Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK®

by Easton, Thomas A.

  “And now you’re buying Macks and Sponges.”

  “We’re learning how to compromise. Or they are. The Council.”

  “But they hate it,” said Pearl Angelica. “The compromise shames them.” Then, remembering the eyes that had probed her every crevice while she was bound to the jerking, spinning stool they kept for their own personal interrogations, she wondered how real that shame could be. Perhaps it was only official. They had chosen a position: They would rather have nothing to do with genetic engineering and its products, no matter how useful they were. If they said anything else, she supposed they must fear, the mob they ruled would support them in power no longer.

  “And you don’t do that,” said Esteban on another evening.

  “No,” said Pearl Angelica. “We use whatever works. Whatever does the least damage to the world. And we embrace technology in all its varieties and powers. We think it is life-enhancing.”

  “But isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Not as dangerous as not embracing technology. That can cripple civilization.” The bot paused then, considering. Eventually, she admitted, “I suppose it can be dangerous too. You have to be careful not to move too fast, not to rush headlong into fads and abandon older ways that work quite well enough.”

  “A stable, adaptable society needs both old and new,” said Anatol.

  Pearl Angelica moved her wrist, and the murmur of agreement moved along her jawbone to her middle ear.

  But then someone said, “You don’t believe in controlling science. You think if a bigdome has a bright idea, he should just go ahead and let it loose on the world. No matter what harm it might do or how many jobs it destroys or people it offends.”

  “No,” she answered as someone else said, “Offending people isn’t the same sort of thing as killing them.”

  “No,” she repeated. “We think some caution is appropriate, but not the sort of paranoia that was so common toward the end of the twentieth century. Or that the Engineers showed toward gengineering.”

  “But it was destroying the environment! Wild Roachsters in the oceans. Bioblimps in the mountains. Cannibal grass in the woods. Oil trees adding to forest fires. It had to be stopped! Wiped out!”

  The ensuing silence stretched until Pearl Angelica wondered whether another Security interruption had forced Esteban to turn off his cuff once more. But then someone cleared a throat. “No,” she said. “Mistakes happen. But they’re a reason to be careful, not to ban the science that made them possible. Closing off any area of research, rejecting knowledge and technology and change, is the worst thing we could do. The highest good is the pursuit of knowledge. You can’t interfere with that.”

  “Your Tower,” said another voice. “That’s its whole point, isn’t it?”

  Not long after that a dozen Security guards entered the greenhouse, marched directly to the bed in which she lay hidden, and stripped the vines aside. There was no searching, no fumbling. Someone had told them just where to look. Within minutes, a pair of guards were half carrying her down the corridor outside the greenhouse. At the first intersection, they took her to the right. Another pair hauled Cherilee Wright to the left.

  They did not remove the strip of pretty plastic that encircled Pearl Angelica’s wrist. Perhaps the informer had not mentioned that or did not know that it existed.

  * * * *

  Her cage was no longer as simple a structure as it had been. Heavy wire mesh had been fastened to the upright bars with loops of welded chain. A sheet of the same mesh covered the top of the cage. Two of the bars were missing, their stubs showing the runneled traces of a laser cutter. In their place was a narrow mesh door equipped with a sturdy lock.

  Roses and mock orange shrubs no longer surrounded the dais. Showers of artificial rain no longer fell each morning from the ceiling. Nothing relieved the starkness of her imprisonment or discouraged the gawkers from coming within inches of the wire that surrounded her. And they were there, women and men, children and youths, laughing when her expression was most desperate, staring when she gripped the mesh with her fingers, recoiling when her roots writhed in the air, and then laughing once more.

  They stopped only when the veedo came to life and Hrecker said, “She will not escape again.” He seemed very satisfied as he bobbed gently on his toes. “And her fellow conspirators are in custody.” He shook his head ruefully. “It’s hard to believe they’re all Engineers, but…” His image was replaced by one of Anatol, Cherilee, the three women who had visited the greenhouse, and several others. They wore identical manacles and nondescript coveralls that might have been chosen in mockery of the Orbitals and the Gypsies. Scabs and bruises marked their faces. Dark shadows ringed their eyes. Blood stained bandages on their hands and fingers.

  Pearl Angelica sighed with relief when she did not see Esteban among them. But then panic clutched at her throat—Was he absent because they had not caught him? Or because they had already killed him?

  Now Hrecker was indicating Anatol. “The murderer. He has confessed to murdering Walter Crocin and then to helping the bot escape.” He did not say what Crocin had been doing just before his death. Pearl Angelica felt sure Anatol must have explained that despite the pain that had extracted his “confession.”

  That night, when she was alone at last, she asked the cuff, “Can you see as well as hear? Donna?” Using her mother’s name for a scrap of plastic, no matter how much intelligence it held, did not come naturally. “There aren’t any wires in this cage.”

  Instead of answering her question directly, the machine’s quiet voice said, “That veedo set is plugged into the floor beneath it. There has to be a wire.”

  “But where?”

  The cuff was silent while a small robot trundled through the concourse and disappeared into a corridor. Soon thereafter Pearl Angelica was following the cuff’s instructions to wind its induction tap into a small coil. When it said, “Tie it so it doesn’t unwind,” she wished for the first time in her life for hair. She had no string, no cloth to unravel, nothing. But then she realized that she did indeed have something. She stooped and grasped a narrow tendril of her roots. She pulled, gasped with pain, and pulled again until it snapped.

  The artificial intelligence in the cuff knew nothing of pain. “Push it through the mesh,” it said. “Dangle it over the edge. Let it lie flat on the floor.”

  When the machine detected no electrical currents beneath the coil, it instructed her to reel it in and try again, a little further around the circle of the cage. Eventually the cuff’s voice displayed a hint of satisfaction—Was it picking up a human feel by associating with her? Was that why Esteban’s cuff sounded the way it did?—as it said, “Don’t move it now. There … I’m sending. No response. Can you mark the spot?”

  Once more she bore the pain of tearing off a tendril. Tied around a strand of the mesh, it would tell her where to pay out her line when it was time to fish again.

  * * * *

  “Esteban? Thank god. I thought …”

  Her leaves were now fully regrown. According to the cuff, it had been four days since she had been returned to her cage. Nights when every attempt to reach the only one of her friends who—She thought! She hoped!—had not been imprisoned and tortured by Security had failed.

  “It took a while,” he said. “I didn’t know whether they had spotted our messages. But I finally heard. Someone talked.”

  “But …”

  “I was more careful than a lot of our group. Anatol was his real name, you know? And Cherilee was hers. But ‘Esteban.’ That’s pure fiction, pure disguise, and I never spoiled it.”

  “You were right.” She did not ask him what his real name was.

  “I wish I wasn’t.”

  “Have they set a date for the executions?”

  The televised trial had been no more than a b
rief formality. The sentences had been no surprise at all.

  “Not yet. Not that I’ve heard.”

  “Maybe they’ve done it already.” If so, Anatol was gone, beyond her reach forevermore. So was Cherilee.

  “They might have,” said Esteban.

  The cuff interrupted them before either could speak again. “Quick! Reel in the tap. I hear someone coming.”

  Far too soon, Hrecker stood beside the dais and Pearl Angelica was trying to conceal the relief the Security chief’s words had sent washing through her. “They’re going to die,” he had just said. “You can have the pleasure of knowing you killed them.”

  He saw the question on her face. “No,” he said. He rose once on his toes and came down. “We aren’t going to make you push the button that opens the airlock. But you came here, didn’t you? You corrupted them. So the responsibility is yours.”

  “Then I must be a murderer.” But they were still alive. All of them.

  Hrecker nodded solemnly and bounced again. “You’ve been tried in absentia. The sentence was death.”

  She was silent as the outrageousness of what he had just said sank in. She had known she was not likely to survive her captivity. She could hide, as she had indeed, but only until someone betrayed her. She could not escape, for the lunar base was surrounded by an environment that would not permit her to live if she left. Even a spacesuit or a truck would keep her alive only for a while.

  Nor was rescue likely. She supposed Marcus Yamoto must have told the Orbitals just where in the base her cage was positioned. But someone—she forgot just who it had been—had told her the Engineers were too well armed for a raid to have any hope of success.

  The sentence Hrecker had just pronounced was no surprise. Yet some part of her had clung to hope. It was still a shock, just as he must have intended.

  Even as she felt that shock, she realized that this could not be happening, not yet, not now, unless … “The Quebec is back, isn’t it? The Gypsy ship. My Aunt Lois.” When he nodded again, she said, “And she told you they won’t pay the ransom.”

  When Hrecker simply stared at her, she said, “Why did it take you so long? You knew who was talking to me. You must have known the first time he helped me climb out of here.”

  His eyebrows rose. “How?”

  “Cameras,” she said. “Microphones. Where did you hide them? Out of sight in a tunnel? In the roses? The veedo set? Overhead?” As she named the possibilities, she pointed.

  He shook his head. His bounces were no longer isolated but rhythmic. “Why should we waste the effort? We caught you anyway. As well as the renegades who helped you.”

  She struggled to keep the sudden swell of elation his words released from showing in her face. He did not know about Esteban. He thought he had arrested everyone who sympathized with her. And she must not let slip any hints that might revive the hunt!

  He said nothing more, though he studied her face and body carefully for several long minutes before he turned and left.

  Had he seen anything in her face or posture? Had she hidden her feelings well enough? She could hardly be sure, but she thought he knew no more when he left than when he had come. She prayed she was right.

  It was several more minutes before the cuff, her Donna, that miniature namesake of her mother, said, “He’s gone. Put the tap out again.”

  Esteban was waiting. She told him who had interrupted them and what she had learned.

  “Shit,” he said. “Or ‘Litter,’ as your people say.”

  “It’s been nice to know you. I think you’re safe. I hope so. I suppose I am only until after the executions. If they’re killing me because I’m guilty of their murder, they have to wait, don’t they?”

  She imagined that he was shaking his head. “Maybe,” he said. “It’s probably easier than fiddling the paperwork.”

  “I wonder where Aunt Lois is now?”

  “I can find out for you.” There was a pause before he muttered, “I’m at home, you know. Of course. It’s night… But I’ve got Stan’s big brother right here…”

  She pictured him facing a standard computer terminal, his fingers on its keys, his eyes intent on the lines of type that flashed across the screen.

  “Nothing in the public databases … The Ministries should change their passwords once in a while … There!”

  “What?”

  “She’s right over us. Or near enough. Drifting north. She keeps coming back. Not really in an orbit.”

  Elation filled Pearl Angelica’s throat. “If I could get outside!”

  “She wouldn’t dare. You’d both be dead.”

  “It’s the death watch, then.” She would stay there, holding position all the time, hovering as if Pearl Angelica lay in a deathbed, waiting until she heard her niece was dead.

  Esteban grunted. “Here’s the minutes of the last meeting of Ministers … this afternoon. You don’t want to know this.”

  “Tell me!”

  “The main argument was whether to kill you on or off camera. The consensus was on. They think that will convince the Orbitals they’re in earnest and make them less likely to refuse their demands the next time they kidnap someone.”

  “How long?”

  “Not much.” His voice cracked. “They’re going to do you all …”

  When he fell silent, she thought he could not bear to name the limit that had been set on her life. But then he took a deep breath, clearly audible through the cuff, and managed, “Day after tomorrow. The file doesn’t say what time.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Pearl Angelica pressed her face against the cold metal bars of her cage. She fingered the loops like links of chain that bound the steel mesh to those bars. She eyed the mesh ceiling that meant she could no longer climb up some ally’s knee and hip and shoulder and head and jump to freedom. She plunged her roots into the dirt beneath her feet and jerked them through it, plowing, churning. It had once been much the same as the fertile stuff Cherilee Wright used for her garden beds—mixed regolith and compost—but it did not taste the same. She had not been free in the greenhouse, but there the soil had not held the metallic reek of chains.

  She peered through the gaps in the mesh. The concourse surrounding the cage was dim. The only sounds were the soft sigh of distant air pumps, a gurgle of water or sewage in pipes beneath the floor or in the ceiling, a hum of machinery that made her think Anatol might have escaped his own cell and hijacked another truck. Could he possibly be on his way to rescue her once more? No. Of course not. There were no trucks on this lower level, no way to get one here, and besides Security would be watching for just such a move.

  Even if he were on his way, how could he hope to rescue her? There was no longer a way out of her cage. There was nowhere to go even if she could get out. The most that he could give her was one more glimpse of his face, a touch of his hand, a word. She craved them all. She knew she would never have them.

  A distant clicking grew louder, closer. It became obviously the sound of footsteps, and she hoped very briefly that maybe, just maybe, she was wrong. Anatol had escaped his jailers! He was coming to visit her one last time!

  But the pedestrian who emerged from a corridor mouth, darted a furtive glance toward the imprisoned bot, and followed the wall to the next corridor was not her friend.

  Why was this stranger so furtive when so many others had gathered close around her to stare and taunt? Perhaps Pearl Angelica was simply the last to hear of her imminent doom. The stranger had already heard at least a rumor, and he did not wish to come too close for fear her fate would prove contagious.

  The silence stretched while she contemplated a time two mornings hence. Finally, she said, “Esteban? Are you still there?”

  “Of course,” came the soft murmur from her cuff. “I couldn’t lea
ve you now, Angie. Not unless there’s a knock on my door. And now that they’ve got you again, there’s not much chance of that. Unless I was less careful than I thought I was and someone knows who ‘Esteban’ is. But I was careful, and—”

  “You’re babbling,” she said. “This upsets you worse than it does me. But then I’ve been expecting it ever since I heard what ransom they wanted for me. This isn’t any surprise, though now that it’s so close—”

  “Now who’s babbling?”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “I’d love to think of something.”

  “Can you contact the Quebec? Talk to my aunt? Let me talk to her?”

  He hesitated before responding. “I’d have to hack into the com center for that. I’ve never done that. Though it shouldn’t be hard. Never wanted to talk to anyone who wasn’t already here, you know? Not on Earth. My mother’s dead. My father thinks I’m a radical subversive traitor to the cause because I came to the Moon. And I don’t know any Orbitals. But if I can tap those Ministry files—”

  “You’re babbling again.” She imagined his hands on the keyboard of his terminal, calling up menus, searching for back doors and access codes, discovering the subroutine that controlled some isolated dish antenna, typing the commands that swivelled it on its base and aimed it toward her aunt’s ship.

  “Just talking to myself, Angie. While I …”

  He could not slip. No errors would be allowed. No typos. The trick was avoiding whatever watchdogs Security might have planted in the system, detecting the hesitancies of response that said an extra program was monitoring what one was doing, finding passwords or alternate paths to one’s goal, every sense stretched to the limits of its sensitivity, every nerve and muscle tuned for speed.

  She knew it all was possible. She could do it herself, at least if she had a bioform computer. Her roots would interface with its. She would, in effect, make it a part of her nervous system and operate it with all the speed of thought. Lacking that, she did not think her senses or responses would be nearly fast enough.