Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  Duncan shook his head. He held one hand toward the room’s locked wooden door. They were prisoners still, and… “As soon as they have what they want from us…”

  Dinner had been a meager bowl of vegetable soup, served from a large kettle by a bored guard. They had sat at long wooden tables, where other guards had kept watch to prevent any attempts at conversation. The gengineers had had to content themselves with speculative glances at each other, surreptitious searches of the room for familiar faces, wary stares at the guards. After dinner, those guards had ushered the gengineers back to their rooms and clicked the locks behind them.

  Gilman nodded. He scratched at the border of his scalp, stared at his fingernails, and pulled free the strands of hair that had come loose. “They need us,” he said. “They’re desperate. What were you doing before this?”

  Duncan’s own scalp itched. He resisted the urge to scratch as he described the landfill mine.

  “They had me on an oil crew. They burned many of the plantations, and then they realized they still needed them. We were out in the woods, looking for wild ones.”

  “You find many?” asked Duncan.

  “Oh, yeah. They seed themselves pretty well. Lots of volunteers.”

  “Think they’ll make it work?”

  “Even with our help?”

  Duncan nodded.

  Gilman shook his head.

  “But we can…”

  “Sure we can. It’s politics that will doom them. They’re dominated by ideology. They’ll cut each other’s throats.”

  “The protestors,” said Duncan. “They’re already arguing with each other.”

  “And we’re in the hands of the losers,” said Gilman. “The extremists always win, at least in the short run. They may lose in the long run—hell, in the long run, these Engineers will reinvent gengineering on their own—but we won’t be around for that.”

  “How bad can it get?”

  “We’ll be shot. Every sign of gengineering will be stamped out. Maybe even every sign of selective breeding. Pets and house plants and traditional crops. They’ll be back to hunting and gathering.”

  Duncan hoped his roommate was wrong. But he did not think he was. The fear of new technologies had been rising ever since the twentieth century, when the pace of change, of population growth, of urban spread, of occupational obsolescence, of the appearance of new devices and methods and risks, of technological progress, had grown too fast for minds that depended on a sense of tradition and stability to accept. The forces of reaction were now ascendant, and they would not fade until the conditions of life had grown worse than the fears that impelled those forces. Perhaps, as Gilman said, humanity would have to drop all the way back to savagery before it could rise again.

  That thought was no comfort. It would not help them.

  “But we have to try, don’t we?”

  * * * *

  Many of the obsolete instruments the Engineers had salvaged proved useless. Some, however, could be made to work, and within a month, Jeremy Duncan and Andy Gilman had a lab that could perform simple genetic engineering, at least in principle. Yet, in reality, it could do nothing. The two gengineers, like their fellows in the other makeshift, make-do labs on the Ginkgo campus, were spending much of their time at the window, staring toward the fence, watching the protestors arrive and be chased away and return, every day more numerous, more determined to close the campus down.

  “What’s the problem?” asked their supervisor. He was an Engineer who knew nothing of gengineering and, when they tried to explain even a little of how the technology worked, waved their words away. He wore a nametag that said simply “Calloman.” He did not carry a swagger stick, perhaps because his rank was too low, but from time to time he did slap his thigh with the flat of his hand.

  Calloman flicked a DNA splicer on. Its LEDs glowed red and green. Its motors hummed. The small display panel above the keyboard blinked patiently: “COMMAND?”

  “The machines work,” he said. “What else do you need?”

  “Restriction endonucleases,” said Gilman. He was seated at a computer that had been one of the few things to survive the destruction of the General Bodies research and development lab. The company’s logo decal still decorated the side of the veedo unit. Better yet, the databases in its polygig memory had proved intact. “Ligases and gyrases,” he added. “Oligonucleotide primers, polymerases, nucleotides.”

  “Chemicals,” said Duncan. “Biochemicals. The same ones every cell uses to replicate its genes.”

  “There’s a ton of them in that fridge.” The Engineer pointed and his ornaments jangled lightly. “I saw them yesterday.”

  “No good,” said Gilman. “They have to be kept cold, and that thing wasn’t even plugged in when we got here. They’re rotten.”

  “And we can’t get more,” said Duncan. Patiently, he explained that once, when they had been free, gengineers had been able to order every chemical they needed from a host of suppliers.

  As Duncan spoke, Gilman summoned a list of corporate names and addresses onto the veedo screen. “All gone now,” he said. “You destroyed the industry, the infrastructure.”

  “Then make them,” said Calloman, slapping his thigh. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  Gilman nodded. “That’s what the first gengineers did. But it takes time. It’ll slow us down.”

  “Not too much.” The Engineer frowned and turned toward the window. It was open, and the odor of honeysuckle wine was strong. “We need those genimals now. We have to be able show them…” He pointed. “We have to be able to show them a success, the equipment for building factories and machines, the machines themselves.”

  “You won’t,” said Duncan. “You can’t.”

  “We have to,” said Calloman. “You have to.” He flicked off the splicer, turned, and left the lab.

  After a moment of silence, Andy Gilman looked up from the keyboard and screen before him. “We have the same problem they do,” he said. “Don’t we? No raw materials.”

  “We’ll have to make them,” said Duncan. “And we don’t have any slaves to help us out.”

  Both men knew that their technology had started out with less than they now had. They could—they would, just as had the founders of their field—find bacteria that made restriction endonucleases, grow them, and extract what they needed. They would then be able to gengineer other bacteria to make the protein tools in greater quantity. They would gengineer bacteria to make other enzymes, and nucleotides in quantity, and copies of genes.

  “At least,” said Gilman. “We know what to do. That’s a start. And we have the equipment we need. It should only take us a few months, not decades. And then we’ll be able to try making a Mack. That’s simple enough.”

  Duncan stepped toward the window. There were protesters outside the fence again, though they were quiet, not threatening, not drawing fire. Beyond them a scatter of small tents showed where they slept at night. A few wisps of smoke said how they cooked their meals.

  “I hope we have a few months,” he said. “If they run out of patience… Or if those…” He pointed. “If the conservatives take over…”

  “Then we go back to the labor camps. Or we’re dead.”

  Duncan shook his head. He didn’t wish to see the landfill mine ever again. He didn’t want to die. Nor did he want the Engineers to overcome their problems.

  He slid his hand down his side, feeling the ridges of his gills, and thrust it into the pocket of his labcoat. His petri dish talisman was still there, waiting for his fingers. He clutched it. The protesters, he knew, were not likely to stay as quiet as they now were. He might live longer at the mine. Helping the Engineers, no matter whether he was doing what he loved to do, felt like licking the hand that beat him.

  He wished there were so
me way to return to the past. Or… He bent his gaze upward, but there was nothing visible except blue sky and scattered clouds. No sign of orbiting stations and habitats. No sign of Frederick. No hope of joining him, of escaping Earth entirely.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The door slammed open, and a familiar voice barked, “Gilman! Duncan!”

  Jeremy Duncan and Andy Gilman jerked their heads up from the array of culture flasks they were studying. “Calloman,” said Duncan. “No, we don’t have a Mack for you yet. We’re still working on…” He gestured abruptly at the flasks. “Enzyme factories. That’s all anyone is working on.”

  “You’re too damned slow.” Calloman stood aside from the doorway, and a pair of Engineers carried in a bot, her leaves ripped to reveal her breasts, her pale green scalp blossoms torn away in patches, her arms and legs bound. The bulb between her thighs looked bruised. “It says it knows a little gengineering. Maybe it’ll make a good assistant.”

  The bot said nothing as she was dumped unceremoniously on the floor between two tables covered with glassware. Two more Engineers appeared with a wooden crate filled with dirt. They set their burden down more carefully, near the window, and left the room.

  “It’s time we need, not hands,” said Gilman. He stared at the bot; her eyes were open wide, scanning the room as if searching for something familiar.

  Duncan knelt and began to struggle with the knots that held the bot’s legs motionless. “I thought there weren’t any left,” he said.

  Calloman shrugged. “Some kids found them. Just half a dozen, on an island in the river, in a thicket. There’s bound to be more out there somewhere. And time you haven’t got. We need progress, now.” He pointed toward the window. “There’s more of them out there than ever.”

  Gilman glanced toward the small tent city and the forest of placards beyond the fence. The protesters were quiet but, yes, their numbers grew every day. The armed guards, and perhaps the sense that it was Engineers who governed what had once been the Gingko County Community College, kept them from storming the campus. “You think a Mack will help?” he asked. “Show it to them, and this place will be rubble in a day.”

  “Show it to the government, and we can get the troops to clear them out.” Calloman said nothing more as he turned and left, closing the door more gently than he had opened it.

  Duncan leaned back on his heels and stared at the mute solidity of the door. “Do you think we’d feel any safer?” he asked bitterly, even though he knew the Engineer could not hear him.

  Eventually, he turned back to the bot and undid the last of the ropes around her arms, grunted sympathetically at the vicious redness of the marks the bonds had left, and helped her to her feet. She staggered, steadied, shook off his hand, and stepped toward the crate of dirt. “No one’s safe,” she said in a husky voice. “Not anymore.” She leaned over the crate, felt the dirt, and added, “It’s dry. Water?”

  Andy Gilman brought a large beaker and poured its contents over the dirt. The water promptly disappeared. The bot stepped into the crate, root tendrils unfurling from her calves and palping the surface of the soil like so many slender tentacles. They worked their way into the soil, and the bot sighed. “They killed them all,” she said. Her voice choked. “I’m the only one.”

  The two men looked at each other awkwardly. Both were familiar with the Engineers’ attitude toward the products of gengineering. “I’m surprised,” said Duncan. “I’m astonished that even one survived. What’s your name?”

  There was a long pause while the bot reached one hand toward the window. The marks around her forearms were already fading. She found a honeysuckle tendril and drew it toward her, bent, and tucked its tip into the soil near the edge of the crate. Finally, she said, “Chervil Mint.”

  “And are you…?”

  “A gengineer?” She managed to produce a faint smile. Her voice remained husky. “Not really. I was too young to work when…” The ragged tops of her leaves parted from her chest. Then, as if she realized she had nothing left to conceal, she let them unfurl, tilting them to catch the sunlight that entered through the window. “But I know the techniques. I know what to do.” Then, as if in afterthought, she added, “There wasn’t any honeysuckle on the island.”

  * * * *

  Deep blue sky arched over the old farmhouse’s weedy garden. Burdock and honeysuckle sprawled. Trees strained to intercept the sun with leaves and needles. Clouds hovered on the southern horizon, hinting of the distant Gulf of Mexico and suggesting rain in the coming hours or days.

  Sam Nickers sat on an upturned bucket in front of the keyboard of the bioform computer they had brought with them. The leaves that formed the computer’s screen were tilted toward him, displaying the lesson of the moment. Around him were scattered two dozen young bots, their roots embedded in the soil, meshed with the roots of the honeysuckle, ready to receive what the computer would send them as soon as he issued the necessary commands. Nearest him was Jackie Thyme. Three teachers, including Mary Gold, stood ready to monitor the flow of information and soothe any students who could not absorb it without pain. The pain was less likely than it had been before Sam had learned how to use the computer, but it could still strike, and there seemed no way to predict who the victim would be or what lesson would cause the most suffering.

  Other bots stood nearby, their roots too touching the honeysuckle, but in watchfulness, scanning the landscape with honeysuckle senses for signs of intrusion, invasion, threat. More than once since the refugees had found this farm, these sentinels had alerted the rest to hide while horse-drawn wagons passed on the road. Once a young couple, walking, had paused at the end of the weed-choked drive, stared at the house, asked each other, “Do you think they’re alive?” and shaken their heads. They had not approached the house; if they had, they could not have missed the signs of occupancy.

  The refugees had food. They had soil and water and sunshine. They had distance from the Engineers. They even retained some hope, though that grew more difficult day by day as the few bots who still survived outside of their small colony lost their connections to the honeysuckle net. They knew that the Engineers still hunted for prey, and that they still found it. It seemed more and more likely that it was only a matter of time before the Engineers found them, and then… There were no signs of rescue.

  Sam was reaching for his keyboard when the image on the screen broke into static. “Litter!” he said as he rebooted.

  “Wait!” said Mary Gold. A distant look spread over her face. “It’s a message… A bot, imprisoned… They finally put her where she could reach the honeysuckle.”

  The details followed: The honeysuckle tendril Chervil Mint had put in the dirt of her pot had rooted. By then she had learned what the Engineers wanted of their captive gengineers. She knew the threat of the surrounding conservative Engineers. She knew where she was. And as soon as the honeysuckle roots had been ready for her touch, she had cried out upon the net. Against all hope, she had found others of her kind. But could they, would they, help?

  No one spoke until Jackie Thyme said, “We have weapons, and Ginkgo County is not far away.” She pointed south and west. “We can do it. We should.”

  “No!” said Mary Gold, the tips of her leaves opening and closing in a fearful flutter, her scalp blossoms trembling. “They’ll find us then. And we’ll be…”

  “They’ll find us anyway,” said Jackie Thyme. “Eventually.”

  Sam thought of the human gengineers being forced to help the Engineers rebuild enough infrastructure to support a mechanical technology, of what would surely happen to them once they had succeeded, of what seemed all too likely even sooner, as soon as the faction outside the fence was sufficiently enflamed. “A meeting,” he said. “We need to consider what to do.”

  * * * *

  The decision had not been quickly reached, but man
y of the bots had had enough of hiding safely while their kind, their creators, and their allies were all exterminated. And, as Jackie Thyme had pointed out, they did have weapons. A new crop of grenade plants, both gas and shrapnel, had ripened and their fruit were ready to use. New botbird plants had grown too. And the bots themselves had regained their strength. Two nights of steady marching on country roads would get them to the college. They could do it, if they only would. And with luck, the Engineers would not be able to follow them.

  “I’m coming too,” said Sheila Nickers. She was wearing a pale blue coverall, armless, its back a cross of straps. Her green skin glowed in the sunlight. “You can’t leave me behind.”

  “I’m the medic,” said Sam. “They’ll need me with them. And I need you here, safe, even if that makes me a fatuously overprotective male. I want to be sure my mate will survive even if I don’t.”

  “Be careful then,” was all she said to indicate her acquiescence. Her arms tightened around his chest. Her head pressed beneath his chin. Her feathers tickled his nose. He tightened his own grip on her.

  The first night of the journey passed without event. Sam marched near the head of the column, a sack of seed-case grenades heavy on his back. There was no moon, and clouds made the night so dark that when he turned, he could see only the few bots nearest him. Toward dawn, when a greying sky sent them looking for a grove of trees in which they could lie concealed till dark returned, it rained lightly. Sam did not find that comforting, though the bots smiled and spread their leaves.

  The second night was as dark as the first until they topped a rise and, through scattered trees and empty buildings, made out the sparks of the campfires that ringed the Ginkgo County Community College campus. They were flickers, dying unfed while the Engineers slept. The small army concealed itself and readied its weapons. Botbirds flew, feeding images through their fiber optic umbilicals to the leafy screens of their parent bushes. Sam and his companions searched those images carefully but saw no sentinels among the fires. Only then did they split into small teams and dare to approach.