Tom told him how he had come home from work to find Muffy missing, kidnapped. Jim described the theft of his truck and meeting Tom and Freddy in the museum.
“Then,” said Freddy. “We went to see Tommy’s mother. She’s a drunk.”
Tom winced at the description but he acknowledged its truth with a nod. “A honey bum. But she said my real father was a genetic engineer, and he had to be behind it all.”
“‘He’s gonna turn Muffy into a potted plant, he is,’” said Freddy, as if he were quoting. “‘And he had his minions swipe the Mack to carry Muffy to his secret laboratory in the sewers beneath the deepest subbasements of the city, where he…’”
“I was potted, all right,” said Muffy. “But…”
“Me, too.” Kimmer’s voice was trembling softly, and when they turned to look at her, the tears were hovering on the edges of her eyelids. “They kidnapped me, too, remember. And they doped us all up on the stuff.”
She hesitated, and her father looked startled for a moment. “So you’re the ones…” he said. “I do owe you, don’t I?”
Kimmer spoke again, more tentatively: “What kind of plant…?”
Tom shook his head. “My mother’s not psychic,” he said. “She’s dreaming. She has to be.” Together then, tripping over each other’s words, he and Jim told how Randy had led them to Tige and Muffy.
“And then they tried to grab us all,” said Muffy Bowen. “Me again, and Julia this time, and Tom.” She described what had happened at the zoo.
“But what’s your Daddy’s name?” asked Alvidrez. His fingers wiggled as Tom answered, and the letters appeared on a nearby screen: “Jack, gengineer…“He asked for Tom’s age, for Jack’s address that lifetime ago, for everything Tom and Freddy and the others could possibly tell him, and slowly the screen grew what looked much like a short dossier.
“You sound like you think you can help,” said Jim.
“I can help,” said Alvidrez. “And I will, since you rescued my daughter too, thanks to that spider.” Randy seemed to know he was talking about her, for she shifted on Muffy’s shoulder, meeped, and aimed her palps in his direction. For a moment, he watched her curiously. Then he went on. “There are millions of databases in this city, and I can search most of them. I use a worm—I’ll load it with the key words you’ve given me, and then I’ll send it out. It’ll break into all the computers it can reach via the phone lines and check their files for the keys. If it doesn’t find them, it’ll move on to another machine. If it does, it’ll send a copy of the file containing the keys back here and then move on.”
He paused, staring at them as if he expected applause. “Come back here tomorrow,” he said. “If the answer you want is anywhere in this city, I’ll have it then.”
When they reached the museum, they found a trio of school buses in the parking area. Two were multi-windowed pods strapped to the backs of Macks much like Tige. One was a similar pod slung from the gasbag of a Bioblimp. Unlike the Bioblimps that served as moving vans, this one had only short tentacles, and its hide was as brilliant an orange as its pod.
They climbed the museum steps behind a flock of scampering, yelling grade-school children shepherded by teachers and parental volunteers. When they finally reached the ticket booth, since Freddy was with them, the attendant waved them through without a word. They clumped then to one side of the rotunda, where they could hear the sound-plaque on its pedestal speaking to the kids: “The WPA was a partial response to the massive unemployment of the Great Depression. It gave work of benefit to society as a whole to writers and painters—and sculptors, such as those who executed the bronzes you see…”
The kids weren’t paying much attention. They were chattering, peering at the sculptures overhead, noticing the gift shop, racing to check its wares for candy and comics. Adults pursued them, struggling to keep the groups together. Glancing at the gift shop, Jim Brane winced at the noise and fingered the worrystone that dangled around his neck. Muffy Bowen did likewise, while Tom Cross pointed toward a hallway too small to have anything to do with the museum’s exhibits and said, “Peirce has his office down there. It’s quieter.”
“But we’re going downstairs,” said Freddy. “Giddyap. I want to see Porculata and the kids.”
As they passed through the hall of biosculptures, they noticed a new exhibit, a meter-wide niche in the wall, fronted with plate glass. “‘Facial Masques’?” Stopping, Tom read aloud the banner sign across the top of the window.
The exhibit was dominated by a large aquarium that seemed to hold nothing other than a few cloudy patches whose contours suggested isolated, ghostly faces. The resemblance was heightened by clear spots that seemed positioned to serve as eyes and mouths.
Behind the aquarium, as sensors registered their presence, a large veedo screen flickered to life to show a similar tank. An attractive woman stepped into position behind that tank, reached into the water, withdrew a sheet of translucent tissue, held it to her face, and smoothed it over her own skin. The clear spots became eye and mouth holes that matched perfectly her own eyes and mouth, and when she was done, the filmy mask was almost invisible, though it left her face pale. Now she picked up a rack clearly labeled “Command Lotions”—a similar rack sat beside the aquarium in front of the screen—and held it to reveal the dozen small bottles of clear fluid it held. She chose a bottle, opened it, and applied the small brush within its cap to her lips. They turned brilliant red.
Other bottles put color in her cheeks and around her eyes, and when she was done, lines of print replaced her image to explain that the “Facial Masque” was cultured skin and the command lotions were artificial hormones that controlled its pigmentation. “I’ve heard of this,” said Julia Templeton. “It’s new.” More print informed them that the Masque’s tissue rooted in the wearer’s bloodstream for its nourishment, and it could be designed to secrete various drugs, such as antibiotics. It also blocked solar ultraviolet.
“Is it permanent?” asked Jim.
Julia shook her head. “They say a woman can make several up in advance. You store them in the nutrient fluid.” She pointed at the aquarium in the window. “Then you just put on the face you wish.”
He snorted. “I hope you don’t…”
“Why not? It sounds good to me.” She patted her auburn hair with one hand. “And maybe someday they’ll have a version for hairdoes.”
“Me, too,” said Muffy, laughing. “It would save a lot of time.” She pointed at a small sign, a strip of wood mounted on a stand beside the aquarium. Its two lines of print said:
A General Bodies Product
Better Living Through Gengineering
Tom shook his head. “And Peirce thinks it’s art.”
“Why not?” said Muffy. “There’s brush, paint, canvas…”
“I’ve never heard of putting make-up in a museum. An art museum, anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.”
When they reached the small auditorium in the basement, they found the curator standing before the door, his hands up, palms out, saying to another throng of noisy children and harried shepherds: “Frederick is on a leave of absence. He’s not here. And his wife does not want to perform alone. I’m sorry.” He pointed at and straightened a sign that hung askew from the door. “But this exhibit really is closed.”
When Freddy laughed, the crowd turned as one to see who dared to defy authority. Then he yelled, “Knock it off, Frankie! I’m back, for awhile. So let’em in.”
The curator was delighted to see the pig, and his expression showed it. As the children yelled their own delight, he opened the door and said, “The next performance will begin immediately!”
“Sure,” said Freddy. “Just give me a few minutes with the family first.”
Peirce led Tom and the others backstage, where the gengineered musicians had their quarters, a single room with a thickly padded floor, cushions, a bathtub, a waste trough, and a booth for the caretaker. The caretaker of th
e moment was a young woman who wore over her black and red coverall the light blue vest of a museum volunteer. She was kneeling beside Porculata, murmuring gently, massaging oil into her tartan-patterned hide, while Baraboo and Barnum watched silently from cushions to one side of the room. The gleaming of their skins revealed that they had enjoyed similar attentions already.
The tableau held only as long as it took Freddy to yell, “Porkchop! Darling! I’m back! And the audience awaits!”
Instantly, a bagpipish blast set the caretaker back on her heels, wincing, her short, dark curls bouncing. Tom barely had time to notice that she wore a “Jan” nametag before Porculata shrieked, “Run! You don’t know what he’s like! My husband! He’s staring at your hams right now! Oh, Frederick!”
Jan glanced at her boss, capped her bottle of lotion, and retired quietly to her booth. Tom set Freddy down near his mate, who immediately cried, “You’re safe! Of course you are. But those maidens are waiting for you, and you’d better not try to deflower them the way you’d like to! I won’t stand for it! You save yourself for…”
A little later, while the genimals entertained their young audience with folk songs and calliope music, Tom and his friends sprawled on the apartment’s floor and cushions and told Peirce what had been happening. When they told him what Petra had said, that Jack must be planning to turn Muffy into a plant, he laughed. “I don’t think,” he said. “That your father could do more than a partial job of it.”
“But at the zoo…” said Julia Templeton.
“I know,” he said. “But there you’re dealing with animals. The basic infrastructure is much the same from species to species, especially within a single group like the mammals.”
“Plants are too different?” As Muffy Bowen spoke, Tom shivered. He knew that it was entirely possible to move at least some plant genes into humans. So did she, he knew, and when he looked at her she was grinning. He grinned back at her, but he said nothing.
“For a complete make-over, anyway. I think. You could probably give people chloroplasts. Those are the organelles that live inside plant cells and give them the ability to use sunlight for photosynthesis. Then we’d have green skin, and we could take a sunbath for lunch.”
He stopped and stared into space, his head cocked as if he were listening to the sounds of music and enthusiasm that penetrated from the auditorium next door. Finally, he said, “Actually, I’m surprised no one’s done it already. Some animals—corals and clams—have symbiotic algae in their cells now. We don’t have enough surface area to use photosynthesis for all our food—neither do they—but it could be a useful supplement, especially in Third World countries. They may lack water and food, but never sunlight.”
“What about endangered plants?” asked Tom. Like Julia, he was thinking of the zoo’s Endangered Species Replacement Program.
“It would be simpler just to do a gene replacement on a common plant.” Peirce hesitated. “Even with animals, the gene replacements would be simpler if we started with a related animal, not a human. Yes, we have a debt to endangered species, but…” He shrugged.
“Then there’s no real point to what they do at the zoo?” asked Muffy. “It’s just public relations?”
“The humane societies have pushed the legislation through. They say converting dogs or cats, say, would be cruel, just more exploitation. But we do things like that, don’t we? It’s a human thing.”
“So,” said Jim Brane, “is that ‘Facial Masque’ thing upstairs.”
Franklin Peirce laughed. “Speaking of PR! GB offered to donate it, and I thought, ‘Why not?’ Let’s put it on display now, without waiting for some future archeologist to dig one of the kits up.”
“And they wouldn’t put it in an art museum,” said Julia.
“If they’d even recognize it. It surely wouldn’t last as well as the Pharaohs’ cosmetic kits.” The ancient Egyptians had used ground-up minerals, chosen for their color, as cosmetics, and they had lasted without change for millennia.
“Go!” Porculata had said after the performance. “Go! Muffy’s safe, but the kidnappers are still out there and mark my words they’ll try again and you have to keep her safe. Tom too, of course. And watch out for those maidens.”
“But Porkchop!” Freddy had cried. “I want to stay with you! Besides, my stomach hurts!”
“Go, you hypochondriac. You have a job to do!”
Barnum and Baraboo, his sons, had twitched and sounded a note or two of calliopish sympathy, though he could not tell whether the sympathy was meant for him or for their mother. They had, of course, said nothing. They could not talk.
He had sighed. He had let Tom Cross pick him up. He had said, his tone dejected, “You should have brought the handcart in.” And they had left.
Now they were on their way back to the Farm. Jim was steering the Mack toward the expressway, but they had not yet left the museum’s urban neighborhood. The busy but clean streets had broader sidewalks and more litterbugs than elsewhere. The buildings were many-storied anthologies of offices and apartments. The shops were purveyors of expensive artworks, antiques, clothing, specialty foods, and more.
“Look at that,” said Muffy. She was pointing toward a shop window that bore the same “Facial Masques” banner they had already seen in the museum.
The Daisy Hill Truck Farm was an array of twenty large barns surrounded by white-fenced pastures. One of the barns was dedicated to the cattle that provided milk and meat for the growing trucks. One was the maternity ward. Still another was the nursery, swarming with baby trucks, or Macks, most of which resembled bulldogs. On its second floor were dormitories for the Farm’s apprentice truckers and apartments for its journeymen.
After dinner, Jim Brane led the rest toward the apartment he and Julia Templeton shared. They entered the puppy barn through a side door and climbed the stairs to a balcony that overlooked the dimly lit first floor. Undivided by walls, its broad expanse of concrete interrupted only by the pillars that supported the ceiling and floor above, this was where the young Macks grew toward useful size.
They leaned on the balcony’s sturdy railing, Freddy wrapped in Tom’s arms, Randy clinging to Muffy’s shoulder. Their backs were to the door to the living quarters, through which seeped the sounds of veedos, music, and conversation. Their eyes were on the floor below, noting the steel cages that kept the pups from mobbing visitors through the ground floor entries, the drainage grills that surrounded the bases of the pillars, the litterbugs that quietly patrolled the floor, cleaning up whatever wastes they had missed on earlier circuits. They were, however, helpless against the reek.
The puppies lay in sprawling heaps, nestled in straw, wind rowed against a wall, snorting, kicking, whining. They were small compared to Tige and Blackie, but they were large enough, Jim murmured to his boyhood friend, simultaneously to intimidate and to enthrall a young man, fresh out of high school, who had never seen them before. His Dad had brought him here, hoping the pups might appeal to him, that trucking might appeal, and that he might in fact discover here a vocation to draw him from the temptations of honeysucking. “They did,” he said, his voice seeming on the verge of a chuckle. “And I did. Just look at them.” They dwarfed ordinary, ungengineered puppies the way calves dwarfed bunny rabbits. Yet they were still puppies, and the human eye insisted on a scale that shrank the vast cavern of the barn to the size of a living room.
Tom grunted his appreciation of Jim’s thought. Julia nodded her agreement. Muffy said, “They’re too big for me. Randy’s plenty.” The spider meeped softly at this mention of her name, and Muffy petted her bristly pelt.
A draft, a sound, made them turn as the door behind them opened. Through it came a tall man, heavy-set, round face accentuated by a receding hairline. “Mike Nickers,” said Jim. He introduced Tom and Muffy and added, “He’s the one who signed me up.”
“And me,” said Julia. “Still recruiting?”
“We always need more truckers.” Nickers showed them the broad,
jovial smile of a salesman and gestured toward the floor below the balcony. “Look at the pups. There’s plenty of business, but even if there weren’t…” His expression grew more reflective for a moment. “If we can’t find apprentices for them, well…We can’t turn them loose. And no one would take one for a pet. So…”
“Dog food,” said Julia.
Nickers nodded. “It’s the only answer. And we have a dozen pups unspoken for.” He looked at Tom and Muffy.
Muffy shook her head immediately, but Tom thought about Nickers’ implied proposition. The man was a salesman, yes. And he was not above trying to hook a prospect with simple guilt. But did he want to be a trucker? Would it suit him as well as it did Jim? Or did he want to stay with Mr. Greengenes’ Appliance Garden, perhaps someday to run a Garden of his own?
Finally, he too shook his head. Nickers shrugged, said, “If you ever change your mind…” and turned toward the stairway. “There’s always pups. Not that we can afford to lose our trucks.” With the door half open, he looked back at Jim. “Think they’ll catch the thieves?”
The muscles of Jim’s jaw bunched visibly. “I wish I knew where to look.”
Not much later, Freddy and Randy lay side by side in one corner of a vacant room in the Farm’s dorm. A blanket covered the pig; the spider nestled in a fold of the fabric. The room also held a bed in which Tom lay on his back, with one arm curled around his mate. Muffy had one leg stretched out along his own. Both were naked. Her hair, its blackness invisible in the dark, curled over his cheek and tickled his nose.
Tom scratched the tickle. “It’s hard,” he said softly. He did not mean anything physical. “It’s hard to believe that you were kidnapped three days ago.” How close he had come to losing her!
“A little more,” said Muffy.
“One day of hunting for you, one for the zoo, and one for Kimmer’s dad.”
“And here we are.” She added, “You saved me, three times.”
“Randy did, and Jim too,” he corrected her.
“And I’ll never touch that honeysuckle wine again. I’m clamping off.”
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