Science Fiction: The Best of 2001

by Robert Silverberg

Dee started with New Greenpeace. At her first meeting she met a woman angry enough to be a good candidate for “subversive projects.” The woman, Paula Caradine, was suspicious of Dee, but Dee was used to suspicious informants.

  “Why are you interested in subversion?” Paula asked. She was stocky, plain, very intense.

  “My sister’s in jail for a genemod offense she didn’t commit. She was framed.”

  “Oh? What’s her name?”

  “Perri Stavros. I’m Demetria Stavros. I used to be a cop with the NYPD. Perri’s conviction changed things for me. The FBI isn’t getting the job done right, even though they’ve got the Act now, or Perri wouldn’t be Inside and the polluters Outside.”

  Paula said, “Nothing’s going on right now,” which was probably a lie. Dee was used to being lied to. Everybody lied to cops: suspects, witnesses, victims. It was a fact of life on the street. Paula said no more, which was a good sign. She’d have Dee and Perri checked out, find out Dee’s story was true. It was a start. Building informants was a slow process.

  In Manhattan, they were already built, at least the ones that hadn’t been killed or been jailed or died of “environmental conditions.” Dee had only been retired a year. However, a week of networking and bribery turned up nothing but the usual empty lies. Then she turned up Gum.

  Nobody knew how old he was, not even Gum himself. He had purplish melanomas on his bald head and exposed arms. Disease, or sunlight, or bad luck. He refused medical treatment, air masks, false teeth. Gum lived everywhere, and nowhere. He remembered life before the Crisis, before the business flight from Manhattan, maybe before the turn of the century. He was old, and stinking, and dying, and his sheer survival this long had earned him a sort of mythic dimension, like a god. There were punks and scars and hyenas in the Park who actually believed that killing Gum would bring horrible retribution. Although Dee had trouble imagining anything more horrible than the life they were already leading. The Park, along with several other sections of Manhattan, had slipped completely beyond police control. No cop would go there, ever, for any reason.

  Dee caught Gum in a bar near the rotting East River docks, on a street unofficially declared a neutral zone. “Hey, Gum.”

  He peered at her blankly. Gum never recognized anybody overtly. Dee suspected he had an eidetic memory.

  “It’s Dee Stavros. With the NYPD.”

  “Hey.”

  “You want a soda?” Gum never drank alcohol.

  “Hey.” He hauled himself onto a stool next to her.

  “Gum, I’m looking for somebody.”

  Gum said in his cranky, oldman voice, “I been looking for God for a hunnert years.”

  “Yeah, well, let me know if you find Him. Also a guy who could be calling himself ‘Mike.’ Or not. Runs a genemod illegal on a ship. Also does abortions there.”

  “Abortions?” Gum said doubtfully.

  “Yeah, you know, rape-and-scrapes. Women’s stuff. You hear anything about that?”

  “A hunnert years,” Gum said. “He went missing.”

  Gum meant God, not Mike. Gum only talked when he was ready.

  “You hear anything, I’d like to know about it.” She slipped him the money chips so unobtrusively not even the bouncer saw it.

  “Just went missing, left us like this.”

  “Don’t I know it, Gum.”

  “A hunnert years.”

  She went to another activist meeting, worked more on Paula Caradine. Before anything could happen, Eliot called her. His voice had the ultracontrolled monotone that a lot of lawyers used for something really serious.

  “Dee, I want you to see something. Meet me at the genemod evidence center in an hour. You know where it is?”

  “Of course I know where it is. Can you say—”

  “No.” He clicked off.

  The Genetic Modification Felony Actions Evidence Center for Greater New York was in Brooklyn. It was another bad air day; Dee wore her mask for the entire trip plus the fifteen minutes she hung around outside. No admittance to the heavily guarded building without five million authorizations. Finally Eliot showed up (“Another breakdown on the subway”), got them inside, and was shown to an e-locked room. Dee recognized the negative-pressure signs in this whole wing. Nothing, not even spores, could drift out. She and Eliot had changed into paper coveralls. They would have to go through decontamination to get out again.

  Eliot keyed the e-locked door and it opened.

  Dee gasped. Years of training couldn’t weigh against this. The single plant sat in the middle of the small room. A bush as tall as Dee’s shoulders, it had broad, very pale green leaves on woody branches. In the center of each leaf was a closed human eye. Eliot turned up the light and the eyes opened.

  Perri’s eyes.

  Each one was the startling blue-green that Dee had never seen on anyone else. Their pupils turned toward the light source. A hundred eyes, moving in unison, blind.

  “The evidence biologist explained it to me,” Eliot said. “The eyes are light-sensitive but they can’t actually see. They’re not wired up to any brain. There’s a human eye gene, ‘aniridia,’ that can be introduced onto animals in weird places, insect wings or legs, and they’ll grow extra eyes. Nobody knew you could put it into plants.”

  “Why? What is it?”

  “It’s an art object,” Eliot said grimly. “A sculpture. Apparently the artist is wellknown in the underground circles that traffic in these things. He’s in custody.”

  “Mike—”

  “Was the supplier, of course. The eyes were grown from the stem cells from Perri’s aborted fetus. Stem cells are easiest to grow into any organ. But the so-called artist is refusing to talk. On advice of attorney.”

  “Will he deal? If you offer enough?”

  “I can’t offer anything, Dee. It’s not my case. But no, I don’t think he’ll talk. More and more of these genemod illegals are being acquired by organized crime. The FBI and NYPD have just established a joint task force on illegals. The artist would rather face the court than face the mob.”

  “But it’s obvious these are Perri’s genes! They can do a DNA match!”

  “Why bother? You can’t prove she didn’t give Mike the tissue, or sell it to him. It doesn’t clear her at all. I just thought you ought to see that the chances of getting Mike on other charges have gone way up. He’s connected to the artist who’s connected to the mob, so Mike is going to get serious attention. They’ll get him if they can.”

  Dee faced him. “I don’t want revenge. I want Perri freed.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want revenge? Perri’s told me a bit about her childhood. You overprotected her, Dee. You made her feel the entire world is dangerous.”

  “It is.”

  “But you also taught her she can’t cope with it without you. That without you, she’s bound to screw up. And like a good daughter, she’s been proving you right ever since.”

  “She’s not my daughter, and—”

  “She might as well be. You were the only mother she had.”

  “You don’t know jack shit about it!”

  “I know what Perri’s told me.”

  Dee demanded, “You see her? A lot?”

  “Every chance I can. Don’t look like that, Dee. She’s not a child anymore, and as you just pointed out, you’re not her mother.”

  “Fuck you, Eliot. You’re fired. You’re not Perri’s attorney any more.”

  “That’s not your decision,” Eliot said.

  “I pay her bills!”

  “Not this one.” His gaze was steady.

  Dee strode toward the door. Going through it, she slapped off the light. The blue-green eyes on the pale leaves, Perri’s eyes, blinked and closed.

  “We’re hitting a farm tonight,” Paula said abruptly. “You can come along.”

  “I checked out, huh?” Dee said.

  “Why didn’t you mention that the bastards tried to kill you with a bio-weapon?”

  “I thought I’d
give you something to research,” Dee said. She hid her surprise that “the group”—pretentiously, they had no other name—had turned up the attack in her apartment. They were better connected than she’d thought. No official police report had been filed.

  “We meet here at two A.M.” Paula said. “Wear dark clothing that covers your arms and legs with at least three layers of cloth, and good boots. We’ll supply gloves and mask.”

  “Got it. Paula . . . thanks.”

  “I know how it is,” Paula said cryptically. Dee didn’t ask what she meant.

  Sixteen people, packed into two vans with blackened windows and an opaque shield between driver and passengers. No names, faces behind masks; Dee wouldn’t be able to identify anyone except Paula. They rode for at least forty minutes at variable speeds. When the van stopped, they could have been anywhere.

  “Stay in single file,” their “group leader” said. He led them through the darkness, one flashlight in the front of the line, off the road through a small woods, then across at least three open fields divided by strips of underbrush. Finally the line halted.

  The genemod farm was an acre lot of saplings. Sold as transplants, Dee guessed. Genemod illegals had learned not to fence or firewall their farms; it attracted too much aerial-surveillance attention. To Dee these saplings looked like any other stand of young trees. What were they genemod for? It didn’t matter. Their creation was the kind of irresponsible activity that had caused the Crisis, when one food crop after another had been wiped out by fast-growing, herbicide-resistant, genetically created “super-plants” with no natural enemies. The kind of irresponsible activity that had, in the end, caused most of the Midwest to endure the controlled burn. The kind of irresponsible activity that had ruined agribusinesses, spurred hoarding, and weakened an already staggering economy.

  The kind of activity that had jailed Perri.

  “Chop each tree clean through at the base,” the leader instructed. “Don’t work on adjacent trees or you risk cutting each other. Be quiet and quick. The acid team is right behind you.”

  Dee took the row of trees he gave her. She buzzed her saw through its base, surprised at the savage pleasure it gave her. The air filled with muted buzz (much of the sound was white-noised somehow) and with the sharp smell of the acid poured over the fallen limbs and rooted stumps. Dee felt energy flow into her as she destroyed the crop. Over the havoc she listened for the sound of defending copters or guns, but no one came. She laughed aloud.

  “What’s so funny?” Paula said, on the next row.

  “I just remembered something. An old poem. ‘Only God can make a tree.’ ”

  “Huh,” Paula said. “Forget poetry and just saw.”

  Dee sawed, every vibration a vicious joy. When they were done, the activists slipped over the fields to the vans. Behind them, the carefully created grove lay in acrid burned waste.

  “I found him,” Gum said.

  Dee tensed. It had taken a long time to locate Gum again. She’d finally found him inside the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, living with a group of people armed with shoulder-launched missiles of some type. Where the hell had they gotten them? The things looked military. The whole setup was one Dee would never have approached at all if two different informants hadn’t said Gum was there. One, heavily bribed, had had the e-mail address. An electric cable snaked across the ground and into the bridge, undoubtedly stealing very expensive energy until the power company discovered it. No longer Dee’s problem. She e-mailed Gum, and at the appointed hour he emerged from the Bridge looking as dirty and demented as ever.

  They sat on packing crates set a hundred yards from the Bridge in an empty lot strewn with broken glass, rags, unidentifiable chunks of metal. Dee counted six rats in two minutes.

  “Where is he?” she asked Gum.

  “Everywheres. Nowheres. Gone and back. A hunnert years.”

  “Not God, Gum! I thought you found Mike!”

  “Gone and back. A hunnert years.”

  Dee held on to her temper. This visit was too important, and too dangerous, to ruin. She waited.

  Finally Gum said, “He watches Mike. He watches me. He watches you. He knows.”

  “What does He know, Gum? Will you tell me so I can know, too?”

  “He knows Mike din’t do it. The plants.”

  “Mike didn’t take my sister to a ship illegal with genemod plants?”

  “Oh, yeah. Praise the Lord.”

  “Mike did take Perri to a genemod illegal?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Gum said. Rheum oozed from his filmy eyes. “Gone and back.”

  “He took her to the ship and he sent her back. But where is Mike now?”

  “God sees.”

  Dee put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. Another rat ran across the lot. Closer to the Bridge a man stood holding a rifle and looking right at her. “Gum, what are you doing with these people who live in the Bridge?”

  “A hunnert years. Straight to God.”

  “You’re their priest,” Dee said. It seemed unlikely, but not impossible. Since the Crisis, a hundred weird religions had sprung up to explain the Earth’s new harshness, atone for the Earth’s new harshness, find hope in the Earth’s new harshness, all kinds of shit. Even criminals, it seemed, could believe in God. Some sort of God. And it might explain what Gum, old and mumbling and shambling, was doing with these well-equipped felons who frankly scared the fuck out of Dee. Priesthood might explain it. Or it might not.

  Gum said, “He din’t do it.”

  “God?”

  “Mike.”

  “What didn’t Mike do, Gum?” They were going in circles.

  “He din’t send that plant to kill you in your apartment.”

  Dee’s breath stopped. “Do you know who did?”

  “T’other side. A hunnert years.”

  “Gum, what other side? Who sent the plant to kill me?”

  “Look to God,” Gum said, and lurched to his feet.

  Dee stood and grabbed at him. “You can’t go now! You have to tell me the rest!”

  The old man tried to pull free. The guard raised his rifle. Hastily Dee released Gum. As he shuffled away, she called after him, “What other side, Gum? Who sent the plant?”

  “It was in all the newspapers,” Gum said over his shoulder. “You was dead.”

  “Gum . . .”

  He was gone.

  She kept at her informants, getting the word out, spending her savings on sweeteners. She went on another raid with Paula’s group, destroying another open farm in Jersey. She visited Perri at Cotsworth, and each time Perri was thinner and quieter and walked with more difficulty. Dee papered the Correctional System with complaints and charges and anger, and none of it brought any changes whatsoever.

  Paula’s group hit an arboretum in Connecticut. Under thick plastic grew bed after bed of lush foliage genemod for . . . what? It didn’t matter. By now, Dee wasn’t even curious. To get into the arboretum they had to blow open the glass with semtex. Instantly alarms wailed. They tossed in the flamers and scattered. Dee, following her instructions, circled widely to the left and ran through an underroad culvert full to her knees with stinking water. Spider webs tore from the roof onto her face. Lights raked the area from a tower she hadn’t known was there, and she could hear a copter roaring closer. But she made it to the van and back onto the highway and all the way to her apartment.

  Only later did she hear that two activists died in the raid. One of them was Paula.

  The next evening Eliot called. “Jesus Christ, Dee, what the fuck are you doing?”

  He knew about the raid. No, impossible, how could he know? Then he’d heard about her working the street. Dee said nothing.

  “How could you go down to see Perri and then gouge into her about what a screw-up she is? ‘You made bad choices, you’ve messed up your life, this prison time will follow you a round forever’. . . how could you, Dee?”

  “It’s all true.”

  “So what? She’s
barely hanging on in that hell-hole and she doesn’t need you to go in there and—”

  “How the fuck do you know what she needs? I’ve taken care of her since she was two years old!”

  “And you’ve made her believe she can’t take care of herself without you. You screwed up her life if anyone did. So stop this—”

  Dee slammed her fist into the OFF key. She raged around the one-room apartment until her own fury scared her. Then she tried to calm down: deep breathing, lifting weights, a cup of hot tea. At midnight she finally slept.

  At three she jerked awake. Someone was in the apartment.

  Her hand slid under the blanket for her gun. Before she could grasp it, both arms were jerked above her head and cuffed. The light went on.

  He took off his night-vision hood and pulled a chair beside her bed. Silently he studied her. He was medium height and build, late thirties, brown eyes. Hair the color of a yellow flower. Dee stared back, refusing to show fear. She said, “You’re Mike.”

  “Yes. Although the name is Victor.”

  She snorted and he smiled. “No, really. You don’t look much like Perri, Dee. Come on, we’re going out.”

  She began to scream. The walls were thin; someone would hear. Immediately Victor slapped a gag strip over her mouth. He pulled off her blankets and cuffed her ankles, ignoring her kicks. Wrapping her in the blanket as if she were sick, he lifted her easily and carried her, a dead weight, down three flights of stairs. He was much stronger than he looked.

  A car waited at the curb. Dee thought, incongruously, how long since I rode in a car? Years. Cars were emission-producing demons. People destroyed them like cockroaches. Only emergency vehicles were exempt, and this powerful sleek car was no emergency vehicle.

  They drove through the empty, pot-holed streets, Victor and Dee in the back and the unseen driver behind a shield in the front. Victor removed her gag.

  “Dee, no one is going to hurt you.” Oh, right, as if she believed that. “There’s something I want you to see.”

  “Why?”

  “Good question. I guess because I hate waste. You’ve wasted a lot of time raiding genemod illegals and harassing ineffective authorities and putting out the word on me throughout Manhattan. Is that ankle cuff too tight for comfort?”