She finally broke the silence by punching the terminal’s “Total” key. Then, to their surprise, she doubled the result. When Tom opened his mouth to protest, she said, “Pay up, and get out.” Her voice was a nasal whine, thin and cold.
“I should call a cop.”
“Not in this town.”
Someone snickered quietly, as if thinking that what Tige had done might be enough to make any sort of justice difficult for them to achieve. Tom had to agree, though he knew there was more to the problem than that. From all they had seen, everyone in this town, cops and all, hated or feared anyone who smelled of gengineering. Yet that could not be all the story, for no one seemed to use bioforms of any sort, even, Tom was willing to bet, within the privacy of their homes. Were they all Engineers? Then why did it seem that they did not dare to express their ideology openly, with all the panoply of slogans and banners and impromptu genimal roasts that were everyday routine in the city? Had someone terrified them of gengineering and gengineers? How? And why?
He sighed. Surely, the answer to all these questions was the same as the one answer they sought. The kidnappers. Perhaps his father. But no one would help. They would have to prowl the region, looking for suspicious places, hunting maybe until they happened to see a Bioblimp carrying kidnappers to or from their base, and then homing on the location. They had no other hope, and he could imagine that the hunt might take them days or weeks.
Tom paid the bill and hoped that they could find, not too far away, another town, one with less bigotry or fear within its soul.
“You didn’t get anything for Tige,” Jim said. “We’re out of biscuits.”
“All they had,” said Julia, “was regular dog food. Crumbs, as far as he’s concerned.”
“There’s more than enough here,” said Muffy. “We can give him the leftovers.” As she spoke, she was spreading peanut butter on six slices of white bread. Her knees held the checkered tablecloth Julia had brought from the Farm flat against the efforts of a small breeze.
“The next town should be different,” said Tom. They had stopped to eat the first time they saw a broad grassy spot beside the road. Pinkley was out of sight a kilometer or so behind them, and they had no intention of returning.
Muffy stacked the slices of bread to make a single multidecker sandwich, adding one more slice to top it off. When she offered it to Tige, the Mack only sniffed. One of the things Jim had trained him to do was to ignore offerings of food until Jim said, “Go, boy.” The Engineers were not at all above trying to poison a Mack or other vehicle. When he finally said the words, Tige opened his maw and Muffy tossed the massive sandwich in.
“Hi!” The single word sounded as if its speaker had a tongue too large for his mouth. It was thick and slow, drawn out.
“Look at the dummy,” said Freddy, his voice soft enough to keep the words from carrying. He was nestled in high grass, leaning against a small boulder. The handcart was still in the truck cab. Not far away, Randy was hunting for prey.
“You really are a pig, aren’t you?” said Kimmer with a disgusted expression.
“And he’s really a dummy.” Freddy was unrepentant. “Look at him.”
They looked. What they saw was a coarse-featured man, standing beside an ancient fat-tired bicycle. The bike’s rusty handlebars supported a basket full of bottles, cans, and assorted rubbish. Thrust through the wires of the basket was a sturdy forked stick a yard long.
Perhaps in his thirties, he was unevenly shaven, his hair ragged as if he cut it himself, his too-large clothes a much patched mixture of styles and colors. For pants, he wore the bottom half of a pink coverall, its waist cinched in with a length of rope. His torso was layered with a long-tailed shirt, a vest, and a denim jacket. From him emanated an odor of sweat, unsurprising on such a warm day, and a faint but distinctive effluvium of ammonia.
“I’m Anse,” he said. Then he seemed to notice where they were looking. He stretched a hand toward his basket and made an awkward groping, patting gesture. “I pick stuff up. Bottles. Get a quarter for’em.”
Tom winced. Deposits were twice what Anse was getting. He had to be cashing in his bottles and cans at the same convenience store that had overcharged them.
When no one said a word, Anse smiled, showing stained and broken teeth, and added, “Pick berries too. Good patch. Over there.” He pointed clumsily, his thumb jutting at right angles to his index finger, toward the shrubbery on the other side of the road.
Finally, Muffy said, “Are you hungry?”
“Sure!” Anse’s eyes opened wide as if he were astonished. Perhaps, thought Tom Cross, he was. The good citizens of Pinkley had not impressed him with their generosity of spirit.
Anse rolled his bicycle closer, drew his stick out of his basket, and used it to prop the bike upright. Only then did Tom realize that the bike had no kickstand and that Anse’s mind, though obviously retarded, was far from useless. He had not wanted to have to pick up his roadside gleanings anew every time he parked his bike, and he had devised a perfectly workable solution to the problem.
As soon as Anse had finished bracing his bike, he turned and held out a hand. When nothing touched it, he blinked, shifted his feet, and aimed the hand toward Peirce. Peirce shook it gravely, and when Anse offered it to Tom, he did the same. The wrinkles of the knuckles were black with grime, and the nails were bitten off as close as possible to the quick. The stickiness of the palm, Tom thought, had to come from whatever foods and beverages had been in the cans and bottles Anse retrieved. At least, there was no odor of honeysuckle wine about the man.
When Anse held out his hand once more, Muffy laid in it a thick sandwich of cheese and meat. Beside her, Kimmer offered a can of soda.
The sandwich was half gone when Anse gulped, cleared his mouth, and said, “They’s all a buncha b’gots.” Then he sat down, cross-legged, by the side of the tablecloth and took another bite.
“What do you mean?” asked Jim.
Anse didn’t answer, but Freddy said, “I bet they don’t let him in the diner either. Or the grocery store.”
Anse nodded eagerly. Then he pointed at Freddy and said, “I seen a lotta gen’als. That’s a new one.” He did not seem impressed by the fact that the pig had spoken; his unspoken question seemed clearly: “What is it?”
“He’s a garbage disposal,” said Tom.
“A musician, too,” said Freddy. He proved his claim by singing the opening verse of “The Duchess and the Student.” Tom joined in on the refrain:
“The Duchess was a-dressing, a-dressing for the ball,
But then she saw the student making water on the wall,
With his bloody big dingle-dangle swinging proud and free,
And never would he stop till it was ohh-ver!
Hanging down!
Hanging down!
Swinging free!
Swinging free!
And never would he stop till it was ohh-ver!”
“I never heard that b’fore,” said Anse. “Sing the rest!”
“Maybe later,” said Tom.
Anse swallowed the last bite of his sandwich. Julia held out the box of chocolate cookies they had bought. He accepted it with a grunt of pleasure, extracted a cookie, and put it in his mouth. When he had washed it down with soda, he asked, “Lookin’ for sump’n?”
Why, Tom wondered, had he asked that question? Was what they were doing so obvious? Was there no other reason for a group of humans and genimals to be in the Pinkley vicinity? He snorted gently to himself. Maybe so, if the local attitude toward gengineering and its products were widely known.
“We’re looking for his mother,” said Kimmer, pointing at Tom. “She was kidnapped.”
Tom sighed. “We caught one of the kidnappers, but his buddies got away.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “In a Bioblimp. The one we caught, we made him talk.”
Anse grinned broadly, bobbed his head several times, and used his hands to wring an invisible neck.
“Not that w
ay.”
“Close enough,” said Freddy. “You scared the litter out of him.”
“Yeah. And he talked.” Tom nodded slowly. “Said their base was near Pinkley. In a valley in the hills.” He looked Anse in the eye. “And we think they’re gengineers.”
Anse nodded back at him and made a noise that suggested that he knew just what they were talking about. Then he drained his can of soda, hefted it in his hand, and eyed his bicycle and its basket. When no one objected, he climbed awkwardly to his feet and added the can to his collection. Then he looked toward the small pile of debris that remained from their meal. Beside it were half a dozen more cans.
“Go ahead,” said Julia.
He beamed. He said, “I know.” He gathered up the cans and took them to his bike.
“What do you know?” asked Jim.
He seemed to ignore the question. “Why they’nap her?”
“No idea,” said Tom.
“Bull-litter,” said Freddy. “We think they’re gonna turn her into a potted plant.”
“Honeysuckle wine!” Anse giggled.
“You’ve seen what happens to the honey bums?” asked Peirce. Anse nodded and stepped into the trees that bordered their picnic ground. When they turned to look, he had one hand on the trunk of a small tree. As they peered, they began to make out the vague lines of arms and legs and face merged into the bark-covered column. “My God!” said Peirce. “I would love to…”
“Too much wine,” said Anse with a grin as broad as any he had yet shown them. Then he added, “Cops find her?”
“They’re looking,” said Muffy. “But so are we.”
Anse was silent while he walked back to his bike, lifted it off its support, and thrust the forked stick through the basket once more. Then he said, speaking slowly, “I know funny place. Peeked, y’know. Through th’ bushes.” To show them what he meant, he held one hand in front of his face and looked at them through the fingers. “Top of hill. What you want, maybe.”
“Where is it?” Tom tried to keep the tide of urgency that swept through him from his voice, but his words still sounded demanding. Muffy laid one hand flat on his forearm as if to calm him.
Fortunately, his tone did not seem to alarm Anse. “That way,” the man said, aiming one hand down the road in the direction they had been going before they had stopped to eat. He indicated a left turn and hesitated while he seemed to struggle over how to tell them where to go. Finally, he gave up, let his arm drop, shrugged, and said, “Follow me.”
He did not look back at them as he swung one leg over his bike and began to pedal.
* * *
CHAPTER 14
When Anse led them at his labored, pedaling pace onto a little-used, weed-grown dirt road, Jim Brane said he thought their destination must be some old farm. The thought was confirmed by grey utility poles and decaying fence posts, festooned with rusty barbed wire, that jutted from the roadside tangle of brush laced together by honeysuckle vines.
However, said Tom Cross, the farm must surely be abandoned, and hence a perfect hideout for kidnappers. Look at this road, and remember, farms now covered less land than even a century ago. The reason was the triumph of the gengineers, who had made it possible to grow steaks on trees, ham on bushes, almost anything in vats. Some food even grew as a side-benefit of one’s house. The beanstalk that supported the Brane family’s home was so prolific that it had supplied the neighbors as well. Tom could recall his mother coming home from a visit with a single bean over her shoulder, like a Frenchwoman carrying a loaf of bread. Both boys had been thoroughly sick of the immense vegetables. The two men laughed at the memory.
The “hill” that Anse had mentioned proved to be no more than a low ridge studded with vine-draped oak trees. “There,” said Anse. He had come as far as he would go, and he stood beside his ancient bicycle, pointing. “Climb up,” he said. “You see.”
“Where does this road go?” asked Tom, but Anse just shrugged, climbed back on his bike, and poised himself to leave. His mission was finished; perhaps he sensed that only trouble could come if he lingered. However, before he pushed down on his pedal and headed back the way they had come, he paused. “Finish th’ song?”
Tom had a similar feeling that they stood on the verge of danger, but he was not free to flee. Nor did he want to make much noise. He shook his head. “Not now.”
Anse nodded, whispered, “Shhh!” and left. Tom barely noticed his departure. If this was indeed the kidnappers’ base, his mother was imprisoned here. He must, if he possibly could, free her and bring her home, though whether to life inside the pumpkin house or in the soil of the yard he did not know. He also wished revenge for the kidnapping that had begun this entire mystery, and an end to the possibility that it could happen again.
He turned to look at the others. Muffy was clearly with him; she had, after all, been kidnapped herself, and she had a personal stake in the outcome. Jim wanted those who had stolen his truck; as well, Jim was loyal to his old friend. Julia’s stake was Jim, but also the potential threat to her own truck.
Like Muffy, Kimmer too had been kidnapped. The pig was simply loyal. Franklin Peirce, the curator of the museum in which Freddy lived and sang, had joined them out of friendship. Only then had he met Kimmer, and she him, so that now their attraction to each other bound them to the group and its quest.
He did not bother to ask whether anyone wished to follow through. He simply led the way through the brush and up the ridge until all could scooch and peer, much as Anse had said he had peered, into the shallow, oblong bowl of a valley beyond. The ground, once cleared, had grown up to small trees and bushes. Through the tangle of trunks and branches was visible…
“That is no country farmhouse,” said Jim. His voice was deliberately hushed. None of them wished to be noticed.
“There used to be one,” said Muffy Bowen. Randy was clinging to her shoulder. “I see the cellar hole.”
“But what is that?” asked Tom. Automatically, hardly noticing what he was doing, he brushed away the bits of leaf and bark and spiderweb that had stuck to his sweaty skin.
“What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Freddy quietly. “I’m sitting on a rock, and my butt hurts, and…” Tom had propped him where a curving tree root bulged above the ground to provide support, but that was below the crest of the ridge and the pig could see nothing at all.
“Sorry,” said Kimmer. She reached for the genimal.
“I’ll help,” said Franklin Peirce. Together they lifted Freddy to where he could see the interior of the valley.
“Mechin’…!” The pig’s voice was awed.
The structure before them was the size of a two-story house. Half hidden by the vegetation as it was, it was clearly in the shape of an elderly human head. The chin was buried in the ground. The mouth, framed by parenthetic folds of cheek, was obviously the main entrance, for just behind the gaping lips and teeth, they could see wooden doors. From the ear that faced them, a smaller door opened onto a broad wooden balcony. The widow’speaked white hair resembled thatch and presumably served the same function, although toward the back of the giant head they could see that it was trimmed to leave exposed an expanse of glass that looked for all the world like a built-in greenhouse’s roof and arching wall. They could make out the green of vegetation behind the glass.
“They didn’t build that,” said Julia Templeton. “They couldn’t have. They had to grow it!”
Peirce laughed gently. “Why not?” he said. “It even makes sense, though BRA would throw a fit. I’ll bet the eyes are windows, and the irises—I wonder if they actually work, like shutters?”
“What about the nostrils?” asked Kimmer. They could all hear emanating from the house a low hum that might be fans. There was also a faint floral odor that did not seem to come from any of the plants around them. Certainly, it was nothing like the scent of honeysuckle. “Air conditioners?”
Peirce laughed again. “Why not? It’s hot enough to need them. Bu
t there’s a better joke.” When the others looked at him expectantly, he added, “It’s a portrait, really.”
“You’re the curator of an art museum,” said Muffy with an impatient sigh. “So it has to be a portrait of an artist. Who?”
“Frank Lloyd Wright.” When they all looked blank, he added, “He was a twentieth-century architect.”
Tom Cross shrugged—the name meant nothing to him, nor to the others, judging from their still blank expressions—and turned his attention back to the head house. The grass surrounding it looked as if it had never been mowed. The only path stretched a short distance from the lips to an area of bare dirt where, presumably, Bioblimps set down and unloaded whatever people, supplies, and kidnap victims they carried. The road on which they had approached the ridge dead-ended to one side of the landing zone. They could see where it crossed a low portion of the ridge to their right.
“I don’t see anything moving,” said Julia. “Do you think anyone is home?”
They watched for half an hour longer, until they were convinced that the house was empty, or that at least it held no horde of kidnappers. “There can’t,” said Muffy. “There can’t be any more than one or two people in there. If there were more, we’d hear them talking, or see them when they stepped outside. Let’s go in.”
“Let’s not,” said Freddy. “What if that mouth closes when we knock? I don’t like the look of those teeth!”
Tom took the pig from Peirce and Kimmer and said, “Shut up.” Then he led the way toward the lips of the head house. They were halfway across the valley when Peirce stepped to one side and said, “What’s this?”
He was inspecting a small shrub with brassy leaves and oblong seed pods. A row of two dozen identical shrubs stretched along a narrow path. Higher shrubbery and small trees blocked the line of sight to the house.
Kimmer picked a seed pod. “It’s heavy,” she said.
Tom did the same. The pod’s surface seemed normal plant tissue, like that of a pea pod, differing only in color. But the weight…He squeezed the pod with his free hand, and it opened, revealing seven small, suspiciously yellow, metallic nodules. “Gold,” said Freddy.
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