Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  They gathered in and around their watching place until no scrap of dirt was visible. They stood quietly, none sitting upon the pew-stones. Some, as was their custom, faced the Tower or its smaller representation that was their icon. Most watched the crowd of Gypsies near Frederick’s pumpkin as the body was brought out and laid in a coffin. The crowd shifted its attention then toward the graveyard on the Tower’s north side, while the Gypsies produced shovels and dug a hole.

  When the bots and humans dispersed at last, Blacktop climbed slowly to his usual post on the lowest step of the Racs’ pyramidal altar. From that vantage point, he stared out across the sea of faces that was his tribe, his people. And yes, there, to one side as they were for every evening service, were the strangers who had come to see the tree that held up the sky and stayed to carry rocks and build the walls of the watching place. Wanderer, Stonerapper, Shorttail, each as attentive as any one of the tailless Racs surrounding them.

  What would they tell their own people when they finally returned whence they had come?

  And there was Leaf, a little further from the front, glaring at the strangers’ backs, her fur bristling. The priest could not see her children, but he knew they were old enough to leave Leaf’s hut and accompany her. They surely stood beside her knees, awed by the atmosphere surrounding them, puzzled by their mother’s ferocity. Her slightly hunched posture said her hands were curled protectively about their heads.

  Blacktop sighed. Her attitude was as fixed and unchangeable as a mountain. If it spread—and it might—there would be war. That was something else he had discovered in the Gypsies’ library.

  At last he raised his arms until they extended from his sides like wings, and he said, “Even the gods are mortal.”

  The smooth susurrus of response bespoke anxiety.

  His hands moved as if he were beckoning his congregation. “A god has died,” he said, and then he let his voice grow rough and calming. “Call him the god of knowledge, for other gods have told me he was the one who thought of building the Tower before you, whose secrets will one day be ours.”

  He glanced at the trio of visitors, and then at Leaf. “No matter who climbs the Tower.” Then he stopped. He let his arms fall to his sides. He said, “The gods live even when they die. There is a part of them that flies to a land of milk and mossberries if they have served their gods well. There they live in bliss forever. If we pursue the Tower well, we will someday join them.

  “Yet pursuing the Tower need not always mean offering it whatever knowledge we can find. Today there is something more important we must do. Frederick faces a long, long journey. If he will reach its end, he must have food and water. We must provide them.” His pause was just long enough to be sure every ear was aimed his way. “Bring Frederick’s journey rations with you to the evening service.”

  Several faces within the compass of the watching place’s low walls looked skeptical. Blacktop chose one and pointed. “You think the dead do not eat or drink. But the books that tell of the gods that our gods worship are very clear. The part of them that lives forever is no more solid than a scent. They call it ‘spirit.’ And it gains strength from the similar ‘spirit’ of what the living offer for its sake.”

  He stared over the sea of faces. At last he nodded as if approving their acceptance of his addition to the doctrine they were still learning how to follow. Then he raised his arms once more and beckoned to them. “We cannot know how long it takes a spirit to reach the land of its gods,” he said. “Not until we undertake that journey ourselves. As each of us surely will. We must therefore feed it for as long as we possibly can. Tonight bring dried meat and berries, nuts, jugs of wine and water.” He turned and held both hands toward the pole at the peak of the altar, and the basket at the peak of that. “Enough to fill the treasure chamber on this image of the Tower.”

  He held his pose for several minutes before stepping down to join his congregation in staring toward the graveyard and the mound of yellow soil that marked where Frederick Suida’s remains now lay at rest.

  * * * *

  Lois McAlois and Renny Schafer slumped on opposite sides of the table in their small kitchen. Before them rested tumblers, empty except for eroded ice. The man held a bottle of amber liquor, the best the Gypsies could produce by way of scotch.

  “Did you know?” he asked. “When I first met him, I was just a genned-up dog. A big-headed shepherd.”

  She nodded. She knew. She had met her husband well before he had become a human being.

  “They wanted to put me down. My makers hadn’t got a license for me. No genetic impact statement. So PETA sued. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Making me smart wasn’t ethical, they said. An insult to animalkind. Human genetic imperialism.”

  He refilled their glasses carefully. “And Freddy saved me. He was working for BRA, the Bioform Regulatory Administration. That’s who PETA was suing. But he sneaked me out of their jurisdiction. Into space. And I met you.”

  She lifted her glass to him. “No regrets.”

  “Hell, no. They’ve been good years. For Freddy too, though the last few …” He shook his head. “They say my new genes are holding together okay. I won’t go the way he did.”

  “But you’ll go,” she said. “We both will.”

  “He had a good run, didn’t he?”

  She was nodding when the apartment’s door scanner squawked, “To arms, to arms! Prepare to repel boarders! You got callers, folks!”

  She set her drink down and climbed wearily to her feet. “We should reprogram that mechin’ thing.”

  He answered as he always had. “One of these days.” Then he too was standing. “Shall we?”

  When they opened the door, they found themselves facing three bots who were obviously near the ends of their lifetimes. Two had fading blossoms. The fronds of all three were browning and frayed at their edges, and their faces were lined.

  “Boston Lemon,” said one as they entered the apartment.

  “Titian Thyme.”

  “Crimson Orchis,” said the one with the bright red petals.

  “I know who you are,” said Renny. “I’ve heard those names. Some sort of governing council for the bots.”

  Their nods were simultaneous. “Once our people would have called us ‘Eldest,’” said Crimson Orchis. “But your niece is so much older than us that …” She shrugged. “We have all been waiting for her to seem as old as she is.”

  “To gain wisdom,” said Boston Lemon.

  “To fulfill her potential,” said Lois McAlois, and Renny laughed. “You don’t know how much she hates being told to do that.”

  “Even so,” said the bots together. “But we need a leader, and she has been the best candidate for many years.”

  “The most potential,” said Titian Thyme.

  “Vast potential,” said Boston Lemon.

  “I quite agree,” said Lois.

  “You have to get her back,” said Crimson Orchis.

  “We can’t,” said Renny.

  “We understand,” said Boston Lemon. “It would be suicide to pay the ransom the Engineers demand.”

  “We need an army,” said Titian Thyme. “Humans and bots and even Racs.”

  “We have fought when we had to,” said Lois. “We surely will again. But the Quebec is too small to carry troops, even with the help of her sisters. And the Engineers have railguns and heavy lasers and missiles.”

  “Rescuing Pearl Angelica,” said her husband. “It could not possibly be worth the losses we would have to take. No matter how much we want her back.”

  There were tears in his eyes as he turned back toward the bottle in the other room.

  * * * *

  “Would you believe they asked me to come up to the Gypsy? And only partly to wash bottles in the greenhouse lab?
”

  Lucas Ribbentrop snorted agreeably. “Why you?”

  “I was her friend. And I’ve had a bit of experience in the lab. ‘Good hands,’ they said, and all the better for having something of a personal interest. I said that wouldn’t really make much difference. They’d be growing new bots, not old ones. Even if the cells did come from …”

  “I told them no,” Caledonia Emerald added. Then she kicked the pile of sacks toward her coworker. They had never thought they would have to haul so much away from the Racs’ “cathedral.” “You don’t have any fronds to get in the way. You clean it out this time.”

  The man laughed. “I did it last night. We take turns, remember? Even if we are running late.”

  The bot pointed forward, through the windshield of the Bioblimp’s cabin. The view had the eerie sheen of infrared, and in the distance a line of Racs, the last of the congregation to depart, glowed brightly. “But this time they packed it full.”

  “And then some. Food galore.” Ribbentrop smacked his lips loudly. The pyramid of steps at the base of the symbolic Tower was nearly invisible beneath the heap of offerings. He stroked the controls. The Bioblimp’s tentacles snaked into view ahead, grasped tufts of moss and stray blocks of stone, and pulled. “Maybe it’ll catch on.”

  “You heard the tape. It’s for Frederick. One time only.”

  “I wish it would.” A tentacle lost its grip as wind rocked the genimal, and they lurched backward on their path. He swore. “Then we won’t have to … Why we can’t use the engine … He knows we’re here. He waits for us!”

  Caledonia Emerald leaned toward the glass. “I don’t see him yet.”

  Ribbentrop grunted as the Bioblimp regained the ground it had lost. “If it does, no more Lost and Found.”

  “We’d still have to come. If we didn’t, the basket would fill up and they’d think we didn’t love them anymore. They’d feel rejected.”

  “So they’d get mad? Attack us? Tear down the Tower?” He snorted. “They’d need a nuke.” He struggled with the controls as wind made the Bioblimp lurch again. “Or mass suicide? I’ve heard the guesses.”

  “If they’re going to do that at all, they’ll do it anyway when we leave.”

  “Naah.” He shook his head and indicated a hot spot on a pew-stone just inside the entrance to the watching place. “There he is. Blacktop’s a pragmatic fellow. He’ll empty the basket himself if we don’t show up. That’s why he’s there.”

  “Do you really think so?” She pointed at three other hot spots toward the back of the stone-walled enclosure. “He’s not alone.”

  “He’s bright enough to invent religion, isn’t he?” He touched a control, and the infrared image in the windshield enlarged. “Those visitors.”

  “What’s that?” Her finger traced a line of small hot spots off to the right. They were not on one of the trails the Racs and Gypsies had worn through the moss.

  “Critters. No problem. Now go on. Do your job, and we’ll get out of here.”

  As soon as she opened the cabin’s hatch, a tentacle appeared in the opening, ready to lower her to the basket and then the pile below. Another took the sacks they had brought. Soon she was dangling beside the basket, stuffing pottery jugs of wine and water, strings of dried fruits and fish, small leather bags of nuts and dried berries, and other edibles into a sack. She knew that Blacktop, the Racs’ priest, was watching her. She wondered, did he really think they were gods? That they accepted his people’s offerings as worship? Or did he see her as a thief in the night? As a collaborator in the myths he was constructing for his people? Or was he pragmatic enough to recognize the value of what the Tower promised and of a system of belief that would make the pursuit of knowledge the highest good for his entire species?

  Pausing when she came to a flat piece of rock, she used the tiny flashlight that hung from her neck to glance at its surface. She saw the imprint of a partial skeleton, head and backbone and a few of the ribs. Some sort of fish. A fossil. A sign that some Rac had already invented paleontology.

  The light was already out and the rock was stowed in a sack when sudden motion in the cathedral’s mouth warned her that something was about to happen. Blacktop’s scream of rage therefore did not make her drop her sack, and his cries for help only made her hands fly more rapidly in their work. Yet she could not help the startled “Uunnh!” that escaped her when the Bioblimp’s tentacle convulsed around her waist and jerked her into the air once more.

  Nor could she help asking, “What’s going on?” as she was unceremoniously deposited in the cabin. But Lucas Ribbentrop was busy with his controls, releasing the Bioblimp’s grip on the altar pole and raising its altitude, letting the wind sweep it silently away. She looked at the windshield. The departing Racs had turned and were running as fast as they could toward their watching place. To the right, the line of smaller glows was much nearer.

  She stepped closer to the windshield and touched the controls that would magnify that portion of the image. “Wild Racs,” she murmured.

  “He heard them coming even before the bugs picked it up.”

  “They must have smelled the food.”

  “From the top of the bluff?”

  “Why not? Maybe they followed our buddies down, noses twitching all the way.”

  There were perhaps two dozen of the smaller, ungengineered cousins of the Racs. When they reached the altar, three confronted Blacktop, their voices singing threats of mayhem while their fellows began to gorge on the food Caledonia Emerald had not removed. Blacktop had a stick in his hands, but his foes dodged his blows as nimbly as the wind. He could do nothing to stop the raid.

  As soon as the other Racs arrived, their wild kin knew the balance had changed. They boiled from the heap that still covered the steps. A few erupted from the basket and slid down the pole. All still held sacks and strings and chunks of food in their mouths as they fled. The Racs did not pursue them, and a moment later the bugs transmitted the sound of laughter and Blacktop’s voice, snarling now, saying, “Frederick must have sent them for his lunch.”

  “He knows how to put the right spin on things, doesn’t he?” The congregation’s stragglers were already on the trail again. This time, Blacktop and the visiting strangers were with them.

  “Hey, he’s a preacher.” Caledonia Emerald once more let the tentacle lift her from the cabin to the edge of the offering basket atop the altar pole. When she found it empty, she descended to the pyramid of steps and sacked the remnants of the offerings the Racs had not been able to fit into the basket. Finally, she faced the windshield behind which her colleague watched, wrapped one arm around the tentacle, and gestured, “Up.”

  On the way back to the corral where they would tether the Bioblimp for what remained of the night, she had Ribbentrop stop at Frederick’s grave. “Down,” she said. “Just off the ground.”

  “What the hell for?”

  She said nothing while she opened the hatch and dropped an empty water jug and a berry bag on the freshly turned dirt.

  “I see,” he said at last. “Now it will look like the wild ones really were just gofers. They fetched, and Frederick’s happy.”

  “I wish I was.” She shook her head. “I’d like to have a hand in what they’re doing up there.” She shrugged, but still she sounded troubled. “Should I have gone? Do you think they’ll keep me posted?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “It would drive me crazy.” Cherilee Wright was tugging the vines aside, untangling tendrils from Pearl Angelica’s leaves, careful to leave no broken stems or other signs that something had been hidden in the bed. She sounded excited. “Wrapped up like this for days. I’m glad you’re not claustrophobic.”

  No, thought the bot as she blinked at the flood of light. It felt peaceful to be rooted. Restful and safe and natural. Her roots had felt at h
ome in the soil Cherilee had prepared so carefully for her green pets. The light had been dimmed to that which struck a forest floor by the combination of foliage and the cloth above her eyes. Now that light washed over her, brighter, almost blinding, telling of the wealth of energy expended on the plants around her. She found herself feeling reassured, for if the lunar Engineers were wholly one with those of Earth, they would look to Earth for their lifeline, their supplies. Yet they put so much into food production and self-sufficiency.

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “He’s okay.”

  “He made it, then.” The relief so plain in her voice revealed how much worry Pearl Angelica had been trying not to feel. “When … ?”

  “No.” The greenhouse manager answered the unfinished question. “If he visited during the day, he wouldn’t be able to see you. If he came at night, when everyone—or almost everyone—is gone, it might look strange. Security doesn’t know who drove that truck, but they’ll grab any opportunity to be suspicious.” She took the bot’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “There. I told him you’re safe. Step over the vines now. And down, to the floor. Now walk and stretch. I know I’d need it after so long in bed.”

  Pearl Angelica’s muscles were not as weak as Cherilee’s might be after prolonged inactivity. She was a bot, after all, half plant, designed to stand rooted in the soil for as long as she wished. Yet she did feel the need to move, pacing down the greenhouse’s aisles, slowly at first, then more rapidly. She examined beds of unidentified seedlings, cucumbers, onions, and corn. She ate a tomato. She stood quite close to one of the white, cylindrical beehives, studying the insects that sauntered confidently through the slit-like entrance, preened upon the narrow shelf that rimmed the hive’s base, and launched themselves humming into the air. “Too close,” said her hostess, and a hand gentle on her arm drew her back. “They sting, you know.”