Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  * * * *

  On the hillsides mist had lingered well past dawn, but it cleared soon after Sue and Wang set forth in a convoy of three cross-country vehicles, leaving Bin to monitor incoming messages at the comms center. Their group included one of Pao’s staff as a guide and a platoon of soldiers escorting technical equipment and the day’s rations.

  At first their route took them through small towns that had sprung up because of the new forest. Not long ago they had been mere villages, but despite the success hereabouts of the one-child policy their population had ballooned thanks to reverse emigration; unhappy in strange cities, thousands of local people who had moved away had applied to return, and permission had in general been granted. So many trees having been felled, most of their homes were burrowed into hillsides.

  Inevitably hordes of the curious attended the visitors wherever they went. Inevitably that included markets, of which there was one in each little town. Inevitably Sue decided in the end to ask why she saw no “good-with-rice” on sale, risking a rebuff from their guide who would inevitably declare that it wasn’t one of the Green Phoenix projects.

  Wang saved her from embarrassment. He tapped her arm and pointed left, right, ahead, behind: low bushes, branches laden, before every house, thriving equally in the ground or in pottery tubs.

  She whistled as she had back in Guangzhou. Why pay for what—as their guide grumpily admitted under pressure—grew anywhere and everywhere faster than a weed, yet, astonishingly, never seeded itself but needed to be planted by human hand?

  Several late risers were emerging from their homes and culling the fruit for breakfast. No charge.

  “Don’t they know about the risk of cancer?” Wang whispered. “There must have been enough cases by now for someone to make a connection.”

  “False sago,” was Sue’s reply.

  He shook his head uncomprehendingly.

  “The starchy food we call sago comes from a palm-tree. There are other plants that yield something similar but aren’t palms. They’re cycads, a kind of giant fern. If you eat the wrong sort you fall ill, become paralyzed and finally die. That’s been known for years. Yet people go on eating the stuff.”

  “Because they’re starving?”

  “More because they don’t think it will happen to them.”

  “I see.… We’re a short-sighted species, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  * * * *

  Beyond that point their route took them deeper and deeper into the forest. There were no more villages or even settlements, only isolated buildings where half-trained “scientists” strove to keep track of the biological explosion taking place around them. Their equipment was old and ill maintained; they reminded Sue, she said, of priests rehearsing rituals whose purpose was forgotten. No wonder something like “good-with-rice” could emerge without anybody grasping its significance … although oddly enough they saw no sign of it within the forest.

  Wang would have wished to inquire further. By now, however, he had been overwhelmed by the majesty of their improbable surroundings, and he was not alone. Earlier the soldiers had been arguing via the radio, the subject being why strangers were suddenly making such a fuss about “good-with-rice,” which they had so long been accustomed to, but at length even the most talkative of them had been shamed into silence by the monstrous actuality of the Green Phoenix. He had had it in mind to make a good impression by commenting intelligently on what they were seeing—the intertwined branches that screened the sky, the creepers and mosses draping them, the birds, the insects, the snakes, the fungi, that pullulated deliriously amid moist heavy-scented air a good five degrees warmer than at their starting-point. Sue, however, ignored him and everyone else, ordering the soldiers to take samples of this, that and the other, meantime recording comments of her own.

  In the upshot Wang wasn’t sorry. Passing trivial remarks about this amazing achievement would have seemed blasphemous. No matter how artificial, how grafted-on, Green Phoenix might look from afar, once you entered it there was no doubt this was in a sense rebellion against the destructiveness of humankind—as though the clock had been turned back by millions of years, to a time when the biosphere teemed with unrealized potential.

  Empty chatter in such a setting would have been like drunken ballads on a temple altar.

  * * * *

  On their return to base, shortly before sundown, they found gangs of men lackadaisically mending potholes in the landing-strip, as though Pao had realized he must make preparations for a flood of visitors but so far had not yet thought of anything more practical to do.

  “Protective magic!” Sue said dismissively, and gave orders for the care of the samples they had brought back before hastening, with Wang in tow, to rejoin Bin at the communications center. By now it was so crowded with the additional equipment he had helped install yesterday that one had to sidle between a double row of monitors reporting incomprehensible data. Without a word Bin handed Sue a wad of faxes. She riffled through them, her near-white eyebrows rising higher and higher. “This is incredible!” she burst out as she finished the last. “But there’s one point these messages don’t cover.”

  “You mean: is ‘good-with-rice’ really not part of the Green Phoenix program?” “Yes!”

  “Apparently that’s true.” Bin, suddenly sounding very old, leaned back and stretched as far as the press of equipment would allow.

  “Yet it can’t possibly be an accident!” Sue clenched her fists. “I can’t believe in the sort of voluntary mutation that would let a plant choose to become dependent on human intervention. Did you know it doesn’t spread by itself, but always needs to be planted, whereupon it just erupts even in the poorest of soils?”

  “That fits with the predictions Allard has been making about it in Paris. You saw.”

  Face the palest Wang had seen, she nodded. “He spent time in Indo-China, didn’t he? Knows a bit about Asian plants.… Any ideas about its origins?”

  “You’ve got everything there is so far.” Bin stretched again and this time dissolved into a frank yawn.

  Sue re-read some of the faxes. Eventually, not looking up, she said, “I think I ought to take pity on Wang. It’ll help to clarify my mind if I spell things out to someone.… Wang, has it struck you as odd that ‘good-with-rice’ has turned up in several countries—obviously spread by emigrés or sent to friends and relatives—yet not attracted much attention and certainly not the sort it deserves?” Wang hesitated, then drew a deep breath.

  “I don’t think it’s odd any more,” he declared. “I did at first, but now I’ve seen how quickly and easily you can make it grow. No one needs to raise it commercially—”

  “But you’d expect people to try,” Sue stabbed. “It’s something you could take to market, sell for a good price—”

  “More and more of us Chinese,” Wang said, letting his voice dwell a moment on the last word, “have turned our backs on farming because our peasant ancestors led such hard lives. Yet there’s something symbolic about making things grow. I feel it. Dr. Bin, do you see what I mean?”

  The older man had been studying him curiously. “You’re an unusual type for a policeman,” he grunted now. “It was smart of Sue to pick you out. Yes, I can well believe that in Singapore and Australia and the other places where ‘good-with-rice’ has turned up it’s been largely treated as a private treasure for the Chinese community. Do you have any inkling just what a treasure it may become?” Wang hesitated anew. He said at last, “If it causes cancer—”

  “Oh, that can probably be tailored out,” Sue said with a shrug. “In spite of what Allard says.”

  “That being—?”

  She was momentarily embarrassed. “Sorry! He thinks the carcinogenic factor is so integrated with its total genetic makeup that there’s no way of isolating it. But he’s only had samples for just over a week. I think he’s being pessimistic. Don’t you?”—handing back the faxes.

  “In principle I have to agree,” B
in acknowledged.

  “Fine. Now I need a shower and something to eat before I—”

  “Just a moment.” Bin stretched for another sheet of paper. “Over in the States and Europe they set some of the search parameters extremely wide, and there’s a phrase that keeps cropping up right on the fringes. Does the term ‘peasant’s son’ mean anything to you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sue said, staring. “Origin?”

  “Maybe the old USSR. But it’s deep stuff from multiply encrypted databanks.”

  She frowned. “For a moment I seemed to recall.… No, it’s gone. Maybe it’ll come back to me when I’m less tired. Coming with us?”

  “No, I’m not hungry yet. I had a good lunch.”

  “As you like. Come on, Wang! By the way, I don’t suppose ‘peasant’s son’ means anything to you, does it? No? Pity!”

  * * * *

  During the meal Sue’s enthusiasm got the better of her fatigue. She enlarged on the possibilities inherent in “good-with-rice.” According to her it represented a credible solution to famine, and despite reservations Allard and other foreign scientists were coming to agree. Over and over she harked back to the astonishing circumstances that it had been under everybody’s nose certainly for several years without its significance being appreciated. She talked so much Wang dared to remind her that she needed to eat, as well, and eventually she remembered to.

  Just as they were finishing their meal a girl brought a folded note from Bin. Sue erupted to her feet, oversetting her chair, and ran off. Perforce Wang followed. He caught up with her in the command center, leaning over Bin’s shoulder as he tapped at a keyboard beneath a monitor that showed …

  Greenthumb’s face. Younger, clean-shaven, but unmistakable. And a name. Not a Chinese one.

  A-er Mu.

  “An inspiration, Wang,” Sue whispered softly.

  “Thank you!”

  And promptly forgot him as, together with Bin, she embarked on the second extraordinary journey of today, this time through an electronic jungle as rife with strange amazing growths as was Green Phoenix.

  * * * *

  “Amnesium! I didn’t know they’d perfected it!”

  Wang snapped back to wakefulness. He had been leaning against a stack of computers just the right height to support him, luckily without doing any harm. What had Sue just said? He struggled to gather scraps of sense from Bin’s reply. The two of them were staring at a screenful of forking lines dense and various as the canopy of Green Phoenix. Under her breath Sue whispered, “God, look how it ramifies!”

  “Leave it,” Bin said incisively. “Now we have a lead to ‘peasant’s son’ we’d better follow through.”

  “Sure, go ahead.… It was staring us in the face! I’d heard of it—even I had!—and I thought it was KGB disinformation!” Sue clenched her fists. “No wonder there’s no record of ‘good-with-rice’ in the Green Phoenix files!”

  Wang could contain himself no longer. He burst out, “You’ve found out who Greenthumb is?”

  “Just a moment!” Sue rapped, eyes fixed on a new display. It was in alphabet, not character, and it took Wang a moment to recognize it as puthonghua in pinyin, not some mysterious foreign tongue. But what could an ancient Russian legend have to do with the Green Phoenix?

  Oh. Of course. It doesn’t. “Good-with-rice” wasn’t part of the Green Phoenix program.…

  “That fits,” Sue sighed, turning away from the screen. “To think I was making all those wild predictions over dinner! Wang, I’m sorry! Bin has dug up the truth, and it’s not pleasant!”

  Taking a deep breath, she drew herself to full height and turned to confront him.

  “The old USSR boasted some of the world’s finest biologists. It also boasted some of the most paranoid politicians, ignorant of science but convinced that by threats they could force their scientists to produce any desired result. Given the speed with which the Soviets came up with an atom-bomb and then an H-bomb they did have grounds.…

  “In the early days of bioengineering a group of enthusiastic young biologists volunteered to work at a base in Siberia where the dream was to develop organisms that could survive on Mars. This was the heyday of space exploration; their greatest hero was Gagarin.

  “But that was under Khrushchev. Following his downfall the project was canceled. However, the scientists were not allowed to disperse. They were set to work on something new.

  “On the Soviet Union’s eastern frontier loomed not so much an enemy as a rival. A political rival, certainly, but more importantly a rival for land. Never mind what politicians might say, sooner or later population pressure in China was bound to force an invasion to the west.

  “If it wasn’t stopped.”

  She passed a weary hand over her short hair. “Sorry if I don’t make perfect sense,” she interpolated. “Bin has found the way to such amazing data that I haven’t digested them yet.”

  Forcing tension out of her limbs by sheer willpower, she resumed.

  “And the way they settled on to stop that invasion was brilliant. What drives people to migrate? They are too numerous for the land to support. So a research program was decreed. Find a means, the orders said, both to feed these Chinese hordes despite the way they’re ruining their land, and at the same time to stop them breeding.

  “And they did it.”

  Wang hadn’t noticed, but several “good-with-rice” rested on a dish in reach of Bin, who now passed one to Sue.

  “This,” she said, hefting it, “is the result. And I’m prepared to believe Allard now. Now that I know Greenthumb was once A-er Mu. That was a famous name in certain circles, last century. He was director of the research station where this stuff was designed. The estimate was that it would take about thirty years to do its work. Someone recalled the legend of the Russian hero who couldn’t walk till he was thirty-three and then became the greatest defender of his people: Ilya Mouromets. His surname means ‘peasant’s son.’ So that was what they called the research station—sited near the Chinese border, in Uighur country, which is where A-er Mu hails from.

  “When the Soviet Union collapsed, the project was still incomplete. But it had progressed amazingly. Not only was the artificial fruit viable—it tasted good, it was genuinely nourishing, and it incorporated carcinogenic genes capable of surviving the digestive process.”

  “And triggered in the host,” said Bin in a rusty-sounding voice, “by the hormones associated with pregnancy—any pregnancy, even one that doesn’t go to term. No wonder Pao can boast about the success of that one-child program in this area! All mothers develop carcinoma of the ovaries!”

  “There were many ultra-secret projects,” Sue resumed, “that the ex-bosses of the USSR didn’t want to come to world attention. Prudently they had made preparations. I imagined—along with practically everybody else—that not only was ‘peasant’s son’ a disinformation exercise, but amnesium as well. Having found out who Greenthumb used to be, I now believe they had created exactly what they claimed: a drug to wipe the memory of higher faculties including speech while leaving intact basic ones like walking and eating. In the twilight of Soviet power they allegedly sent out KGB poisoners to administer it by force, lest research they had conducted on political prisoners might be exposed. It all sounds very Russian, hmm?”

  Wang shook his head confusedly. This was too far beyond his everyday world. All he could think of was that he had shot the man they were talking about and no one had yet told him whether he had done wrong.

  Suddenly Sue sounded bitter. “You were right,” she concluded, tossing up and catching the fruit Bin had passed her.

  Wang shook his head in bafflement.

  “This is not the cure for famine. It’s exactly what you took it for, exactly what you might expect from our sick species.

  “It’s a weapon.”

  THE HARE

  …dwells in the moon and guards the elixir of immortality. But it was traded for the right to father sons; hence he is th
e patron of inverts, and only women celebrate his feast.

  Wang thought about the hare for a while. Then he husked, “People are going to go on eating it, aren’t they?”

  Sober nods. With feigned cheerfulness Bin said, “Yes, it’s spread too far to call it back. But there’s a chance that some day, pace Dr. Allard, we may eliminate the carcinogenic genes. Or invent a better version! And, you know, something that sterilizes people only after they have had the chance to breed… it could be no bad thing.”

  But Sue wasn’t listening. She was turning “good-with-rice” over and over in her hands, much as she had the gnawed one Wang had shown her at the Tower of Strength, and whispering, “It’s a weapon. It’s a weapon, and we poor fools imagined it was food.”

  * * * *

  Copyright © 1994 by Dell Magazines.

  F. M. BUSBY

  (1921–2005)

  Although he and his wife Elinor were involved in fandom for many years, F. M. Busby wrote very little SF until after he retired from his job as a communications engineer. Despite his late start, he wrote almost twenty novels (mostly in the space opera Demu series, which had a sort of “retro” feel) and twice that many stories.

  Francis Marion Busby was a traditional name in his family, named after the famed Revolutionary War “Swamp Fox.” Busby quickly adopted the nickname “Buz.” Since his father had Parkinson’s, his mother’s high school teaching job was the family’s only financial support. Busby made it to Washington State College, but had to join the National Guard for the stipend they received. When he realized he was likely to be drafted into the Korean War, he enlisted in the Army instead, and spent his term on Amchitka Island in Alaska. After graduating with a degree in engineering, he went back to working for the Alaska Communications System in Seattle.