Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  “I know he wants to talk to you, and …”

  “We can see each other at the lab tomorrow.”

  Her voice added to its quiet insistence just a hint of desperate wail: “But he told me to be sure …”

  He shook his head. “Lovely party, Vicky, but I’ve had enough for now. And I’m sure he would rather relax with you once everyone else goes home.”

  Her voice went quiet. “I wish you were …”

  Was she about to say “right”? He did not want to hear of the Gelareans’ marital difficulties. He pushed the door open and slipped outside before she could say any more.

  Dusk had fallen, but the heat still struck him like a wall after the comfort of the house’s air-conditioning. He had been in Maine once, at about this time of year, and he had been impressed by how livable a place could be if only the day’s heat gave way to coolness. One could recover.

  He had a small air conditioner in his small apartment. It was a necessity of life much farther south than Maine. So was a wife, in Maine as everywhere else. Sean was fortunate. Hearth rug Nick Gilman was even luckier, for he also had a child.

  It was too hot to rush. He walked slowly, ambling, looking at the bioform houses that he passed, studying the few other pedestrians on the walks. Not far away, he knew, there was an empty pumpkin house with a “For Sale” sign on its lawn. He had walked past it more than once in recent days, wishing that he could afford to buy it, or perhaps something more elegant, like the Gelarean place.

  He had been married once. But she had left. She had called him cruel, abusive, mean-spirited, and worse. She had wanted him to see a therapist. They had drugs, she had told him. They can teach you not to hate.

  He had refused. Of course. So had his Papa, when Mama had said the same thing, or close enough. So he too would sleep alone tonight. There would be no one to whom he might boast of his achievements.

  Feet clicked on the walk behind him. He turned his head, and there—faltering as she noticed a stranger’s perhaps hazardous attention, intention firming as she decided to take a chance, now again catching up so quickly—was a woman. Young, buxom, white teeth gleaming in her dark face as she smiled a greeting. The sheen of sweat. An aroma of musk. A schwartzer. What the Boers, and his Papa, called a kaffir. An Arabic word for infidel, once used to refer to the most intelligent of the Bantu groups, the Boer equivalent of “nigger.”

  As she drew abreast of him, he increased his pace enough to stay with her. He hated blacks, yes, as he hated whites. He always had and he always would, after what they—both of them!—had done to his parents. But he was lonely tonight and his masters had approved of his work. He was feeling almost friendly, and in an unfeigned way quite unlike the act he had deliberately performed for Nick Gilman.

  He waved a hand at their surroundings to catch her eye. “My apartment is lots cooler than this.”

  She looked at him. Their eyes met. She laughed. “So is mine. And it’s not far away.”

  He felt something open up within him, brightening and relaxing. Was it possible? Could such a simple overture possibly have evoked any interest at all? A delicious thrill ran through the core of his being, and he told himself that she was not truly what he hated. Schwartzer, yes, but not kaffir, not the savage blacks who had taken over virtually all the continent of Africa and slaughtered whites, yellows, other blacks, everyone who was not of their tribe. Her ancestors had surely never been within a thousand miles of South Africa. In fact, they had been among the persecuted, just as had his parents. He could see it in her eyes, dark pools stained by generations of slavery, oppression, and discrimination. And besides, she was surely not a black, not a true black, not in this country with its centuries of miscegenation, recognized and unrecognized. She was a coloured, like him.

  She touched his wrist as if by accident. He smiled. “I can hardly wait. A cold drink. A cold shower.”

  “Me too,” she said, and her touch repeated. It was not an accident.

  “But it would be so much nicer with company.”

  She nodded, smiling broadly. “I can hardly wait.” A pause, just long enough for his hopes to soar like a police department Hawk. And then she lengthened her stride, drew ahead, and looked back to say, “My boyfriend’s there already.”

  His spirits fell once more. She had been toying with him, and he would find no more satisfaction, of any kind, tonight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Fischer!”

  Lieutenant Napoleon Alexander’s office had one small window. On its sill was a dirty ashtray that dated from the days when the lieutenant had been a pipe smoker. On humid days, its carefully preserved encrustation of tar and ash added a strong note of stale tobacco to the office air. Until the year before, a rack of dusty pipes had held down papers atop the filing cabinet in the corner and made the stench even worse. Still more tobacco scent lifted from the walls, which would not be due for two years or more for an addition to their myriad layers of paint, visible in rounded corners and chip craters whose edges were bands of multicolored strata.

  The rack of pipes had disappeared when the Count had decided they made it too hard to resist temptation. But the ashtray remained, together with the rumor that when the Count was alone and unobserved, he would lift it to his face to savor the aroma. This Monday morning, he would not need to touch it. The air was warm, and it was raining. The room stank of old tobacco.

  The stacks of papers were still there, as clear a sign as Bernie’s typewriter of underfunding. All the rest of the world was thoroughly computerized and had been for decades. The best the police could do was equip booking desks and evidence technicians with slow, cranky, limited-memory OS/2 machines from the last century. The officers had to write their reports on even older electronic typewriters, as their predecessors had once had to use manual typewriters. Obsolescence was a police tradition.

  “Fischer!” the Count repeated.

  Bernie was staring through the window at the rain that drew a gray curtain across the front of the Aerie. The bicycle rack was invisible. “Yes, sir!” As usual, Bernie’s salute was sloppy and his stance was a far, far cry from the rigidity of the “Attention!” his superior had all but shouted.

  The Count licked his bright red lips and said, very softly, “I had an alarming, a very alarming, phone call this morning.” He stood and leaned forward over his desk, bracing himself with his arms. “An anonymous phone call. About you. And I don’t generally put much credence in anonymous phone calls about my people. But do you know what that anonymous caller said?”

  Both Bernie and Lieutenant Napoleon Alexander knew that such phone calls were part of any detective’s life. Inevitably he stepped on toes. He came closer than they liked to people with guilty consciences. And they did everything they could to deflect attention. It rarely worked, for a detective’s superiors always knew what such calls most truly signified.

  What, then, could have the Count so worked up? Bernie could not guess, but he was sure he would learn very shortly. He said, “No, sir.”

  The Count glared at Bernie. “He said that you are neglecting your work. You are spending too much time at the Neoform labs. You are sniffing after Dr. Emily Gilman like a dog after a bitch in heat!” Spittle sprayed from his mouth to sprinkle the desktop. A few droplets landed on Bernie’s shirtfront.

  Bernie stepped backward at the force of his boss’s explosion. First Connie, he thought. Now him. Emily was a sexy lady, yes, but why did everyone think he should be trying to get into her undies? “But …” He tried to speak, but he was given no opportunity.

  The Count’s next words were softer: “I’ve seen her picture. She’s pretty. Good boobs. Nice ass. But you’re supposed to chase that ass on your own time!”

  Finally, he could say something. “It’s work, sir, really. I’m … “

  “Not anymore, it isn’t. The
feds are handling the Sparrow case, and you don’t need to do any more research on gengineering, do you?” He didn’t give Bernie a chance to reply. “And I told you to concentrate on that mutilation-rape!”

  “But they’re linked!”

  The Count, still leaning over his desk, blinked. For a moment, he looked almost owlish. “Explain that.”

  Bernie tried his best. “The rape was in Greenacres, right? And two of Neoform’s major people live in that genurb.” He sketched Ralph Chowdhury, his hatreds, and his rivalry with Emily Gilman over their creations. He told how he had happened to be invited to the party celebrating Emily’s patent, and he described Sean Gelarean, company founder, and his richly furnished, limited-access house.

  “Chowdhury,” he said, “may think he has good reason to want Emily dead, and he would know how to fiddle the Sparrow. And the Assassin bird, which is a Neoform product! She may be the next woman we find in pieces.”

  The Count settled back in his seat and shook his head wearily. “I doubt it.”

  “And Gelarean’s house. I’m suspicious. I’d like a warrant.”

  Lieutenant Alexander shook his head again. “No grounds.”

  “Greg Florin was there. In a pink tux.” Bernie had indeed recognized the casino owner. Because the state did not license gambling, Florin’s operation was illegal. But the police ignored his transgression, tolerating him as long as he kept away from more socially disruptive activities. Because there were rumors that he was not in fact avoiding those activities, his presence at the party was ominous.

  The Count sighed. Both men were aware that the drug business was reviving with the aid of the same gengineering technology that had almost destroyed it at first. They knew of the cocaine nettles and the seeds that had appeared in the hangar of the Chickadee that had saved Emily Gilman. They recognized the potential of a gengineering firm such as Neoform.

  “I was checking out that house the other day,” Bernie said. “As you suggested. And I found a nettle leaf.”

  The mood in the Count’s small office had changed. Bernie was no longer on the carpet, no longer under suspicion of uncontrollable randiness. He was, instead, an official hound tracking prey through a maze of misdirection. He was a hawk indeed.

  “Connections,” said the Count. “You’re right.” He sighed heavily. “Stay with it, then. Carry on.”

  Before Bernie could close the door behind him, he added, “But no search warrants. Not yet.”

  * * * *

  The rain had ended by noon. The clouds had dissipated, and the city had steamed all afternoon in the summer sun. Now, Connie Skoglund’s air conditioner hummed in the background.

  “I still think she wants you.” Connie’s motions as she sliced onions and green peppers with a long-bladed knife were fast and efficient. In a moment, she would add them to the pepperoni-and-cheese pizza Bernie was taking from her freezer. They already had glasses of a cheap red wine that could pass for Chianti.

  “That’s the last one,” said the freezer. “Should I put more on the list?”

  Connie pitched her voice an octave higher: “Check!”

  “Bull.” Bernie set the pizza down on the counter and sipped heartily from his glass. “It’s a strictly work relationship, and you know it.” He had spent the day on a knifing, a burglary, a drug bust, paperwork, a court appearance, routine matters of the sort that had occupied police officers’ lives as long as there had been police officers. He had barely had a chance to think about the Sparrow case or, for that matter, about finding whatever monster had murdered Jasmine Willison. Nor had he yet said a word to Connie about his confrontation that morning with the Count. She had brought up Emily’s supposed infatuation with him entirely on her own.

  She shook her head. Her brown hair, still glossy from a recent brushing, bounced. He smelled a flowery shampoo and wished he too had gotten away from work with time to shower and change. All he had been able to do was unfasten the harness that throughout the day had held his .357 magnum in its shoulder holster. His shirt was marked by still-drying sweat beneath the arms, the stain a simple, civilian moon under his right arm, but a moon extended by a shape that resembled the subcontinent of India beneath his left. He could smell himself. His scent was not much like flowers.

  “Uh-uh,” she said. “Bull, yourself. No way. You wouldn’t be hanging around her so much if that was all it was. And she wouldn’t be letting you.”

  “It’s research!”

  “You don’t have to see her every day for research.”

  “I don’t!”

  “Near enough.”

  A thought suddenly struck him. He set his glass down. He laid one hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. “Say. You didn’t have anything to do with that phone call, did you?”

  She stared back at him, her mouth a thin, horizontal line of annoyance. “What phone call?”

  He did not let go of her while he told her what the Count had told him that morning. When he was done, she raised a hand to brush his arm away and turned back to the pizza. “Jackass.”

  “What do you mean?”

  This time she turned around on her own. She held her slicing knife up between their faces and shook it. “I said, you’re a jackass. A fool. You don’t get it, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  She sighed. “It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got the hots for her or not. You’re hanging around Neoform too when you hang around your Emily, and you’re making someone over there nervous.”

  She made sense. Of course. Someone wanted him out of there and they must have called the department. He didn’t think it could be Nick Gilman, for though he might be jealous, he was also scared for his wife’s life. Chowdhury? Gelarean? Someone else? He could not say, though he could guess. He had no real evidence, but there was, as he had told the Count, a personality, a history, and rivalry that could, together, lead to violence. Every cop had seen it happen more than once.

  * * * *

  Bernie had come to talk to Emily about the phone call Lieutenant Alexander had received, but when she had ushered him into her lab, she would not let him speak.

  “Look,” she said. “Alan finally got the bugs out of those pouch genes.” Her fingers moved over the keyboard of her workstation. A Bioblimp appeared on the screen. Ghostly fingers, barely visible on the screen, plucked at its flanks to open the folds in which it would tuck its cargo. There were only two, and their openings faced toward what, Bernie supposed, must be the front of the genimal. Ghost fingers poked into the pouches, their depth of penetration communicating internal size.

  “I thought you already had the patent?”

  Her dark hair jerked as she nodded. He caught a whiff of shampoo odor, clean and flowery, but not quite the same as Connie’s. “Sure. But it describes the pouches in very general terms. This is design work, not invention. Details.”

  The next sequence showed the Bioblimp with its cabin in place, slung beneath the gasbag, tentacles dangling around it, except to the rear, where a missing tentacle left room for the propeller that jutted from the back of the cabin to push the Bioblimp through the sky. Bernie did not know whether the tentacle was missing because the creature simply did not grow one there or because it had been—would be, he thought, reminding himself that this was a simulation—cut away. It hovered over a house, anchored itself to a tree with one tentacle, used others to lift the roof from the house, and then plucked furniture from the exposed rooms. The furniture went into its pouches. As they filled, they bulged obscenely.

  “It makes moving look easy,” said Bernie appreciatively.

  “Removable roofs are just the simplest of the changes that will make sense once this thing is on the market. Look here …” She keyed another animated sequence, and a Bioblimp, this time with the Mayflower logo visible on the side of its gasbag, floated t
hrough the air toward a high-rise apartment building bedecked with balconies, each one painted with a number. She pointed. “Addresses.”

  One tentacle wrapped around a balcony railing to moor the van. A human figure, so small on the screen that its gender could not be told, stepped out of the apartment, opened a panel in the wall of the building, and pushed a switch. The entire apartment slid out of the building like a drawer from a bureau, and the moving van began to pull furniture from its cargo holds and place it on the apartment floor. When the van was done, the human figure pushed the switch again, and the apartment slid back into the building.

  Bernie laughed. “You could water the houseplants that way too. In the rain.”

  “Our patent lawyers are going nuts.” She grinned at him. “We’re remaking the world, aren’t we?”

  “As long as you don’t redesign people so they don’t need to eat. Lunch?”

  “Where?”

  “You choose.”

  “The Bed and Buggy Motel has a nice luncheon. It’s just a couple of blocks away.”

  There was a moment’s silence while they stared at each other, both of them fully aware that, whatever their purposes in going to a motel, most people went to such places for only one thing. Finally, he said simply, “Why not?” To himself, he saw that now, perhaps, he could tell her about the phone call. They would have a good laugh over lunch, and then they would come back here, to the lab.

  * * * *

  To reach the motel, and its restaurant, they had to walk through a small neighborhood shopping center. There was a grocery, a hardware store, a liquor store, a cleaner, two small boutiques, a barbershop, a drugstore, and more. As Bernie and Emily approached the entrance to a shadowed bar, its door opened partway. A voice, warmly feminine despite its obviously synthesized nature, murmured, “It’s awful warm out there. Why don’t you come inside and be comfortable? The beer is cold.” A free sample of the bar’s conditioned air gushed refreshingly across their ankles.