Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  “She shouldn’t even be here!”

  As Sunglow seemed to shrink beside him, he pressed against the flow, steering her with his hand on her hip, his wrist against her lower back, just above the swell of her buttocks. He could feel the bony nub beneath her skin, all she had to mark her biological origins and her kinship to him and all the rest, twitching against his wrist. From the corner of his eye, he noted the rotundity of her belly and its statement of maturity and health. He wished his own swelled out as much, but he did not eat the way he should.

  The crowd was so far thickest toward the front of the Hall. To the right, toward the rear, there was still room, and that was where he directed their steps. He felt relief when the righteous comments faded behind and the looks they drew began to seem more sympathetic. Here were a very few other tailless Racs, a mixed couple or two, a child whose short tail proclaimed its hybrid status.

  “Remember,” he said. “You’re an exchange student from Farshore. Not a beast from the forest, not a degenerate from the slums. Not whatever they say. Don’t let them get to you.”

  “It’s hard,” she said, and her voice was still high, higher, pained and suffering and more than a little mad.

  “I know.” As they passed the glass display case, his mind froze for a moment. How long had it been since he raided it for that seed? Months, though “month” was a meaningless term on a world without a moon. The word had come from the Remakers and meant a span of thirty days. He raised himself on his toes. The key was just where he had left it. No one had yet discovered the theft.

  He remembered how empty the vast room had been that night, how quiet, how clean. Now it roared with Racs talking, talking, talking. It smelled too, of fur both washed and unwashed, of soaps and perfumes, of morning meals. Even in the rear of the Hall, it was now impossible to move.

  “There aren’t many tailless Racs here,” she said.

  “They’re almost all servants and laborers. Poor. Low-class. Unambitious.”

  “We’re poor at home too. But not unambitious.”

  “You made it here.”

  “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. You’re just about my only friend.”

  He winced and looked away from her. He liked her, he did. He wished he dared to like her better. But … He changed the subject. “The place is packed.” He could feel warm flesh and fur against his back, his sides, his front. A cry of outrage elsewhere in the Hall prompted him to clutch at that harness pouch that held his money. Someone had joined those Racs who had lost everything they carried while they—but somehow not their thieves—were immobilized in the weekly crowd.

  “It always is,” she said. “Every time. And most of them don’t see me when they look at me.”

  The room was filled with those who worked at Worldtree Center, students, teachers, scholars, librarians, administrators, and filled again with those who worked elsewhere in the valley or in the city atop the surrounding bluffs. There were also those who came great distances to worship at the center of the Rac civilization, in the valley where once the Remakers had created their kind. There were also pouchpickers and strapnips. And almost every one had a tail.

  “I’m surprised you come.”

  “Just with you,” she said. She patted his arm. “I could help, you know. Then you’d be done sooner. We could …”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head abruptly, and as abruptly wished he hadn’t.

  “You always say that.”

  Few were paying much attention to the mural that recounted the history of the Racs, or to exhibits such as the glass case and its casket of seeds. All eyes were focused on the front of the Hall, the miniature Worldtree that reached almost all the way to the Hall’s high roof, the pyramid of steps at its base, the High Priest emerging from a small doorway on the right.

  The roar of the crowd died to the merest murmur as the High Priest mounted the steps and revealed the purpose of the pyramid, to lift him high enough to be visible throughout the Hall. He wore a light yellow cap and cape marked to recall the black ears and back-stripe of the Founder.

  The High Priest faced the Worldtree’s icon, head up, arms held high. He held the pose as he turned toward his audience, scratched the side of his muzzle with sweeping gestures that could be seen throughout the Hall, and bowed. “Welcome,” he rumbled.

  As one, the crowd scratched the flanks of its myriad snouts and rumbled back, a sound of immense satisfaction at being where they were.

  It was this way at the end of every week. The people of First-Stop filed into the Hall and stood shoulder to shoulder, packed tighter than ever they were outside this shrine to the high Worldtree at the center of their world, to the aliens who had Remade them from the beasts. Yet they did not feel awe. Their religion was one of pride and determination and striving.

  The High Priest’s voice snarled and rumbled forth. “Our gods are gone,” he cried. “But they have not abandoned us. Before they left, they said, ‘Come to us when you are ready.’”

  The murmur of the crowd that filled the Great Hall swelled in response. Scent glands released involuntary bursts of odor, nostrils widened, bodies shifted.

  “Are we ready?” His pause was hardly long enough for any answer. “No.”

  The crowd’s murmur shifted higher in pitch, expressing an anxiety as ritual as the disappointed High Priest’s sway of body and shake of head.

  “We have not learned enough. Yes!” he cried. “We have learned an enormous amount. We climbed the Worldtree.” He gestured toward Kitewing’s portion of the Hall’s mural. No one looked.

  “We learned how much, much longer our Remakers took to learn as much. Then we learned to build thundertrees and grasp the edge of space with our own claws.”

  The murmur grew deeper, the crowd of Racs more pleased with itself. Dotson twisted to see where the thundertrees were being added to the mural. The painters had begun their work only a month before.

  “That too is not enough. Our Remakers are gone far beyond the edge of space. We have much to learn, even with the aid they left us. But we will never give up. To do so would be to deny our destiny.

  “We will continue. And someday we will deserve to call our Remakers what they called themselves: Gypsies.”

  The rhetoric continued until it was time to celebrate the progress that had been made in recent days. A large door to the left of the High Priest’s pyramid swung open, and three young Racs wheeled in a mass of complicated looking machinery. It proved to be the latest version of the mechanical arm that would aid the building of the space station Rac engineers planned to place in orbit above their world. The High Priest’s pride was clear when he gestured, the Hall darkened, and one wall was illuminated with a scene from space: Three construction capsules equipped with smaller arms were beginning to assemble a framework of aluminum girders. Behind them First-Stop floated, aloof and beautiful. Near the bottom of the image swam several broad sheets of solar cells. In the distance were the flecks of light that were fuel tanks and spent thundertrees. In time, they would be fastened to the framework, linked by tunnels, powered by the solar cells, and staffed with Racs eager to take the next step outward, away from First-Stop and toward reunion with the gods.

  Next a scientist was saluted for discovering a drug that would increase Rac fertility and hence the size of the population that struggled to pursue the destiny the Remakers had assigned the Racs. The next generation would learn more and faster, and there would be more farmers, miners, and factory workers to support the drive beyond the edge of space.

  Another was honored for learning that the larger dumbos, big-eared flying creatures with feathered wings and furry bodies, could tell each other where to find nectar and water bodies suitable for egg-laying. They uttered sounds pitched above the range Rac ears could hear and used the echoes to navigate. To communicate, they played back the echoes they had
encountered on their way to their find.

  Finally it was time to leave. The High Priest scratched his face and bowed one last time, turned, descended the steps of his pyramid, and vanished. The crowd began to seep from the Hall to the pathways outside.

  “Well?” said Sunglow.

  “Well, what?”

  “A basket lunch? A beer or two? An afternoon picking berries on the Field?” She sounded less dejected than she had before the service had begun.

  “I have to …”

  “Work. I know. You work too much.”

  “I’m sorry. But …” He made the gesture that, for a Rac, was a shrug.

  “It’s not good for you.”

  As the Great Hall continued to empty, the crowd shifted. Space appeared between its members. Dotson Barbtail could no longer feel the pressure of others against his pelt. He let go of his money pouch and smiled as he noted Sunglow doing just the same. Together they turned toward the Hall’s high doors and moved with the gaps among their neighbors.

  “Dotson!”

  Moss and honeysuckle filled the eye with purple and green, the nose with scent. Beyond the grounds and the valley’s encircling buildings, the bluffs lifted high to scattered trees and the walls of offices and hotels and private homes. But they were not given the chance to admire the view.

  “Dotson!”

  They turned as one to find an older Rac approaching from one side. The hairs of his pelt were tipped with silver-gray, giving him a frosted, grizzled appearance, and his whiskers were white. His claws rasped against his muzzle. “Senior Hightail,” said Dotson as both he and Sunglow returned the greeting gesture. “The head of my department,” he added for Sunglow’s benefit.

  “I haven’t seen many interim reports from you lately,” said the Senior. His tone was smooth and high enough to indicate a degree of anger. Behind him, another scholar from the Center pretended not to hear what he was saying. Dotson thought he recognized one of the astronomy section. Starsight? Was that his name?

  “Has there been any progress?” asked Senior Hightail when Dotson did not reply immediately.

  “Not as much as I would like,” admitted the younger Rac.

  “I know why.”

  Dotson hoped he did not look as surprised as he felt.

  “You haven’t been spending enough time in the lab. Not for months.”

  “I’ve been waiting for samples,” said Dotson. “But they’ve been having trouble with the submersibles, and …”

  The Senior snorted so hard that droplets sprayed from his nostrils. “More likely it’s this pretty thing.” He pointed at Sunglow. “Shouldn’t let yourself be distracted. Not if you wish to accomplish anything.”

  “Yessir.” What else could he say? That even though the submersibles were not visiting the deep-sea vents, he had all the samples he needed in the lab’s freezers? That he didn’t spend nearly as much time with Sunglow as she wished he would?

  “It’s important, you know. All Rackind is counting on you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I want a report,” said Senior Hightail. “You’ve got a week.” With that he turned and left.

  When he was a safe distance off, Dotson told Sunglow, “Don’t mind the old fart.” A moment later, he squeezed her arm and added, “I like being distracted. At least by you.”

  She squeezed back. “But you won’t go to the Field with me.”

  “You heard him. Now I’ve got to write a report for him.”

  “You didn’t have that excuse an hour ago.”

  He said nothing as he led the way off the steps and onto a gravel path that pointed toward his apartment.

  “You’ve never had me in your place, you know. So I’ll go home with you now. You dictate. I’ll type. We’ll be done in no time. And then …”

  “Uh-uh,” he said, and despite his best effort, his voice squeaked. “I work better alone.”

  She stopped on the path and swung to face him. “You’re lying. You’re afraid of me. Or you have something else going on. Do you have a mate there?”

  “No!” But his voice squeaked even worse.

  “I don’t believe you!” she cried quite shrilly.

  He could not possibly tell her the truth. But what else could he say? In silence, he tried to smile. He let the effort go when Sunglow’s only response was wide open eyes, flaring nostrils, one hand raised in fury, its claws extended.

  He backed a step. She froze and stared at her own hand, realizing what she was doing. She let it fall. And then she walked away from him.

  * * * *

  Dotson Barbtail’s apartment consisted of two alcoves and two rooms. One alcove, its opening shielded by a curtain, held a shower, a sink, and a toilet. The other was a tiny kitchen with a hotplate, a coldbox, and three cupboards for food, dishes, and utensils. One of the rooms held a table, a desk, two chairs, a rack of shelves filled with books and stacks of paper. The other was equipped with a sleeping pad and another rack of shelves that held harnesses, extra pouches, two cloaks, three caps, and copies of all those Remaker plaques that pertained to his research.

  The sleeping room also had a broad, multipaned window that faced the morning sun. Before that window was an oversized earthenware pot full of dirt. In that dirt stood what looked like a large plant. A broad rosette of green leaves lay flat on the soil. From its center rose a waist-high stalk as fat as Dotson’s thigh. Its lower half was creased as if it would someday divide in two. Its upper half was swollen and misshapen. The top of the stalk bore a fat terminal bud.

  Dotson tried to work when he got home. Just as he had told Sunglow, he had the work to do, and it had gained urgency from Senior Hightail’s words. But …

  He sat at his desk, staring at his typer and the piece of paper it had held for three days. It was in fact the first page of a progress report. Unfortunately, he did not have much progress to report.

  As they had with so much, the Remakers had left full accounts of their own biology and of the techniques by which they had manipulated the material of heredity to create such things as Racs. Dotson Barbtail’s predecessors had established that Rac and Remaker biology were in all but details the same. The cells of both stored information in genes built of DNA. The Remakers had used protein enzymes found in bacteria to snip and splice the genes, and their plaques noted that the most useful such enzymes came from bacteria that lived in hot springs and volcanic cracks in the deep sea bed. Unfortunately, they had not been able to leave samples with their records. It was up to the Racs to find or make their own tools for genetic engineering.

  That is, it was up to Dotson Barbtail. He had been assigned to screen First-Stop’s bacteria for the necessary enzymes. He had even found some, transferred their genes to bacteria he could grow in vats in the lab, and hoped soon to have restriction endonucleases and heat-stable polymerases in quantity. Unfortunately, the bacteria refused to grow as they should. It almost seemed that the enzymes poisoned the cells that made them.

  He had said all that before. He had told his superiors. He had requested more samples from hot springs and the sea bed. He had put himself at the mercy of other workers, and when the submersibles had run into problems of their own, he had actually been pleased.

  Could he have solved his problems by himself? Perhaps, he thought.

  If he had never raided the Great Hall for that Remaker seed.

  If he had never planted it in his sleeping room, there by the window.

  If it had never sprouted.

  If he had never spoken to it and watched in open-mouthed delight as its stalk bent away from the light toward him, toward his voice.

  If he had been able to leave it long enough to try growing the enzymes he already had in other sorts of bacteria. Surely there were some the enzymes would not poison. Surely there was a way.<
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  But.

  He slammed one hand on the desktop and sang, high-pitched and angry, at the awkward, clumsy, time-consuming typer. Would it help if he had a computer, a word processor? No one had such things yet, but the Remakers’ plaques described them in detail. Five years ago, the High Priest had celebrated the first single-crystal silicon ingot. Now there were solar cells for space stations. A year ago, he had celebrated the first simple integrated circuit. Soon, soon.

  No. The problem was not his tools. It was him.

  He abandoned his desk for the sleeping room. He stood over the plant and sang at it angrily. Once more, as it always did, it leaned toward him. It did not care about his mood. “Speak to me,” its posture said. He could almost see the stalk as a body, a Rac wrapped in a green robe to blur its outlines, the terminal bud a head tipped attentively in his direction. “Speak to me. Talk and tell and teach.”

  Soon he was telling it about the service that morning, about prejudice against tailless Racs, about Sunglow’s courting of him and his reluctance to let her into the apartment, about his fear of what she would say or do when she saw the plant for the first time. Would she guess what it was? What he had done? Would she denounce him? Would the High Priest himself then come here to remove the pot and plant? What would happen to him?

  Would he be banished? That would mean the continent of Farshore, a backward place peopled almost entirely by tailless Racs. There were mines there, essential for industry and progress, and there was a need for managers. Maybe he would be volunteered for that duty, far from the Worldtree at the center of his life, at the navel of the world.

  Or … The Farshorns provided most of the miners, when they were not warring with each other or the Land of the Worldtree. Tailed criminals provided the rest.

  Sunglow was a tailless Farshorn herself, as lovely and enticing as only the alien could be. She was not backward, not primitive, not fit only to be a miner or a servant. Her mother was a teacher, her father a bureaucrat. But no matter how much he craved her, no matter how much other males envied him when she was with him, tail or no tail, he could not let her get too close.