Greenhouse

by Thomas A Easton

  “Even if there get to be very many of the honey bums,” said Kimmer.

  “Fire,” said Julia.

  Freddy added, “The herbicide those boobs carry in their jet.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. Then Jack said slowly, “Will you…?”

  Muffy shook her head. At the end of a traditional story, the heroes would surely destroy the villains in a blaze of glory. But the amaryllis ladies were not truly villains. They had their dreams, and those dreams opposed them to the fully human world. But they were not evil. Those who were were now captives in the greenhouse. When she looked at Kimmer, the other one among them whose rude kidnapping had begun the quest that led them here, she saw agreement.

  Tom nodded his acceptance of her judgment. “The Engineers,” he said. “And many more. Everyone who is scared of change. They will want to destroy you.”

  Jack and the amaryllis nodded slowly, simultaneously. “Yes. You are right, of course. We must stay out of sight. Be quiet. Bide our time. Grow more human. Go, then. Take your mother. And me.” He pointed at the amaryllis that supported Tom’s mother. The “me” he meant was that of the plant, of the mind that controlled his speech, not that of the voicebox. No one misunderstood him.

  “No more kidnappings?” said Muffy. “No more attempts to turn us all into plants?” The honeysuckle was quite enough, for it would keep on acting until and unless some human gengineer found a way to stop it. She wondered who they could tell, other than BRA, who might have a chance. Perhaps Peirce would know.

  Jack shook his head, and once more Tom and Jim bent to move the heavy ceramic pot toward the house’s entrance. As it began to slide, Jack said, “I will help your mother grow. Maintain the circuits and the flexibility. Help her speak. Then she will again. Again be happy as she was before. She will also tell what happens here.”

  “How can she?” asked Muffy.

  “She knew before, just a little. Honeysuckle vines link root to root. They are our link to everywhere. Sensors, yes. One-way is best. But also telegraph, with less efficiency. In the sap. One virus carries honeysuckle genes. Another carries memory signals. Coded in its RNA nucleic acid. Just water us with honeysuckle wine.”

  And that, thought Muffy, must explain the song. No songwriter had ever learned of Jack directly, or from his bosses or coworkers or psychiatrist, nor from the psychiatrist’s computer. One had, sometime, somewhere, drunk honeysuckle wine and so tapped some knowledge of the amaryllis ladies, their creator, and their lives. As with Petra’s forecast of Muffy’s fate, that knowledge had been incomplete, confused, but it had been enough for inspiration.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 17

  The Bioblimp in which the kidnappers had arrived was not as large as the one Peter Barcano had loaned them. Its cargo pouches were far too small to hold Tige. But its gasbag held enough hydrogen to lift the Mack, and the crew pod was the standard design for moving vans. A cupboard held a coil of heavy rope, and the pod’s outer wall bore a number of cleats and ring-bolts. Movers used them, and the rope, to handle objects too bulky for the cargo pockets.

  Jim Brane used them in the same way. Once the pot containing Petra Cross and the amaryllis lady was safely ensconced in the pod, he wove a sling of rope beneath his truck and anchored the web to the pod’s attachment points. Then, once he had lifted the Bioblimp into the air, he commanded its tentacles to curl protectively around his Mack.

  It was a strange sight that left the valley in which the amaryllis ladies lived with Jack Rivard, their creator and slave. Above, the swollen, gas-filled bulb of a gengineered jellyfish, on its side the stylized sailing vessel of a moving company. Beneath, nested in a web of ropes and tentacles, a giant bulldog, eyes rolling nervously, mouth drooling, legs dangling. Between, covering the Bioblimp’s mouth, the pod, a flattened teardrop built of lightweight plastic and metal, a compartment for crew and a housing for the engine that turned the propellor mounted to the rear, at the narrow end of the teardrop. Visible through the windows set in the sides and front of the pod were Jim, acting as the pilot, and his mate and fellow trucker Julia Templeton. Standing behind them were Tom Cross and his mate, Muffy Bowen. Toward the rear of the crew compartment was the pot that held Tom’s mother, Petra, and her botanical companion. Staring alternately at this pair and at each other were Franklin Peirce and Kimmer Alvidrez. Freddy the pig was propped on a bench to the side. Randy the spider roamed the narrow compartment, hunting for edible vermin.

  Drawing rapidly away ahead of them winged the Robin Redbreast in which the BRA agents had arrived. It was empty. After saying that they would not need it again, Julia had set its control computer to return it to its base.

  Muffy pointed out the window. If they bent forward a bit and peered downward, they could see Tige’s ear, the hair along its edge fluttering in the wind of their flight. But she was pointing farther forward. “We weren’t that far from Pinkley,” she said, almost shouting to be heard above the throaty roar of the engine.

  “The road bent,” said Jim. He too pointed, his finger tracing the line they had traveled with Tige.

  Pinkley itself was quiet, the shadows of its peaked roofs and steeples long in the early morning light. There were two cars in the lot of the diner that had closed in their faces. “Do you think the supermarket will be open today?” Tommy’s words and the ensuing laughter bore just a touch of grimness. Their success—they had found both his mother and his biological father, and they had discovered the reasons for Muffy’s kidnapping, and for the attempts on the rest of them; they had even learned the why of honeysuckle wine and the taking root of honey bums—could not make them forget their rejection.

  The flight homeward did not last long. The engine on this Bioblimp drove them westward through the air far more rapidly than the winds had so recently carried them into the east. By lunchtime, they could see the barns and pastures of the Daisy Hill Truck Farm, where they had left Ralph, Petra’s husband and the man Tom Cross had grown up calling his father.

  “Did you get her?” Ralph stood among truckers and Farm workers, anxiety plain upon his face. Tom was leaning out the door of the Bioblimp’s crew pod, watching as Jim undid the ropes that had helped keep Tige from falling into Lake Michigan and Julia controlled the tentacles, shifting them from their burden to anchor points on the nearby fence. Beside Tom, Kimmer held Freddy.

  “Watch out!”

  “What’s that?” Tige was shaking himself furiously, precisely as if he had fallen into the lake. Trucker Bill Forsneck, standing not far from Ralph, pointed at the wildly oscillating truck cab from which came loud crashing noises.

  “Litter!” cried Freddy. “The handcart!”

  Someone was leading Blackie, Julia’s Mack, from her bay in the barn. She raised her head, snuffed loudly enough to be audible even above the noise of the crowd, caught the scent of her mistress and her friends, and barked. Tige answered.

  “Yes,” called Tom to his father.

  Moments later, the pot was on the ground, surrounded by silent onlookers, and Julia was trotting toward her Mack as if, like any dog owner returning from a trip, she had missed the beast. The amaryllis was holding its leaves to itself, leaving Petra Cross exposed, naked, blind behind opaque pupils, motionless. She was not even shaping words with her lips, as she had done not so long before. It was as if her transformation to vegetation had progressed much nearer its completion.

  “We saw one,” said Kimmer, “that had turned to wood.”

  “I’ve heard of the roots,” said someone in the crowd of onlookers.

  “She’s even growing leaves,” said another. Tom’s eyes followed the finger pointing toward her shins. The leaves he had noted before. But had he seen light between those limbs before? Were they fusing to become a solid stem, a trunk? And she was, she had to be, aware of the changes she was undergoing. But what was she feeling, thinking? What would she say if she could?

  Ralph Cross paced around the pot, shaking his head. Tears were in his eyes. One hand
was raised as if to touch his wife, or what she had become. But the hand dropped to his side. He turned to Tom and said, “I can’t. I’ll get the house fixed. I’ll sell it. But I’ll stay in my apartment. And there just isn’t any room for…”

  The amaryllis’ blossom head turned toward him. Its fronds curled, and the odor of its pheromones swept forth, striking instantly into every brain that was not protected by a worrystone. “Clamphole,” they said in chorus. Faces twisted with alarm at the invasion of their wills that made them speak, but still, in unison, they added, “Litterhead.”

  Halfway through the first word, Tom felt Muffy’s hand seize his. Her stone touched his skin with cool fire, his control of self returned, and his voice stopped. But the others continued, even his father’s:

  “Now she speaks through me. Root to root. But she will speak. Speak for herself. Plant her. Give her dirt. Let her be. And grow. And bloom. Plant me beside her. Let me teach. And shape. And water us. With honeysuckle wine.”

  The odor died, and the Farm onlookers stepped back, recoiling, frightened now, shaking their heads furiously, as if they were so many bulls trying desperately to free themselves from as many matadorial capes. Ralph alone did not move. “No,” he said. “I can’t. I moved out because of the wine. She just wasn’t, wasn’t…” He choked and swallowed before finishing:”…Petra, anymore. She isn’t, still.”

  Nor, thought Tom, would she ever be again. Even if the gengineers tried to purge her of her plant genes and successfully restored her to her own proper flesh, she would bear the marks of her experience. And if the amaryllis lady succeeded in its goal, if it could indeed shape from his mother a half-plant, half-human who could speak both to humans, with a voice, and to amaryllises, with pheromones, she might be more human, but the marks she would bear would be far deeper.

  “I can,” said Peirce. He ran a hand over his forehead and scalp, stopping only when he came to his hairline. “But she’s yours, really. You’ll have to donate her to the museum. We’ll take good care of her.”

  Ralph nodded wordlessly. His eyes were still wet.

  Tom took a tentative step toward his father. “I’ll visit you, too,” he said. He meant, of course, that he would be visiting his mother. He had found her, found his feeling for her, again, and even though she had changed, he would not abandon her. Nor would he abandon this man. There was no genetic link between them, but they were father and son. And there was no other father, except in body. Jack lived, yes, but the mind within his skull was not truly his.

  Ralph reached for his son. They embraced as fathers and sons always have when at last, for whatever reason, however briefly, they reach across the gulf between the generations.

  “You’re there a lot, aren’t you?” asked Ralph.

  “For Freddy, anyway. Though now…”

  “Yeah. I guess I’ll see you there, then.”

  “Maybe we can…” Both men nodded.

  When they reached the museum, the parking lot was empty, the staff was gone, and the doors were already locked for the night. “Litter,” said Jim. He clucked to his Mack. “Back to the Farm, then.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Freddy in his throaty voice. As always, he sounded as if he were speaking through his nose. “No way. I’ve been trucking around the countryside for days. I’ve been exposed to wild anther-shakers and berserk Bioblimps and gun-waving boobs and hoods. I’ve been teased and tantalized and scared and terrorized. And I want my Porkchop. I want her now. And Frankie has a key. Right, Frankie?”

  Franklin Peirce was the museum’s curator. “Of course,” he said, and he held up a ring of two dozen keys. “Right here, somewhere.” He pointed toward a side door. “Over there, Jim.”

  The shaking Tige had given it had not harmed the handcart. It remained entirely capable of carrying the pot containing Petra and the amaryllis lady into the building and down its halls. Ralph pushed the cart. Freddy rode now in Tom’s arms.

  Natural light has an unfortunate tendency to fade the pigments of paint and dye and turn organic materials such as canvas and other fabrics brittle. The museum therefore had few windows, and its lights, now turned dim, left its halls almost as dark as they would be at midnight.

  “I wish,” said Freddy. “I wish there were some windows in our apartment. I miss being able to see the green, and the weather. And we’re in the basement. I could see girls’ legs!”

  “You going to be Frederick again?” Tom Cross laughed.

  “I guess,” said the pig, more quietly now. “The music is serious stuff, you know. Though I enjoyed this adventure. I got blue balls and palpitations, but I saw a lot of outdoors, and nobody got hurt, and…”

  “Stop!” said Peirce, and he unlocked a door. When he opened it, the others saw tiers of shelves loaded with boxes of all sizes. “Storeroom,” he said, and he rummaged until he found three worrystones. He handed one to Tom, saying, “You lost yours.” The second went to Kimmer. “Your mind should be your own.” The third he gave to Ralph. “So should yours.”

  When Ralph looked blank, Tom explained, “Somehow, it keeps their odors from taking you over.”

  “Ah,” said his father. “Thanks.” He put the chain around his neck and waited while Peirce turned back to Kimmer and held out his own stone. They knocked, nothing happened, and Ralph nodded as if he were not surprised. Then he asked Peirce, “Where will you put her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Peirce. “We have an exhibit of bioforms, but…”

  “She isn’t art, is she?” said Kimmer. ”They aren’t.” She meant the amaryllis ladies.

  “Performance art,” said Freddy. “Jack’s.”

  Peirce laughed and stopped the procession before an elevator door, locked open for the night. As he ushered them in, rummaged for the appropriate key, and activated the machinery, Ralph said, “You wouldn’t put her on exhibit, would you? She is…”

  “Your wife?” The elevator floor dropped under their feet, and Peirce nodded. “It might not even be safe. We need to keep the two near each other, so the amaryllis can help her develop as she should, if ‘should’ has any meaning here. But I wouldn’t dare put that amaryllis where its pheromones could…”

  “Behind glass?” offered Muffy.

  “No,” said Ralph. “Please.”

  “We have an empty room or two, down here, near the music area.”

  “But first!” said Freddy.

  “Right!” Peirce laughed again. “Let’s get you home, and show Porculata and the kids what all the fuss has been about.”

  They passed the entrance to the auditorium, rounded a corner, and opened a door. Beyond it was a small room furnished with a desk, a couch, and a pair of easy chairs. On a shelf stood a steaming coffee pot. Stretched out on the couch was a young woman holding a magazine as if she had been reading. Tom recognized her as Jan, the attendant he had last seen oiling Porculata’s hide; she still wore the light blue vest of her job, thought his time over a coverall patterned in green and black chevrons. The room smelled of honeysuckle wine; on the desk stood an empty glass.

  When she saw Peirce, and then Freddy, Jan’s face lit up. “You’re back!” she cried, rolling off the couch and reaching for the door in the far side of the room. “Wait till I tell…”

  Peirce pointed at the glass on the desk. “Have you…?

  Jan’s face fell as if to say that, yes, she had, and yes, she knew she shouldn’t have. “Just a little…”

  “And Porculata?”

  She nodded. “She insisted.”

  Freddy laughed. “So that’s how she knew…” His wife wasn’t psychic. She had given that scatterbrained impression because she had tapped, albeit imperfectly, the amaryllis ladies’ grapevine.

  Jan opened the door, and a blast of bagpipes and calliopes drowned him out. “Frederick! We heard!” A moment later, Porculata cried, “A maiden! Two maidens! You brought them home with you. And see what I meant? You couldn’t possibly deflower them!”

  Porculata was nestled in a bed of soft cus
hions on the apartment’s padded floor, her hollow legs jutting into the air. Freddy winked at Tom as his old friend set the pig down beside his wife. Randy was already palping Barnum and Baraboo, the calliopes, meeping her delight at seeing them again. While Freddy and Porculata then writhed together in the best approximation they could manage of a human embrace of greeting, Ralph Cross, with Jan’s help, positioned the handcart and its burden to one side of the room, next to the booth in which on-duty attendants were supposed to spend their time.

  Finally, Porculata said, “Jan, dear. Sit us up, please. And now, tell me everything!”

  When they had obliged as best they could, she said, “The poor things!”

  “What in the world do you mean?” asked Kimmer.

  “Look,” said Julia. “Look at what they did to Petra, with that honeysuckle wine. And at what they were going to do with me. Think of what they’re surely doing now with the kidnappers and the…”

  Porculata stopped her with a snicker. “They didn’t ask to be made,” she said. “Just like Frederick and me. And they don’t have our compensations. Our music. An audience.”

  “And friends,” added Freddy.

  She twitched her agreement. Then she turned one eye toward Barnum and Baraboo and said, “And I think it’s admirable, that they’re trying to make sure their children have a better life than they do by getting them more human genes. It would be lovely to have walking flowers in our audiences!”

  Muffy nodded in agreement. “But,” said Tom. “They’re also trying to turn people into plants.”

  “So what? We turn people into animals.”

  “Only at the zoo, and only with their consent,” said Julia.

  The others nodded. “Maybe,” said Freddy. “Maybe we could make people-plants in Botanic Gardens.”

  “Or find volunteers,” said Jim. “For the amaryllis ladies to use.” When Julia shook her head at him, he added, “Or for research into making walking plants.”

  Peirce was facing the handcart, one hand on his chin. “One thing they’ve proved,” he said. “Dorothy Parker was wrong.”