Asimov's Science Fiction - June 2014

by Penny Publications

  And our recent orders were conspicuous by their absence. Where was the dog, Samson Rex Sprocket? Where was Mr. Schuster, the companion to Mrs. Schuster that I'd finally persuaded Lorraine to buy?

  I searched the nurseries until I found Harriet in one of the greenhouses, smiling as she peered at a batch of seedlings and compared them to the projections on her laptop screen.

  I glanced at the seedlings, which were too young to show distinctive features. "What are these?" I asked, trying to make it sound like a neutral question.

  "Hi, Travis. These are the prime minister. I've been fine-tuning him for a while, but I think this is the final version. He destroys everything he touches!"

  Before I could reply, I suddenly felt queasy and clutched my stomach.

  "I've given the plants a subtle odor that creates a sense of disgust," Harriet said. "Whenever people look at him, they want to vomit."

  She looked delighted, more enthused than I'd seen her for a long time. I wanted to congratulate her, and leave her to get on with it. Yet I'd seen the latest P&L figures. They were scary—and if we didn't deliver the orders we'd taken, they would become even scarier.

  "Harriet, I hate nagging you. But we're running a business here. We need to concentrate on our paying clients."

  She sighed. "Believe me, I hate being nagged even more than you hate nagging me. So why don't we just stop doing it?"

  "Because I've seen the numbers. We're in a tough situation."

  "Well, doesn't that prove their point?" she demanded.

  "Whose point?" I asked, frustrated that we'd drifted so far apart I didn't even know what she was talking about.

  "The Austerity Rebels. Our business is struggling because the economy is struggling." She pointed to the seedlings. "It's his fault!"

  Harriet rarely took much interest in politics. Why was she so enthusiastic about this commission? Had she really become convinced that everything could be blamed on the government?

  "I don't think it's the politicians' fault. They're just scapegoats. There's always been an economic cycle." I paused, searching for an analogy that might convince a gardener. "It's like the turn of the seasons. Winter always arrives: sometimes it's mild, sometimes it's devastating. Yet it doesn't last forever. Spring is round the corner. The green shoots of recovery will soon appear." I tried to sound upbeat.

  She frowned. "Scapegoats? But if it's not their fault, then whose fault is it?"

  "Everyone's," I said. "When times are good, people over-extend themselves and borrow too much money. They make risky investments because they're too optimistic." I waved my hand, pointing to the gardens outside the greenhouse's glass walls. "I bought all this land because at the time, our business was doing well, and I thought that would continue."

  Quickly skating past my own misjudgment, I went on, "But it wasn't just that. I wanted to make you happy. I wanted to give you all these gardens and orchards so that you had everything you could possibly need. Yet you've lost enthusiasm. You don't like taking commissions any more."

  I tried not to sound like I was blaming her, but inside I was thinking, Why are you so ungrateful? I gave you everything you wanted, and you're screwing it up.

  Harriet shook her head. "It used to be art. Now it's just a production line. People keep requesting commissions, and they all want the same things. It's always their relatives, or their pets. They all want the same few plants: roses or tulips or dogwood. They all want to be beautiful and colorful in exactly the same ways. They never ask to be spiky or ugly. No one wants to be a wallflower."

  "And these politicians are the opposite of all that," I said, looking at the seedlings. "Negative qualities. Thorns and bristles, spines and thistles."

  "Exactly," she cried. "I've never had the chance to do this before. I've been looking for something different, and here it is. Unleash the horrors!"

  "It's a shame that no one's paying us," I said.

  Harriet shrugged. "It's a shame that everything boils down to money."

  "Indeed." I sighed. "Still, let's try to make the best of it. If you've already done the work anyway, maybe we should put these on sale."

  I wasn't optimistic that many people would want to buy vegetable politicians. Yet any income would be better than none.

  "I'm sure you can sell them. You're so good at the business side." Harriet smiled at me. "You'd best plan for a whole range: there's lots of cabinet ministers, and they're all just as evil."

  "Hey, calm down," I said, alarmed at the prospect of yet more time being wasted on this. "We can't sell politicians that no one's heard of. Just stick to the well-known ones. And we still need to fulfill our existing commissions—you know, from the clients who are actually paying us money."

  "Yes, yes," she said distractedly, her attention drifting back to the baleful seedlings.

  These politicians might or might not have wrecked the economy, but they were certainly wrecking our relationship. The prime minister really did destroy everything he touched.

  In truth, our relationship had been floundering for some time. It's hard to be someone's lover and also their business manager. When you're nagging them by day, they don't want to snuggle up to you at night.

  Put like that, it sounds simple. Stop nagging! I'd contemplated this, wondering what would happen if I stopped worrying about commissions and simply let Harriet indulge herself in whatever pomonic extravagances she fancied. I wanted to do this. I wanted to return to the old days when we were happy and carefree.

  But I couldn't convince myself it would work. You can't pay bills with joie de vivre.

  We just needed to struggle through this rough patch. If we could survive the downturn and keep paying off our loans, then eventually we'd have more freedom.

  I kept trying to tell Harriet this, holding out the prospect of sunnier times ahead. She tuned me out. She wanted to spend every day doing exactly as she pleased—not sometime in the future, but right now.

  No wonder we're in a recession, I thought. It was pure self-indulgence. If everyone would only knuckle down and try a little harder....

  I played my own part, striving to boost sales of our existing range and drum up new business. I held an open day for parents to bring their children. We had a few pop stars and sports heroes that Harriet had created in more enthusiastic days. "Hey kids, if you like Doctor Drumbox, why not grow him in your back garden? Be the envy of all your friends!"

  Seeing children wandering around the orchard gave me an idea. Even nowadays, kids still love gathering horse chestnuts to play conkers: they thread the conkers onto shoelaces and bash them against each other, in contests with as much rivalry and skulduggery as boxing bouts. What if they had personalized conkers, shaped like their own heads, so they could enjoy smashing each other to bits?

  I mentioned this to Harriet, with a lukewarm reception. She was busy working on the politicians, because we needed to start selling seeds soon to let people grow them for Bonfire Night.

  Dean Hudson visited for several discussions about how best to represent the government in botanical form. He told us the old joke about Margaret Thatcher going out to dinner with members of her cabinet. The waiter requested her order, and she said, "Steak!" Then the waiter asked, "What about the vegetables?" Thatcher looked round the table at her cabinet, and said, "They'll have the same as me."

  Despite Hudson's attempts at ingratiating himself, and his continuing pleas for freebies, I remained firm. I insisted that we would sell the seeds rather than give them away. He called me a cold-hearted capitalist, at which I smiled and thanked him. He grimaced, saying that the Austerity Rebels would try to raise money from donations to buy packets for distribution. I offered him a discount for bulk purchases.

  In May, we finished developing the seeds and launched them onto the market. Harriet nodded approvingly when I showed her the package's lurid illustrations and disclaimers. "Warning: politicians are poisonous. Handle with care. Flammable!"

  Orders began trickling in. A few of our clients c
alled to complain that the product was in bad taste. I reassured them that it didn't reflect our political views—we just needed the money.

  To my surprise and displeasure, Hudson kept visiting, even though the seeds were finished and released. He spent long hours with Harriet in the garden. Was he distracting her with more ideas for bizarre products? Or was he enticing Harriet away from me?

  That summer, politicians were everywhere. They sprouted on waste ground, on roadside verges, on construction sites where work had halted due to the weak economy. Guerrilla gardeners planted them mischievously in parks and woodland. They rampaged across the moors.

  And they grew. Aided by accelerants, they swelled like monstrous triffids. Some were cacti; others were brambles with loathsome fruit. They smothered the landscape, a blight across the whole of Britain. Driving from Devon to London one day, I lost count of how many I saw: in hedges by the road, in the middle of roundabouts, even in municipal hanging baskets. The ivy-based environment secretary grew all over buildings, every leaf looking like his smug fat face.

  Business was booming. We'd sold far more seeds than I'd anticipated. Yet I disliked the effect on the countryside. They withered everything around them: you could spot them in a hedgerow by the dieback on either side. I'd assumed that people would grow them in their own gardens, but no one wanted ugly toxic things in their own backyards. They preferred the politicians to ravage elsewhere. But everyone's elsewhere is someone's here.

  When Hudson arrived for another of his mysterious visits, I confronted him. "Why are there so many of these things in the countryside?"

  He tilted his head, acknowledging the point. "I know, it's extreme. But it's agitprop. It needs to be extreme to get people's attention. And it's a perfect illustration of what the government is doing to the country. This is waking people up!"

  "Originally you said you were just planning a bonfire," I reminded him. "I could understand releasing a few plants as some kind of one-off stunt, but these things are everywhere. And why do they have to be so toxic? They could have gone on bonfires without needing to be poisonous."

  Harriet frowned at me. "It's only a mild herbicide, nothing deadly. They have to be poisonous to make it meaningful. If they were just caricatures, like cartoons in a newspaper, then that wouldn't achieve anything. You know what happens when cartoonists are as nasty and satirical as possible? The politicians buy the original cartoons, and get them framed to hang on the wall! We need a harder edge than that. I don't want any cabinet ministers putting my plants on their desks in the Ministry of Austerity. I want this to really hurt."

  As she spoke, Hudson kept nodding like a teacher proud of his pupil. Harriet had never been interested in politics, and now she knew that politicians bought satirical cartoons of themselves. She'd changed.

  Still, Harriet was enjoying her work, almost like the old days. And the unexpected success of the politician seeds had made the business profitable again.

  I should be happy. Shouldn't I?

  Our new line of merchandise attracted some unsavory clients. One man came in and asked me to put his head onto the most vigorous and invasive plant we could create. He wanted to introduce it into his ex-girlfriend's garden.

  I rebuffed him. He said, "Wow, it's a bit late for you to develop scruples, isn't it?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Haven't you heard? It was on the radio when I parked the car. One of your plants has nearly killed someone." At first I thought he was simply being unpleasant because I'd refused his custom.

  But after I got rid of him, I went online to check the news. It was true. A young child had almost died after putting a politician in her mouth. She was seriously ill.

  I shuddered. For a few seconds I stood blankly, unable to think, horrified by what had happened.

  Then I picked up my phone. It had been in silent mode during client consultations; I saw that a dozen people had tried to call me in the past ten minutes. Journalists, probably. Perhaps the police.

  Looking outside, I saw cars arriving.

  After hastily consulting a lawyer, I learned that we probably had no legal liability, as we'd merely sold some seeds. The packaging clearly warned that the adult plant was poisonous, and we hadn't ourselves grown the offending plant.

  Nevertheless, our reputation plummeted. Income from selling the seeds evaporated, and we had nothing to replace it. The bad publicity had ruined our business, with many of our former clients boycotting us. I barely bothered to keep the showroom open.

  Everything was in limbo. The child's sick condition, blighted by politicians, seemed to represent a sick Britain. Dean Hudson appeared on TV to criticize the government and call for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister.

  Harriet moped around, feeling guilty. "It shouldn't have happened," she said. "The foul smell ought to have put her off eating the plants. And they weren't supposed to be deadly to humans. But maybe there was a bad batch of seeds—"

  "Or maybe someone interfered with them," I said. "We don't know for sure that it was our fault. Right now, all we can do is help get rid of the things."

  I joined a local taskforce going into the countryside to root out all the dangerous politicians. We visited Dartmoor, where the invasive plants towered over the heather and bracken. The conservationists handed out tools, gloves, and nose plugs. We had a safety briefing: "Remember to wear protective clothing whenever you approach a politician."

  Everyone started hacking away. It was excellent exercise. We tore the politicians apart, and scythed off their heads. Then we built a fire to dispose of the debris. The cabinet ministers' faces contorted and blackened as the flames consumed them. The cleansing smoke dispersed the stench of corruption.

  While the government burned, we sat around drinking tea. I received a few unfriendly glances and harsh words, to which I responded by explaining that I'd never intended our plants to escape into the wild. But overall, the reaction was less hostile than I'd expected.

  To my surprise, people were enjoying themselves. Coming out to fight the politicians had brought the community together.

  The same thing was happening all across the country. Bands of public-spirited volunteers had united to eradicate the parasites blighting the land. It was the big society in action.

  And as we swept away the plague of politicians, the sick child began to recover. News bulletins showed her eating a birthday cake, playing with kittens, and visiting a local park that had been freshly cleansed of suspect vegetation.

  It was a neat metaphor—suspiciously neat.

  "Looks like a set-up to me," I said to Hudson. "How convenient for you, having a photogenic little girl poisoned by those caricature politicians."

  "That's disgusting!" he said. "Do you really think that we'd poison a child?"

  "No, but I reckon you'd exaggerate it. How ill was that girl, really? Harriet's plants were nowhere near lethal to humans." I turned to Harriet. "Isn't that right?"

  With a tense, pursed expression, she nodded.

  "It must have been a mutation," Hudson said.

  "Must it?" I inquired. "Funny how the plant that poisoned her was so quickly destroyed, before anyone could analyze it."

  I had no proof of my insinuations. But I strove to cast doubt in Harriet's mind, hoping that she would prefer to blame someone else's conspiracy rather than her own incompetence. I wanted her to break free of Hudson's influence, which had caused us so much trouble over the past few months.

  "Don't blame me," said Hudson. "I wasn't there. I heard it on the news the same as everyone else."

  "You didn't seem very upset about it," Harriet said.

  Hudson whirled round. "How dare you? I don't have to stand here and listen to this!" "No, you don't," I replied. "Let me get the door for you."

  Over breakfast the next morning, I said to Harriet, "We need a fresh start."

  She nodded. "Let's talk outside."

  Harriet led me through the gardens until we reached an unkempt patch of scrub, ful
l of shoulder-high saplings and spiky gorse bushes. The gorse sheltered us from the autumn breeze, its bright yellow blossom a welcome splash of color. Mossy rocks offered themselves as benches. I checked for dampness, then settled myself down. Harriet sat opposite me.

  "If we're going to have any kind of a business, we need to start again," I said. "And it's got to be something you're happy with. Forget all the old commissions. What would you like to work on?"

  Harriet smiled. "I'm so glad to hear you say that," she said. "I'm tired of trying to make plants represent people. It was a fad—we took it as far as it could go. Now we need to move on."

  "Do you have anything in mind?" I asked.

  "Yes, there is something. I got the idea from Dean Hudson—"

  Seeing my scowl, she hastily continued, "—but I've changed it. You remember how he kept visiting us? He had another idea for customized plants. I didn't tell you because I knew you were already unhappy about the politicians, and I had problems with his idea anyway."

  My expression brightened. I was relieved to hear that Hudson had simply been trying to get more plants, rather than making moves on Harriet herself. Assuming she was telling the truth, of course. But I didn't doubt her. As we sat in the gardens that we'd bought together, all our recent troubles began to seem like obstacles that were already behind us. We would make a fresh start, recapturing the spirit of when we first fell in love, with grand emotions and grand ambitions. Harriet went on, "I made the politicians smell bad, so people would be disgusted with them. But he wondered how far we could go with that. There's all sorts of pheromones that affect behavior. He wanted to make a plant with a truly revolting smell, one that would inspire a revolution."

  I laughed. "You mean some kind of scent to make people go wild?"

  "Yes. Except I thought it wouldn't be very ethical to influence people surreptitiously, so I was trying to think of ways around that."

  I knew how Harriet's mind worked, and what conclusion she would reach. "You'd have to be honest about the effect you wanted."

  "Exactly," she said. "I wondered what sorts of feelings could be evoked, and how to codify them. Then I realized that the answer already existed. The language of flowers!"