“Good boy!” He had waited for them obediently. Now he panted, tongue lolling, clearly delighted to see his driver again. Jim tossed him the sammitch fruits he and Julia had brought, thumped the side of his head, and praised him again.
“Look at that!” cried Muffy Bowen. Randy had emerged from the weeds already. Now the tame predator was crouched over a sleekly furred body. Its coat was striped, its tail was long, and its ears were triangular, but its claws were sharply curved and pointed, visible even in their owner’s current state. Tom guessed that the creature’s ancestors had once been domestic cats. They had gone wild, though, moved into the woods, and returned to the hunting lifestyle of their ancestors. The animal whose juices Randy was sucking was as efficient a design as anything a gengineer could produce. The difference, Tom knew, was that evolution worked far more slowly.
“I’d rather eat dog biscuits,” said Julia.
Tom made an appropriate retching noise, while Jim merely nodded. They had all had enough of that sort of food. Muffy shivered, wrapping her hands around her elbows. The night air was cool. “Let’s leave. We’re out, we can tell the cops where to go, and that will be the end of it.”
“We still need the kidnappers,” said Tom. “And besides, now we know Jack isn’t much of a guard. We can get out anytime. Let’s go back.”
“Wait a minute!” said Jim. “The wolf hasn’t closed his jaws yet, but that doesn’t mean we should sit on his tongue! They could…”
“There’s still too much to learn,” said Tom. “It’s worth the chance.”
They left Tige parked beside the house and retraced their steps. When they reached Jack, he tilted his head back upon the scrawny column of his neck and looked up at them. His eyes held a shine of consciousness that had not been present when he had met them, on their arrival, in the greenhouse. Now he lifted his dripping pie plant fruit, poked one thumb through its rind, and said wistfully, “Little Jack Horner.”
“No,” said Tom. “Rivard. You’re Jack Rivard.”
Jack shook his head slowly and said, “Stuck in his thumb.”
Tom blinked the tears from his eyes. “And pulled out a plum,” he said. As if empathizing with his father’s gestures, he pulled his worrystone from within his coverall and stroked it with his thumb.
“Good boy,” said Jack.
“He must have heard us out there,” said Jim. “Talking to Tige.”
Muffy laid one hand on Tom’s arm. “His mind is gone, isn’t it?”
He covered hers with his own free hand. “Their pheromones,” he said. “They’ve been controlling him for so long. He snapped, or he just fled into himself. Or they literally destroyed his mind.”
“He was a bit off to begin with,” Jim Brane reminded him.
“I suppose he had to be.” Tom nodded, and the sound of footsteps on the stairs drew their attention to the room behind Jack’s back. In a moment, Franklin Peirce and Kimmer Alvidrez joined them. Kimmer was carrying Freddy, his worrystone sandwiched between his torso and her bosom.
Julia Templeton crossed Jack’s bedroom to the panel of switches mounted on the wall beside the door to the greenhouse. She flipped its toggles. Light bloomed in the bedroom, the front room, and the greenhouse. At the same time, the fans in the house’s ventilation system changed their tone and the draft that had been flowing through the bedroom toward the greenhouse reversed direction. Within seconds, a wave of fragrance announced that the amaryllises had awakened.
“Yes,” said Jack, still looking up at them. Suddenly what light had dwelled within his eyes was gone, and he spoke in a slow rush of words as unlike his previous gropings at sense as a river is unlike a dripping faucet. “No mind. Long gone. Gone. Burned out. You. I heard. I did. You understand. You. Upstairs. Yes. Should be. Upstairs.”
Tom winced as he once more felt the amaryllises’ pheromones plucking at his brain. He continued to massage his worrystone, while with his other hand he clutched at his mate’s hand, still on his arm. She said, “He really is just a puppet. They work his strings, and when they sleep, all his mind can do is twitch. And they listen.”
“I don’t see how,” said Peirce. “It should not be possible.”
Tom drew a handkerchief from a pocket of his coverall and bent toward his father to wipe pie juice from his face. As he dabbed at the sticky, grimy skin, he steadied himself against Jack’s shoulder with his other hand. That hand still held his worrystone, and when it touched Jack’s shoulder, it began to hum.
Jack stiffened and blinked. His eyes focused again, and he spoke almost normally: “Mommy used to wash my face.”
When Tom recoiled at the sudden change, Jack became once more a mere puppet: “Don’t!” he exclaimed. “Stay clear! Your rooms! Go! Upstairs.”
Julia gasped. “Tom! It’s the worrystone! That’s why Kimmer…!”
“You mean…?” This time Tom touched his father deliberately with the stone. When the man’s mind, such as it now was, was once more promptly freed of the amaryllises’ control, he was convinced.
“Pretty flowers,” said Jack. “They’re mine.”
“We know,” said Muffy. She sounded as if she were about to cry from sheer empathy, or from the thought that this was what had been in store for her.
Somehow, Tom thought, the stones indeed counteracted the pheromones. “Thanks, Frankie,” he said. “If you hadn’t given us these, we’d all be the way Kimmer was.” He shuddered theatrically.
“Hug me tighter,” said Freddy. “Mine’ll protect us both.” Kimmer looked down at him, startled, realized where his stone was, and obeyed with a nervous grin. “Oohh, that’s nice,” the pig added. Julia made a face at him.
“It has,” said Franklin Peirce. He looked bewildered. “It has to be an accident. I don’t see how the sculptor could have designed this into it deliberately.”
Freddy laughed. “Murphy works both ways,” he said.
Peirce nodded. “People used to say that for every natural illness or poison, nature held a cure,” he said then. “I guess it’s still true, even if nature has changed a bit.”
Jack—or, through him, the amaryllis ladies—sighed dramatically and dropped his pie plant fruit on the floor. “Keep away,” he said slowly. “Don’t. Touch him. We will. Tell all. All we can. We can. But first. Make the light. Brightest light. Or we must. Must exhaust. All our reserves.”
Julia obeyed, turning the rheostat that controlled the greenhouse lights as far as it would go. The lights glowed until they were nearly as bright as day.
Tom was the last to find a seat upon the floor. The imperfect pretense that had met them earlier that day, when they had first arrived, was done. No longer did Jack say “I,” even some of the time. Now the word was “we,” and yes, he wanted to hear what the amaryllises had to say. But was this his father? Was this all that remained? Just a body? A mouthpiece? But that was all Jack had been, really, even when he was pollinating Petra Cross. Even then, according to his recorded confession, he had been far more than he suspected under the influence of the plants he had gengineered.
“We can,” said the amaryllises as their fragrant pheromones rode the air currents from the greenhouse gallery to Jack. “Can talk. We are. Human. Almost. Can. We can think. And talk. Using him. Think and talk. But cannot. No. We cannot walk. Our roots. Roots bind us. To our soil.”
The ghostly pluckings Tom felt at his mind were enough to make him recoil with horror, but he suppressed the response, clutched his humming worrystone tighter than ever, and listened. “Ahhhh!” Jack moaned. “He created us. Was master. We loved him. Yes, loved. Now he is our pet. And slave, yes. Master/pet. Master/slave. Cannot think. Much. But we are jealous. Jealous still. He walks. Has hands. No roots. Not bound to place. Can move.”
“Then that,” said Julia Templeton. She pointed at the immense organ whose empty pollen
sacs Jack was still plucking. They glistened with his drool. “That must be what you want. You want a new pollinator, a new supply of human genes, and then your children or grandchildren will have legs.”
“Yes!” Jack almost shouted. “For our seedlings/scions/sprouts. And voices. Sound, not scent.” The dominant component of the pheromonic flood became less floral and more musky, and his tone changed. “Not destroy. Not humans. We do not wish. But merge. Yes, hybridize. Merge plants and humans. Into one. For mutual. Mutual benefit.”
“I see,” said Muffy Bowen. “But why not use viruses, the way gengineers do to make Macks and Bioblimps. Or the way Jack did to make the honeysuckle?”
“The pattern,” said Peirce. He and Kimmer each had one hand wrapped around his stone, while Freddy’s stone was still pressed between the woman and the pig on her lap. “Jack started pollinating when he was just a kid. And besides, sperm and pollen go straight to the eggs. Easier targetting.” As Peirce spoke, Jack nodded his head jerkily.
Muffy gave him a sidelong glance. “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense.” Turning back to Jack, she said, “What you said earlier, when we first arrived, about saving the environment…”
“No lie.” Jack nodded his head earnestly, though his eyes remained blank. The effect was eerie. “Will happen, yes.”
“It might make us less exploitative,” said Peirce musingly.
“But the plants gain something too,” said Muffy. “Awareness. Intelligence. The ability to pull their roots out of the ground and move to richer soil, or just to go seeking for new sights, or mates.”
Tom thought that the gain for the plants must surely be far more important than protecting the environment by rendering its abusers harmless. The amaryllises wanted to share the human dominance.
“People, too,” said Jack, staring at her. “Make food. Their own. Need only sun. And water. And put down roots. When they are bored. No need. For houses. No need. For vehicles and roads. Need only soil, sun, and wet.”
“Like Petra,” said Tom. “Like my mother. Though the roots didn’t seem very voluntary.” He paused. “Where is she?”
Jack, and the amaryllises, ignored him.
“Why did you have her kidnapped?” asked Muffy. “Why did you send those thugs after me? And Kimmer? Tom? Julia? Why us?”
Jack turned slightly and pointed at Tom. “Master/pet’s scion/seedling/sprout,” he said. “Our son. He has our genes. Genes and pollen. He should have pollen. Even anther. But pollen, yes. Not now? Then soon. We will give him genes. And his sacs will fill. Yes, fill.” Jack plucked once more at his own exhausted sacs. “Then he shakes. Shakes his anther. Gives pollen. And we set seed. More human seed. More human genes.”
When Julia made a bewildered noise, Jim muttered a brief explanation: Yes, Tom had the rudiments of his father’s strange equipment. A bud. Presumably, it would develop just as Jack had just indicated.
“Why not some other man?” asked Peirce.
“No pollen. Would have. Yes, have to. Give more plant genes. Make him. Make pollen. Would take. Take too long.”
“They’d use a virus for that,” said Freddy. “Wouldn’t they?”
“And me?” asked Muffy.
Jack aimed a finger at his own chest. “For him. Please him. And pistil/mate. Pistil/mate for his scion/seedling/sprout. For us. Us too. Took others…” The finger shifted toward Kimmer. “For us. To pollinate. Put plant genes. Plants in humans. Try again. Again like scion/seedling/sprout.”
“But pollen doesn’t work like sperm!” cried Tom. It couldn’t swim, he told himself. It had no tail. It was simply a single cell that grew a thin tube of its substance through the flesh of the flower’s female parts, and when the tip of the tube found the ovary and an egg, transferred its genes into the egg.
When Jack said, “Worked before. With you,” Freddy laughed out loud and Muffy grinned. Tom blushed. He said nothing, except to Jack: “What about my mother?”
“His pistil/mate,” said Jack, pointing at himself again. “Something for. Our master/pet. But also genes. Plant genes. Had them. She did. Plant genes. From wine. Honeysuckle wine.”
“Me too, then,” said Muffy.
Jack nodded. “No mistake. He made virus. Made it just so. Just as we wished. A tool. A seed. Tool to change. Change people. People into plants.”
Peirce, still holding Kimmer’s hand around his worrystone, looked thoughtful. This was much as he had said. Julia shuddered just as Tom had a little while before. Though she said nothing, Tom thought he knew what she was thinking: Jack was not lying now; the virus and its effects were as deliberate as they could be. And those effects could not be undone.
“Where’s my mother?” asked Tom.
His tone was insistent, but Jack still ignored him. “Connect,” he said. “They do. Their roots. Link up. Connect together. Send messages here. To us. We know. Everything. All that happens. All who drink. That is how. How we knew. Just who to choose. Those two. Tom-Tommy’s pistil/mate. And mother.”
“Where is my mother?”
Slowly and clumsily, Jack got to his feet and turned toward the greenhouse gallery. “Come.”
The thin clouds had thickened. No moonlight and no stars were visible through the glass. The greenhouse seemed a curving tunnel, walled in by greenery and in the gaps between the leaves by primordial darkness. In this tunnel, the amaryllis ladies formed a line of vaguely feminine shapes, sinuously curved, the tips of their blade-like leaves cocked like the hands of dancers painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs.
For the first time, Tom realized that the amaryllis nearest the door was the largest, over seven feet tall. He noticed its bulb, bulging from the dirt that filled its pot, its surface traced with faint convolutions. He gestured to draw the attention of the others to what he saw. “That’s where they keep their brains.”
The rest of the amaryllis ladies were progressively smaller, so that the perspective of their line was exaggerated. They were also more or less evenly spaced, except for one gap a third of the way down the gallery. One of the amaryllises had been moved closer to the head of the line, near the largest, and set just a little to one side. Its stem was thicker than that of any of the others, and its leaves were tightly furled, coming to a clustered point just below the apparent chin of the amaryllis’ face.
As they watched, those leaves loosened, spreading first at their tips. To those tips clung matted clumps of dark hair. Bare skin appeared, a scalp. A forehead, closed eyes, nose, mouth, chin, a face at peace, at rest, as comfortable and comforted as a baby at the breast.
No one said a word until Jack broke the silence: “Too many. Too many roots. Over all. All her body. She needs. Needs to be. Be like us. Upright. Bottom-rooted.”
The still unfurling leaves revealed naked skin. Petra Cross’s roots were still visible, but those that wormed within her flesh seemed smaller, and those that had emerged, that had been torn from the ground while she screamed, were withered.
“We teach her. Teach her too. To read. To read our perfumes. And later, yes. To make her own.”
Petra’s ankles were lost in a snarl of roots, thick and brown and obviously sturdy. The amaryllis held her upright and therefore forced her to root in that position. Tom wondered whether he or Ralph could have done the same, could have braced her upright, staked her like a tomato plant or a slender nursery tree. In time, it seemed quite soon, she would be rooted well enough to stand alone, and then to transform into the sort of living statue they had seen beside their latest picnic site. Already leaves were sprouting from her shins. They looked like honeysuckle leaves.
“Mother?” he said. His voice, for all that he was grown, squeaked plaintively. He cleared his throat and tried again: “Mother?”
“Cannot talk,” said Jack. “She is ours. Ours. One of us. Now one of us.”
Pe
tra’s eyes slowly opened to reveal opaque pupils, as if her eyeballs had already turned to wood. The peacefulness of her expression vanished as her mouth gaped open and deep lines slowly engraved agony in her cheeks. Her arms twisted slowly, but they were still held by her amaryllis’ leaves. Her lips writhed as if she would speak out, if only she could take a breath and make a sound.
“‘Tommy!’” Muffy clutched at her mate’s arm. “That’s what she’s saying. And, ‘Where is Ralph?’ And ‘Help.’”
“No help,” said Jack. “No. No. She is plant. She is. Plant now. Not all plant. But almost. No going back. No return.”
Chapter Sixteen
The amaryllis’s leaves had unfurled completely and now spread across the top of the pot, surrounding both stem and rooted ankles and reminding Muffy Bowen of the Botticelli painting of Venus emerging from the sea. Petra Cross was the naked Venus, standing erect, eyes as unseeing as if they were paint indeed. Yet she was something else as well, something all her own, for her hands remained pinned to her sides, not poised in Renaissance modesty. Nor was her skin the smooth and glowing pink of art but loose and pallid, reflecting all the time she had spent indoors, drinking honeysuckle wine. It drooped and sagged, and beneath it crawled the remnants of her roots.
The overall effect was distinctly not that of a Venus, unless one painted by a Hogarth. But that, thought Muffy, was Petra Cross. She, Muffy, was many years younger. Her skin looked much better, and so did her figure, since she was a dancer. If she were in Petra’s place, she would, she thought, she hoped, make a better match for the painting.
Muffy shuddered, for she knew too well how close she had come. And how far the distance would remain between reality, even for her, and the innocent, joyful promise of Botticelli’s art: Petra’s face was distorted by an agony of helplessness, of imprisonment, perhaps of pain. Surely the same agony would distort her own. And she had the honeysuckle genes already, for she had been well on her way to being a honey bum. The amaryllises had had her kidnapped. They had tried to bring her here. They would have planted her, just like Petra, if not for Tom and his friends. And then they would have pollinated her, again like Petra.
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 62
