Revolution World (6 page)

"Alright boys and girls, let's get this party started," said Joanna, pointing her handheld at the wallscreen like an old TV remote. Immediately it flicked on to reveal another conference room crowded with people in suits. The room had no windows so it could have been anywhere, but Thalia seemed to remember the Malsanto headquarters were in Missouri. She'd never been to Missouri.

The man at the head of the conference table was obviously in charge. He stood up and smiled at them warmly. Thalia thought he looked like that James Bond character in Uncle Eugene's old movie. He wore his suit with easy grace and the touch of gray at his temples would have been sexy if Thalia wasn't sure that every inch of his appearance was designed to be appealing by an expensive image consultant.

"I am delighted to meet the leaders of Floracopia at last. I've followed your little company with great interest. I am Gordon Hellerman, CEO. Let me introduce my team."

As he went through the introductions, Thalia noticed an unfamiliar man staring at her with an intense, black expression on his face. She stared back, trying to figure out who he was and what his problem was.
Was he disgusted? Did he hate her? What?
He kept darting looks at her sister, as if he wasn't sure which of them to loathe. He was in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked Hindi and spoke with a New York accent.

"And this is our lead gene developer, Shiva Perun." Gordon was saying. Oh. Thalia did know this guy. She couldn't believe how much he'd changed. He'd studied advanced genetech with Clio. Since it was all at virtual university, Clio had spent late nights studying with this guy, but had never actually been in the same room with him. He lived in New York then and Thalia had been in the area for a Floracopia project. So Clio recommended she go meet this guy. He must have put on at least fifty pounds and cut off the ponytail he'd cherished then.

Thalia was willing to bet even his own mother wouldn't have recognized him under the thick mustache he was now sporting. Judging from the death glare Shiva was giving her right now, he remembered her very well.

After introducing the Floracopia team, Harmony asked casually, "Well Gordon, what can we do for you this morning?"

Gordon's smile reminded Clio of a shark. "Well, there are so many possibilities available with your excellent team and our connections and resources, aren't there? We'd like to explore working more closely with you. Currently, we have a US defense contract that requires some techniques that your team has used successfully before. Medea, would you mind presenting the details?"

Medea was a suited stick insect that appeared to be all elbows and teeth. She pulled up several graphics silently and efficiently. Clio was glad they were not actually in the same room, as she would worry that this painfully thin woman might kill and eat the first person to attract her attention.

"As you know, the nation's war effort demands that we do all we can to beat our enemies," Medea was saying as she worked her way through a slick presentation.

After thirty minutes, Thalia was bored. It had been mildly interesting to let Shiva glower at her for a while. He'd been attractive enough to fool around with in New York until it became obvious that he was having some sort of transferred dominance issue with her sister. She couldn't be bothered with some egomaniac's mind games and she hated it when guys got all wrapped up in the 'You look just like your sister' thing.

Getting away from that was one of the reasons she liked traveling so much. Being one of a set of identical quadruplets could be such a drag. When the job in New York wrapped up, she'd left and not thought of him since. Apparently, he had not appreciated that.

Thalia fiddled with the hem of her dress. She wondered how she could get them to wrap it up, because she was pretty sure they'd have to sit around and talk about what jerks the Malsanto guys were after they were done. She wanted to have lunch out at Bessie & Bubba's Diner and hopefully get in a little flirting with some cute farmer from the next small town up the highway.

Then she noticed how stressed out her mother was looking. She must have shot a note to Kalliope by handheld because Kalliope suddenly sat up and began paying close attention to the presentation. Thalia clued in enough to realize that Malsanto was proposing Floracopia work on a project to create super soldiers for the military.

Harmony's forehead wrinkled with concern. "I'm surprised a DARPA contract got you clearance to do human gene modding at all, even if it is for the war. The UN has strict bans on that. I understand you can't share all the details unless we take on the project, but I'm a little confused on the approach you are taking. What are some techniques that you have considered using on this project?"

"Oh various techniques, the gene gun, for example. But you know how unreliable that technique can be. Forced mutation, p-modding. We haven't really settled on an approach yet," Medea replied with a glance at Shiva that clearly implied the reason they hadn't settled on an approach was because Shiva couldn't find one that worked and that's why they needed to hire outside help. He pretended to ignore her.

Everyone at Floracopia did ignore the look since they were stunned into silence by the p-modding comment. Thalia vaguely remembered that p-modding had something to do with the break-in they'd had in the labs a few weeks ago. It had really shaken the rest of the family up. Clio was now inexplicably spending her nights hunting in her woods and Kalliope had installed a million new security measures in all the Floracopia buildings.

Thalia interrupted Medea. "Just so I'm clear, the projects seems to involve feeding something to a person that would cause their DNA to alter in such a way as to cause them to rapidly turn into huge super-soldiers with hyper-twitchy reflexes, right?"

"Well, there are many applications for this kind of technology," Gordon interjected with his toothy smile and a velvety chuckle. "I'm sure the government knows best the uses for these things. We just do what they ask. These contracts pay well and they bring a measure of other kinds of power. After all, the government isn't going to look too hard into a trusted supplier. It gives you a certain security that other companies just don't have."

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? 'That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun." Harmony sang under her breath. Thalia arched an eyebrow but Harmony just shook her head.

"Thank you Gordon, but I believe that, as interesting as this project is, we will have to decline," Harmony declared. "We simply have too many other projects right now. I don't think we will be available any time in the foreseeable future."

Gordon produced his shark smile. "This is such a vital project for us that we would be willing to compensate Floracopia for any inconvenience." He proceeded to name a sum so staggeringly large that several people at the Floracopia table audibly gasped.

Bob the Money Guy grabbed Harmony's arm and began whispering rapidly in her ear. She gave him a dirty look.

"No, Gordon. I understand your urgent need to help our government, but we really cannot put off these projects. They are for critical areas that desperately need these splices," she said firmly. Bob sat back and sulked.

Thalia knew her mother was right. Half the projects they had were for malnourished or starving populations. She knew that no matter how much money was involved, they should work on saving lives before they worked on making America's soldiers better at taking lives away. But she did daydream about what she could do with a huge paycheck.

But now that the Co-op had refused to help the Malsanto suits as politely as possible, Malsanto was doing the veiled threats bit and taking just forever. Eventually, they wrapped up the meeting. The Floracopia team promised to think over the Malsanto proposal and get back to them if they changed their minds.

"Those are some scary people," Joanna said as she collapsed into a chair after graciously saying goodbye to the Malsanto team for fifteen minutes.

"You know they dropped that hint about p-modding just to taunt us. 'A measure of security' he says. Ha!" Kalliope muttered darkly.

"It doesn't mean they were behind the break in," Harmony replied, thinking it over. "But it does seem probable that they knew about it and mentioned it as a threat."

"I don't know. I heard rumors on the globenet that Malsanto was behind that lab in India burning down after they were cloning and selling Malsanto products at a discount," Thalia interjected, shaking her head. She didn't know what to think. The whole meeting had been horribly depressing.

"If we give them this technique, the government could use it for all sorts of horrors and they could do it to anyone. If they can change a person's genes through the food that they eat, they can change you without your knowledge or consent," Kalliope said.

"But if we don't they'll just come up with another way to do it. That's the way it always works out," Bob spoke up. "My goodness you ladies are gloomy today. You may not like him, but that man talked a lot of sense. If we do what they want, we don't have to worry about what threats they made or what they might do. All we'd have to do is start counting all the money we'll have and stop worrying about the government rolling in and shutting us down. Sounds pretty good to me."

Joanna rolled her eyes. "I don't really think that's an option, Bob. We don't need the money, for starters. We have a backlog of work for the next two years. And even if we suddenly took leave of our senses and wanted to give the government yet another way to make people miserable, an action like this would require a full vote of the Co-op. Remember? That's why we call it a cooperative. And I sincerely doubt that it will pass in this town."

Bob left the room in a sulk.

"Well, at least we know what they want," Harmony said as they got up to leave.

"What is that exactly?" Thalia asked.

"They want to threaten us. They want the p-mod technique and they want us under their thumb, doing all the stuff they can't do," Joanna summarized. "But they can't buy us out and we won't play ball. So they are going to make trouble for us."

"Why is it so difficult to run a genetech business?" asked Thalia with a sigh. "I mean it's hard enough coming up with a product that works while keeping the cost down to something our clients can afford."

"It could be worse, daughter dearest," replied Harmony. "I started this business the year after they legalized splicing again. It had been outlawed for forty years before that. You want to talk about difficult? It was practically a full-time job just convincing those farmers that they wouldn't wake up to attacking killer tomatoes if they bought my splices."

"That was a crazy time," laughed Joanna. "I just wish they would end the ban on human splicing. We could really make some money if medical genetics weren't so heavily regulated."

Harmony cast her a look. "There were some very good reasons they banned gene modification for so long and it all had to do with human splicing." She gave a quick shudder.

"We are going to need airtight security," Kalliope said with a grim smile.

"This is really not a good time for anyone to be taking too close a look at us and anything we might be involved in. The government does not have the best sense of humor these days," Harmony sighed, looking at her daughters pointedly. Thalia and Kalliope looked embarrassed. Thalia made a mental note to have a talk with Clio about some of their extracurricular projects.

CHAPTER SIX

I
t was just after dark when Seth and Max headed towards the location Clio had sent to their handhelds. It was another visually disheartening diner called
'The Tequila Shack.'
As they opened the doors, a wave of mariachi music rolled out into the night. Despite their initial urge to run for it, the smell of mouth-watering Mexican food sucked them inside.

"God, it's like a clown car," Max laughed. "How do they fit so many people in here?"

"I'll go check the bathroom and see if they've got Narnia in there too," replied Seth.

Through a sea of people packed into tiny tables, Seth spotted Clio waving from a large booth in the corner. Pints of Mexican beer were pushed into their hands as they sat down. Sitting next to Clio was a girl who looked exactly like Clio, but with a grease-stained shirt over plaid golf pants and combat boots.

Max stared openly at the two purple-streaked pigtails exploding out of her head. The not-Clio girl gave him a grin and shoved a basket of warm tortilla chips towards them. Max couldn't think of how he wanted to form his question, so he dipped a chip into the bowl of fresh salsa sitting on the table and took a tentative bite. After a minute, he rolled his eyes back with bliss and rapidly began making the chips and salsa disappear.

Seth took a bite and hot peppers punched him right in the taste buds. His mouth was on fire and his eyes watered. He wondered if he was going blind. He fumbled for a glass of water.

"Oh, sorry. I forgot to warn you that the salsa is a little spicy tonight," shouted Clio over the band. "But don't stop eating or it will only get worse. Here, have a beer."

Seth thankfully drowned his screaming tongue in beer.

"Delicious," said Max around a mouthful.

"This is my sister, Kalliope," Clio shouted back.

"Twins?" asked Max.

"Quadruplets," Kalliope answered. Seth's mouth formed a silent "Oh." Kalliope continued to grin while swigging her beer, as if daring them to ask how her mother, a splicer, came to have quadruplets if human gene modification had been banned for over forty years. They didn't.

Then an older woman arrived who looked so much like the two girls, they must be related. Harmony was taller than her daughters and had straight, should-length hair like spun bronze. She usually kept it up in Chinese hairsticks, but tonight she wore it down with a thin summer dress.

"I see you men have met my daughters. I'm Harmony," she said with an easy smile as the mariachi band finished their last ode to lost love. She'd had a long day full of worries, but decided to leave them at work for the evening. Harmony hoped the men would provide interesting conversation.