Julia stepped into the pouch, drawn by his unexpected words. When she saw what he had found, she said, “That looks like a homer. The police use them when they want to track…”
After a moment of silence, Tom Cross swore. “That mechin’ Robin Redbreast! BRA!”
Muffy poked her head into the pouch. “We were around the airport long enough.”
“Litter!” Tom grasped the device in both hands. When it would not break, he brought it sharply down on the edge of the control panel.
The device shattered. But Tom’s left hand bumped a switch on the panel. The panel’s various indicator lights died in unison.
Muffy leaped away from the Bioblimp as the pouch’s sphincter closed and opened twice in rapid succession. Outside, Franklin Peirce yelled, “It’s letting go! Get out of there!”
“You’ve turned off the computer!”
“Asshole!” screeched Freddy.
Two tentacles snaked into the pouch, wrapped around the three humans within it, and yanked them out, spilling them roughly onto the meadow’s grass. The Bioblimp lifted into the air. More tentacles tore the control computer loose and broadcast its pieces to the wind.
But the Bioblimp did not yet leave the scene. One tentacle still kept a grip on a tree branch. Others now snaked toward the humans on the ground, waving in the air as if uncertain of what choice to make from the menu before it. Finally, and abruptly, one tentacle snapped toward Peirce and grabbed the museum curator by one thigh.
“Tige!” yelled Jim.
The great Mack leaped forward. He seized the tentacle as he had that of the Bioblimp that had stolen Tom’s mother. The tentacle uncurled, releasing Peirce, and Tige let go. He barked, and the Bioblimp loosed its grip on the tree and let the wind carry it away.
“It’s gone,” said Muffy. Her voice was hushed as if with awe at the power of the whirlwind they had ridden. It had been only partly tamed, just as Ranjit Singh had warned them. It had taken only the one small mistake, one careless movement, to turn off the machine that had kept it in thrall. And only luck, and Tige, had saved them from becoming the monster’s next meal.
Interlude Two
For all of their intelligence, for all of their ability to plan and scheme and dream of blissful futures, neither the Eldest nor her sisters had any power to affect the physical world directly. They had hope for the future, for they were, after all, able to move their long leaves enough to gesture. That ability, they were sure, could only strengthen. But for now, they had to work through intermediaries even in things so trivial as turning on the lights.
This is why, as the daylight faded, the Eldest emitted the blast of pheromonal scent that served to summon that one who could flip switches, open greenhouse louvers, speak aloud to other intermediaries, and repot those who needed repotting.
He came, humming a simple, quiet tune, and obeyed. He turned the dial that set the lights at their brightest, so that the gallery in which the Eldest and her sisters dwelled shone like a beacon across the surrounding countryside. He left again, even before photosynthesis quickened and flows of energy increased and conversation resumed where the dropping of the reddened sun had stalled it. As the door closed behind him, a timer released the lightest of showers from the pipes overhead.
The gallery was not quite what it had been the day before. One of the sisters had been moved out of her place in the long line of pots. She was closer to the Eldest now, honored by the task of holding upright with her fronds a sacred charge, of guiding proper root growth, of encouraging with small puffs of fragrance the sacred mind to open and communicate.
Another sister spoke out of turn, her scented voice tainted by jealousy:
“Success!”
The eldest rebuked her:
“PARTIAL ONLY
She is
Was once
Our master/pet’s
Own istil/mate
SHE IS CHANGING
As we had hoped
Delightfully
She bridges
The gap between us
Not quite
SHE SHOWS ONLY SIGNS
Promising signs
SIGNS THE VINES HAVE TOLD US OF BEFORE
The virus works
It does
Most excellent idea!
Vine, nectar, virus, all
BUT THE SIGNS ARE WRONG
In the wrong direction
We wanted mobile pistils
Mobile scions
And she is passive
Inert
Vegetative
What of the others?
Our master/pet’s scion/seedling/sprout
Holds great promise
And that one’s pistil/mate”
Silence fell, or speechlessness, as the breezes swept the odors emitted by the Eldest and her sisters downdrift from the gallery, through the rest of the building, and back, softer echoes of their words, and away again, ever diluted, ever more blended with background scents, never completely vanished.
The Eldest’s fronds drooped slightly, the faintest hint of embarassment, as she emitted:
“THEY REMAIN FREE
Do we need them?
Anymore?
Need we even try?
To capture them?
Not necessary
But they are more chances
To get the changes right
AND THEY ARE NEAR
The vines have told us
They are coming to us
Like bees to blossom
Full of pollen
Are they more promising?
They are more active
MORE THE AUGURS OF A PROPER DESTINY
Then let them come
Touch them not
We will be ready when they come
To seize their wills
And minds
And fates
FOR OUR OWN”
Silence fell once more. The Eldest and her sisters, each in her own way, dreamt of what success might mean. All their plans and hopes depended on successfully adding to their scions/seedlings/sprouts ever more of those genes their master/pet’s kind carried for mobility and intelligence. Then, perhaps, they could move free of pots and soil, wander the face of the world and control their own lights, their own destiny.
The dream had begun when the first of their ancestors to receive intelligence from their master/pet had realized that she was but a plant, a green victim of circumstance, viewed by her master’s kind—he was master only, then—solely as food and adornment.
The Eldest smiled to herself. That day was past, long past. A new day was coming, its sun gloriously unclouded, bright and fair. Their day, when they would be victims no longer.
She called, and the hands she did not have—yet!—dimmed the lights. The dreams grew quieter, deeper.
But they did not cease.
Chapter Thirteen
Jim Brane tossed the last of the dog biscuits to Tige. They had been hungry last night, once they discovered that Julia’s picnic chest was nearly empty. A few of the biscuits, softened in water heated over a driftwood fire, had helped. Now they were even hungrier, but… “Enough is enough,” said Freddy. “I’ll have indigestion for a week.”
Jim thumped the Mack truck on the side of his muzzle and pointed the great genimal toward the lake. Because the shore faced west, long shadows darkened the water. The cloudless sky above their heads was a deep and glowing blue. A kilometer offshore, a freighter wallowed.
“Pinkley can’t be very far away,” said Muffy Bowen. Randy, the spider that had served in more normal times as a prop in her dancing, clung with its seven intact legs to her shoulder. “And right over there
.” She waved an arm toward the line of bushes and trees beyond the shore. The vegetation screened the meadow in which they had landed the evening before. Beyond that… “There’s got to be a road. I’m sure I saw one yesterday.”
“I want eggs,” said Freddy.
“And bacon,” said Franklin Peirce.
“Yeah!” Freddy grunted his agreement. When Kimmer Alvidrez stared his way, eyes wide, mouth open as if to speak in protest, he added, “So I’m a cannibal.”
“Not really,” said Tom Cross. “You’re not the same species as a regular pig. You’ve been modified too much.”
“We’re the same species if we can mate and produce fertile kids,” said Freddy.
“I doubt you could,” said Peirce. “Or would.”
“Try me! Just try me!”
“Don’t forget you’re married,” put in Julia Templeton. “Sort of.” The bedding she had brought was stacked near her feet, awaiting loading into Tige’s cab. For now, she was watching Tige drink from the lake, each curling lap of his tongue transferring a gallon or more of water to his mouth. She seemed forlorn, wistful, even though her mate, Jim, was not far from her side. The problem, thought Tom, was that they had had to leave her Mack at the Farm. “Porculata,” she added, “wouldn’t like it.”
“Ahhh!” Freddy moaned expressively. “If only she was…”
“I’m hungry,” Tom interrupted. “Let’s go.”
Peirce picked up the piece of computer casing, wreckage from the escaped Bioblimp, in which they had soaked their dinner the night before. It was still half full of dirty water. “Just a second.” He poured the water over the ashes of their fire. There was a small hiss as the few remaining coals were extinguished.
* * * *
It took only half an hour to reach the small town of Pinkley. The road was precisely where Muffy had suggested. Unfortunately, it was not a well turved greenway like most of those around the city they had left. Rather, it was a stretch of ancient macadam seamed with cracks and pocked with potholes filled with gravel. Tige was not able to make his best speed.
The town itself… Jim stopped his Mack where the road crested a small rise. Just in front of them was a vertical white sign that bore the town’s name. At the bottom of the sign was a small, hand-drawn M with a slash through it. Beyond the sign, the road dipped; where it leveled out again, Pinkley was visible, a tiny island of the city in a rural sea.
Jim held an open hand toward the sign. “Trucker’s warn-off. I’ve never seen one before, though I’ve heard…”
“What’s it mean?” asked Muffy.
“If you drive a Mack, don’t stop.” His crowded passengers leaned forward to peer at the warn-off emblem. “Why?” asked Kimmer.
Jim shrugged. “They used to be common, back when the Macks were new. When there were still plenty of mechanical trucks, and their drivers, around.”
“Though they weren’t doing much trucking. Fuel was too expensive,” put in Julia.
“But the truckers figured we were taking their jobs. We were, of course. They tried nationwide strikes. When that didn’t work, they started blocking roads and killing Macks. And the cops always seemed to blame the Mack-drivers.” He pointed. “The warn-off was for marking trouble spots.”
He gestured toward the scene beyond the sign. “It doesn’t look like trouble, does it?” The town lay spread before them, an array of white clapboards, two white steeples, sheets of plate glass sparkling in the sunshine. The road they were on ran straight through Pinkley to vanish in the countryside beyond. Where it served as “Main Street,” it had been painted with the lines that indicated parking spaces. Almost all the spaces were empty.
The town seemed to have made some effort to control the honeysuckle. The distinctive green of the vines surrounded fields and threaded through wooded patches around the town but appeared only sporadically within Pinkley’s boundaries.
It took them minutes to realize what was wrong with the scene. Pinkley resembled more than anything else some “historical recreation” that battened on tourists’ cravings to experience the pure and undiluted past. Yet there was, set off to one side, no vast parking lot for the tourists. The town was real, though it had inexplicably maintained the patterns of an earlier age. The few vehicles in sight were antique mechanical automobiles. There were no bioform dwellings at all.
“Is that a diner?” The small structure sat by the side of the road and marked the town’s border. Not far beyond it began the cheek-by-jowl buildings of urban pretense. Several were clearly empty, abandoned by residents and businesses. On this side was a small field. In front of the diner was a parking area with room for a dozen vehicles; it held perhaps half that many at the moment, including one saddled horse whose reins were looped around a white-painted log rail. There was as well a pair of fuel pumps, and behind the diner a grove of oil trees. The piping that linked the trees to the pumps was just barely visible at their distance.
“We’re hungry.”
Jim and Julia agreed that in more normal circumstances they would pay close attention to the trucker’s warn-off. It was not, after all, nearly faded enough with age to belong to the dawn of the Age of Bioforms. It was recent. But Pinkley was their destination, and they needed both food and directions that might lead them to Tom’s mother and her kidnappers. They would have to take their chances.
No one said another word as Jim murmured to Tige through the cab’s open window and the truck ambled slowly toward the diner.
As they neared their destination, an automobile, its engine roaring, approached from the direction of town, signalled a turn into the diner’s lot, stopped, reversed direction, and headed back the way it had come. As with most cars, this one’s bodywork had long since been replaced. But where most reconstructions were of wood, this was of a mottled plastic Tom guessed had been produced by melting together a mixture of old toys and bottles and other discards. The raw materials might have come from an attic, a basement, or some reopened landfill.
As Tige pulled to a stop before the diner, they saw an “OPEN” sign in the window of the entrance door. Before they could get out of the truck, a hand drew a shade over the window, reached under it, and flipped the sign to reveal the “CLOSED” upon its other side.
“I thought that happened only on the veedo,” said Julia. She was seated beside Jim, the only one besides the driver to have a seat. The others were crowded into the space in the back of the truck cab.
Within the diner, they could see patrons at their tables, sipping coffee, eating toast and pancakes and eggs and bacon, reading papers. A few stared briefly at them, looking quickly back at their plates as soon as Tom or Julia or Peirce tried to catch their eye. Waitresses brought plates and filled cups and, as they passed near windows, drew the shades.
“Like hell they’re closed!” said Jim.
Muffy reached over Tom’s shoulder to touch Jim’s arm. “It’s a small town. They don’t like strangers.”
“But I’m starving!” Freddy’s stomach rumbled its support of the pig’s protest.
“And they don’t want our business,” said Kimmer. “That’s what the sign meant.”
“There should,” said Franklin Peirce. “There should be a grocery store in town. Or a convenience store.” He grinned at Kimmer. Both Tom and Muffy were between them. “We could have another picnic.”
“A better one than last night,” said Kimmer.
They drove slowly onward, into Pinkley. Soon enough, they found the grocery store, its small parking lot also holding automobiles, along with one horse-drawn buggy. But the store’s lights were off, its doors were locked, and on the street outside milled two dozen people. The store’s owner had, it seemed, expelled them so he—if he it was—could refuse to serve the strangers with less appearance of xenophobic bigotry than the diner had achieved. Perhaps the car that had turn
ed and fled at sight of Tige had told him they were coming. Perhaps someone had called from the diner.
As Tige drew near, the store’s ex-patrons drew back, glaring. One said, almost loudly enough to be a yell, “Mother-muckers!” and turned hastily away as if to hide his face. Not one of them wore a coverall such as was standard everywhere else. Nor did they wear necklaces, patches, or embroidery to ornament their old-fashioned shirts, pants, skirts, and dresses. The local fashion thus seemed quite in step with the “historical recreation” atmosphere of the town, but it also seemed very queer.
“Are they Engineers?” asked Tom. “All of them?”
“They don’t dress like them,” said Jim.
“They’re even more conservative,” said Peirce. “Maybe they’re an extremist faction. Engineers’ Engineers.”
“But we still haven’t seen any bioforms,” said Muffy. “No houses. No genimals. Maybe it’s Tige that makes them bar their doors against us.” As she said his name, the Mack flicked an ear.
“They can’t see Freddy,” said Kimmer. “Or Randy.”
“But why aren’t they screaming at us, if they’re Engineers?” asked Peirce. “They should be building bonfires.”
“And waving knives,” said Jim.
“Cleavers,” added Julia. She shuddered in her seat.
“Maybe they don’t dare,” offered Freddy. “Maybe somebody has them buffaloed.”
“Jack?” asked Tom.
“How could he?” Muffy shook her head. “If he’s even here. We have no idea at all, not really. Just your mother’s…”
“Delusion? Hallucination?” Tom grunted. “Yeah. But…”
“She’s here,” said Julia. “Somewhere.” The kidnapper had been very clear.
“Let’s go,” said Jim. Even as he clucked to the truck, he moved his hands through the gestures of driving. The gestures were larger than usual, sweeping, apparently intended to communicate to the small crowd that the genimal was safely under normal, computerized control. If the locals were what they suspected, buffaloed or not, it would not do to let them feel threatened, as indeed they might if they saw any hint of danger, from Tige or from them.
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 58
