He leaped from his desk and danced headless about the office.
I felt in complete control of myself as I watched him and continued the conversation. “About the Model 2000 launch,” I said. “If we factor in the demand for pipeline throughout and adjust the media mix just a bit, I think we can present a very tasty little package to Product Marketing by the end of the week.”
Tom continued to strut spasmodically, making vulgar copulative motions. Was I responsible for evoking these mantid reactions? I was unaware of a sexual component in our relationship.
I got up from the visitor’s chair and sat behind his desk, thinking about what had just happened. It goes without saying that I was surprised at my own actions. I mean, irritable is one thing, but biting people’s heads off is quite another. But I have to admit that my second thought was, well, this certainly is a useful strategy, and should make a considerable difference in my ability to advance myself. Hell of a lot more productive than sucking people’s blood.
Maybe there was something after all to Tom’s talk about having the proper attitude.
And, of course, thinking of Tom, my third reaction was regret. He really had been a likeable guy, for the most part. But what’s done is done, you know, and there’s no use chewing on it after the fact.
I buzzed his assistant on the intercom. “Arthur,” I said, “Mr. Samson and I have come to an evolutionary parting of the ways. Please have him re-engineered. And charge it to Personnel.”
Now I feel an odd itching on my forearms and thighs. Notches on which I might fiddle a song?
GOOD WITH RICE
John Brunner
The late John Brunner was one of the most prolific and respected authors in the business, with more than fifty books to his credit, including, in addition to his science fiction, thrillers, contemporary novels, historical novels, and volumes of poetry. His massive and widely acclaimed novel Stand On Zanzibar won him a Hugo Award and was one of the landmark books of the ’60s, and he produced several of the most notable novels of the ’70s as well with books like The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and the remarkably prescient The Shockwave Rider—which, in retrospect, cannot only be seen as an ancestor of cyberpunk, but which may have been the first serious fictional speculation about the workings of an “information economy” world; it even predicted computer viruses. In addition to the Hugo, Brunner won the British Fantasy Award, two British Science Fiction Awards, the Prix Apollo, two Cometa D’Argento awards, the Gilgamesh Award, and the Europa Award as Best Western European SF Writer. His many other books include the novels The Squares of the City. The Atlantic Abomination, Polymath, Age of Miracles, The Crucible of Time, and The Tides of Time, and the collections The Book of John Brunner, The Fantastic Worlds of John Brunner, and The Best of John Brunner. His last book was the novel Children of the Thunder. He died an untimely death in 1995.
Brunner was always one of the most politically savvy of science fiction writers and here, in a story that could have come out of this morning’s headlines, he shows us how biological and genetic science might help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems—at the cost of raising some unsettling new ones.
THE SUNSET DRAGON
. . . crept the last few hundred meters into Guangzhou Central station at less than walking pace. The train was so named because it hailed from about as far west as one could go without leaving the country. It was not, however, those of its thousand-odd passengers who had ridden it for the full two-and-a-half days that tried to open the doors before it halted, and on failing—because the rolling-stock was of the most modern design, with an interlock connected to the braking system—stuck their heads out of the windows to voice futile complaints. Rather, it was those who had joined it closer to this final destination, who had not yet had time to sink into the ancient lethargy of the long-distance traveler, so appropriate to a land whose very dust smeared one’s skin with the powder of ancestral bones.
But their impatience was to meet a further check.
There must be some very influential people in the first carriage behind the locomotive. Where that car was to draw up, a section of the platform was isolated by metal barriers. Carpet had been laid. Railway officials in their smartest attire hung about expectantly. Two women fussed over a little girl in jacket and trousers of red silk who was to present a bouquet. Backs to the train, soldiers stood on guard bearing carbines at the port.
The exalted passengers should have emerged at once, accepted the flowers and the compliments, and been whisked to a waiting limousine. Instead, there was some sort of hitch. Had they been able to see why they were obliged to wait, perhaps even enjoy the little bit of spectacle, the passengers would have shrugged the matter off. Wherever one went in China nowadays, there always seemed to be Important People thrusting to the head of the line: politicians soliciting support for this or that school of opinion; businessmen involved (or claiming to be) in discussions with foreign corporations, Japanese, American, European; experts in a hundred disciplines seeking ways to mend the sick heart of the land . . . As it was, though, the crowd quickly grew restive.
###
There are, of course, no such things as coincidence, and Policeman Wang was far too good a Taoist to imagine otherwise. When he looked back later, though, he could not help being struck by the number of preconditions necessary to set in motion the chain of events that was so soon to change the world—or rather, let the world find out how it was already being changed.
For instance, but for the delay in getting the Important Passengers away to their car, he might well not have spotted the old peasant as he hobbled by amid the throng, swept past like an autumn maple leaf abob on a swollen stream. Or even if he had, which certainly was possible because in this thriving Special Economic Zone the fellow cut such an incongruous figure, would not have had the chance to act on his sudden inspiration—more properly called, he supposed, a hunch.
Being for the moment free of routine duties, such as discouraging peddlers anxious to fleece newly arrived country folk and noodle-cooks apt to overset their pushcarts in their eagerness to beat off competitors, he was able to take stock of his human surroundings in search of what had snagged his attention.
The passenger mix off the Sunset Dragon was typical for this time of a working day. There was a preponderance of men in suits and ties, clutching attaché cases and portfolios, fretting as though they were being conspired against and looking for someone to blame. There were merchants carrying craftwork, carpets, bales of cloth and skin rugs from non-endangered species such as pony and camel. There were a couple of priests in wide-brimmed conical hats, showing themselves openly again thanks to foreign insistence on religious toleration. There were a lot of elderly folk, remarkably spry because of their practice of tai ch’i, presumably here to visit relatives working in the city and thus allowed to live in it. There were virtually no children other than babes in arms, for it was during school hours, but Wang caught sight of three in a group, sickly and sad, presumably on their way to be examined at a hospital. There were several young people whom Wang would dearly have liked to accost, to find out why they weren’t studying or at work, but they looked too well-dressed for him to risk it. Either they came from rich and influential families, untouchable by the police, or they were drug dealers or black marketeers, so he would be interfering in areas for which another branch of the force was responsible, or—in the case of the girls and possibly some of the boys as well—they were prostitutes who very probably had triad protectors. Sometimes Wang doubted whether the bosses in Beijing had understood what they were letting themselves in for when they insisted on reuniting Hong Kong with China.
But he didn’t want to think about Hong Kong.
Heterogeneous though those around him were, the old peasant still stood out like a rock in a rice bowl. (Old? Probably he was no more than fifty, but he had lost several teeth, the rest were stained with tobacco, and under his greasy blue cotton cap his face was so ingrained with dirt that e
very wrinkle, every line, was doubly overscored.) He was shabbily dressed in garb reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, much repaired; only his shoes were new. Over one shoulder he balanced a bamboo pole, sagging at both ends for the weight of one bundle tied in cloth and one sack that failed to disguise its contents, an oblong hamper. He seemed unwilling to rest his load on the ground, though it must be tiring in the warmth of Guangdong. No doubt of it: rather than just being annoyed by the holdup, he was nervous. He kept glancing around in a totally different manner from his companions. When his gaze strayed to Wang, it darted away on the instant.
He’s worried about the hamper. What’s in it?
At Wang’s side his partner Ho said sourly, “This lot look as though they could turn nasty. How much longer are they going to be kept hanging about?”
Wang disregarded the question. His eyes were still fixed on the old peasant.
“Not talking to me today, hmm?” Ho said huffily. He had small liking for Wang, whom he regarded as an idiot. To have spent a year in Hong Kong and not come back rich—what a wasted chance! In many ways he reminded Wang of his wife, who seldom tired of saying the same.
But never mind him. The dignitaries had finally emerged from the train, the bouquet was being presented, there were bows and handshakes and official cordiality in progress. Wang reached a decision. Raising the aerial on his radio, he requested the cooperation of their squad commander, Inspector Chen.
Who was not a bad sort, Wang felt; at least he didn’t share Ho’s low opinion of him. He asked no questions and didn’t even frown at being summoned by a subordinate. Together they closed on the peasant, with a scowling Ho in their wake.
Seeing police approach with batons drawn, the peasant panicked. He dropped his burden and would have fled, save that the crowd was not only too dense but also surging into motion as the barriers ahead were moved aside. Trapped, he turned through half a circle, closed his eyes, and pressed both hands against his chest, swaying as from a weak heart. A young man with a dark sly face reached for the fallen pole. Wang’s baton cracked down one centimeter from his outstretched fingers. Mind changed, the fellow scurried away. By now Ho was steadying the peasant to save him from falling—vastly against his will, as was obvious from his expression of distaste.
“What do you suspect?” Inspector Chen muttered, with upraised baton directing the rest of the squad to hold back the crowd—rather like the conductor of a western orchestra.
There was a powerful smell of urine, more pungent even than the stench of humanity below the station roof. On the basis of that, plus the obvious fact that the peasant was of far-western stock, Wang said, positively, “A banned animal.”
Chen stared for a moment. “Could anyone still be that stupid?” he demanded. Then he glanced at the peasant, who had recovered enough of his wits to glare daggers. “Let the fool sit down!” he called to Ho in passing, thus answering by implication his own question. With a gesture he indicated that Wang should fetch and open the sack.
Instead of consenting to sit, the peasant wrenched free of Ho’s grip, fell to his knees and implored mercy with repeated kowtows. His accent was so thick they could barely grasp what he was saying, though it included some excuse about his wife being ill. But there was no mistaking the import of his actions.
Chen eyed Wang sardonically. Speaking clearly and slowly, with the intention of being understood, “You were right. He is a fool. Now let’s find out what kind of animal it is. Better yet, why doesn’t the fool tell us? You—what’s-your-name!”
The old man was blubbering by now. Ho caught both his pipestem wrists in one hand and tugged a wad of greasy papers from the side pocket of his jacket—a stupid place to carry them in a crowded train, of course. Maybe he had got away with it because no one was much interested in stealing the identity of an old countryman.
“Name!” Chen snapped. When no reply was forthcoming he signaled to Ho.
“He’s called Lin Yung-fei,” the latter reported, having fumbled open the wad of papers. He added, punning on Lin’s primary meaning of forest, “Perfect for a raw-food-eating barbarian!”
The insult cut short the peasant’s sobs and he went back to glowering. It was a poor joke, though. Ignoring it, Chen indicated to Wang that he should proceed with his examination of the hamper. Circumspectly he complied: first untying the rope that attached the sack to the carrying pole, then opening the sack and pushing it to ground level on all sides, thus revealing that the hamper was made of wicker and that its lid was secured with rough wooden pegs.
The stink made it indisputable that his conclusion was correct.
The passengers from the arriving train had dispersed, but they were still surrounded by a score or more of onlookers. Wherever one went it seemed there were always people with nothing better to do, who veered to swarm like kites at every breath of an event. So long as they didn’t try to meddle it was pointless to order them away. As many again would spring up, faster than mushrooms.
Lin recovered his voice long enough to curse: first his luck, then whoever the “friend” was who had told him he could make a lot of money by smuggling a rare animal to a big city, and thirdly the police. At that stage Ho’s baton prodded him in the kidneys and he subsided.
The hamper lid had holes around the fastening pegs. Cautiously applying one eye, Wang confirmed that there was indeed an animal inside. It was brown, lithe and sleek; it had sharp white teeth in a wicked-looking jaw; and it had claws.
“It looks,” he said slowly, “like a large ferret.”
The peasant snorted. Apparently he had run out of lies and denials. “Just the sort of stupid remark you’d expect from a townie!” he rasped. “She’s not a ferret, she’s a marten!”
Wang nodded. He had heard the term and seen pictures.
“Is that a protected species?” Chen demanded, and didn’t wait for an answer. “I guess it must be. If not, why is he bringing it here?”
Sadly Wang reflected that there had been a time when such a question could have been answered legitimately in more ways than one: as a pet for my grandson, to be trained to rid our home of rats, to be bred so the pelts of her young can be made into hats and gloves . . .
That, though, had been before the tidal wave of humankind turned half of China into wasteland. He himself was married, to his cost, but he had not taken up his legal chance to become a father because he didn’t want to be guilty of causing yet more desolation. To his wife, of course, he claimed it was because modern advances in biology would soon ensure a hundred-percent guarantee that their sole child would be a son—and wasn’t that what her mother had dreamed of all her life? Ho often taunted him for waiting, pointing out that there was always a fifty-fifty chance, but since his own child was a girl his gibes rang hollow.
“All right,” Inspector Chen said after a pause, raising his radio. “I’ll warn base that we’re bringing this lot in. Ho, put handcuffs on the old fool. Wang, you carry the whatever-it’s-called. You!”—more loudly, to the onlookers. “Move on! The fun’s over, such as it was.”
At that point Ho spoke up unexpectedly. Much as he claimed to look down on country folk as a rule, it wasn’t the first time he had boasted of special knowledge due to rural ancestors. “Be careful!” he warned. “I know about martens. They can give you a nasty bite. This one’s sure to be in a vile temper after being shut up hungry for so long. Matter of fact, I’m surprised it hasn’t chewed its way out of the hamper!”
Wang hesitated. He was about to say that the animal didn’t look very aggressive when he was forestalled by Lin.
“Who said I kept her hungry? I’m not so stupid that I’d starve a valuable animal! She’s worth much more alive than dead!”
He gave no indication of whether he wanted the marten alive because she was to be bred from, or for the more prosaic reason that no decent Chinese housewife would feed her family on flesh she herself had not seen killed.
“Is that true?” Chen demanded. Wang applied his eye to the hole in
the hamper lid again.
“Yes, it does seem to have something to eat. Some kind of fruit, by the look of it. Right?” he added to Lin.
Before the old man could reply, Ho interrupted. “Martens are carnivores,” he scoffed. “They eat meat, not fruit.”
“They eat that sort!” Lin snapped. “Same as we do!”
“What sort?” Chen demanded. Lin shrugged.
“That sort! We call it ‘good-with-rice’ because it is.”
Wang felt a faint prickling on the back of his neck. He sensed something unfitting to the proper order of things. By his frown Chen did also. Having contacted base to warn of their arrival, the inspector added a request for someone to take charge of the marten, and then, after a brief hesitation, a further request, this time for information about kinds of fruit that carnivores might eat. The sense of bewilderment at the far end was almost audible.
That done, he returned his radio to its clip at his belt.
“Right!” he barked. “Let’s go!”
THE TOWER OF STRENGTH
. . . pharmacy was typical of its kind: long dark wooden counters with many drawers below; more drawers in the cabinets that lined the walls, holding leaves, roots, stalks, flowers, seeds, bark, fungi; organs from animals, birds, reptiles, fish; dried blood, musk, gall, even dung, especially from birds; at intervals, work stations where the staff weighed out these and other substances on shiny new electronic scales, then comminuted them in electric grinders—to the annoyance of many of the customers who thronged the premises, for they were as conservative as their devotion to traditional medicine indicated, and felt that some subtle essence might be lost from a drug if it were not pounded with an iron pestle in a marble mortar. But the only pestle and mortar to be seen reposed in the display window, gathering dust alongside a set of old-style balances with wide shallow pans of tarnished brass.
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