Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  The other laughed, a short bark that cut off as if it were against the rules to be amused by anything at all. At the sound, the oldest of the supervisors swung around. He wore a pencil-line mustache, and his hair was graying neatly along the sides. He said, “This is private property, kid. Get lost. And tell your father it ain’t smart to ask too many questions.”

  * * * *

  Andy’s mouth had still hung open, but no longer with delight. Nick had stifled words that surely would have been unwise to speak aloud, considering the way the strangers had carried themselves. He had turned the boy away, back toward the airport bus stop, and they had left immediately.

  Once safely on the bus and heading home, Andy had wanted to know, “Why, Daddy? Why were they so mean?” Nick could only shake his head and repeat the question to himself. Were they just litterheads? Or were they involved in something that could not stand public scrutiny? Or both?

  Andy was still upset about the rebuff he had suffered when it was time for Emily to arrive home. Nick was in the kitchen. The boy was in the living room, pretending that his Warbirds were the real thing. As best Nick could make out from the other room, they had come to town to visit Andy himself. When they found the local airport’s runways blocked by growing farm buildings, they used their laser cannons, flechette bombs, and poison sprays to clear away the obstacles.

  Nick could not help but be amused. Children’s fantasies were free, direct, and often violent, and they effectively vented feelings and relieved frustrations. If only adults could use fantasies in the same way! Some could, he knew. But most, most thought that fantasy was for kids. For grown-ups, its only justification was as planning for the real thing.

  “Where’s Mommy?” The cry seemed plaintive. When Nick checked the clock on the wall, he realized that she had not pulled the Tortoise into the garage on schedule. She was late. He left the makings of dinner scattered on the counter and joined Andy in the living room.

  By the time Emily did get home, father and son had been standing by the window overlooking the drive for twenty minutes. Nick, remembering how Miss Carol had alarmed him with her reassurances, had said nothing aloud. He had simply joined the vigil and let the boy lean against his leg.

  When Emily finally walked into the house, she was obviously tired. She slumped, and her hair needed the touch of a comb. There was a hint of future bags in the drooping of her lower eyelids, but her eyes remained bright. Her voice was even lively as she said, “You wouldn’t believe … !”

  She threw her briefcase toward the couch and opened her arms. Nick held her tight. “Try me,” he said. When Andy tried to push between them, he let her go long enough to reach down and lift the boy into his arms. Emily kissed their son.

  In a moment, she looked at Nick curiously. He told her about calling, and what he had wanted to say. She kissed him and said, “It was the Tortoise.”

  “What happened?”

  She explained, accepted his congratulations and hug, and let him lead the way to the kitchen. “Dinner’s on hold,” he said. “And the wine …”

  Nick set Andy down on the counter beside the sink. They fetched the wine, poured, and positioned themselves on either side of the boy. She said, “But that wasn’t all. Bernie’s Hawk had a chip too, and it went berserk in the air. He had to shoot it.”

  “I’ll bet he had a parachute!” said Andy. She nodded and squeezed his shoulder. Thus encouraged, and reminded of the death of the Chickadee, he said, “We went to the airport today. And it’s gonna be a farm! But they chased us away.”

  She let him interrupt. When the story ran down, she squeezed his shoulder again and returned her attention to her husband. “And then Bernie had to check the computer at work. That’s why I’m late. He didn’t even get there till almost five.” They clicked their glasses in a silent toast to survival. She went on: “The saboteur made a mistake. He left tracks.” She explained how Neoform’s people signed in and out, and how that procedure had let them identify the guilty man.

  Andy tugged at his mother’s blouse. “Who was it?”

  “I don’t think you’ve met him, dear. I hope you haven’t.” She looked at Nick. “Chowdhury.”

  “The chowderhead.” He said that natural corruption of the name as if it were a curse.

  “We’ll get him tomorrow. Bernie’s getting the warrants tonight.” She hesitated before adding: “I’ll be going with him. He said it would be okay.”

  “Can I go too?”

  They each put a hand on Andy’s knee. “Uh-uh.” Nick’s smile, so confident that he loved her and that she loved him, that she was his and not this other man’s, slipped. It became a frown, and then a scowl. He said. “I’m not surprised you want to be there. But …”

  She straightened and drew back from him, just a little, as if chiding him for his suspicions. “He almost killed me, Nick! “

  “And he’s your protector.”

  “That’s what I called him this morning. It’s true. And I’m certainly concerned with this case. I want to be in at the end.” She tossed back her wine, lifted her butt away from the counter, and stepped to the fridge to refill her glass.

  He watched her move, thinking of the past. There had been a time when his thoughts had centered on that butt, her body, for hours and days at a time. He had prized as well her intelligence, her independence, her determination, her drive. He was getting old. The body still drew him. But the rest of her, the mind and spirit, seemed more important. There were plenty of bodies in the world. The rest …? He did not want to lose her.

  She held up the wine carton and cast a quizzical eye in his direction. He nodded, emptied his glass, and held it out. She poured, a wing of dark hair falling past her cheek.

  He sighed. What did Bernie value in her? Mind? Spirit? Body? Or even less? Was she perhaps, only a momentary focus of attention, attractive because she was part of a case, there, ready to his hand?

  She spoke: “That’s all he is, you know. There might have b …” She stopped herself with a visible effort. “He’s not really my type.”

  His voice was gentle. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a man,” she said. “He even smells like one.” Her eyes half closed and she smiled softly, while Nick wondered whether he should feel insulted. “But he has a mean streak.” She told him what she meant. “He’s not gentle. Like you.”

  Andy was watching them carefully, head turning, first right, then left, to face them as they spoke. “Daddy’s nice,” he said. “Isn’t he?”

  Emily wrapped one arm around the boy’s shoulders. “We want you to grow up to be just as nice,” she said.

  He wiggled under her arm and said, “I’m hungry.”

  Nick laughed. “Then I’ll get supper back on track.”

  * * * *

  When Emily fell asleep on the couch after supper, Andy said, “That’s funny, Daddy. Mommy never takes naps.”

  “She had a hard day,” his father told him. “The Tortoise …”

  “Why did it try to kill her?”

  “Someone told it to.”

  “I know. He reprogrammed the computer.”

  He nodded. “Sort of. But she fixed it in time.”

  “Then it’s okay now?”

  “For sure. No problems. And right now, it’s time for you to head for bed.” He reached as if to swat a young behind, and the boy laughed, dodged, and ran for his room to change into his pajamas.

  Nick let his wife sleep. She had had a hard day. It wasn’t the first, what with the Sparrow, the Assassin, and the Mack attacks, but this one must have been the worst of them all. Their own possession, the Tortoise, always and unquestionably trustworthy, had turned on her. She had won the battle, but surely the stress had been far worse than the less traitorous attacks of strange genimals could ever engender. And then the discovery
of who had done it, the resolution, the relief of suspense, the letdown. He told himself that he too would collapse under the circumstances.

  She did not wake until, near their normal bedtime, he decided to move her to their bed. As he slipped his arms under her and lifted, her eyes opened and one arm went around his neck. “Honeymoon time?” she murmured.

  “Bedtime,” he said, smiling down at her.

  “Hokay,” she drawled. Her arm tightened to draw his lips to hers. “But can I wash up first?”

  “You smell fine.”

  “So do you.” She kissed him again. “But I still want to wash up.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Morning sunlight poured through the broad windows of Sean Gelarean’s spacious office to puddle on a golden carpet. The walls, paneled with Honduran mahogany, were splashed with original landscapes. A sideboard held three of Wilma Atkinson’s biosculptures. The cooled and filtered air smelled faintly of polishes for wood and leather, of lime aftershave, and of potting soil.

  Gelarean himself sat at the broad desk in a high-backed seat of padded leather. His face was dark in silhouette against the window behind him. A single unmarked pad of paper was centered before him, a pen beside it. A computer screen and keyboard rose out of the desktop at comfortable angles. A phone was pushed to one side to make room for a glistening rectangle with rounded corners. The strange object’s surface was a mottled green. In the center of its top was a ring of eight eyes. Near each edge was a mouthlike slit. No legs were visible.

  The desk was a slab of wood that, at first glance, seemed to float in air. Then the watcher realized that Gelarean was visible only from the desktop up, the rest cut off as if by a knife, or blocked as if by a solid desk. The desktop’s apparent defiance of gravity was an illusion: The desk had supporting sides like any normal desk, though they were holographic veedo screens that faithfully repeated the view of rug, wall, and window behind them. It was as close as technology had ever come to invisibility.

  Bernie stood before the desk, thinking that Gelarean was just the company’s head of research. He knew that the company depended utterly on research for its products, but still he wondered what sort of quarters Neoform’s president enjoyed. Could the difference be as simple as thicker carpeting and more expensive paneling? Or would the president have a private sauna behind a door, say, right there?

  “A warrant,” Gelarean was saying. He held the paper before his face, reading. “For today. Friday. But why?”

  The briefcase from which Bernie had taken the warrant still hung from one hand. He lifted it six inches and let it fall. Carefully, as if Gelarean were totally ignorant, he explained: Someone had been sabotaging genimals, apparently trying to kill Dr. Gilman. There had been the Sparrow, the Mack, the Tortoise. And, of course, the Assassin bird, which underlined the seriousness of the criminal’s intent, and the fact that Emily was indeed the target. The target image in the Mack’s chip was mere confirmation.

  “But what makes you think…?” Gelarean’s tone was that of a businessman who had nothing at stake but face— giving nothing away, expressionless except for a faint air of confidence. The police were in his office, but he had done nothing wrong and could not be touched. At worst, the company might falter for loss of a key employee, while he might blush in embarrassment.

  “Yesterday that someone put another chip in my Hawk while it was in the lot outside.” His voice had grown biting, angry. “And only one person left the building at the right time.” After a moment’s pause, Bernie added, “Your security system produces very good records.” He did not say that there were other reasons for suspicion too.

  “Ah. Well, in that case …” Gelarean’s seat creaked. The hand nearer the telephone twitched, as if Gelarean suddenly wished to place a call. Bernie did not miss the intention movement, but he did not credit it with any great significance. The reason, he later thought, was that the executive smoothly changed the motion’s course to open a drawer and produce a small vial with a perforated lid. Gelarean held the vial near the green oblong on his desk and removed the lid. A fly buzzed free and circled briefly. Then one of the oblong’s mouths opened, and a long, cordlike tongue flicked out to snatch the fly.

  Gelarian explained: “A flytrap. We developed it from a frog to sit on a table, or hang on a wall and …” He flicked a finger. “It should do well in warm areas.”

  “On picnics too.”

  The other gestured, open-palmed, toward the door to the suite. “I won’t keep you. Go to it. Though I hope you’re wrong. We’d hate to lose the man.”

  * * * *

  He met Emily at the door to her lab. “Just down the hall,” she said. “I saw him come in earlier.”

  They faced each other, motionless, for a long moment. No, he thought, she was not for him. And she clearly still thought the same, for her mouth was clamped, looking uncharacteristically narrow, and she was leaning back, slightly increasing the distance between them. They could enjoy their bedroom sports. They had done it. But they had nothing in common outside the bedroom. Their society was supposedly classless, but the difference between them was, in truth, one of class, even of caste. The caste marks were education, physicality of occupation, even favorite entertainments. He could not imagine her at the Roachster races.

  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “He was playing with a flytrap when I left.”

  She made a face. “That was developed by one of our technicians. The patent’s in his name.”

  “Let’s go,” he said. She turned and started walking down the hall. He fell in beside her. At first, then, he thought they were both leaning away from each other, just enough not to touch. But the rhythm of their walking fought their separating—within a few steps, their arms were brushing companionably, almost as if they were still bedroom friends.

  Ahead of them, a door slammed open. A slight figure darted into the hall. A white lab coat hung, half on, half off, from his shoulders. A small case was in one hand.

  “That’s Ralph!” cried Emily as he dashed toward them.

  “Stop!” When Chowdhury paid no attention, Bernie spun and grabbed. He caught a glimpse of wide, staring pupils surrounded by rings of white, a half-open mouth, drops of sweat on a dark upper lip. Then Chowdhury was twisting toward the wall. His lab coat came off in Bernie’s hand, and he was past them, racing toward the stairs. The case was still in his hand.

  Bernie sighed. If they hadn’t paused to chat about flytraps! Emily was already beginning the turn back to her office and the phone. “Don’t bother,” he said, one hand on her biceps. “He’s probably past Miss Carol by now. And we’ll get him later, anyway.”

  The door to Chowdhury’s lab was still open. When they stepped in, it was to meet the stares of his three technicians, seated at two computer workstations and a DNA splicer. “He’s not here,” said one. “He had a phone call.”

  “He said he forgot an important meeting,” put in another.

  “He was in an awful hurry,” said the third, the one woman. All three had black hair and brown skin. Hers was the brownest.

  Bernie tossed the vacant lab coat on a workbench. He remembered that twitch of Gelarean’s hand toward the phone. He should have realized that Chowdhury might be warned. Now it was too late. Then again, they would catch up with him soon enough. He breathed deeply. They would not be here long.

  He stared around the room, struck by the differences between it and Emily’s lab. The furnishings were far more idiosyncratic, more reflective of its master’s personality. He was dismayed by the high lectern at the front of the room, the stool on which Chowdhury must have sat just a little earlier, the lesser stools on which the technicians sat at their higher-than-normal desks and benches. How could anyone in this modern age use such ancient, uncomfortable perches?

  He barely noticed the freezers and incubators, the potted plants th
at occupied the benches nearest the windows, or the aquaria and terraria near the walls. They fitted perhaps too well his image of a biologist’s laboratory.

  Emily introduced the technicians. Sam Dong, his skin, now that Bernie knew his name, actually seeming more yellow than brown, was the one at the keyboard nearest the door. Micaela Potonegra was working the splicer. Adam Chand’s screen showed something that might have been a fish, or a submarine. From the ceiling above him hung what looked like a dried fish that had been inflated like a balloon. It was studded with stubby spikes.

  They rose from their seats and gathered near Chowdhury’s lectern. When Bernie showed them the warrant, Micaela sighed. “It had to come,” she said. She led them to a bench in a shadowed corner of the room. It bore a row of terraria whose contents were only dimly visible. She pressed a switch. An overhead light came on to reveal a churning mass of … Of what? They looked like worms in size and shape, but they were banded in bright colors.

  “Coral snakes,” said Micaela. “There’s heroin in the venom. He had me implant the genes. I didn’t know what they were until …”

  Sam Dong said, “I knew. He had me make some changes in them, and I looked them up. I didn’t tell her.”

  Bernie moved to peer into another terrarium, deliberately ignoring the other man’s attempt to defend his colleague. “Rattlesnakes,” Micaela said. “Amphetamines.” She pointed. “Mambas. Asps. Mescaline and angel dust.” All three technicians looked awkward, pained, embarrassed.

  “The classics,” Bernie said. His voice was quiet, depressed. There was no crime in giving a genimal the ability to manufacture drugs, though the law would certainly cover selling those genimals to drug users. And surely the Bioform Regulatory Administration would object to the potential environmental impact. No wonder, he thought, that Chowdhury had sabotaged the Hawk. He must have seen Bernie’s interest in Emily as a blind, his interest in the Armadon as a pretext, his continuing presence as a threat. He must have panicked. And today he hadn’t dared to stay and try to bluff it out.