Her blossoms were just below his nose. He looked at them. They were pale yellow, the central pistils paler, the tiny anthers darker, almost orange, the fragrance subtle but warm, musky, hinting of violets and cherry blossoms. He let his own arms fold around her, feeling for the first time the fibrous texture of her leaves, the firm meat beneath, the knobs of bone, the warmth.
Neither of them ever knew how long they held each other, except that it was long enough for Donna Rose’s tears to slow and finally stop.
That was when Frederick spoke his first words. “I’ll have nightmares tonight,” he said. “If I even sleep.” Such things, such atrocities, whether he was involved as he had been when he had given Donna Rose refuge after the massacre in the park, or only saw the slaughter on the news, always left his mind roiling with the pain of memory. Rest came late or not at all.
The bot only squeezed his chest more tightly and murmured something into the wet cloth of his coverall.
“What?” he asked.
She shifted her head, freeing her mouth. “I won’t sleep either. I know it. How could I?”
A long moment later, she added, “Maybe. If we just held each other. Like this, Freddy.”
The muscles of his legs were protesting, informing him that he had been standing far too long. He sighed and watched the petals of her blossoms flutter in the breeze of his breath. “All right,” he said. “Let’s lie down.”
They turned together toward his bed.
It was not long before they sought a comfort deeper than simply holding tightly to each other could provide. As Donna Rose had promised, her bulb did not get in their way. Nor did the way her roots twined involuntarily around his ankles or her leaves enfolded them both in a green cocoon.
Just before he fell asleep, Frederick wondered whether their mating could possibly be fertile. The bots themselves relied on their head-top flowers and seeds for reproduction. But their human genetic component was large, and they might well, he thought, have more animal apparatus than met the eye. Ovaries. A uterus.
What might their child be like?
* * * *
“We launch this thing tomorrow,” said Arlan Michaels. His short figure straddled one of the cables that held the Quoi, the first crew-carrying Q-ship, the prototype, in its bay, his legs holding him in place. He gestured toward Lois McAlois. “The tanks are full. Make sure it’s ready, and let’s get it outside.” Three technicians leaned over open panels in the ship’s long central spine, bracing themselves in the gaps between the tanks of reaction mass that girdled the spine. They were making final adjustments to the Q-drive itself.
“What’s the rush?” asked Renny. Both he and Lois wore vacuum suits, the faceplates of the helmets open. His had been tailored especially to fit his nonhuman form. Lois held in one hand the end of a tether clipped to his belt, and when she let go of her own cable, the two of them began to drift toward the ship’s cabin hatch.
“Director’s orders,” said the pilot. “He said we need it now.”
“It can’t help them down on Earth, can it?” asked the German shepherd. “Even if it works. It’s too small.”
“It’ll work. Never doubt it.”
Michaels grimaced. “It’s a machine. Maybe he figures, if it works the way it’s supposed to, it’ll calm those Engineers down a little.”
“Huh!”
“Maybe he’ll offer it to them. A bigger model, a trip to the stars, a hunt for a world with enough resources to let them live the way they want, at least for a while.”
“It’ll take too long. They’re not that patient. And there’s too many of them to move.” Renny was growling his words.
“What else can we do?” said Lois. She did not sound hopeful, but now the hatch was open and she was pushing the dog into his niche, the space her missing legs would not occupy. She slid in behind him, strapped herself into her seat, and began the process of bringing the controls to life. A computer ventilation fan began to hum. Indicator lights lit up. A computer-synthesized voice said, “The hatch is open.”
Metallic noises from behind the cabin suggested the closing of access hatches. Lois touched a control and the cabin hatch swung shut, sighing into its airtight seal. She closed her helmet and reached toward Renny’s. As soon as they were both thus shielded against any loss of cabin pressure, Michaels’ voice came from speakers beside their ears. “The techs are clear.”
“Power on,” said Lois, and she fed the necessary commands to the Q-drive. Probabilities shifted. Particles materialized from the vacuum, and a digital meter spun out its report of available energy.
Renny twisted, more awkward than ever in his suit, to position his head near her truncated thigh, where he could watch her face. She did not look at him, for the controls demanded all her attention. “Just like the simulator. Is everyone out of the way?”
“The bay is clear.”
“Release the cables.” Someone obeyed the command, but the cables did not let go of the ship quite simultaneously. The Quoi lurched and began to drift toward one side of the bay. She fed the merest trace of lunar dust to the drive, routed the mildest possible thrust to the appropriate side, and recentered the ship.
“Pull the air.” The throb of air pumps faded rapidly as the air that carried the sound grew thinner.
“Open the bay.” The great door that closed one end of the bay irised open. She fed more dust to the drive, and the Quoi moved slowly out of its shelter, into the environment for which it was meant. Black filled the ports, and stars, and the bulk of the construction shack, and further off Probe Station itself, the separate research labs, the radio telescope, the Moon, and Earth. The sun was not in their field of view.
“No problems.”
“Then bring her around,” Michaels said over the radio.
The other end of the construction shack held a dock, an elastic tube with a mouth like that of a lamprey. Carefully, Lois swung the ship. The ports darkened as they came to face the sun. They cleared again as the Quoi swung its nose still further. A touch of thrust, the merest feather, then pushed the ship. More feather touches, more swings, and finally the dock’s lamprey mouth could fit over the cabin’s hatch. Then, at last, she could shut down the controls once more and say, “Tomorrow, Renny.”
* * * *
When Frederick opened his eyes that morning, he found Donna Rose staring at him. He blinked, and he almost smiled. “No nightmares,” he said.
“None at all?” She did smile.
“None.”
PART THREE
Chapter Fourteen
The place was like a gravel pit or crater, its high walls marked with the strata of civilization, its floor a day-baked, night-chilled puree of dust and sand and small stones and fragments of garbage, studded except near the working face with the shacks of the imprisoned workers. The air reeked of a thousand stinks, of rot and sweat and smoke and ordure and ancient chemicals. The only moisture lay in small, glistening puddles, oily, acrid, plainly toxic, that no one dared to touch. There was no trace of green plants, not even of the ubiquitous honeysuckle, though there were within the crater a very few skins marked by chlorophyll. Most people whose modifications were so obvious had not survived to be confined in the camp.
One side of the crater was open to admit a road, though it was blocked by chain-link fence and armed guards. More guards patrolled the crater rim. Beyond the fence, their cinderblock barracks sheltered in its lee a few small, dusty shrubs. Trees were visible in the distance.
Naked except for a strip of tattered cloth wrapped around his hips and a pair of crude sandals cut from rubber tires, Jeremy Duncan crouched in the sun beside the shadow cast by a fragment of pumpkin shell. He sniffed at his arm, detecting in his sweat the odor of malnutrition. There was food, but it was not enough to maintain both life and strength. To make up the defic
it, he had already used up all his fat; now he was using protein, muscle, and the wastes he generated in the process accounted for his body odor. When all the muscle he could spare was gone… He stared alternately at the ruins of his home and at his neighbor, as naked as he, as naked-ribbed scrawny, though he didn’t have the festering sores that marked the edges of Duncan’s gills.
What he did have was a small, smoky, reeking fire, its fuel bits of ancient, punky wood, organic pulp, and his own manure, all dried in the sun. He also had a shack, a hovel, pieced together from bits of ancient plywood, a rusty automobile door, a tattered shower curtain. It was barely more than a burrow, but it helped to contain his body heat at night and it provided a minimum of shelter against the wind and rain.
Duncan had had a shack like that himself, but he had made the mistake of using a piece of pumpkin shell for one wall. That morning, early, dawn barely in the sky, three guards had come to roust him from his sleep and chide him.
They wore tan shorts and shirts, polished black shoes, black socks, broad-brimmed hats. The smallest had stood to one side, an automatic weapon held ready in his arms. The other two had carried heavy sticks.
“You know better, genny,” the one with the mustache had said, backhanding him, kicking him, striking him on the gills with his stick. “No more gene shit. Never. I should even rip these things out of you. With my bare fingers, or an axe, or…”
While the guard raved, while he cowered, hiding his face with an arm as much to conceal his defiant, hating glare as to protect his eyes, another guard, the largest of the three, had torn the shack apart. He had kicked the rusty doorposts until they fell. He had peeled the roof off and hurled it sailing through the air until it sliced into a nearby shack; a shriek marked protest or pain, though it cut off immediately, as soon as the victim peeked through a crack and saw what was happening. He had pushed at the walls until they fell, and then he had stomped, shattering ancient glass, crumpling rusty sheet metal, breaking half-rotten wood. Finally, all that was left was the piece of pumpkin shell, jagged-edged, too heavy to hurl, too thick to break with feet or hands alone.
“Don’t use it again,” the one with the mustache had said. “We’ll bust you up next time.” He had grinned as if he would enjoy the job.
As soon as the three guards had left, the camp’s other prisoners had emerged from their crude shelters, kindled their morning fires, and stood beside them, warming their hands, carefully not looking in his direction. The desultory mutter of complaint and argument and memory had resumed as if it had never quit the night before, but no one had said a word to Duncan. It was as if the others feared that if they came too close to one who had attracted such unwelcome attention, they too might suffer.
When Looby and his small entourage appeared, the voices paused for only a moment. They too were a threat, but they too were prisoners. They were also the only ones who had anything to grin about as they were grinning now. Alone among the camp’s inmates they wore shorts and shoes, filthy but intact, and carried both sticks and extra flesh. All but one wore shirts as well; the one without was too furry to need such a garment.
“Aww, Jerry,” said Looby. He was a greenskin whose ability to photosynthesize a few extra calories had in the early days given him an edge over other would-be bullies. His other modification—his thumbnails had been replaced by retractile talons—had also helped. Now the other bullies danced attendance on him, and the group kept its informal status as chief thugs by dispensing the meager rations, trading food and drink to the other prisoners in exchange for what they pulled from the ground. It was not surprising that Looby and his friends were the best fed, nor that they protected their privileges by beating and starving those who dared to protest and by informing on those who spoke of escape or riot.
“Aww, Jerry,” said Looby again. No one knew his last name. “They wrecked your house! And I can use that piece of wood, those posts, that…” Extending one thumb claw as a mute warning that Duncan should not object, he used it to point at the few still usable bits of wreckage. “Mickey, Stanley, Bess,” he said. The indicated aides picked up the pieces. When they had everything that was salvageable, and Jeremy Duncan had nothing left at all, Looby said, “Amy! Give the man a potster.”
The woman he indicated bore a large scar on her cheek, where some Engineer had sliced away a genetically implanted decoration. Fragments of healing, reforming tissue revealed that the original had been a patch of butterfly wing and that Amy might once have been beautiful. Now, however, she was as scabby, string-haired, and filthy as anyone in the camp. Not even the chief slaves could wash. But she had a cloth sack over one shoulder, and now she produced what looked like a withered potato. Duncan’s mouth watered at the sight. When she tossed it on the ground in front of him, he seized it eagerly. He had expected nothing, for the guards brought food only once a day, in the evening. That, they said, was when the slaves had earned a meal.
Potsters were one of the gengineers’ earliest successes. They grew in the ground like potatoes but tasted much like lobster. Duncan thought it little wonder that the Engineers tolerated their existence despite their principles, but he said nothing. He was not about to give Looby a chance to change his mind. He was already chewing when the gang turned toward their own huts not far from the guardhouse, there to use what they had taken to make their rooms larger and their walls tighter against the wind and their roofs less likely to leak when it rained.
When he had eaten half the potster, Duncan folded the rest into his hand. Then he sat back on his heels and stared disconsolately at the little that was left of the wreckage. It had been all he owned. There was nothing else. No book. No rag. Not even a shiny bit of stone or metal. Nothing. They were allowed to build their shacks, if the materials they chose were worthless enough, or if they were ideologically pure, though if they were that they would not be here. Everything else they found was taken away.
He stared at his neighbor. He was a lucky man. He had no genetic modifications, at least none that showed. The guards therefore did not abuse him as badly. He had a little more pigment in his swarthy skin, and the sun did not burn him. Duncan glanced at his own cracked and peeling hide. And was he also chewing? Could he possibly have saved a crumb of their meager rations? Or was he simply gnawing on his tongue, or a bit of plastic or rotten leather?
“Bert?” He held out what was left of the potster, offering to share.
“Yah,” said Berut Amoun, accepting the trade, biting, chewing. “I suppose there’s room. You can squeeze in here tonight.”
“We’re slaves.”
“Tell me something new.”
“I hate them. They’re dumb. They’re stupid. Idiots.” He kept his voice soft. He had seen what happened to those who insulted their masters too loudly. “I hate them. If I ever get the chance…”
The Engineers had triumphed. Through elections and coups and riotous rebellions, they had taken over every government that mattered. They had slaughtered gengineers and gengineered, the owners and sellers of Slugabeds and garbage disposals and Roachsters, greenskins and bots. And when their frenzy had calmed, they had marched the survivors into the labor camps. Duncan no longer remembered how long he had been here, in this camp. Nor did he remember whether he had already been here when Bert arrived, or whether Bert had been here first. He did remember that they had arrived only days apart, and that they had quickly discovered that they both knew Frederick.
“I wonder where Frederick is,” said Duncan now. “And that dog.”
“He sent Renny up there,” said Bert, not for the first time. He bent his gaze toward the sky, too hazy with the smoke of burning garbage to be blue. At night, they could not see even the brightest of stars or satellites, and the moon was blurred. “Probe Station. Oughta be safe enough, eh? And then he went up too. I hope he had sense enough to stay there.”
Duncan nodded gravely and stared at his
hands. They were calloused, stained, cut by shards of metal and glass, red and swollen and oozing pus where the cuts had become infected. It would only get worse. One day, as he had seen happen to others, he would be unable to use them, unable to work. Looby would stop feeding him then. The guards would ignore his pleas. They would beat him. And he would die. He had seen it happen to others.
A horn blew, and the camp stirred. Duncan groaned. Bert crawled from his shelter. Looby screamed from somewhere, “Back to work! Move, you loafers!” He had chosen to make his occasional show of directive energy, as if to convince the Engineer guards of his value; most mornings he remained undisturbed in his hut. His henchmen appeared and began to chivvy the Engineers’ prisoners toward the wall of the camp and the leavings of the Machine Age.
The place had once been a sanitary landfill, a dump where layers of earth had shielded from rats and seagulls and other vermin each day’s accumulation of empty cans and bottles, steel and aluminum and glass, the plastics of outworn shoes and clothes and broken toys, scraps of foil, electric motors full of copper wire, cast-off refrigerators and microwave ovens, all the discards of an age far richer in material resources. The aluminum and copper and glass and plastic were still there. The larger chunks of steel had sound, unrusted cores. And it was the prisoners’ job to separate anything and everything of value from the dross.
The gate in the fence opened, and an ancient front-end loader, red with rust, belching smoke, rattling, creaking, threatening imminent collapse, roared into the crater. When it reached the working face, it dug its bucket into the compressed layers of garbage and dirt, wrenched, and tore. Its job was to loosen, to make what was there available to sorting, stacking fingers. Whatever they found they would hand over to Looby and his crew in exchange for food. Later, they would pile it all in bins near the gate, and later still in the wagons that hauled it away to be used as the raw materials for a new Machine Age. The wagons were drawn by horses, cows, and even people, slaves as much as those who mined the dump.
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 83