seemed to be following Chowdhury with his own gaze.

  According to Emily, Chowdhury was abrupt, abrasive, abusive, temperamental, secretive, impatient, and intolerant. But he had been quite cordial just now. He had been willing to speak at least a little about his Armadons. He seemed interested in the search for whoever had programmed the Assassin bird to attack Emily. He seemed sympathetic and concerned.

  Nick preferred to believe his wife. She was not the sort of person who could convince herself that a thoroughly nice person was so awful, and then describe that person so to others.

  Chowdhury therefore had to be dissembling. But why? Was he hoping to get on the good side of Neoform’s current fair-haired girl? Did he wish that some of her good fortune would rub off on him and make his Armadons as great an initial success as her Bioblimp? Or …?

  Nick left his plate on the shelf and wandered through the house. Where was Emily? There, talking animatedly to her technician, Alan. She saw him and waved her glass. Beside her was another Atkinson sculpture, a dozen narrow stalks thrusting from the dirt in a plain, brick-red flowerpot set atop a baby grand piano. The stalks merged to form two linked rings that were covered in fine scales picking out a colorful mosaic. He could not see the details clearly enough to tell what, if anything, the pattern signified, but he could hear the thing’s metallic, chiming voice.

  There were more conventional artworks as well—paintings, prints, antique scientific instruments, small carvings in wood and stone, each displayed to good advantage but safely set behind glass barriers, all originals, all expensive. Either Neoform was very successful or, as he had heard from Emily, Victoria Gelarean had indeed brought money to the marriage. There were very few houseplants other than the sculptures.

  Nick would have liked to climb the tower both for its view and for the sense of power, of overlordship, that he thought might accompany having such an extension of one’s house. He would also have liked a look at the greenery there, and thus some sense of what Sean Gelarean might really be like behind the bluff exterior he showed the world. But locked doors barred all exits from the party’s assigned rooms, except to the outdoors.

  One of those locked doors turned a narrow hall into a cul-de-sac. He was testing the knob, thinking the door might open to the tower, when he felt a hand on his arm. He let go of the doorknob abruptly, embarrassed even before he realized that the hand belonged to Victoria Gelarean. The hood of her red monk’s robe was back, revealing wrinkled skin, a vividly birthmarked cheek, and twinkling eyes. Her lips were pursed as if she were recalling something for which she did not care. She shook her head gently and said, “He doesn’t let me go up there. Not even me.”

  Her hand exerted gentle pressure, steering him back toward the living room, where the bulk of the party still was concentrated. As they turned, he saw that Bernie Fischer was watching them. He had a drink in his hand, but he looked as if he too had been wandering curiously, trying doors much as Nick had been doing. Was Sean Gelarean then a suspect in some heinous crime? Or were police detectives simply just as nosy as he himself?

  Victoria released him when they came to the bar, saying, “Why don’t you have a little wine, dear?” Nodding, Nick filled a glass before turning toward the room to find her already gone from his side, circulating among the other guests. Gelarean was nowhere in sight, but there was Chowdhury, in a corner near a bathroom, so close against a stranger that their bellies were almost touching. Nick smiled at the sight. The stranger’s pink tuxedo covered a mass of solid flesh that matched the slight gengineer three times over. He listened impassively, and when he spoke, when he reached out to pat Chowdhury’s shoulder, his smile seemed a decal pasted into place to simulate approval. When the two men turned away from each other, that smile disappeared as if it had never been, and Nick glimpsed a coldness of soul that would have been out of place in an insect.

  Nick had been to other Neoform parties, but he had never seen the man before. Was he a neighbor? If so, Nick thought, then Greenacres was a much less congenial place to live than its obvious wealth and stylishness might suggest. If he was a business contact—Nick hardly dared to wonder what sort of business, or how he must treat his employees. If he was a friend, then what sort of person could Sean Gelarean really be?

  A hand clasped his arm from behind. He jumped.

  “Did I startle you?”

  It was Emily. “I was spooked. By a real creep. Over there, in the pink tux.” He pointed, but the stranger was gone. He had to settle for describing the man. He said nothing about his attempt to open locked doors, or the way Gelarean’s wife had stopped him.

  Emily shuddered. “There’s no one like that around the company, I know. You ready to go home?”

  He was.

  Chapter Twelve

  What a weak-spined, pussy-whipped excuse for a man was that Nick Gilman! A jobless househusband! A pussycat, neutered and turned into a hearth rug for his wife to walk upon! Chowdhury pitied their son. A boy should grow up with proper role models, women who stayed home, content with children, kitchen, church, men who showed their strength, who dominated their women and the land as one.

  Chowdhury could not help but think so. His parents had set the model for him, even though they had also violated it. Neither of them had been in any position to dominate anyone’s land. And his Papa had worked in the kitchen as often as his Mama, for she had often been off with their fellow exiles, listening to their dreams of return and treating their illnesses, even confined as she was to a wheelchair. But he had been a man who knew how to use his belt and his fist. He had also told the boy stories of the homeland, where men were men and women knew their place, and he clearly wished that things had never fallen apart. He wished, indeed, for only such change as would let him join the dominant whites on equal terms. His Mama as clearly wished the same, though she could also say, with full and laughing awareness of her irony, that a proper man was a Boer-boar-boor, and his slogan a borborygmic grunt.

  Chowdhury had had his reasons to make so nice to Nick Gilman. But it had been an effort, a severe effort. He was, he knew it, a snarler, a croc, as his Mama might have put it, in the river of life. His temper was worse because he had finished his latest illicit creations and turned them over to his masters. Now he was waiting for their reactions, and patience was not among the few virtues he numbered, in all honesty, among his own. In fact, he counted patience as the antithesis of what was necessary in the world’s natural elite, its natural rulers, men of genius like himself. Though he did realize that just a little patience might help him bear the long wait for recognition a little better.

  Chowdhury shivered at the thought of what he had learned by making so nice for so long to such an abysmal hearth rug of a man. His master, the one who gave him most of his orders now, was not far away. He could tell him things, frightening things, things that would demand action, or flight. But not here, not now. Later, later, the time would come. And then, perhaps …

  Chowdhury obtained a cup of coffee, fortified with a dollop of Irish Cream, and a small square of cheesecake. He ate and drank, wishing that his Indian half were less strong, or that his inner mind could accept the fact of his professional position and attendant prosperity. In India, in the old, pre-Black South Africa, for all he knew in the modern post-Boer South Africa, men displayed their wealth in their bellies, in the fat that announced to all the world that they had enough, and more than enough, to eat. But somehow, he could never bring himself to eat enough to swell out with that commanding presence o
f the real man, Boer-boar-boor or not.

  He watched the crowd around him. There was that cop, always around, poking, prying, destroying. There was Victoria Gelarean, a woman unfortunate of face and figure but a woman for all that, serving her husband’s needs as a woman should, quiet and self-effacing. She had one hand on the small of the hearth rug’s back, and she was pushing him gently toward the bar. They had come from another room, and Chowdhury wondered if Nick Gilman had been exploring where he shouldn’t. If so, perhaps he was less anemic than he seemed. He had wanted to see the tower room himself when he had first visited this house. Eventually, he had, but he knew that it was normally kept behind locked doors.

  A mass of pink gestured Chowdhury imperiously to join it in the corner by the bathroom door. He obeyed, and as he drew close enough to see the doughy face atop the pink, he recognized the gesturer as that man who had first set him the task of making the cocaine nettle. The pink was his tux. The mass was his torso, well fed and enviably unattainable. The smooth, round face was smiling thinly, coldly, though that did not disturb Chowdhury. He did not know the man’s name—the thugs and dealers and waitresses at the casino had called him just “The Boss”—but his rank was clear. Chowdhury knew that he, like his predecessors in the Family, the Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, whatever the papers called it at any one time, was a manipulator of games, dollars, drugs, and lives. He was also, as Chowdhury’s Papa—and Mama—would have recognized immediately, a real man.

  When Chowdhury was within reach, a pink-wrapped arm extended like the proboscis of some parasitic beast. A heavy hand clasped his shoulder and drew him in to face, too close, the other’s diamond tietack. The fingers kneaded Chowdhury’s flesh painfully. The voice, all threat softened by careful layers of oil, murmured, “You’ve done a good job, Ralph. Good work.” The thin smile broadened. “Fetch me a drink? I don’t want to be obvious out there.” He glanced toward the cop, Bernie Fischer, and his smile became more genuine. “I do believe he recognizes me.”

  “Of course.” Chowdhury shrugged free of the hand, marveling that the casino owner could enjoy so obviously the stares of a policeman. Vanity! he thought, even as he felt the niggling truth that he might well react in the same way. If only he had the recognition he deserved.

  “Just club soda.”

  As Chowdhury crossed the room to the bar, he noted the flushed faces and loud voices of the other people at this party. Many of them had been guests at the party thrown by that company lawyer. They were not avoiding alcohol or, perhaps, less licit substances, but he saw no sign of any nettles in their pots.

  This man, his master, The Boss, the “baas” in the language of home, was carefully staying sober. He wondered how drunk he could get in private, or at his own parties. Or did he always keep his senses solidly about him, the better to control, to manipulate, his games and drugs and lives?

  When he returned, the other accepted the glass of bubbly liquid, raised it to eye level, and repeated, “Yes, good work.” He sipped, and the toast was done. “I came to tell you so myself, though ordinarily we let him”—a flick of the eyes—“handle you.”

  Then, Chowdhury thought, they must have found his creations interesting.

  “The nettle was fine. Though perhaps you could shorten its life?” The words came slowly, laboriously, as if, like Chowdhury, he too had to strain to speak soft words.

  “But never mind. It’s quite marketable as it is. A considerable success. But then …” He paused to sip once more from his glass. His dark eyes bored into Chowdhury’s skin. “We weren’t sure anything more was possible. You surprised us. Snakes and jellyfish!” Another pause. “We love them.”

  Chowdhury grinned nervously as someone passed behind them to get into the bathroom. He wondered if this love, proclaimed in such a coldly passionless voice, meant that he would be freed of his debts. He suspected not. He was more valuable than ever to these people. They would surely refuse to run any risk that he would escape. Freedom was not in the cards.

  When the bathroom door closed, the other said, “We want two thousand of those jellyfish. Immediately. And two thousand of each of the snakes.”

  “I’ve already started the jellyfish.” They had been easy to start. He had simply left the lights over their tanks on a little longer to convince them it was time to breed and then released a burst of pheromones into their water. They had promptly generated millions of gametes, eggs and sperm. Overnight, almost, he could have more larval cnidarians than he could possibly raise to maturity, or supply with tanks. He sighed at the thought that if they proved popular, there would have to be a factory of considerable size just for the necessary aquaria. Breeding nettles, jellyfish, and snakes would need another sort of factory, rather more like a farm. He hoped he would not wind up in charge of it.

  Chowdhury recalled the scene when he had introduced his creations. His immediate master had come to his lab, pushing, insisting, demanding tangible progress. Reluctantly, he had produced the disks on which he kept his plans, spec sheets, and notes. He had described what he had done. He had pointed to the aquarium and its contents. Then he had brought out the snakes in their terraria, the asps, the coral snakes, the mambas. Tiny things, sleek and colorful, loaded with hedonic venoms.

  Within himself, carefully hidden from this underworld lordling all in pink, he smiled at the memory of his master’s initial revulsion, of how intrigue began to show, of how the man had wished to try the venoms out. He had had to caution him, saying, “Be careful. With the jellyfish, you just leave your hand in longer for a larger dose. With the snakes. I linked the drug and pigment genes in reciprocal tandem. The paler the color, the less pigment, the more drug there is in the venom. You can start the customers off easy, and then sell them stronger and stronger pets. Don’t take a light one.”

  “I understand tolerance.” His master had reached for one of the darker, more brilliant reptiles and let it bite his arm, nearly as dark-skinned as Chowdhury’s own. His eyes had closed, his mouth half opened, his breath moaned outward in an ecstatic groan. “I like that,” he had said at last. “And so will they. I’ll pass them on.”

  And indeed they had. “The snakes,” Chowdhury said, “will take a little longer.”

  “What a pity.” The man in pink shook his head. “Those will be much more profitable.” He sighed heavily. “In fact, one of our board members was saying he wished we could retail them through legitimate channels. He even suggested an advertising slogan: ‘Make an asp of yourself!’”

  Chowdhury chuckled dutifully at this display of the other’s wit.

  But the lighter tone did not last. The other stuck the fingers of his free hand into the top of a pants pocket. Then, abruptly, as if the pocket concealed some secret switch, he asked, “How long?”

  Chowdhury shrugged. They would grow quickly, but … “I’ll need a month or so to build up the breeding stock, even using hormones to speed their growth. Then, say, six months before you’ll have many for the market.”

  The other shrugged as well, though he did not look surprised. Perhaps, Chowdhury thought, he had some small sense of biology. “Que sera…” Now he patted and squeezed Chowdhury’s shoulder once more. He said, “Then you’ll have plenty of time to come up with something else,” and turned away. The interview was over.

  * * * *

  Something else? No, they would not let him go. Never, or never until he lost his touch or the competition proved more imaginative or the police caught them all. He told himself not to worry about that last possibility. He could always claim that he had been forced to do his work, though he did find it satisfying, if not as satisfying as his Armadons. And besides, as the lordling in the pink tuxedo had begun to say, “Que sera, sera. What will be, will be.”

  Behind the door he stood beside, the toilet flushed and a deep, gurgling voice, like that of a drowning troll, rumbled, “Don’t forget to wash y
our hands!” A more normal voice swore, and there was a rush of water in the sink. Chowdhury chuckled and moved away.

  But what else was there? Nettle, jellyfish, snakes. Bees, wasps, and spiders were also venom injectors and could be tailored to deliver drugs that were effective in small quantities, such as hallucinogens. Even mosquitoes and other biting insects might work, for they injected a droplet of saliva when they bit. In fact, a snake’s venom was a modified saliva in the first place.

  But they were bugs. Nonusers, ignorant of their value, would swat them, smearing all their value on walls and arms and rolled newspapers. And people who would use them would surely be too few; bugs were not popular. What was worse, it might be difficult to keep them from escaping and multiplying endlessly. Then the world would have a drug problem!

  He supposed it would be possible to come up with worse ideas. A porcupine? Its every quill filled with some mind-altering substance, standing ready to be plucked and injected? A hedgehog, its quills shorter and less prone to accidental removal and injection, would be a better choice. Color-code the quills, each color corresponding to a different drug?

  Or a virus? Short-term and noncontagious to protect the market, just as his masters wished. One that would force the body to make its own supply of the drug, and then, after a few hours or a day, die out? Or a bacterium that could reproduce only outside the body? Either would have advantages over the more conspicuous genimals. They would be easier to smuggle, to conceal, to take surreptitiously. He would have to see what he could do along those lines.

  Lost in thought, Chowdhury made his way toward the Gelareans’ door. As he neared it, a billow of red converged upon him. He reached for the doorknob anyway, but before he could touch it, a soft hand seized his wrist. “Ralphie! You can’t leave yet!”

  He raised his eyebrows. The woman’s crimson hood was up, her birthmark a mere shadow on her cheek. “But I must, Victoria.”