Thomas Easton - Organic Future 02 - Greenhouse

PRELUDE

To the Eldest and her sisters, the glass that protected their narrow

gallery from sky and weather was as plain to "see" as the dark walls that

shielded them from public view. Their senses were not quite of the human kind,

and it was not difficult for them to register the infrared that glowed from

both sorts of solid surface. Yet they could also respond to visible

wavelengths, and thus they could watch both the swayings of the overhanging

palm fronds and citrus branches that tempered the bright sunlight and the

movements of tree limbs and clouds and sun beyond the glass.

They could also feel. They could feel temperature and dry and wet, and if

they could, they would have smiled when the pipes that arched between their

shade plants and the glass spewed misting showers to keep the dryness from

their leaves and blossoms and the rich soil that embraced their bulbs.

The Eldest and her sisters could hear as well, but they could not speak.

They could not, in fact, communicate in any ways that humans would easily have

understood. They talked to each other by the slight bendings of their stems,

the curlings of their leaves, and mainly by the drifts of fragrance that rode

the steady current of air that flowed from the Eldest down the gallery past

all the rest. In due time, when the air had swept through all the other

passages of their dwelling, those odors would return. But they would be

diluted then, spread out and weakened, and of course delayed. The Eldest thus

spoke always with the first and loudest voice, and no sister could threaten

her dominance. So long as no one rearranged the gallery or tampered with the

ventilation system, so the situation would remain. And so long as the Eldest

gave no orders for change, their ordered rank and the air currents that swept

their messages along the gallery would be undisturbed. She would, of course,

order no disturbance of the status quo, for much of her heredity dictated a

properly hierarchical sense of her own importance in the larger scheme of

things.

Now the Eldest let a long leaf curl and straighten while she twisted on

her stem to peer down the gallery and be sure she had the attention of her

sisters. She might have sighed if she had had lungs. Those sisters...She was

the Eldest by only a little. All had had time to reach their full growth. But

only she had reached a size consistent with maturity. The others were small

and stunted. Some were deformed in minor, inconsequential ways. And the next

generation would have to be worse. Certainly it could be no better. Unless...

Finally, she released a small puff of intricately intermingled odors. Her

message was simple, and each member of her retinue added to it comments, so

that what the listener furthest downdrift sensed was something rather like:

"WE ARE HANDICAPPED

Cannot leave our beds

Destiny and progeny demand

No handicap

Motility

THINK

Consider

OUR MASTER/PET

Has/had pistil/mate

And scion/seedling/sprout

THAT ONE TOO HAS

Yes, pistil/mate

Let's bring!

Them here!

YES

To us

To study them

And cherish them

To change

If possible

To make them make

Pollen

We crave it!

Yes, fruition

And predestined

Success

IF POSSIBLE

Will these three be enough?

TELL, THEN, MASTER/PET

To get more as well

As rootstocks

And pistils

For our dreams"

The conversation was not hasty, for the speakers were languid beings,

unrushed and patient. But by the time the sun had dipped near the hills and

the light had begun to dim, the issue was settled. The Eldest and her sisters

spread their leaves and turned their faces toward the last of the light. There

was nothing more to say, and only a little to do, a little that could easily

await another sunny day, when energy waxed and opportunity arose. Tomorrow the

Eldest would issue the necessary orders.

Until then, she and her sisters would spend their time in dreams, dreams

of some distant day when their scions/seedlings/sprouts might stalk the world

beyond the walls that enclosed their gallery, when more active beings would

cease their scurryings and bow before them, when...

Darkness fell, but before the dreams grew still and dim, the Eldest sent

out the call. Moments later, a hand fell upon the switch near the gallery

entrance and artificial lights came on. They were dim but bright enough to

sustain consciousness, intent, and dreams even when the world was lost in

blackness.

CHAPTER 1

"Do you have the new Slugabeds?"

"Of course we do, Ma'am." Tom Cross smiled at the customer and tugged

surreptitiously at the side of his light green coverall. She was old enough to

be his mother, and her paisley coverall was both three years behind the

fashion and a hair too tight. Yet she was stylish enough in other ways; she

wore no rings or earrings, and the chain around her neck was blackened

aluminum, its pendant a classic pewter peace sign, both as current as could

be. She must, he thought, hate to admit that she was losing her struggle to

keep the figure of her youth. "Right this way, please."

She babbled, as customers tend to do: "We have an antique waterbed, you

know. And it doesn't leak. But I saw the ad, and I thought how interesting it

would be. Almost like having a pet. And it wouldn't have to be plugged in."

Tom didn't know she had a waterbed, antique or new. He didn't care whether

she had seen an ad, or how interesting she thought a Slugabed might be. It was

enough that she had chosen to visit Mr. Greengenes' Appliance Garden. And that

he had a chance to earn a commission. Someday, perhaps, he would have a Garden

of his own. For now...

He gestured at the potted plants they were passing. "Then you don't have

any bioppliances? Our hanky bush is quite useful. And the bathroom model is

very productive."

"Oh, we have one of those. But it doesn't do much, you know?"

"Neither does a Slugabed. It just lies there."

"But it's warm! And it wiggles. That's what the ad said."

The young man nodded. "If you wish. It'll massage you, or cuddle you,

or..." He shrugged. "And yes, it keeps itself--and you--at body temperature.

It'll warm you or cool you, depending on the weather."

The Slugabed display was around the next corner, just past the goldfish

bushes. "These are more active," he said. "Just drop the flowers in a bowl of

water, and..."

"My sister has two."

He sighed as quietly as he could, hoping she would not notice, and led her

onward. "There," he said. "We have a good selection." The Slugabeds, looking

like unrolled sleeping bags, were arrayed on a carpeted platform, without

frames or headboards or box springs. They came in all sizes--crib, youth,

twin, queen, king--and in as many shades of skin as one could see on a city

street. A few were even piebald.

The customer leaned over to pat a light tan Slugabed. Over her shoulder

blades, Tom could now see, her coverall had been embroidered with small wings.

His own coverall bore no decorations other than the darker green figures woven

into the fabric. "They're not very thick, are they?" she asked.

"They don't have to be. Try one, and you'll see."

She looked skeptical. "And the surface. I expected..."

"Something slimy?" When she stiffened, he thought that of course that was

precisely what she had half expected, in the back of her mind, even as she

craved to rest on the leading edge of fashion. He added, "Well, the basic

genome did come from a slug. But then they added the genes for a real skin.

And warm blood."

"It feels just like human skin, without the hair." She giggled at a

thought. "Or the stubble."

"I believe it's a modified pigskin. Very smooth, very soft."

She lay down. The Slugabed twisted under her, fitting itself to the

contours of her body. It did not wrap around her, but rather cupped and

cradled her as if she lay in the palm of some giant lover's hand. It made Tom

think of Muffy Bowen. They weren't married, but they lived together, and she

would be at home now, looking forward to his return. He wished that he were

there now, and that he could afford a Slugabed for their bedroom, and

that...He sighed, more loudly this time.

It was not the customer's body that made him think of Muffy, but the way

the Slugabed embraced her, and the way the ripples ran through the

bioppliance's substance, and the way she responded. Her nipples had erected

quite visibly.

The Slugabed's skin, he knew, was as soft and smooth as that of a baby's

butt. He had lain down on one when they first arrived and been depressed for a

week. He wanted a child; Muffy didn't; that was the greatest flaw in their

relationship.

"Ooh!" the customer said. "I see what you mean. What do you feed it?"

"It absorbs your sweat and body oil and skin flakes. If that's not

enough..." Tom Cross pointed to a patch of skin near her head. It was slightly

lighter in color than the rest of the Slugabed. "This spot turns bright pink,

and you pour some milk on the bed, or gravy, or..." He shrugged. "Instructions

come with it."

He pointed to a small bump on the skin beside the hunger patch. "That's

the control node. Try squeezing it." When she obeyed, the Slugabed fell away

from her body and lay flat, quiet and passive, a mere mattress.

"Oh!" she said. She squeezed the node again, and the genimal once more

molded itself to her.

"If you squeeze harder," said Tom, "it'll massage you."

"Can you squeeze too hard?"

"The instructions warn against trying. It tries to scale its response to

your command, and..."

She was ignoring his answer. She forced the living mattress flat with her

hands, rolled on it, patted it, stroked it. "They don't come with fur, do

they?" He shook his head, thinking to himself that fur would make feeding a

messy business. She rolled over again and pressed her face into the Slugabed's

surface. Then, finally, she sat up and said, "I think I'll take it. You do

deliver?"

The Slugabed display was near the back of the store. After Tom Cross had

written up the sale and arranged for delivery, he fetched a basket of apples

and a bottle of nutrient spray from the nearby supply room. He was a salesman,

but among his duties he also counted the chore of feeding the inventory.

The spray was for the Slugabeds, and it took him only minutes to

distribute their rations. The apples were for the garbage disposals that sat

in a row near the wall, held erect by U-shaped brackets. Each of the

gengineered pigs had a barrel-shaped body, stubby, nearly vestigial limbs, and

a blunt snout that pointed toward the ceiling. Once it was installed in a

customer's kitchen, the drainpipe from the sink would empty into its mouth and

throat. It would then chew up whatever chunks the owner chose to putdown the

drain, extracting nutrient as necessary. The residues--solid and liquid--would

pass through the genimal and into a second pipe. Here, in the Garden, the

garbage disposals were connected only to the outlet pipes, short stubs that

jutted upward from a larger pipe that ran beneath their row. Water ran

continuously through this pipe. Odor was limited to the animal fragrance of

the genimals' bodies.

Tom stuffed an apple into each pig's mouth. When the grinding noises had

quieted, he gave the larger models a second helping. Then, the basket still in

his hands, he made his rounds of the store, gathering overripe pie plant and

sammitch bush fruits, withered goldfish blooms, yellowed leaves, and other

organic garbage. He could feed it all to the pigs, he knew, and sometimes he

did. But the Garden also stocked litterbugs. They were street and yard

cleaners, designed to process huge quantities of dung and other litter, and

all he had to do was dump the basket's contents before them. Their shovel jaws

made short work of his gleanings. When they were done, he scattered

walnut-sized feed pellets on the floor of their pen. The store simply didn't

generate enough litter to satisfy their needs.

Tom's boss was a Ukrainian immigrant who liked to brag of his prosperity.

Looking sadly down at his flat belly, he would shake his head slowly back and

forth and say, "My grandmother would be ashamed of me. In her day, a

successful merchant would be fat!" But not him. He had, he would add, left the

homeland just in time. The Ukraine had once been a breadbasket, but climate

change had made it a dustbowl, and those of his relatives who were still there

were starving. He did not say that many would be dead already if he did not

send money, but Tom knew. Tom also knew that the amounts he sent were what

kept him lean.

Albert Mettnitzky spent most of his time in an upstairs office. He

displayed his own green coverall on the floor of his Greengenes franchise only

when there were too many customers for Tom to handle or, as now, when it was

time to lock up for the day.

"It's been a good day, Tommy. A good day. You go home now, and kiss that

Muffy for me."

Tom grinned. He said almost the same words every day. "I'll do that, Bert.

See you tomorrow."

Tom Cross grimaced as the damp heat beyond the store's door reminded him

of the quiet hum of the heat pump that kept the store cool in summer and warm

in winter. He grimaced again when he smelled...

Some days, the sidewalk in front of the store was totally blocked by

Engineer demonstrators. Today, there was only one, wearing a blue coverall

streaked with sweat stains, new and old. He wore a golden cogwheel, the emblem

of the cult-like movement, on his breast pocket. His beard was unkempt and his

body lean to the point of emaciation. His red-rimmed, glaring eyes refused to

settle long on any particular part of the scenery, bouncing from the store's

display windows to the traffic of gengineered vehicles in the street to the

pedestrians, most of whom did not share his obsession. He smiled only when he

saw one of the rare automobiles whose owners could afford fuel and hand-made

parts. Most of the old vehicles had long since lost their original bodies to

rust. The sheet metal was usually replaced with hand-crafted wood and gleaming

varnish.

The Engineer did not smile for bicycles, for they were too common. Though

they were mechanical, their virtues of simplicity and convenience had let them

survive intact the transition to a technology centered on biology.

The picketer's sign said simply "MACHINES, NOT GENES!" Most Engineers

expressed their hatred of the gengineering that had supplanted the Machine Age

more violently. Full-scale demonstrations were often marked by litterbug

barbecues or Roachster bakes.

Tom stood in the Garden's doorway long enough to watch the man pace slowly

past him, turn, and pace back as far as the strip of green that separated the

Garden from the electronics store next door. That strip was heavily overgrown

with the honeysuckle vines that had appeared everywhere in the past year or

so, and the vines, as always, bore a heavy crop of blossoms the size of small

wineglasses. Each one held a mouthful of nectar, self-fermented and laced with

a mildly euphoric drug.

The picketer plucked a blossom and drained its load of honeysuckle wine.

His eyes promptly glazed. Tom shook his head and walked around the man. At the

corner, he boarded a Bernie, a modified Saint Bernard with a passenger pod on

its back. A few blocks later, he was on the street again, and whistling as he

approached his apartment building. He was looking forward to the little time

he would have with Muffy. She was still what she had been when he first had

met her, the Spider Lady at The Spider's Web. An exotic dancer, necessarily a

night worker, and one with a following, too. But he was the only one of her

fans to...

A high-backed Armadon, mad offspring of a gene-splicer and an armadillo,

clattered down the road away from him. Like Roachsters, Armadons had wheels

grown from their shells; their legs ran backwards atop the wheels to turn

them, and that was what made the clatter. It had been parked near his own

front door, but that did not disturb him. This was city, and the streets were

lined with Roachsters, Hoppers, Beetles, and other vehicles. There were even a

few internal combustion antiques.

He only glanced at the knee-high evergreen shrubs that lined the walkway

between the sidewalk and the entrance to his building. He paid even less

attention to the ancient paneling in the building's small lobby, or the carved

moldings, or the marble floor beneath his feet. He had registered the

building's signs of age when he and Muffy had first moved in, pegged them as

too-ample sign that the place was a dump, and forgotten them. Now the building

was home, even if there were three flights of stairs between the street and

their apartment. He usually paused only long enough to see if Muffy had

fetched the mail and to unlock the glass door.

This time, however, Tom ignored the rack of mailboxes to his right. The

glass door was shattered, and the shards lay at the foot of the stairs, beyond

the frame. Someone had not waited to be buzzed in, or to get out their key. It

seemed, quite simply, that they had walked through the door as if it were not

there.

He froze, thinking that it must have happened very recently. No one had

begun to clean up the debris. Yet there were no cops around. Hadn't anyone

noticed?

He stepped through the door's empty frame, careful not to catch his

coverall on the jagged teeth that jutted from the rim. His feet crunched on

broken glass, and when he caught himself swearing at the noise, he wondered:

Whoever it was, could they still be here? What did they want? Whose apartment

door had they broken down? Who were they raping, murdering, torturing,

robbing?

Muffy?

The thought struck him like a blow. His knees sagged beneath him for just

a second, but he quelled the involuntary response, looked upward as if he

thought he could see through all the floors and walls between him and their

apartment. Then he took a deep breath and ran up the stairs.

The first floor apartments were closed, their doors intact and

undisturbed. The same was true on the second floor. But on the third--the door

to Tom's apartment was open. Beyond it, a throw rug had been kicked into a

heap. A chair lay on its side. A spray of dirt told him that a fallen

houseplant lay just to the left of his field of view.

He stilled his panting long enough to cry, "Muffy?"

When there was no answer, he repeated his call. Finally, he tested the

door's knob. The latch was broken.

He entered the apartment. "Muffy?"

The broken houseplant was an amaryllis, an "Alice" so gengineered that its

blossom resembled a human face. It had just the one blossom, for the

gengineers had merged the four large blooms typical of an unmodified

amaryllis. They had also removed the amaryllis's yearly rhythm, so that Alices

needed no winter dormant period and indeed would produce new blooms as soon as

the old ones faded.

At the moment, this one's bloom, its face, looked as if, if only that were

possible, it would cry. It had fallen from a dresser beside the door, along

with a book, a photograph, and a small pottery dish in which they had kept odd

coins. The dish was as shattered as the downstairs door. The coins were

scattered on the floor.

Tom Cross picked up the photo and turned it over. It was of Muffy, one he

had taken at the art museum. She was standing in front of a pointillist

rendition of a human head formed by a cloud of gengineered gnats. What they

pictured changed constantly in expression, sex, and apparent age; the camera

had caught a fatherly figure, beaming proudly down upon Tom's mate.

He set it back on the dresser. Where was Muffy? He called again, and again

there was no answer. He searched the apartment, but it was small and it did

not take him long to be sure she was not there. Nor, by the time he had

finished, did he wonder what had happened. The bedroom was in perfect order.

So was the kitchen. The back door was intact. The intruders, whoever they

were, had broken in the front door and caught her immediately. She had

struggled, but the signs were all here, in the living room. And then they had

taken her away. But why?

He stood at the window. Its frame was wreathed in the ever-present

honeysuckle vines. Most people, he thought, kept the vines trimmed back from

their windows. Many even tried to keep them from growing in their yards,

though the plants were insistent. But Muffy liked them. She wanted them

hovering in the apartment windows, like drapes, she sometimes said, only

fresher, prettier, more useful.

He had to admit the vines were prettier, though they did, as now, have a

tendency to drape themselves over the sill. He picked up the intruding

vegetation and pushed it outside. When it fell away from the masonry, he

caught his breath. Had Muffy or her kidnappers grabbed at the vines? Had they

struggled here? Had she tried to escape? He didn't think the vines would hold

her weight.

Some of the vines' tendrils were broken. He picked fragments from the

sill, fingered the stubs, and made a face at the stickiness of the sap that

leaked from them. Where was she? Why had they taken her?

He took a step, and one foot made a "snick-ick" noise as he pulled against

a stickiness. He looked. Three honeysuckle blossoms lay crushed upon the

wooden floor, their pink and cream flesh discolored by dirt and bruises. The

invasion had been too recent for their spilled nectar to dry entirely, but

someone had stepped in one of the puddles and the footprints had had time to

grow syrupy. Small insects hovered in the air around the sticky patches.

He sniffed. The sickly sweet odor of honeysuckle wine dominated the room.

He wondered how Muffy could stand to drink the stuff. She had persuaded him to

try it, but only once. He had not liked its taste or smell.

Nor had he liked what he thought it did to Muffy. She had once been

vivacious, active, a joy to be with. But ever since she had taken up honey

sucking, she had had spells of seeming tired, uninvolved, languid.

He knew that languidness. The wine had made him want to stretch out on a

mossy bank, arms spread to the sun, smiling and uncaring, disconnected from

the animal rush of life. He hadn't liked the feeling.

A scrabbling noise behind the couch brought him out of his reverie and

made his last hopes fall. He turned away from the window. "Randy?"

Randy scuttled from her hiding place, mute evidence that Muffy could not

simply have left early for her job. The spider was the size of a cat, black

and shaggy, and she was essential to Muffy's work. And besides, the wreckage

in the apartment could not be due to simple burglars, or vandals. Nothing

seemed to be missing, except for Muffy. And the damage was hardly enough to

satisfy vandals.

He noticed that one of Randy's legs was trailing. When she reached Tom's

feet, she made a "Meep" noise and waved her palps.

She was usually silent, except when she was hungry or curious about some

novel rustle in the vines outside the window. Tom bent and picked her up. She

was quivering like a plucked string. "Hurting, are you?" The useless leg was

crushed, as if someone had tried to kick the genimal out of the way, or to

step on her. He petted her stiff and wiry fur, picked from it the kitties that

had been under the couch, talked to her, tried to soothe her. In a few

minutes, Randy bent in his hands, trying to reach the base of the broken limb

with her mouth.

"I wish you could tell me what happened," he said as she chewed. The leg

came free and fell to the floor. He wondered whether it would grow back when

she molted again. "You won't be much good to her with only seven legs, will

you?" Randy was both Muffy's pet and the prop she used in her dancing. Her

fan, her feather boa, her bubbles. That had impressed him once, when he had

just run away from home, when he and Freddy had wanted to be singers together.

He had already lost his father. He had found out that his mother's husband

had not sired him. That had been a neighbor, a man who had moved away from the

neighborhood before ever he had been born. Then, by running away, he had

forfeited his mother, and he had never tried to return home. Now Muffy was

gone. It felt like a retribution of the fates.

Even Freddy had moved on, and Tom hadn't been able to sing alone. He had

worked in the Web's kitchen for awhile. Then he had found his present job, and

this apartment, and Muffy had moved in with him. And now...

His eyes watered. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Why? Why?

Had the Engineers, those perfervid reactionaries, taken offense at her

dancing? At Randy? Had they taken offense at him and his job at the Garden?

Was she gone forever? Or would the phone ring and some strange voice demand

that he quit his job or burn the Garden or poison the stock? And then, only

then, would they release her. They did such things. They had learned well the

lessons of a century of terrorism.

He stepped across the room. The phone hung on the wall near the kitchen

door. The cord was intact. He took it off its hook and held it to his ear. The

dial tone was there, normal, undamaged. He hung up again, and he stared at the

phone, willing it to ring, willing it to tell him what was going on. He even

willed it to know what was going on, but the "message waiting" light remained

stubbornly dark.

He knew he was being silly. If they were going to call, they would wait.

They would want his nerves as much on edge as possible. They would want him to

be grateful for the call, so that he would do what they wanted.

And there was no way that Muffy had done it all herself. She wasn't

emotionally violent. She never had been, and honey suckers never were. The

honey made them quiet, passive, content to do no more than sit and suck more

honey. Muffy wasn't as far gone as most, for she retained the energy to dance.

But the tendencies were there. They had been there, perhaps, even before she

discovered the honey's charms.

So he shouldn't just wait. He should do something. He looked at his watch.

Only twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the building. His stomach

rumbled. He would, he thought, wait just a little longer. While he

waited...The refrigerator was an old model, and while it kept food cold

enough, its memory was failing. Once, long before Tom and Muffy had moved into

the apartment, it had kept track of its contents and automatically printed out

shopping lists. Now, when he touched its handle, it muttered lists of foods

Tom and Muffy could not afford and of brand-names no one had seen in many

years. "Haagen-Daaz," it said. "Lobster tails. Sara Lee. Prime rib."

Modern food supposedly tasted much the same, though the sources had

changed practically beyond all recognition. He thought of pie plants and

sammitch bushes and broccoli trees and hamberries. Lobster could still be had,

for a price, but for most people...The potster salad in the leftover container

before him was made from a hybrid of potato and lobster, and if it tasted much

like the latter, it looked and grew like the former.

He forced himself to eat the salad before he reached for the phone again.

Then, while he was waiting for the police to arrive, he paced. He held Randy

in his arms, petting the bristly fur, and he remembered. He and Freddy had

been on stage for the first time in their lives, singing dirty songs to warm

Muffy's audience up for her. There had been boozy cheers and catcalls when

they had finished, and then someone had patted his shoulder and murmured,

"Good job, guys." The voice was soft, feminine, but when he turned, no one was

there.

"Watch the stage, dummy," Freddy had told him.

In the glare of the spot, he had seen: black hair, glistening in the

light, falling halfway down a bare back: a mass of black fur cradled in a bare

arm: a profile undimmed by cloth of any kind. He had gasped in unison with the

collective sigh of the nightclub's patrons.

He had met her later, and later still she had joined him for breakfast in

the nightclub's kitchen. They had become friends. She had introduced him to

the art museum where Freddy now lived. And then his bud had begun to swell and

itch. It had grown painful, and one morning he had been unable to get out of

bed.

She had come to him then. She had helped him unfurl his leaves and open

his bud.

They had been inseparable ever since. Until now.

The tears came. He let Randy climb upon his shoulder to taste them.

He wished that she had never tasted honeysuckle wine.

He heard the boom of Sparrowhawk wings in the air outside the window. The

cops had arrived. He sighed at the thought of talking, of strangers poking

through his and Muffy's life, but he also felt a surge of hope. They would

find her. They had to. That was their job.

CHAPTER 2

The chatters, wheezes, hums, and rattles of the city's afternoon traffic

flowed through the open truck window at Jim Brane's elbow. The streets were

full of bioform vehicles, and the sidewalks were a river of humanity clad in

coveralls of a thousand colors and designs, with a million ornamentations of

patches, embroideries, sashes, and medallions. Some individuals wore other

garments--jackets, vests, even skirts--over their coveralls.

Outside the truck window, just ahead, cocked backward to catch his voice,

was an ear the size of a bedspread, held erect except for a flopping tip. On

the right side of the Mack's great brindle head, the ear was folded down.

Tige's shape made clear his canine ancestry. His only marking was a white

circle around one eye.

Jim's markings were only a little more elaborate. He wore the blue

coveralls of an indentured trucker. Shoulder patches tagged him with the Daisy

Hill Truck Farm's distinctive logo, a black-eared white beagle. The logo's

aptness was lost in the mists of time; the Farm's products were descended not

from beagles, but from bulldogs. A similar emblem adorned the side of the

fiberglass pod strapped to the Mack's back. The control compartment or cab in

which Jim sat was at the forward end of the pod. The rear was for cargo.

Greasy smoke and an enticing odor poured from a parking lot a block ahead

and on the right. As Jim and Tige drew closer, they could see that the lot

held no vehicles, except as wreckage. It had been taken over by a small mob of

Engineers, a few of whom were still breaking up the shack that had sheltered

the lot's attendant from the elements. There was no sign of the attendant.

The rest of the Engineers were gathered around a fire built of the broken

lumber. Over it they had hung a gutted litterbug and chunks of Roachster tail

and Hopper haunch. They faced the street, some of them holding bullhorns to

their mouths, all of them screaming slogans such as, "EAT THE CORRUPTIONS OF

LIFE!" When an old mechanical automobile passed by, they cheered. When the

vehicle was a gengineered Roachster or Armadon or Beetle, they threw rocks.

Someone even threw a rock at Tige. But where other vehicles dodged and

Thomas Easton - Organic Future 02 - Greenhouse

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