Greenhouse

by Thomas A Easton

  “You didn’t show me this,” said Kimmer Alvidrez. “You’re right. He was a lot like you. A tech-freak who wouldn’t wash.”

  “Gee, thanks,” said her father. “But you’re missing the point. He was a loner, a misfit.” He paused. “So was I.”

  His daughter looked him in the eye and patted his shoulder. “Adaptation,” she said. “It worked out pretty well for you. But I wonder what happened to him?”

  He waved a hand to shut her up as Tom Cross scrolled the screen ahead. For awhile then, no one interrupted.

  But I got frustrated at times. Everybody would be talking about me, laughing, sneering. And I was getting straight A’s, since I didn’t have any social life to distract me. So they were jealous, too. They had plenty of social life. I would see them under bushes, on couches in the dorm lounge, through windows. Animals. All of them. They were pure animals. And I thought that life would be so much more peaceful if they were all plants. But that was just a fantasy. An idle wish.

  Hmmm.

  The fantasy didn’t last. That was about when my bud began to enlarge. It soon reached downright impressive proportions—or they would have been impressive if I had dared to show anyone. But it wasn’t comfortable. The leafy wrapping around the bud grew too, but not quite so fast, and it felt the way your fingertip does when you wrap a rubber band around it. Swollen, you know? And tight, and hot, and God! it hurt.

  It didn’t last long. One day, the leaves simply separated, peeled back, and the pressure was off. That was when I found out what had been happening to my testicles.

  You look curious. I’ll show you. See? They’re pollen sacs, and what I’ve got is an anther.

  I figured the sacs would open in a day or two, and then, for the rest of my life, I’d be a walking powder puff. The least movement, and—Poof!

  I suppose women would find your, er, apparatus rather alarming.

  Well, sure. But, like I said before, staying away from them wouldn’t be anything new. The problem had always been getting anywhere near them, and by then I was used to the situation. My solitariness was so much a habit, it might as well have been a choice.

  Actually, I did wonder if I should amputate it right then and there, but I decided to put that extreme measure off. First, I would see if I could contain the pollen with wrappings. Then I would have to see if my anatomical uniqueness was good for anything.

  I was also reluctant to cut because it was beautiful. It was the prettiest part of me! And it was my own doing. I was proud of it. But I still had sense enough not to wave it around in public.

  But they caught me anyway, eventually. That’s why the company insisted that I see you.

  Tell me about it.

  Well, the pollen sacs opened, just as I expected. And they put out quite a lot of pollen, beautiful yellow stuff with a powerful musky odor. I wondered what effect it would have if I could release it in a crowded room. But I girded my loins. I wrapped my anther up, and I kept it hidden.

  Eventually I got my degree and found an apartment and was able to wash whenever I wished. That was when I got the job with the company. I was presentable enough, finally, and I knew my stuff. And it didn’t take me long at all to become one of their best gengineers. Hey, I’m the guy who developed the goldfish bush!

  I have one of those at home! Got it for my daughter. She loves it.

  It was basically just a reversal of what I had done to myself. I moved the whole goldfish genome into a rhododendron and rigged it to grow not flowers, but genuine goldfish. It was tricky, but when I was done, you could pluck a flower, drop it into a bowl of water, and watch it swim away. Or just plant the bush beside a fishpond.

  But then I made my mistake. I said I was used to solitude? I was too damned used to it! I didn’t stink anymore, I had a decent job and a decent income, and best of all I was a hit with the company. Some of the women around the lab began to eye me. They approached me. They invited me to lunch and dinner and parties.

  And every time, every single time, I broke into a cold sweat. My heart raced. I blushed. I stammered. It felt like I was looking over the edge of a high building. And that was without even thinking of my anther. I was ashamed of myself.

  Kimmer laughed. “I guess you weren’t that bad off, Daddy. You got married, after all.”

  “Shhh,” said Alvidrez. Neither one of them said a word about where her mother and his wife was now.

  I understand. This happens to many people who are misfits when young. They grow older, they begin to fit in, and they suffer from panic attacks. You must understand that although your reaction might have been a little stronger than the usual, it was entirely natural. You had built your self-image on your isolation, and these contacts were threatening both. They were threatening you.

  Fortunately, this is the sort of situation that therapy can help. We have a very good record with realigning basic programming, though we cannot manipulate the mind anywhere near as well as you can the genes.

  That is not the problem they sent me here for. I rebuffed them all. I repulsed them. I turned cold and curt and abrupt and insulting, and I holed up in my lab all alone, all alone with my amaryllis.

  Amaryllis?

  That’s right. I didn’t neglect my work, but I did begin to look at myself in connection with it. I remembered the odor of my pollen, and I ran an experiment or two. If I wrapped my anther tightly enough so not even the odor escaped, the women left me alone. If I didn’t, I had to get downright nasty. And that gave me the answer I needed to escape their attentions. I soon had a cell culture that produced the active ingredients. Chanel bought it, and the company gave me a raise, though they didn’t know where the cells came from.

  And then…Well, I found that a fairly small change in the amaryllis genome would let my pollen fertilize it. After all, the stuff was already part amaryllis.

  I was delighted when my own genes showed up in the next generation. The amaryllis still looked like an amaryllis, but the blossom had changed until it actually looked like a crude sketch of a human head. So I pollinated it again, and the next generation looked even more human.

  That was when my supervisor walked into the lab. There I was, with my pants unfastened and my anther in my hand, shaking it over a flower in a big pot. He said, “What’s the matter, Jack? Too much coffee this morning?”

  And then he got close enough to see what I was holding. And to see the blossom on the plant. In a minute or two, he got his voice back, picked up the pot, said, “As soon as you can pull yourself together, Jack, I want to see you in my office,” and walked out of my lab.

  By the time I got to his office, about ten minutes later, he had half a dozen mucky-mucks with him. And they all agreed that I had gone too far. The anther was no problem—after all, gengineers play with themselves all the time, and they knew it; hell, half of them were gengineers, and one of them had actually made patches of skin over her cheekbones grow embedded butterfly wings; very exotic, and it’ll be on the market any day now. But the amaryllis was another matter. Moving human genes around like that was verboten. And if I didn’t agree to see you, I was out of a job on the spot. It didn’t matter a bit how good a gengineer I was. What mattered, they figured, was how much trouble I could get the company into.

  And what am I supposed to do for you?

  I don’t know. Convince me that playing with human genesis wrong? Rid me of a god complex?

  Megalomania?

  Whatever you call it. Or just give me a note saying that I’ve seen you and you think I’m sane enough to be loose on the streets.

  I suspect the best thing would be to help you learn to form normal relationships with women. Do you want that?

  Wouldn’t the anther get in the way?…Look—my hands are shaking already.

  I see. But can’t you restore your penis to normal? Another virus, programmed to replace or cancel out the amaryllis genes?

  I suppose so, but…

  Would you want to?

  No!

  I see. />
  That all happened two months ago, you know. It took that long before you could see me. And in that time, I sold the amaryllis to Burpee. They’ve named it the “Alice” variety, and it’ll be in the spring catalog. They’ll have plenty of’em available, thanks to tissue culture and forced growth. Here, I have a bulb in my pocket. Just put it in a pot, leave the top sticking out of the dirt, and water it.

  It looks perfectly normal. Why “Alice”?

  After the flowers with human faces in the old story.

  They don’t know why it looks so human, but they love it, and they’ve paid me a bundle already, with more to come. I don’t really need the job anymore. And I have everything I need in my apartment. Plenty of amaryllises, and I can pollinate them there as well as anywhere.

  I’m afraid the hour is up. Next week?

  SESSION TRANSCRIPT: SESSION 2

  PATIENT: Jack D. Rivard, 832-076-1074

  OCCUPATION: Genetic Engineer

  DATE: May 17, 2053

  I was disappointed when you didn’t comeback last summer.

  Ah, well, I didn’t figure you would be able to do much for me, you know? You suggested that I change myself back, and I didn’t want any of that. But now! Your follow-up notice came, just like the one from the dentist, and I…Jeezus! You gotta help me! Anything!

  I lost the job, of course. I expected that, but like I told you, I had the Burpee money, and I very quickly had all the consulting work I could handle. Pretty soon, I had enough money to move out to the suburbs. I found a nice place, a little chalet-type house mounted on a giant beanstalk. There’s a pumpkin house next door.

  I moved in, with my amaryllis plants in their pots. And every night, I pollinated them. And that’s the problem.

  What do you mean?

  I can’t stop!

  I mean, it’s become a compulsion. Just as I expected, every generation of these amaryllises has more human genes, more of my genes. When I gave you that bulb, they were flowers that looked like they had faces. Right? Did you plant it?

  Of course. It was quite impressive.

  Dr.‘s subvoc: Though Emma made me throw it out. Said it reminded her of child molesting.

  They’re not the same anymore. Now they look like real women. Almost. Life-sized. Human life-sized. Pale stems wrapped in green leaves that fold down when you approach them. The stems curve here and here, and this looks like tits, and the flower at the top…I’ve got blondes, redheads, brunettes, whatever you like. And they never say a word. They just stand there, waiting for me to shake my anther.

  But somewhere along the line they picked up the odor the company sold to Chanel. I got the gene for that from the plants in the first place. But then my cells modified it somehow, and now it’s back in the plants, and they’ve modified it some more.

  And every time I come into the room, they pump it into the air.

  Pheromones!

  And I can’t help myself! I strip down and I grab my anther and I shake it and I shake it and I…

  Jack!

  Thanks, Doctor. Anyway, they want my pollen. They demand it! And I have to shake out a helluva lot of it before they’re satisfied. Or before they run out of pheromone. I usually turn on some music before I get started, and then I dance. Exercise, right? That’s why I’m in such great shape. Not an ounce of fat.

  But it’s grinding me down, Doctor. I can’t take it much longer.

  Then perhaps it’s time to think again about reversing your own modifications. Or—you’d still respond to the pheromones, wouldn’t you? Maybe you should get rid of the amaryllises.

  Oh, no! They’re not intelligent, you know. They’re just plants, they have no brains at all, and they don’t know what I’m doing. They don’t know I’m working on a virus to take away their pheromones. A deodorant virus.

  The only problem is finding the time. The closer I get, the more insistent they seem to become. Their appetites!

  But I’m getting there. I am! And when I’m done they’ll be perfect flowers of their sex. They’ll be lovely! And I’ll have their demands under control. I’ll pollinate them only when I want to!

  And they’ll never criticize you, call you names, deny you…

  Right. They’ll just sit there in their pots, their fronds unfurled around their feet. They’ll be the decorations they should be.

  Do you remember what I recommended last summer? I said the best thing might be to help you learn to form normal relationships with women. But…

  You don’t think I can, now? I don’t want to!

  Ahhhh. I suspect that you have missed something important.

  Like what?

  You say your amaryllises are mindless plants. But you also say that every generation has more and more of your human genes. And already, clearly, they have enough of a nervous system to respond to your presence. And with the pheromone, they are resisting, denying, your attempts to control them.

  Are you suggesting that they have brains after all? Minds? Wills? That they release the pheromone deliberately? That they are trying to make me make them more human? Or just to stop me from completing the new virus?

  Isn’t that a thought that you should entertain? They may already be so much like women that they are not controllable. And soon, in another generation or two, their human component may be so great that it will be immoral even to try.

  You don’t understand. You don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re just plants! They can’t possibly do any more than look like humans.

  Certainly, there’s no way they can possibly control me. Not even with pheromones.

  Where do you keep them?

  Most of them are in the living room.

  Are there any in your lab?

  Just one.

  Then I think…

  Uh-uh. I know what you’re thinking, and it’s impossible. It’s just a plant! It couldn’t possibly register what I’m doing in there, much less pass the word to the gals in the other room.

  Do you realize how you speak of them?

  Oh, hell, Doctor. You don’t understand. It’s just a figure of speech.

  Actually, I wonder why I ever bothered to come back here. I don’t know why I expected you to understand what I’m going through. I…

  You don’t have to leave, you know. Your hour isn’t up.

  I’ve gotta go, Doctor. I really do. If they’ll give me just a little time tonight, I can finish up that virus.

  I’ll let you know how it works out.

  PATIENT: Jack D. Rivard, 832-076-1074

  OCCUPATION: Genetic Engineer

  FILE CLOSED June 15, 2054

  No return visits

  Follow-up notices returned, marked “No forwarding address.”

  Tom Cross sighed. It was done. He knew something now of why he was so different from other men. He knew far more than he had ever dreamed of knowing about his biological father. He knew him, he felt, almost as well as he knew himself, or Muffy, certainly far, far better than he knew Joe-Dee Alvidrez. And he felt sorry for the man. He had, it seemed, bitten off more than he could chew. He had, perhaps, been destroyed by his own creation. He had…

  Muffy Bowen echoed his sigh. “Then…” she said. “This means our Alice…” She meant the flower in their apartment, the one he had found on the floor after her kidnapping. “In a way, she’s really your half-sister. He was her father too!”

  He nodded.

  Freddy giggled and sang, “Shakin’ my anther…!”

  Tom scowled at the pig. “You want me to drop you? That has to be a coincidence.”

  “We’ve been neglecting the Alice, haven’t we?” said Muffy. “We haven’t been home in…I bet she needs watering.”

  Tom nodded again. Then he said, musingly, “It looks like Peirce was wrong.”

  “What did he say?” asked Alvidrez.

  Tom explained. “He thought no gengineer would be able to do much in the way of converting a human to a plant. But Dad—Jack—gave himself that anther, and…He also made q
uite a bit of progress toward converting those amaryllises into humans.” He said nothing about himself.

  “Then I suppose,” said Jim Brane, “that he really could be thinking of turning Muffy into a potted plant.” Muffy shuddered at his words. “And your mother was right.”

  “How could she be?” said Tom. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “She’s a drunk! A honey bum!”

  “And there’s absolutely no evidence that Jack is behind it,” said Muffy.

  “Except for the flower pots,” said Jim.

  “You’re right,” said Tom. “But that’s not much help. They’re probably just coincidence. More coincidence.”

  “They didn’t have shipping labels addressed to Jack Rivard,” said Muffy.

  “I wish,” said Alvidrez. “I wish I could have found something more current. Like where he is now. But…” He shrugged. “If it’s not in the databases…”

  “We’ll just have to hope that they’ve finished bothering us,” said Tom.

  “Or that they’ll try again,” said Freddy. “And this time, tell us where to look.”

  “What will you do now?” asked Alvidrez.

  “I have no idea,” said Tom Cross. “Wait for Freddy to be right, I suppose. Or…”

  “Can I go with you?” asked Kimmer.

  “No!” said Tom.

  “There’s nowhere to go,” said Muffy Bowen. “For now, except home.”

  “But I’m pretty good with computers,” she said. “And if you need to get into them for anything…”

  “She’s right,” said her father.

  Tom shook his head and said, “No,” again. “It’s bad enough that we’re at risk. I wouldn’t want them to get you again, too.”

  “It’s my choice,” she said. “I want to catch them just as much as you do. They snatched me too, remember.”

  “No.” He was adamant.

  “Yes,” said Muffy. “There’s plenty of room in the Mack’s cab.”

  “It’s going to get crowded,” said Jim. “It’s just a cab. We didn’t think we’d need a van back today.”