Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  The rain had stopped. The sky had cleared. Now the air was still and damp. Randy scuttled around the intersection, searching for a scent that time and weather must almost totally have destroyed. But her senses were as keen as those of any bloodhound. She stiffened, paused, and turned left, her seven legs pulling the leash taut against Tom’s arm.

  The man behind the arm refused to move. After six blocks of following the spider down the center of the road, dodging traffic, wishing fruitlessly to be invisible when pedestrians were in sight, he had had enough. His feet were already sore, and there seemed no sign that Randy would ever stop.

  Hand over hand, he drew leash and spider toward him, picked her up, and turned toward the Mack not far behind him. Jim opened the right-hand door and said, “Had enough? Whatever she’s following has to be riding by now.”

  “Keep going,” Tom Cross said. “I’ll get out at the next intersection and let her check the direction.”

  Their progress was slow, but it was nevertheless faster than walking. Blackie could cover the long straight stretches between the intersections far more quickly than Tom’s personal shank’s mare. He could catch his breath while he petted the bristly back of the spider who was leading them, he hoped, toward her mistress and his mate. For a moment he envied his old friend, Jim, who might have lost his Mack, and, yes, of course, that had to be a blow. But he still had Julia.

  As Tom thought, he remembered that when he had come home—just yesterday!—an Armadon had pulled away from the curb in front of his and Muffy’s building and gone down the road ahead of him, in just the direction they were moving now. He wondered if there were indeed any connection besides coincidence, and then he decided it didn’t matter, for here was another intersection. It was time to get down, let Randy cast about for the scent and point their direction of travel, climb aboard again, and then drive on.

  It was a slow stop-and-start process, but in due time it led them out of the residential neighborhood in which they had begun their tracking and onto a larger artery that bent their path back toward the city center. Now Tom had to give up his wish for invisibility, for it was more unrealistic than ever. The brightly lighted streets were thick with Buggies of every description, and the sidewalks with shoppers and theater-goers. And here, as nearly everywhere, honeysuckle vines grew wherever they could find bare soil, in the cracked pavement of alleys, by the roots of curbside ginkgoes and maples, in the miniparks to be found on many blocks, and then climbed toward the sun on whatever vertical surfaces were within their reach. Honey bums huddled in cardboard huts sheltered in the shadows of the vines. Litterbugs patrolled the streets and sidewalks.

  The intersections were now so busy that they had to use Blackie to block traffic while Randy searched for scent. Drivers made their various genimals honk, growl, and bark. Drivers and pedestrians alike cried out, “Where’s your Spiderman suit?” Most of them surely did not know that Spiderman had been created long in advance of the genetic technology that had prompted the revival of superheroes in new comics and veedo shows.

  At one intersection, however, there was no such noise. Blackie stopped, deliberately blocking traffic. Tom emerged with Randy in his arms. He set her down, and she quickly ran to the limits of the leash to scuttle from side to side, forward and back, exploring for the scent that had first caught her attention in the apartment. But the halted traffic was silent, and the humans simply watched.

  “Tommy!”

  He raised his head, and the silence caught at his attention. Jim Brane was leaning out the door of Blackie’s pod, pointing urgently with one hand toward the side of the intersection on the other side of the Mack, gesturing frantically with the other for Tom to get back inside the pod. Tom wondered what had so upset his friend. Were the cops coming to tell them to quit blocking traffic? He looked around him. Then why was everyone so quiet? Knowing that he might be doing something foolish but intent only on answering that question, hoping that the answer might help him solve the larger mystery of Muffy’s disappearance, he let Randy draw him forward until he could see around the Mack.

  Standing on the other side of the intersection were four Engineers, distinctive in their blue coveralls and golden cogwheels. They had apparently been strolling down the center of the street, for a horde of bioform vehicles was silently backed up behind them. One wore a metal helmet that resembled the helm of some ancient knight. Another had shiny brass springs dangling from his earlobes. All held curved lengths of sharpened metal that might once have been automobile springs. Now they were swords, machetes, the perfect weapons with which to terrorize modern drivers. They could chop off a genimal’s limbs or head, slash its wheels, destroy upholstery and control computers and even drivers. The Engineers were staring at the Mack that had dared to block their path, at the man and the spider, which had now, finally, caught the scent and begun to strain the leash straight ahead, toward the threatening quartet.

  The Engineers laughed and stepped forward as if to meet her.

  A chill ran down Tom’s spine.

  Blackie growled. The Engineers stopped and gave her a wary look.

  Pedestrians began to edge away, deciding that though this bit of impending street theater might be fascinating enough, it might turn nasty, and who, after all, wanted to get his or her shoes or coverall or gown bloody?

  “Get in here!” Jim’s gesture was more urgent than before. Tom obediently drew the spider in, picked her up, and turned toward the Mack.

  “What’s going on?” cried Freddy. The Mack’s pod had not been meant for passengers. It had only two seats, one of them the driver’s. Jim sat in the other. Tom had to squat behind, while the pig was simply braced in the handcart by his cushions. “Lift me up so I can see!”

  The Engineers laughed again when Jim raised the pig’s head into view. One said, “I’m kinda sick of pork, but at least it’s not a litterbug.” Another added, “Too small. Just an appetizer.”

  Freddy swore and added loudly, “Gotta catch me first!”

  “We’ll catch you all! Dogmeat for dinner!” They waved their makeshift swords in the air, but Blackie growled once more and they didn’t move.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Jim as Tom climbed into the pod. Julia put her Mack into motion, the Engineers stepped aside to let them pass, and soon the intersection was behind them.

  Jim turned the rear-view screen toward his face and adjusted the magnification. “They’ve stopped a Roachster,” he said. “Hauled the driver out.” Tom leaned over his shoulder to see. The Roachster’s owner was curled on the sidewalk while two of the Engineers kicked at his head and ribs. The other two were turning the Buggy into something reminiscent of an antique convertible. Roachsters were exoskeletal genimals, half lobster and half cockroach, and their passenger compartments were bubbles in the shell of their back. Dealers cut holes in the bubble wall and installed windows and doors before selling the vehicles. Now the Engineers were using their blades to chop away the entire bubble. Fortunately for the owner, if the Engineers left the Roachster alive, its next molt would recreate the bubble, and the post-molt body shop would have no more work to do than ever to make it just as good as new.

  “Now they’re following us,” said Jim. “And everyone else is going the other way.”

  “I wish we were going the other way!” Freddy’s loud defiance of a moment before had turned into a moan of despair. “Fast. I don’t wanna be barbecued!”

  “Do you think Engineers did it?” asked Tom. Kidnapped Muffy and stole Tige, he meant. “Maybe they wanted to get me to destroy the Garden, or…”

  “It’s not their style,” said Julia Templeton. “If they wanted to close down the store, or that place where she dances, they’d simply walk in and chop it to bits.” The precedent had been established long ago by protestors against alcohol and abortion.

  They stopped at the next intersection as usual. B
ut while Tom set Randy again to searching for scent, Julia turned Blackie to face the way they had come. The Engineers stopped their hijacked Roachster half a block away, waved their blades, and screamed threats. The few residents of the neighborhood who were on the street promptly disappeared. Vehicles turned and fled, seeking other routes to their destinations.

  When they set off again, this time down a side street that led them into a neighborhood with fewer streetlights and open stores and less traffic, the Engineers continued to follow. Their shouts echoed from the walls that enclosed the street.

  As the intersections passed behind them, their surroundings grew darker, the homes and apartments that lined the streets shabbier, more festooned with graffiti, much of it reflecting the sentiments of the dispossessed of the age, the Engineers and their sympathizers. But Randy continued to pick out their turns, and the speed and apparent confidence of her choices increased as the streets grew drabber and less traveled. “Not so many newer odors laid down on top,” said Jim Brane.

  “She didn’t pick out any scent yesterday?” asked Julia.

  Tom stared ahead, over their shoulders and out the windshield. Somewhere ahead, near or far, the trail would come to an end. And then… “No,” he made himself say. “I wish I knew why she did today. You’d think the scent would be a lot dimmer.”

  “Of course it is,” said Freddy. “But she lost a leg, right? She was in shock. It just didn’t penetrate.”

  Jim checked the viewer and barked a surprised laugh. “They’re turning off! Got bored, I bet.”

  “Or decided they didn’t have enough of an audience,” said Julia.

  All four relaxed, though Freddy didn’t seem entirely to trust Jim’s report. “Keep an eye out,” he said. “They may be circling.” They were entering a district of factories and warehouses, of streets that even litterbugs ignored and whose gutters overflowed with filth, of alleys choked with honeysuckle, of cracked masonry and burned-out hulks, of stark desolation softened only by the draperies of the honeysuckle vines.

  “This isn’t far from where I picked you up,” said Julia, with a glance at Jim.

  “A few blocks,” he said.

  “Turn off the headlights!” said Tom.

  Ahead of them, the street ended in a paved square surrounded by buildings and unusually free of honeysuckle and rubbish. An Armadon was parked to the left. The only exit was a narrow, tunnel-like opening in one wall. Yellow light, flickering as if someone or something were moving between the source and them, glimmered around the edges of some object in the tunnel. The light was brightest on the right.

  “Looks like we walk,” said Julia. “Unless this…”

  “You stay with Blackie,” said Jim, thinking of how he had lost his own Mack. “And lock the doors.” When he and Tom were down, Tom put Randy on the ground, and she began to dance and strain at the leash, pulling them toward the tunnel. She meeped insistently.

  “The scent’s fresh,” said Jim. “Right in there, but what is it?”

  As they drew closer, they could hear quiet voices and make out scattered words: “That’s… last… Glad… done. Wonder what… do.” The object in the tunnel became clearly a truck trailer, being loaded through a side door drawn hard by a loading platform in the side of the tunnel. At the trailer’s other end, presumably, there was a Mack.

  The trailer’s door slammed and latched. The lights on the loading platform went out. A voice rose: “Let’s get outa here.” They heard the door to the Mack’s cab open and close. The trailer’s lights blinked on, and the glare of headlights reflected from a wall beyond the tunnel.

  “I wonder!” Jim’s voice was just a whisper, but it carried as clear a load of eager anticipation as if he had shouted.

  “What?”

  Instead of responding, he called aloud: “Tige!”

  There was an answering bark. Jim’s voice rose joyfully. “Tige!” Behind them, Blackie woofed a more canine greeting. A cry of anger echoed in the tunnel from the men in Tige’s cab. The trailer lurched forward, but as soon as it had cleared the far end of the tunnel, the Mack pulling it began to turn, its headlights revealing that the tunnel linked a pair of similar courtyards. Reflected light illuminated Tige’s brindle hide, the white circle around one bright eye, an open mouth, a lolling tongue.

  Tige stopped and turned his head, snarling, toward the cab of the pod upon his back. His limbs and neck shook spastically, as if there were within his brain a war between his loyalty to the master who had called his name and the electronic controls through which the thieves were trying to make him turn and flee.

  “Tige!” The great dog still trembled, but the spasticity diminished and he walked haltingly into the tunnel and toward his true master, the signals from the computer in the cab classified as delusions though they remained obviously distressing. Tige snarled, whined, and whimpered by turns, until at last the door to the cab opened and three cursing men leaped out and fled back through the tunnel.

  Tige stopped, panting, in front of Jim. The trucker grinned, thumped the side of the overhanging snout, dodged an immense tongue, danced his delight, turned, and saluted Julia in her own Mack. But Randy was still meeping and tugging at the leash.

  Tom Cross let her lead him toward the trailer that had been hitched onto the stolen Mack. Tige still wore his original pod, cargo compartment and all, and the new trailer had little more room for cargo than the pod. What it had in addition was the side door that had permitted loading from the kidnappers’ hideaway here, and that was where Randy stopped to meep again, more insistently than ever.

  The giant spider climbed up his side until it could face the trailer’s door from his shoulder. He pulled on the door’s handle, and it clicked. It was not locked. He froze, suddenly afraid to pull the door open. Was Muffy behind it? Randy seemed to be saying that she was. But if she wasn’t? What would he do then?

  Julia Templeton touched him on the shoulder. He turned and saw Freddy in her arms. “So open it,” said the pig.

  He could see Jim Brane climbing into Tige’s cab, presumably to see what damage had been done and to turn off the flow of conflicting commands that still had the Mack twitching. He turned back to the door and pulled. As soon as the opening was wide enough, Randy stopped meeping, leaped for it, and disappeared.

  The interior of the trailer was pitch black. There was no motion, no sound of anything but quiet breathing, interrupted by Jim’s swearing from the direction of the cab on Tige’s back. “I’ll bring Blackie over,” said Julia, handing him Freddy. “For the headlights.”

  In a moment, he could see a large bucket from which jutted the stems of a number of lengths of honeysuckle vine. He supposed someone had wanted to keep the vines, and the blossoms that bedecked them, fresh. More blossoms were scattered, empty, trampled, across the floor of the trailer. Along one wall were several ceramic flower pots or planters the size of half-barrels.

  The breathing was coming from a row of heaped and rumpled blankets on the other side of the compartment. Tom set Freddy inside the trailer, stepped in himself, grabbed a blanket, and pulled. The snoring, honey-stunned face that was revealed was young, female, and lovely, but it was not Muffy’s.

  “Mech,” he said. He grabbed another blanket, Julia joined him, and together they uncovered the rest of the captive women. Only at the end did they find one against whose side huddled a bristly spider. She had dark hair and a familiar face that made Tom sigh. With an air of immense relief and satisfaction, he said, “That’s Muffy!”

  “But… who are the rest of them?”

  Tom shook his head. There were six, seven counting Muffy, all wearing coveralls much like Tom’s or Jim’s own, varying mainly in the length of leg or sleeve, all in the same stupor. Had their captors forced them to drink the wine? Or had they, like Petra, been ready enough to drink if only someone would put it within their reach?
They didn’t look so dissipated. Perhaps they had just been willing to drink to relieve the boredom of captivity, and their captors had encouraged them with the bucket and the vines to simplify their task of preventing escape.

  “They’re just as potted as your mother said,” said Freddy. He had tipped over and now lay on his side, his snout aimed toward the bodies Tom was uncovering. “But I bet it’s not your real Daddy. It’s slavers, hauling them off to an Iranian brothel. Nice merchandise, too. If I didn’t get seasick, I’d disguise myself as a eunuch and sneak onto the boat with them.” Ogling the sprawled bodies, he whistled.

  “You are a hypochondriac,” said Julia.

  Tom shook his head again. He didn’t believe Freddy’s suggestion. “How are we going to wake them up?”

  “Try fresh air and cold water,” said Jim. He was standing on the ground outside the trailer door, having finished what he had to do in the cab.

  The water in the bucket wasn’t cold, but it would do. They plucked honeysuckle blossoms, emptied them of nectar, and used them to splash water on the sleeping faces. The women responded gradually, at first able only to moan, gasp, and utter incoherent words. But then Muffy’s eyes focused on the face leaning over her, and she said, “Thomas!” For a moment, her face was alive, alert, and she was fully there. Her hand clutched at the familiar bristly shape cuddling itself against her. But then, though her eyes remained open, her alertness faded. Tom supposed that she was the victim less of the alcohol in the honeysuckle wine than of the drug, which much more effectively blocked the channels of caring and attention.

  “We’ve been looking for you, hey?” The tears came to his eyes once more, and he blinked as he lifted her head so she could see the others.

  “’S Freddy! But who…?”

  “That’s Jimmy. An old friend. They swiped his Mack to haul you off. And his girl, Julia. Randy tracked you down.” Remembering, he drew a small package from a pocket. “Franklin sent this, for when we found you.” He showed her the worrystone and when her hands could only fumble with the chain looped it around her neck.