Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  * * * *

  A spaceplane was a hybrid vehicle. It began its journey from the ground as if it were an ordinary jet plane, burning fuel with air. As it gained speed and altitude, it became a ramjet, forcing air down a funnel throat, compressing it to maintain the flow of oxygen needed to burn the fuel. As the speed became too great and the air too thin for any ramjet to function, the plane’s carefully shaped underside came into play, channeling and compressing air into a channel where a spray of fuel could keep the thrust building. Only when the spaceplane had reached such a high altitude that there was too little air to exploit at all did it begin to function as a rocket.

  The advantages of the multi-mode propulsion system were two: First, unlike a pure rocket, the spaceplane needed to carry relatively little liquid oxygen with which to burn the fuel it used within the atmosphere; it could therefore carry a heavier payload to orbit. Second, the thrust never became oppressive; the passengers were pressed into their seats with only a little more force than they might have experienced in a rapidly climbing jet.

  The changes in the spaceplane’s mode of action revealed themselves in changes in the notes the engines sang. When it was a jet, the note was low, bass. As a ramjet, it sang higher, tenor, the note vibrating through the plane’s very frame as exterior sound was left behind the sound barrier. As a scramjet, the note was highest of all, a screaming operatic soprano. As a rocket, it dropped back to a bass that vibrated in the passengers’ bones, and shortly after that, it quit entirely. The spaceplane had achieved orbit. Now it could coast, adjusting its course if necessary with only small bursts of rocketry until it approached the long cylinder of Nexus Station. There any passengers going beyond to other destinations would have to change to local spacecraft.

  “Mech,” said Frederick. He was holding one hand over his mouth as if…

  “Do you need this?” Donna Rose reached into the pocket on the seatback in front of her and offered him a bluntly labeled “Barf Bag.”

  He shook his head. “I can control it. I think.” He accepted the bag, laid it in his lap, and swallowed. “Give me a minute. Never been in zero gee before.”

  “It doesn’t bother me,” said Donna Rose.

  He looked at her skeptically. She seemed to be trying very hard not to smile at his discomfort, and though he knew that such smiles were more of relief than of amusement, he grew irritated. He made a growling noise.

  “In fact,” she said. “In fact, it feels nice, like when I let my roots down and spread my leaves and soak up sun. Like floating.”

  “We are floating,” said Frederick. He was used to feeling the pressure of his seat against his butt. Now there was nothing, there was not even the opposite pressure of his seatbelt on his stomach, the vestibular apparatus in his middle ear was stubbornly insisting that he was falling, his stomach was floating, twisting, turning, fluid was churning, sloshing, lapping at the base of his esophagus, his stomach muscles were clenching, now slowly, now faster, his mouth began to water, and…

  He got it all in the bag.

  “There’s a pill,” said Donna Rose, pointing, and he saw it in a blister fastened to the base of the bag. He extracted it, swallowed it dry, closed his eyes, leaned back in his seat, and clutched the armrests, forcing himself into the cushions as if he could by sheer will supply the missing force of gravity. Within moments he could feel the pill begin to work.

  Thrusters made soft thudding noises. The spaceplane lurched, slowing for its approach to the Nexus dock. There was a clank of metal latches, a hiss and ear-pop of equalizing pressures, and the plane’s hatch opened once more. Following the other passengers, Frederick and Donna Rose pulled themselves from seatback to seatback, propelling themselves into the station’s receiving hall where their attention was seized by a dozen corridor mouths so ringed by signs that no one, no matter which way their feet were pointing, could fail to read them. They did not notice the pair of black-clad attendants waiting at the entrance until one said, “Where you going?”

  “Probe Station,” answered Frederick, and four hands seized and hurled him toward a corridor to the left. Two more attendants halted his flight, said, “Shuttle to the right,” and turned away to catch Donna Rose.

  The luggage must have traveled by some other route, for when they reached the shuttle’s berth, marked by a single circular opening in the wall and beyond that what was clearly the interior of a small spacecraft, Frederick’s bag was waiting for them. So too was a large plastic crate with a metal grill on one end. “Renny?” said Frederick.

  “I wondered if you’d make it, Freddy,” said the German shepherd. He sounded as if the trip had had no more effect on him than it had had on Donna Rose.

  A woman dressed in a pale green coverall with white chevrons down the sleeves emerged from the shuttle’s hatch. Her auburn hair was cropped short. So were her legs, which stopped at mid-thigh. If they had been intact, she would have been no more than a meter and a half tall. “What’s this?” she said. “It talks?”

  “Yes.” Donna Rose nodded. “We’re taking him…”

  “Then what’s he doing in that box?” She promptly unsnapped the catches that held the crate’s grill in place, and Renny pushed himself into view, his tail wagging furiously.

  Frederick immediately noticed that though Renny still wore his collar, the radio tracking device PETA had convinced the court to order was gone. Donna Rose caught the question in his glance at her and said, “I left it in a waste can at the airport.”

  “Nice dog,” said the woman in green. “I hear the boss did him himself.”

  As the German shepherd drifted across the corridor, he thrust his forelimbs straight out and curled his tail over his back as if he wanted to stretch, but the lack of gravity made the effort futile. The woman grabbed a handhold and pressed Renny toward the nearest wall.

  When his feet touched, Renny pushed, bowing his back until the joints popped. “Ahh,” he said. “Thanks. I like you.”

  Donna Rose laughed, while Frederick answered the woman’s own comment. “Years ago,” he said. “But they don’t want him down there.” Silently, he wondered at the woman’s lack of legs when the gengineers could easily stimulate their regrowth. Then he realized that the ticket clerk on Earth and the attendants who had helped him and Donna Rose on their way through Nexus Station had shown no signs of genetic modifications. Yet he had seen no signs of prejudice other than the zone of empty seats around the bot. Perhaps, he thought, it was simply that these people thought more in terms of controlling their environment, of metal and machines and externals, than of controlling their internal flesh.

  “Of course not.” The woman turned away, pulling herself back into the shuttle with one arm, keeping the other curled around Renny’s chest. The lack of legs offered no handicap in zero gee. Over her shoulder, she said, “I’m Lois.” She gestured toward her thighs. “An accident. Nothing to do with my piloting. And are you coming? There’s no one else.”

  As they entered the small spacecraft, Frederick asked, “How’d you know about Renny?”

  “It’s a small station,” Lois said. “Most secrets we don’t even try to keep, except from outsiders. I heard from the com tech who monitored your call.”

  The shuttle was little more than a small cylinder whose stained and padded walls were equipped with straps for fastening passengers and cargo into place. Toward one end was a large veedo screen that let the pilot see in any direction she chose; beside it was a small porthole. Set in front of the screen was a padded bucket seat whose broad arms were covered with pressure and slide switches, the spacecraft’s controls.

  “Strap down,” said Lois. “It can get a little bumpy.” Hardly was she in her own seat before she showed them what she meant. The shuttle’s thrusters separated the craft from Nexus Station gently enough, but then the engine fired and the sudden acceleration was enough to stagger any
one who wasn’t anchored.

  The shuttle was not a fast ship. The trip to lunar orbit and Probe Station took most of the next day, for the distance was far greater than that between Earth’s surface and Nexus Station. Frederick and Renny passed part of the time napping, while Donna Rose asked the pilot to position the shuttle so that full sunlight shone in the small porthole and then spent the hours basking and photosynthesizing. “I have never,” she said. “I’ve never felt such thick sunlight. It’s delicious.”

  When the Station finally came into view, it proved to be a slowly rotating cylinder whose ends had been stepped in toward the center. It looked like a pair of tin cans, one short and fat, the other longer, thinner, tucked inside the first so its ends protruded. Docking ports and communications antennae were visible on the ends. A radio telescope several kilometers in diameter, its supporting framework seeming impossibly delicate to eyes accustomed to gravity, hung off to one side, as did several smaller cylindrical stations. When Frederick asked what the latter were, their pilot said, “Research labs. We don’t do the messy stuff in the living room.”

  A moment later, she said, “Brace yourselves. The docking collar’s an elastic sleeve, and…” There was a click as the shuttle’s hatch met the docking port, the sound of sliding metal, and the snap of closing latches. Then the shuttle began to turn as the docking collar confronted and conquered the ship’s inertia.

  Alvar Hannoken was waiting for them inside the Station, his rugged face beaming as he spotted the dog he had gengineered. “Renny!” he cried.

  The German shepherd barked his own greeting, and Frederick said, “Dr. Hannoken.” He looked at the other curiously. Gengineers had a reputation for modifying themselves in strange ways that only later showed up in the populace, and there was something he could not quite identify about the man’s body. Certainly, the legs of his coverall were looser than they were on most people, but…

  “Frederick. I didn’t expect to see you too. But you’re welcome, of course.” When he turned toward Donna Rose, Frederick introduced the bot. “She’s a refugee,” he said.

  Hannoken’s face sobered instantly. “We get the news. I’m sure we can find a place. And besides, we can always use the oxygen. If more bots follow the drinking gourd up here…”

  “Actually, sir, I use more oxygen than I make.”

  “That’s all right. Don’t worry about it.” He turned to Renny, smiling again. “And you, sir, are the first dog I’ve ever seen with a portable tree. Come on, now. Let’s get you some weight.”

  “I’d like that,” said Frederick, and in a moment the three new arrivals were following Hannoken and Lois down a corridor, pulling themselves along with handholds fastened to the walls. They had not gone far before Frederick realized what was peculiar about the Station Director’s body: His coverall knees were creased, not smooth. His legs bent backward. In fact, the “knees” were really ankles; true knees made the fabric bulge near the hips. Hannoken had redesigned his legs to resemble those of a goat. The thighs were short and powerful, the feet elongated. There were no hooves, but the man wore black stockings as if to mimic their appearance and he would clearly walk upon his toes when they reached those parts of the Station where its rotation provided a centrifugal substitute for gravity. Frederick supposed that Hannoken’s modification might actually offer some advantage in low or zero gee, where so much movement was by jumping.

  Chapter Eight

  Testimony from a hearing of

  The Senate Committee on Agricultural Policy

  Transcribed from GNN (Government NewsNet)

  for the Federal Register.

  The Honorable Cecil D. Trench (DemSoc-NC), Committee Chair: Gentlemen and ladies, agricultural subsidies have been a tradition in this fine nation of ours for the last century and a half.

  In my own state of North Carolina, the tobacco crop was supported in that way for many years. In the Midwest, subsidies have seen thousands of corn and wheat and hog farmers through years of drought and flood and foreign dumping.

  Dairy farmers saw difficult times when new technologies such as bovine growth hormone came along. That was a product of the earliest of the genetic engineers. Later the udder tree came on the market. Both of these developments increased productivity enormously. So enormously in fact that the price of milk seemed bound to decline to virtually nothing. The farmers would have starved and gone bankrupt. The dairy industry would have collapsed entirely. And then the nation’s children would have been without their necessary and essential nutrition and the nation itself would have gone the malnourished and therefore brain-damaged way of Ethiopia and Bangladesh and Brazil. All that, and more, except for the price supports that kept the price of milk high and kept the dairy industry in business.

  But now, ladies and gentlemen, some people are claiming that this noble tradition is no longer necessary. They say we can do away with crop subsidies. They say that the forces of our traditional free market system should be given free rein. They say that if farmers go out of business, that is only a sign of their superfluity. The gengineers, they say, will provide. For years, in fact, new crops have been in the fields. Some have been mere modifications of traditional crops, ones that make their own fertilizer and pesticide. Others have been new kinds of plants—house-plants with edible fruit or flowers, pie plants, and more. Still others have been strange hybrids of plant and animal—hamberries, potsters, sausage bushes, the udder trees, more. Yields have reached new heights, and the price of food has reached lower levels than any human being now alive can remember.

  Yet—Yet!—some say this very boon for the consumer is a curse for the farmer who cannot get enough money for his unprecedented bumper crops to pay his mortgage or his taxes or even his seed bill. Some say the subsidies are more essential than ever before.

  And some say the new crops are more profitable than ever were any of their predecessors. Some say those farmers who have embraced the new technology are banking more money than ever before, even as those who turn their backs on the fruits of gengineering go wailing to the wall.

  That is what we are here today to discuss: Do agricultural subsidies remain a desirable way for our government to spend its tax revenues? And if so, who should get those subsidies?

  Catherine Dubuque-Kinshasa, Ph.D., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Agricultural Demographics, Department of Agriculture: Senator Trench, gentlemen, ladies. Yes, there are people who favor continuing our system of agricultural subsidies. They argue that those farmers who accept the benefits of gengineering monopolize all the money to be made in farming, leaving only scraps for the few farmers who prefer more traditional crops and methods and thereby forcing the latter to abandon their farms and find other lines of work.

  These people are, of course, absolutely correct. Gengineered agriculture is the dominant form of agriculture in this country today. It is dominant because it is more productive, more cost-effective, and more environmentally benign. If it forces traditional farmers out of farming, that is no tragedy. Traditional farming depletes the fertility of the soil. Constant plowing leads to erosion. The use of pesticides and fertilizers leads to water pollution and air pollution. Traditional agriculture demands heavy use of scarce energy and material resources. And its costs are a burden on the consumer, the taxpayer, and the government.

  Gengineered agriculture needs very little in the way of fertilizer and pesticides and, last but not least, very little labor. Every crop that once had to be planted anew every year can now be produced on trees and shrubs that continue to bear for decades. Every crop that once required vast farms far from the consumer can now be grown in a family’s yard.

  We should be delighted that the traditional farmer is virtually extinct. With him has gone any need for subsidies. Those modern farmers that we still need are profitable enough not to need them. As for the traditional farmers—soon, there will be none left to dem
and or receive the subsidies.

  Oscar Pembroke, farmer, Upton, VT: Senator Trench, I’m here to tell you! Old-style farming is not extinct. No way is it extinct!

  (Waves thick paperbound book in air.) This book, this one right here in my hand, it’s The Guide to Organic and Mechanical Farming. It’s a manual on how to make that kind of farming work! It used to be that mechanical farming, all that sod-busting and chemical fertilizing and pesticiding, wrecked the soil, yeah. But if you plow and plant and use organic techniques, if you use lots of manure and predator bugs to eat the pests, it’s good for the soil. It builds the soil!

  The Honorable Earl P. Mitchum (LabRep-ME), committee member: Isn’t that still a form of biological engineering?

  Mr. Pembroke: But it ain’t genetic engineering. Gengineering is the devil’s way. It’s not the way God meant for us to raise our food. There’s no denying that it’s good to the soil, and it’s productive, right enough, but it’s the path to hell. It puts farmers out of work. And because it means there’s not so many farms anymore, it means kids can’t go see where their food comes from. It puts people further and further from their roots, from the soil. Senator Trench, we need those subsidies!

  Dr. Dubuque-Kinshasa: I should think gengineering would put people in closer touch with their roots. After all, they don’t have to visit farms when they have pie plants and sausage bushes growing in the living room and two-meter green beans or squash blossoms hanging on their house plants.

  Arnold Rifkin, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., President, Foundation for Economic Trends: The health of the American farmer is not really the point. Genetic engineering is the most insidious form of pollution—of the human genome, of the biosphere—that human beings have ever had the temerity to devise. The Foundation I have the honor to represent here today has been fighting this genetic pollution ever since the first gene was spliced. I hope that you will seize the opportunity before you today to ban the technology, the gengineers, and all their products. There are more environmentally benign ways to ensure human survival!