Genometry

by Gardner Dozois

###

  “Are you all right?”

  It was Dr. Long’s voice. Wang managed to drag himself to his feet, using the rail for support. “How—?” he husked.

  “You saved my life.”

  “What?”

  “For official purposes!” she snapped. Feeling something sticky on his skin, he glanced down. It looked black in the artificial light but it had to be blood. Shed by the man who had staggered past from the direction of where the bike was kept . . . Comprehension dawned.

  “Not his knife. Yours.”

  “Correct. I’d better lose it before your chums show up.”

  “They won’t have been told yet,” he objected.

  “Of course not! Who likes getting mixed up in police business? Same everywhere, you know: in any American city you can be beaten to death with a hundred people in earshot . . . But you’ve got to radio in, haven’t you?”

  “I—uh—I suppose so.”

  “Go ahead, then. It’ll look suspicious if you delay. Don’t mention a knife. Say you came to the bike with me and when he jumped us you cracked him in the face and made his nose bleed, or split his lip, or something.”

  “But you actually cut him, didn’t you? How deep?”

  “How should I know?”—angrily. Then, relenting: “Yes, pretty deep. I don’t suppose he’ll get very far.”

  “Then the story won’t hold water. If they find him alive—”

  “It’s got to hold water!” She turned blazing eyes on him. “I can’t afford to be hamstrung by some petty criminal!”

  He was on the point of saying something to the effect that robbery with violence wasn’t so petty, when the look on her face prevented him. He said after a moment, “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Good. Then I’d be obliged if you could stick around for a while.” A quaver crept into her self-assured tone. “I never hurt anyone before. I mean not really meaning to hurt.”

  “He was going to steal your bike,” Wang grunted, poising his radio.

  “That’s what he wanted me to think.”

  He checked as the implications sank in. “What he wanted you to think?” he repeated slowly.

  “The key was in. If all he was after was the bike he could have got away before I interrupted. I ride it down the gangplank all the time.”

  “What else, if not theft?”

  “I don’t know. But I can think of one peculiar thing that’s happened today.” She passed a weary hand across her hair. “Oh, maybe I’m paranoid, but a lot of high-ranking politicians staked their futures on Green Phoenix. And bioengineering has erupted from nowhere to become a multi-billion business . . . Are you never going to call in?”

  Wang came back to himself with a start. Her comments had brought to mind countless rumors he himself had heard ever since Green Phoenix was first announced. It was the most ambitious reclamation project in history—not just reforestation, but an attempt to create on ruined hills a unique, precisely calculated mix of trees, shrubs, grasses, epiphytes, saprophytes, fungi, every kind of plant, together with the micro-organisms necessary for their proper coexistence. All the plants were to be of proven benefit to humanity, whether by supplying food, or timber, or fibers, or drugs, or dyes; but all of them had been modified. That was what frightened people. Probably that was what was troubling Dr. Long. Though—the thought ran through Wang’s mind as he whispered into his radio—how could anyone in Guangzhou have learned about the mysterious fruit so quickly, let alone where it was being taken? Could one of the regular traders in endangered animals have been waiting at the station? Unlikely; they were too recognizable. An agent, perhaps a new recruit, who had sneaked away baffled? How about the man who had tried to steal Lin’s belongings? No, he would scarcely have been so blatant if he worked for one of the big traffickers . . .

  Meantime he was uttering mechanical words.

  There proved to be a patrol car within two blocks. It rounded the corner, siren wailing. He knew one of its crew by sight. They recorded statements, took samples of the drying blood, signed over the unlikelihood of finding the culprit unless he was silly enough to get arrested on a different charge, and eventually gave Wang a lift to a stop on the busline serving his home district. Weary to the marrow, hungry and thirsty all over again, he returned to a note from his wife: since he hadn’t turned up at the promised time she had gone to her mother’s for the evening and might or might not be back.

  He ate what he could find, stepped under a cool shower, and fell asleep as soon as he lay down. He dreamed about unwholesome creatures emerging from the Zhujiang and feeding on shiny metallic fruit that had erupted all over the Ugly Turtle like so many boils.

  ###

  On arriving for work exactly one week later, he was summoned before Chief Superintendent Tan. Wondering what he might have done wrong, he obeyed at once. Others were already there. Inspector Chen’s presence as his squad commander was no surprise, but with him was Dr. Long. She looked not just tired but exhausted, indeed visibly older, as though as many years had passed for her as days had for the rest of the world.

  The chief spoke up without preamble. “Your report about last week’s incident at the University Biological Department was incomplete,” he rumbled. Wang felt a stir of apprehension, assuming that the man Dr. Long had stabbed must have been found and recounted his side of the story. But he was wrong.

  “Dr. Long tells me your prompt intervention saved her life. You made no mention of the fact.”

  “Sir, I think—”

  “There’s no need to be modest,” Dr. Long sighed. “I’ve said you deserve a commendation.”

  “Well, that’s—uh . . .” His voice faltered from incredulity.

  “It’s too late to object,” Tan said. “Sit down, by the way.” Waving at a vacant chair, he leaned back in his own.

  “Dr. Long has come with an unusual request,” he went on, “but before I tell you what it is I gather there’s something else she wants to say. Dr. Long?”

  “Thank you.” She rubbed her eyes, suppressing a yawn, and interpolated with a grimace, “Sorry, but I haven’t had much sleep lately. I received a preliminary report from the States about that peculiar fruit not long after you went home and it’s kept me busy ever since. It’s—uh—disturbing.”

  Wang tensed. “Is the fruit in fact from Green Phoenix?”

  “That’s the strangest aspect of the matter. They say not. That’s to say, everyone except Lin says not.”

  Chen’s eyes widened, Wang noticed from the corner of his own gaze. Tan was rather better at controlling his expression, but even he showed the ghost of a reaction.

  “On the other hand,” Dr. Long pursued, “I’ve traced reports of something similar from other places: Singapore, Hawaii, Australia. Not documented, not scientifically investigated. Not until now, that is.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” Wang admitted, sensing that the others would welcome a confession of ignorance.

  “The fruit derives from a plum. As you must have noticed, though, it doesn’t smell like a plum.”

  “No, it smells more like—well—raw meat. Like pork, maybe.”

  “To judge by the way the marten ate it, it must taste like pork as well. In fact that’s exactly what Lin compared it to. When the report from America came through I made myself very unpopular by having him hauled out of his cell and carted off to City Hospital. I thought I’d had a bright idea. I was wrong.” She rubbed her eyes again and this time failed to overrule a yawn.

  “He’s in pretty good health all things considered. On the other hand his wife is not likely to last out the year. She has a massive fibroid growth in her abdomen. It was discovered last month when she was undergoing a hysterectomy. Lin was able to tell me where the operation was performed, and even the name of the surgeon. I made myself unpopular with him too, by routing him out before breakfast.”

  She drew a deep breath.

  “In the far west the incidence of this type of growth has shown an upsurge in the pas
t few years. Commonest continues to be stomach cancer attributable to a diet high in spiced and salted food. Next commonest are cancer of the lung, mouth, and colon. However, in a remarkably short time this new one has achieved fifth place. Stranger yet, it’s confined exclusively to adult women. What do you make of that?”

  Wang licked his lips. “Something to do with the fruit?” he hazarded. “You’re implying it’s been modified to make its flesh more like animal tissue. But in that case the UN—”

  “Quite right: the forest is nominally under UN supervision, though in practice that boils down to satellite inspections and an occasional guided tour for VIPs. However, they are supposed to receive details of all gene-modifying experiments, and there is no mention of any such project in records made available to FAO.”

  “Accidentally, then? It seems so unlikely . . .”

  “Under normal circumstances I’d agree.” Despite her fatigue, Dr. Long’s tone was regaining some of its former crispness. “However, as I remember telling you, these circumstances aren’t normal.”

  Wang nodded thoughtfully. He could well understand what lay behind Dr. Long’s disquiet. There were political and economic factors, too. He recalled her reference to the powerful individuals who had staked their futures on the success of Green Phoenix. They wouldn’t like it at all if it turned out that one of their creations—or rather one of the creations they had lent their blessing to—was responsible for an epidemic of cancer.

  Maybe Dr. Long had not been so paranoid after all when she wondered whether the thieves had really come after her Kawasaki.

  There was a short silence. Eventually Tan cleared his throat. “Dr. Long is planning to visit Green Phoenix,” he said.

  She nodded. “I expect permission any day. For once the UN’s right of inspection is to be fully implemented. There have been misgivings about Green Phoenix right from the start, not just overseas but in this country too. The full-bellies have never approved, have they?”

  It struck Wang as incongruous to hear this blonde round-eye refer so casually to one of the unofficial factions in the present Chinese government. Some held that a surplus of food allowed the leisure to plot subversion, so it was safer to keep the people hungry, others that shortages made them angry enough to rebel. In allusion to an ancient proverb they were nicknamed “full-bellies” and “empty-bellies.” Obviously massive reclamation projects were anathematical to the former.

  But what did all this have to do with Policeman Wang? He cast an inquiring look at Tan. “Dr. Long?” the chief superintendent invited.

  “Mr. Wang, I hope you don’t mind, but . . . well, I don’t have to tell you that if this fruit does in fact originate from Green Phoenix, sundry persons will find themselves in jeopardy. They may take steps to protect their reputations. The way you reacted the other night made me feel I can rely on you. I’ve asked for you to be detached on special assignment. I want you, in effect, to be my bodyguard.”

  “There’s no need to decide at once,” Tan began. “When permission comes through for the trip—Is something wrong?”

  “No, sir.” Wang straightened to full height. “Thank you, Dr. Long, for the suggestion. I’d like to volunteer straight away.”

  That added the near-theft of the Kawasaki to the necessary preconditions.

  THE GREEN PHOENIX

  . . . was indeed green. Brilliant viridian, searing emerald, acid lime, sprawled out of the five valleys where it had initially been seeded, that tapered in the manner of fingers—or claws—and now had surmounted all but the barest and rockiest of the intervening ridges. Sight of it drove away the headache that had plagued Wang since undergoing, last evening, a whole battery of said-to-be-necessary immunizations.

  For it was wrong!

  He had never traveled this far west before, never seen with his own eyes how valleys like these might have looked in olden time. He had never viewed the aboriginal firs and pines, breathed the electric scent of waterfalls, heard the clamor of uncounted birds. But images of them were part of the world he had been born to, immortalized in the work of long-dead artists, shadowed forth in poetry and legend, implicit to this day in the characters he had been taught to write with.

  That was gone.

  Instead, here loomed a mass like fungus, like pondweed, like moss, as crudely bright as though it had been painted, as stark as though it had been carved from plastic foam. Staring at it from the elderly twin-engined army plane Dr. Long had conjured up for the last stage of their journey, he felt horrified.

  And more so yet when he looked elsewhere, for all the surrounding land bore testimony to the greed of humankind: scarps denuded of soil and vegetation; terraces ordained by far-off bureaucrats on the grounds that global warming had made it feasible to grow rice in this area, which squandered months of work and slumped at the first drop of rain, leaving cascades of mud to dry and blow away; felled logs by the hectare, last remnants of a noble forest, destined for sale abroad to the profit of parasitic middlemen, seized in the nick of time and kept back so that the local folk might warm their homes in winter, heat their food, and mulch their little plots with bark and sawdust before erosion stole the last trace of their fertile land. It had been a bold decision, much applauded. Even so, thousands of the starving had had to be relocated or allowed to emigrate.

  Now the Green Phoenix provided work—better: a sharable ambition—for about a million who remained. Nonetheless the process of attrition still went on. Wang had never thought before how small a number a million really was. No one knew, no one had known since the nineties of last century, the population of his home city. He could only repeat what he had been told, that it was about twice as great as in the year of his birth: four million, then? Mexico City comprised, so it was said, more than thirty million, of whom most were doomed to starve, catch AIDS, or die by violence.

  Guangzhou was a cosmopolitan place—had been since before Wang was born. Twice a year it was invaded by thousands of foreign visitors attending the great trade fairs, and in between there were countless minor cultural events. Since 1997 it had been as open to the world as any part of China and much more than most. But never before had Wang felt the reality of the world beyond the frontiers of the Middle Kingdom as keenly as when watching—there was small point in listening, for he spoke no language but his own—Dr. Long invoking the support of colleagues in country after country through computers at the Ugly Turtle. Now as the plane droned toward the edge of the Green Phoenix, toward the little landing-strip that served the headquarters town whence it had been directed since the forest’s inception, he sensed the first impact of what she had achieved. Waiting for them at the head of a group that included soldiers was a man in a dark civilian overcoat whose very posture betrayed a wish to be anywhere but here, and not merely because it was a dank and misty afternoon. Wang wondered whether he dared pose a question, but was saved the need. Dr. Long spoke up.

  “I knew they were taking me seriously, but I didn’t realize how seriously!”

  The third passenger glanced at her. Wang had only met Dr. Bin on the flight from Guangzhou: a greying bespectacled man of middle height, introduced by Dr. Long as a fellow biologist but manifestly more than just another scientist. He exuded a scent of politics.

  “That’s Project Director Pao, isn’t it?” he grunted. “I didn’t know you’d met.”

  “We haven’t,” was the composed reply. “But can you imagine someone like him sending a deputy with all these rumors flying around?”

  “Are you sure they’ve reached this far?” Bin countered. “If so, the next thing we can look forward to is lunatic headlines like GOODBYE TO HUNGER and FAREWELL TO FAMINE!”

  Wang started. Even though he had gathered, from what Dr. Long had told him about her discussions with colleagues, that people had been surprised and impressed by what he still thought of as “Lin’s fruit,” he hadn’t pictured it as having such global consequences.

  Surely, though, she had implied that it also gave people cancer—or
had he misunderstood somewhere along the line? Quite possibly. He had a new problem on his mind. When first proposed the notion of this trip had seemed like a heaven-sent escape from the misery of home. Now, however, he couldn’t help hearing over and over his wife’s threat that if he didn’t come back on the promised day, not even one day later, she would sue for divorce.

  He suspected that was what she secretly wanted. In today’s China, where so many parents of the last generation had opted for a boy in the traditional manner, there was a multimillion surplus of males and any girl less ugly than a water buffalo could pick and choose. People didn’t even object to divorcees any longer. So . . .

  There was no actual control tower. Circling, their pilot was speaking to a man on the ground with a hand-held radio, confirming the identity of those on board. Dr. Bin scanned the area. “Do you see any sign of the equipment?” he inquired.

  Dr. Long shrugged. “No, but I imagine the roads are pretty rough in this part of the world. Pilot!”

  “Yes?” The woman at the controls glanced over her shoulder.

  “Ask if there’s any news of the trucks bringing our gear.”

  A brief half-heard exchange: then: “Yes, the lead driver called in not long ago. They’re just the other side of that hill. Should come in sight any moment . . . Okay, we’re cleared to land.”

  And set them down ahead of a plume of dust.

  Unstrapping as the plane halted, checking his gun, Wang demanded, “Doctor, should I go ahead and—?”

  “And make like a bodyguard?” she countered wryly. “I guess you can skip it this time. We have had enough support from the level heads.”

  He looked blank. Impatiently she rapped, “Not the full-bellies! Not the empty-bellies! The few politicians in this benighted land who sometimes worry about our whole species instead of just their chance of taking their hens and hogs and horses up to heaven! Don’t bet on their ascendancy lasting, though. We’re here chiefly because the pro-UN faction got the jump on the others, the people who stand to lose the most if we have to firebomb Green Phoenix . . . In practice of course it would have to be nukes, and even they might not do the job properly.”