Asimov's SF, March 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  My verandah faced north, to give me shade from the hostile UV of the noonday sun, and that was the direction from which the alates were coming. There shouldn't have been anywhere in that direction for them to come from, but I knew that if the stubborn ancient walls of Hollyn and Patrington could provide the foundations for marvelous growths of littoral limestone, and hence for newborn islands where plastishacks could be securely bedded, there was every possibility that parts of Withernsea could do likewise.

  Of all the former dwelling-places in the Holderness, Withernsea was the one that generated the most legendary echoes—far more than Hornsea, which had been a considerably bigger town in the Ice Age. As its name proudly declared, Withernsea had been on the coast in those days, and would now be unsheltered on its eastern shore from the full wrath of the North Sea storms—but what it lacked in safety it might make up in romance, at least in the eyes of an artist.

  Withernsea was a lot closer to Hollyn than Patrington, as any sort of creature might fly, but I had no idea whether there was a navigable channel through the algal dendrites that reared up from the new sea bed, whose colonization of the Holderness grew more insistent with every year that passed. I never went out in the motorboat for “leisure purposes,” but if I ever had I'd have headed vaguely westward, in the direction that would have qualified as “inland” before the old Ice Age land had been gradually swallowed up by the salt-marsh.

  I considered the possibility of ignoring the matter, simply hoping that it wouldn't become a problem. If I had been a fungal specialist, like the communards of Patrington, that would have been a justifiable strategy, but I wasn't. I had three species of flowering plants producing reliable cash crops. The rape and the poppies were safe enough for the time being, but there was no way of knowing how far across the angiospermal spectrum the artist's experiments might eventually range, and the foxgloves might already be in hazard. Pharmed foxgloves are notoriously vulnerable to what the technical jargon terms “bizarre pollination,” in spite of the insect-repellents built into their nectar. I didn't suppose for a moment that those inbuilt insect repellents would have the slightest effect on antheric alates.

  For that reason, I really needed to talk to my new neighbor about the situation, if I could. With luck, all I'd have to do would be to ask politely that he tighten up his security measures, and he'd be willing to oblige. There is, after all, a certain core of politeness involved in living outside the law; no one with any sense wants to give anyone else too powerful a reason to stir up trouble. I'd have to get my head in condition to make the trip, but I trusted my own products and visiting wasn't something I'd ever had to do with sufficient frequency to risk another hook.

  I didn't know how long it would take me to find a viable route to Withernsea, but I didn't dare set off in the early morning, even with a canopy over the boat and the shade of the algal dendrites to limit my UV exposure. Given that it was June, when the days lasted far longer than the nights, the prudent thing to do was to pop the requisite pills in late afternoon and set off in the right direction, establishing a deadline for the search that would guarantee me a safe passage home before the twilight dwindled away.

  I didn't make it on the first day, but I figured out a mazy route that got me close enough to the re-risen Withernsea not merely to estimate the contours of the island but actually to glimpse the roof of the largest of the plastishacks in which the artist had set up production. It was hard to miss, not only because of its capacious size and flamboyant architectural design, but because of its blatant disregard for the most elementary camouflage. If a copter were ever to fly over my place, its pilot would need a keen and attentive eye to make it out, but the new building stuck out from its surroundings like a tarantula on a lacy net curtain. The Hull police had far more urgent things to do at present than explore the Holderness, which lay outside their jurisdiction, but the boldness of the new development was still reckless.

  The next day, I followed the mazy path I'd already mapped out with all possible speed, starting at four-thirty, and had found a way to the shore of the new island by six. I tied the boat up in the shade of a mock-willow, and made my way stealthily over the virgin coraloids to the sturdy platform on which the complex of plastishacks had been erected. The central element, at least, was more mansion than shack.

  Ever since the Great Migration had begun, technologies for erecting instant houses had been subject to tremendous selective pressure, forcing them to evolve with the same tachytelic fervor as the new littoral ecosystems that were recolonizing the drowned land. Even so, the house seemed to institute a significant step forward. I'd never seen anything like it advertised on TV. The artist was obviously an exceedingly rich amateur rather than the kind of impoverished optimist who used to starve in the proverbial garrets of the Ice Age.

  My heart sank as I looked at the place from a distance, sheltered by the algal undergrowth, and I nearly lost my nerve. In spite of the chemical fortification, I wanted to change my mind, turn around and go back home. I knew, though, that if I did that I'd eventually have to come back, probably sooner rather than later. The combination of necessity and curiosity was just powerful enough to give me the courage to continue going forward and knock on the door. My approach was tentative, as much for fear of guard dogs or an entourage of bodyguards as my native inclinations, but the place was utterly quiet. If there was anyone at home, they were busy about their daily toil.

  I knocked, and waited.

  * * * *

  The person who answered the door was a casually dressed female, whose apparent age was about twenty-one. I didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that she was a lowly servant, though. The kind of wealth necessary to buy a mansion-sized plastishack could also buy a great deal of cosmetic somatic engineering, and I assumed that even rich people dressed casually when they weren't expecting visitors. The woman might easily be the kind of apparent twenty-one-year-old who'd been around for more than a century. Those kinds of people, so rumor had it, often went in for exotic hobbies.

  “I'm Daniel Anderson,” I told her, while she looked me coolly up and down. “I'm probably your nearest neighbor, unless there's someone closer to the north."

  “I'm not supposed to have any neighbors,” the woman replied, her use of the personal pronoun suggesting that she was the artist herself rather than any mere hireling. “That was the whole point of moving out here. There isn't supposed to be anyone living between here and Hull. There isn't even supposed to be anywhere for them to live.” The way she stood in the doorway was manifestly imperious; she was definitely the mistress of the house.

  “This place isn't supposed to exist either,” I pointed out. “My smallholding is on new ground that formed above the walls of the church at an Ice Age village called Hollyn—the steeple came down and the roof caved in, but the rest stood firm. I run a small pharm there."

  “How nice,” she said. She still hadn't told me her name, let alone invited me in. “What do you grow there?"

  “Psychotropics. Mostly amanita and muscaria derivatives, some opiates, a few exotic oils, and digitalids."

  “Digitalids?” she queried. “Does that include inspirationals and focal intensifiers?” She was definitely an artist.

  “Yes it does,” I said. “Nothing very exotic, though—standard stuff you could buy off the shelf if the law were a little saner and Big Pharma a little less paranoid."

  “Ah,” she said. “You've found some of my alates, haven't you? You're worried about the possibility of transgressive cross-pollination. How far away is your pharm, exactly?"

  “A little less than three kilometers, as the alate flies,” I told her.

  “That far? I had no idea that my little treasures had that sort of range, even with the aid of a favorable wind. The wind mostly blows from the west, carrying escapees out to sea, but the land and sea breezes are brisker in summer, and they alternate with a certain forceful regularity. I can assure you that my alates pose no danger to your poppies and foxgloves. Fo
r the moment, I'm only working with roses, lilies, and orchids, and I've no intention of broadening my experimental range in the present phase of my campaign."

  “How long is the present phase of your campaign likely to last?” I asked, lending a slight ironic emphasis to the odd phraseology.

  She didn't answer. She didn't shut the door in my face, though. She was obviously intrigued to discover that she had a neighbor within a mere three kilometers. She wanted to know more about me. She knew full well that it would be easier and safer to do that at a distance, but she was apparently the kind of person who preferred operating directly, face-to-face—unlike me.

  “What do you think of my designs, Mr. Anderson?” she asked.

  I didn't suppose that she cared about my critical opinion. She was fishing for information about my politics, and the extent of my biochemical expertise. “It's not a matter of aesthetic admiration, so far as I'm concerned,” I told her. “I'm sure that the natural flowering plants that are busy colonizing the New Everglades are too discriminating to entertain foreign pollen, but the whole point of engineered flowers is to welcome hybridization and facilitate eclectic recombinations. It's hard enough keeping my poppies and foxgloves from unnatural intercourse with one another, without having dozens of varieties of ambitious pollen flying in of their own volition. Would it be possible for you to tighten up your containment procedures? Not so much for my benefit as for your own—it's only a matter of time before other people begin finding your stray produce."

  “I can assure you,” she said, “that the police aren't going to bother me here.” She sounded very confident. She looked me up and down again, as if measuring me for aggressive potential. I had to admit that, from her point of view, I might easily seem dangerous, no matter what kind of subtle defenses her fancy house was fitted with or how many other people would come running in response to a cry of alarm. After a suitable pause, though, she nodded and moved aside, inviting me to come in.

  I hesitated. I wanted to turn and run, assuring myself as I went that I'd done what I came to do, and that there was no need to string it out.

  She frowned, obviously having divined the impulse, and finding it rather unflattering. “I'm Judith Hillinger,” she said, as if that were guaranteed to settle the matter.

  It took a couple of seconds for the reflex to kick in and bring the memory to the surface. The moment of realization must have been clearly legible on my face. “Please come in,” she said, to complete her victory. “Given that we're neighbors, we ought to get to know one another a little better."

  She showed me into a room that the mansion's architect must have envisaged as a “reception room,” even though the edifice was located in a place to which invited guests and stray callers would have to make a long and awkward journey. I sat down on a settee, which was upholstered in fancy leather that had never been worn by a cow, and accepted her offer of a glass of iced water.

  “You have the advantage of me now,” she said. “You probably know my entire life story, up to the point when I was released from jail. Even if you somehow contrived to miss the scandal, you can extract every detail from web archives in a matter of minutes. I know nothing at all about you, though, and if I were to feed your name into a search engine I'd probably find it very difficult to sort out one particular Daniel Anderson from all the rest."

  I knew how slight and short-lived any advantage I might possess would prove. If she wanted to find out everything there was to know about me, she could do it—except, of course, for the one thing that nobody knew. I didn't even have the momentary advantage of still being familiar with the lurid details of her case. All I remembered for sure was that she was sufficiently well-connected to have got away with a slap on the wrist for the kinds of flagrantly illegal but essentially unhazardous plant engineering she'd been doing a decade or so ago, and that she had inherited so much money from her late father that the maximum fine would hardly have made a dent in her fortune. Instead, she'd elected to go to trial, and had turned the courtroom into a media circus, making impassioned speeches in defense of the freedom of creativity, and the urgent necessity of humankind becoming the true masters of evolution.

  I'd thought that what she'd done was foolish and counterproductive even at the time, when I too had still been enthusiastic to invent, innovate, and become a master of mental evolution. She'd posed as a hero, but she was really just a nuisance, making it harder rather than easier for those who worked patiently in the shadows.

  “There's nothing about me to interest someone like you,” I told her, not knowing whether to hope that it was true. “I'm just a pharmer, trying to make a dishonest living in peace."

  “Which implies, I presume, that you haven't got a criminal record—yet."

  “No. Are you going to turn me in? I suppose that a simple phone call from you would be enough to bring police copters scurrying from Hull to Hollyn, no matter how much they have on their plate."

  “Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “I'm in hiding, just as you are—and for me, as you'll understand, that's a little more difficult. The police won't bother me, as I said, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't cause trouble for me. If you were to tip off a certain section of the media...."

  “I wouldn't,” I said. “As you say, it's as much in my interest as yours to be discreet—which is why I'm here, to warn you about the alate problem. I just want us to be good neighbors. As far as I'm concerned, you have as much right to be here as I have, and to do exactly as you please—but I need to protect my investment. My margins are a trifle thin right now; the market's oversupplied, and the dealers I work with have troubles of their own."

  “Perhaps you ought to be developing new products,” she said.

  “I've tried that,” I admitted, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Research in psychotropics is difficult and dangerous; testing new products is the sort of thing that can seriously damage your thought-processes. Adventures of your sort carry far less hazard, and the results are much easier to evaluate. I presume that you don't have to worry overmuch about regulating your turnover and protecting your profit margins."

  “You're right, I suppose,” she said insouciantly. “Given your apparently straitened circumstances, I dare say that it would be difficult for you to relocate—and why should you, given that you were here first? You're right; the best thing is for us to make the effort to be good neighbors. If my alates’ range extends to several kilometers, I'll have to make more effort to contain them. It'll be a nuisance, but it's not impractical. I originally intended to surround the compound with high fences—nothing obtrusive, just spidersilk mesh sustained by discreet poles—but I let it slide when I discovered how difficult it is to make them stormproof. I'll just have to steel myself to the necessity of frequent repairs. Maybe I can get away with shielding the southern and western sides, so that any fliers that go a-wandering will be lost at sea. Will you give me a little grace, so that I can experiment with potential solutions until we find one that suits us both?"

  “That's fine,” I assured her—and it was, indeed, a better deal than I had any right to hope for, given that she probably had enough money to force me out or crush me like a bug, if that had been the way her instinct worked. “Thanks—I appreciate it. If there's anything I can offer by way of trade...."

  “Of course there is,” she said. “It will be handy, now I come to think about it, to have a local supplier. I'll pay you the retail price, and I'll trust you not to poison me."

  The last comment was probably more of a threat than an expression of confidence, but she said it so lightly that I didn't take offense.

  “Are you living here alone?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” she said. “I don't pay anyone to answer the door, because I didn't expect to have any uninvited visitors, but I'm not alone. I have three technical assistants, a cook-housekeeper, and a boatman. The cook and the boatman are out fishing at present. Do you live alone, Mr. Anderson?"

  “Yes,” I said, shortl
y.

  “That must be rather lonely,” she said. “Perhaps you might come to dinner some time—but I'd really rather that you didn't drop in uninvited, if you don't mind. I'll give you a number to call, and you must give me yours. Would you like to see my laboratory?"

  The last sentence came as a complete surprise, given that its immediate predecessors had implied that I was being brushed off now that our business was settled. She was an artist, though, and I was a pharmer who'd confessed to having done original work in the past. She had some reason to expect that I'd be capable of understanding her labwork and appreciating its results. I also figured that she probably wanted to satisfy my curiosity, so I wouldn't have quite so much incentive to come back again.

  “Yes,” I said. “I would."

  * * * *

  The lab was impressive, as it had every right to be, given the money that had obviously been lavished on it. Judith Hillinger's three technical assistants were equally impressive, at least to look at. Not one of them appeared to be a day over twenty-one, although I guessed that they'd all had help in that regard. All three were female, though, so their expensive looks were presumably going to waste, unless the absent cook-housekeeper and boatman were both male and similarly cosmetically enhanced. I felt very old and very ugly, and I wasn't at all reassured by the politely disdainful way the three women looked at me as they were introduced, one by one.

  I made suitably complimentary murmurs in confrontation with the genomic analysis kits, the chromosomal maps and the batteries of restriction enzymes, although the only thing that really impressed me was the sophistication of the proteonomic analyses. I made a similar show of being impressed by the seed nurseries and the hydroponics. I didn't have to make any effort at all, though, when we finally went into the greenhouses, whose contents simply took my breath away.