Greenhouse

by Thomas A Easton

  “Sentiment. Yes, sentiment.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Freddy.

  “But also genes. We said it once. Need old genes too. Inbreeding is not just bad. Both good and bad. Need old and new. Has anther, too.”

  Jack fell silent. Abruptly, the pheromones emanating from the amaryllis ladies changed their character. Sweat broke out on the gengineer’s forehead, and he clutched at his withered anther as it swelled.

  Muffy’s head throbbed and ached. Her worrystone began to vibrate. It hummed, its pitch quickly rising until it sounded panic-stricken. The other worrystones sounded too, and their chorus quickly grew deafening. Muffy let go of her mate and put her hands over her ears, but that did not help. She looked at her companions. They too were suffering.

  Tom Cross looked dazed. His stone was as loud as any, and his hand was wrapped tightly around it. But he was lifting the chain over his head.

  “No, Tommy!” She grabbed, but he twisted away from her. He dropped the worrystone on the floor. He moaned. He stepped toward the largest amaryllis lady and his mother, nearby in another pot. He undid the fastenings of his coverall, and his bud, swollen vastly beyond anything Muffy had ever seen, came into view. Its sides, where Jack had nothing but empty pollen sacs, were beginning to show a hint of yellow.

  Muffy could not help but think of mice, whose females become fertile—they ovulate and become receptive to the male—when exposed to the pheromonic scent of male urine. Like them, though he was male, Tom was developing. His testicles were still there. But his anther was maturing too. Unlike Jack, he had a double set of gonads. Both human and plant. Both sperm and pollen. And within days, or even hours…

  Other moans drew her attention to Jim and Peirce. They too were responding to the flood of pheromones the amaryllises had unleashed. Yet they were responding more slowly, less completely. The reason, thought Muffy, must be that they lacked Tom’s botanical component. Or—she looked at Jack, who remained sweating but quiet, not moaning, not so swollen, apparently resisting the orgiastic commands—the pheromones were not aimed at them. Or was Jack being told by other signals to remain aloof?

  Like Tom, Jim and Peirce were unfastening their clothes. Their worrystones were unable to defend them despite their frantically noisy efforts. These pheromones were thus obviously different, not designed for communication, for the passage of information, even for the exercising of detailed control over another’s will. They were for preemption, for releasing and directing primal urges. They were simpler, more direct, more…

  The preemptive pheromones had a primal honesty. Somehow, Muffy sensed that neither they nor the amaryllis ladies were evil. Jack had created the ladies. Then he had threatened them. They had dominated him with their pheromones in sheer self-defense. And that remained their motive: defense of their selves, of their unborn—unsprouted—progeny, even of the world in which those progeny must live. Muffy felt that she could understand that much of why the plants acted as they did. But there was something else as well: unlike humans, they wanted not just the survival of their progeny, but also the genetic improvement of their kind. They embraced the law of evolution. They did not deny reality, and they did all they could in the service of their future. Somehow, she could not find it in herself to condemn them.

  Kimmer was staring at Peirce, clutching Freddy, and sobbing. Freddy, for all that he was a pig and not a human, was making a soft hooting sound and rubbing his snout against the side of her head. Julia’s hands were clenched, white-knuckled, as if she were suppressing an impulse to murder. Muffy could feel her own, other urges rising within her. Yet she remained in control, perhaps because women have always had—or seemed to have—more control over themselves in moments of sexual excitement.

  Desperately, Muffy groped within her mind. She knew something, had seen something, could do something, that would help. She knew it. But she could find nothing, until…

  She stepped backward, toward the entrance to the greenhouse gallery. Keeping her eyes on the amaryllises and on Tom, now advancing toward the sentient flowers, she explored the edges of the doorway with a hand.

  And there! There! She turned a dial, flipped switches. Lights flickered off, then on again. The hum of the fans faltered and returned. A glass panel overhead opened and admitted a cool night breeze. And the flow of air through the greenhouse gallery reversed.

  It was only moments before Tom blinked, backed up, detumesced, and rearranged his clothing. The odor of the new pheromones was still there, but it was rapidly weakening, diluted by having to travel the long way around the head house, some of it lost to the outer world. The shriek of the worrystones moderated. As quiet returned, Tom’s stone, abandoned on the greenhouse floor, uttered a single defeated “Snap!” When Muffy looked, it was already turning black.

  The ensuing silence was disturbed by the sound of a small jet engine overhead, the clap of wings cupping air for a landing, and a brief bark, as of canine curiosity.

  Jack looked only blank, though he turned his head toward the front room of the head house. Jim said, “Is it help? Or…?” Julia led the way out of the greenhouse, through Jack’s bedroom, and into the front room, where the house’s dark eyes stared blankly down at them.

  But before she or anyone else could reach the door to the outside, it opened. In the doorway, framed by the teeth behind them, stood two men. Both wore dark grey executive coveralls and small mustaches, one dark, one light. Neither wore any ornamental patches or jewelry, not even a neckchain.

  The taller of the two, who wore the light mustache, held a leather folder open in his hand, a glint of metal telling all that he held a badge. “Bioform Regulatory Administration,” said the other. He seemed to be in charge. “Enforcement. And here you are.”

  Freddy swore: “Mechin’…!”

  Muffy watched Tom nod at the gene-cops and ask, “How’d you find us? I thought…”

  The two BRA agents laughed as if they were a single person. “That you wrecked the tracer? Sure, but we knew where you were up till then. We flew into Pinkley and asked a few questions. They told us which way you went.” He did not say that they had waited until night in hope of catching them all in bed.

  “They must,” said Jim. “They must have thought you were on their side.”

  Another laugh. “They were overjoyed, especially once we said who we were chasing.”

  “And who is that?” asked Kimmer. Her voice was as tense as Muffy’s had been just a few minutes before.

  “Illegal gengineers. Man-muckers. Polluters of the genome. And you’re under arrest. All of you.” The badge folder disappeared into a pocket and both agents drew small guns. Muffy recognized them as dart-throwers. The darts could be loaded either with anesthetics or with deadly toxins.

  “But we haven’t done anything,” objected Peirce. “We’re not gengineers.”

  “We’ll sort that out later. For now, you’re evidence. So’s the house. I’ve never seen such obvious muckin’.” The shorter BRA agent pointed his gun at Freddy in Kimmer’s arms. When she wrapped her arms more tightly around the pig, the agent turned toward Peirce. “We know who you are. And I can’t say I’ve ever trusted what goes on in that museum. Artists are as bad as gengineers. No respect for…”

  The other agent grabbed Jack by one arm. “You too. You and your giant dong.” He made a disgusted face. “The rest of you are witnesses. And what’s in there?” He pointed toward the greenhouse. The doors were open, Muffy recalled, and he could surely see…

  “The lady with the roots?” said the shorter agent. “We’re supposed to get her too.”

  Muffy and the rest stood aside, but the BRA agents gestured imperiously. “You first. Lead the way.”

  When the agents entered the greenhouse, however, their commanding manner faltered for just a moment while they stared at the amaryllises. While they were thus distracted, Muffy was able to step out of the procession and lean against the wall beside the door.

  “Jeezzuss!” said the agent wi
th the light mustache. “Mechin’ giant Alices! Are they alive?”

  “Who cares?” said the shorter man. “We’ve got enough herbicide for all of’em.”

  “Herbicide?” asked Tom.

  “No!” cried Muffy. They had had her kidnapped. They had planned to pollinate her, to breed their children on her. But…“You can’t!”

  The agents ignored them both. “We’ve gotta keep one, you know. Evidence.”

  “And wipe the rest.”

  “I’ll go get the stuff. And the camera.”

  “No!” cried Tom as their intent became clear. “Not my mother!”

  “Huh?” Petra was plainly visible, the leaves of her supporting amaryllis seeming her own, and the plant’s immense blossom now bent out of sight behind her head. “That’s the one. Shut him up, will you?”

  The gun began to turn toward Tom. “Sleepy-time…”

  “We’ll haul her out for you!”

  The agent paused. “Why not? All right, go ahead. But only as far as the door, for now.” He gestured at Tom and Jim. The two young men bent to lift Petra’s pot and move it toward the greenhouse door. Fortunately, the pot’s edge curled over to give them a handhold. As they passed the agent and he could see behind the rooted woman, he laughed. “And there’s our evidence. We won’t need another.”

  They would, Muffy knew, for that cop had said so, want to study both Petra and the amaryllis. They would take them both, and pieces of the house, and Freddy, and Tom, and even all the rest of them, to some tightly locked BRA laboratory and take them all apart, cell by cell, to learn just what had been done to their genes, just what threat they might offer to the world. And then…Muffy did not believe even the amaryllises held any real threat, even though they wished to convert humanity to planthood and environmental benignity. Their main ambition was for the improvement and safety of their offspring.

  Certainly Petra Cross held no threat, not with honey bums taking root allover the city and the country. It would be so much better to return Petra to her husband, Ralph. He could plant her in the yard again, or he could keep her in her pot, in the living room of his city apartment, with or without the amaryllis.

  “Do you think?” asked Peirce. “Do you think they’ll be able to restore her? Maybe your gengineers could find out what honeysuckle genes she carries. Then they could build a virus to remove them, and…”

  “Honeysuckle genes?” said the taller BRA agent. “Never mind. We’ll figure that out later.”

  Muffy shook her head. Surely, BRA’s gengineers would never bother to build Peirce’s virus. It would be too complex a task for minds that could consign intelligent beings to endless laboratory study. As Tom and Jim hauled Petra past her, she bent one hand behind her back, found the knob, and turned it, praying that she had the right control and was doing the right thing with it. The relief she felt when the house’s ventilation system obediently reversed the flow of air through the greenhouse nearly buckled her knees.

  Outside the head house, Tige began to howl. Muffy thought that he seemed to be announcing a new threat, and one he recognized and hated.

  “Mech!” muttered Freddy. The pig’s snout was nearly smothered in Kimmer’s neck. At the sound of his muffled voice, she relaxed her grip. “What now?” he added.

  Jim dropped his side of the pot and ran ahead. As Petra and her amaryllis companion tottered, the BRA agent’s finger jerked. His gun went “Pht!” but the dart missed. Jim was already into the front room.

  Muffy sniffed the air and felt surprise at how she was already taking for granted the strange ability of the worrystones to neutralize the plant ladies’ pheromones. Yet her stone had not yet begun to hum again. The pheromones she had been expecting, the commands the amaryllises would issue to incapacitate the BRA agents, were not there. The amaryllis ladies were silent, or odorless. She looked in their direction, saw only human eyes staring toward the house’s front door, saw beyond the agents and her friends Jack staring toward her with a childishly expectant look upon his face. She thought that, if only he had a mind of his own, he might say or gesture that his masters were holding their fire until…She turned away, her face feeling hot and red, anxious not to reveal to anyone, not the agents, not whoever might next be coming through the door, that any surprises lay in store for anyone at all.

  When the agents indicated that she should follow the rest, ahead of them, to the front of the house, she obeyed. She too wanted to see what was about to happen, and she had done all she could.

  Jim opened the door, admitting a glare of spotlights or headlights, and said, “It’s a Bioblimp.” He swung one leg forward as if he were about to leave the building, but then he stopped. A shadow fell over the opening. He backed up.

  The silhouette that followed him was unrecognizable except in one feature: the gun in its hand, a blocky, massive slug-thrower. The gun was pointed at Jim, and it jerked in emphasis as its bearer said roughly, “Shut that mechin’ Mack up!”

  Jim obediently called, “Tige! No!” Silence fell.

  The silhouette moved into the house’s interior light, and Muffy saw a familiar dirty coverall, a face she had last seen at the zoo and, perhaps, leaning out of a Bioblimp pod. Three more of the kidnappers followed him, each with a gun.

  “Pht!““Pht!”

  But the two BRA agents had made the mistake of choosing the same target. One kidnapper fell, three gunshots immediately reverberated in the enclosed space, and the agents were on the floor. One screamed and clapped his hands to his thigh. The other…One of the bullets had torn open his throat, and blood had sprayed a three-meter swathe of floor. His head had flopped to one side. Half his blonde mustache was now red. “He’s dead,” said Julia, her voice hushed with fear.

  “Mechin’ right the litterhead’s dead. You will be too, if…Back up! Get away from those guns!” One of the kidnappers retrieved the weapons, checked their loads, and muttered that Andreas should wake up eventually. Another eyed the women and said, “I know where we could get a good price…”

  “Even for that one?” The leader pointed at Petra Cross. “Useless bitch.”

  “Collecting her cost us Walt.”

  “We ought to kill that mechin’ dog.”

  The leader pointed his gun toward Jack. “And what about you? You haven’t paid us off yet. You’ve got what you wanted. So you owe us.” When Jack said nothing, he let his eyes walk up and down the naked man and added, “This place smells like a whorehouse. I want to see…”

  They moved again, like a human tide that swept through the head house, first in one direction, then in the other, impelled not by the commands of some distant moon but of nearer goons with guns. Muffy and her friends, preceded by Jack, led the kidnappers through Jack’s bedroom to the greenhouse gallery.

  As they entered the gallery, the amaryllis ladies turned their floral faces toward the newcomers, like sunflowers toward the sun. “Christ!” said one of the kidnappers.

  His leader said, “I’d like to know how…” but Jack interrupted him. “You were not,” he said. He seemed to be trying to speak more quickly. “Not supposed. To come back. Back without…” He was closest of them all to his sentient plants, and Muffy noted that the pheromones that made him speak were faint, as if the amaryllis ladies were being careful not to alarm the invaders by affecting their minds.

  “Don’t complain. You’ve got’em all.” The gun pointed directly at Jack. “And we want the rest of our money.”

  “It won’t make a bit of difference,” said Kimmer Alvidrez. “If you shoot him. He’s just their mouthpiece.”

  Muffy winced, though Kimmer had apparently not given too much away. “You mean…?” The kidnappers stared at the giant flowers. “He’s just a front? They can’t move?” The three kidnappers moved closer, and the other humans let them through. Even Jack stepped aside. “Jesus!”

  Muffy could see the kidnappers thinking: They could search the house and take not just what Jack had agreed to pay them, but anything and everything they
found. They could take an amaryllis or two, or kill them all and take the house for their headquarters. They could keep the human women for their own, or sell them, with no further risk than they had already incurred as kidnappers. They could…

  They were so close to the amaryllis ladies that they were utterly helpless when the sentient plants finally renewed their flow of preemptive pheromones.

  They moaned, dropped their guns, and began to strip. When Tom began to moan too, Muffy quickly pulled the chain that held her worrystone over her neck, cupped the humming stone in the palm of her hand, and grasped Tom’s hand in hers, the stone sandwiched between them, protecting them both. Her mate relaxed and murmured a fervent, “Thanks!”

  To one side, Jack was once more sweating as he resisted the call to pollination. With an air of effort, he gestured them out of the greenhouse and into his room. Petra and her guardian amaryllis were still there. Muffy could see the unconscious kidnapper and the two BRA agents, one dead, one still clutching his leg wound, in the room beyond.

  Jack closed the door to the greenhouse, immediately shunting the flow of pheromone through the ventilator grills above their head and thereby reducing their exposure. The amaryllis in Petra’s pot turned toward him. “We did not,” he said for the plant. “Not expect so many males. But now we have enough. Enough genes. He will give them pollen-bearing anthers. We will have pollen, and seeds. A strong new generation.”

  Muffy could not help but notice that when only a single amaryllis controlled Jack’s nervous system, his speech was far more coherent.

  “We still,” said the amaryllis through Jack. “Still intend. To spread our genes. Turn people into plants. But first we need. Motility. And hands that are our own. We need defense.”

  “That’s true,” said Tom. “You’re right. BRA will not sit on its hands when you begin to spread out. And others, too, will resist.”

  “So far,” said Peirce. “So far, only honey bums, and not many of those, are growing roots. If others do the same, or if…”