Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (350 page)

Handing Wang her satchel, retrieving from it her gauntlets and helmet before letting him sling it over his shoulder, she followed him back to the police-station parking lot.

THE UGLY TURTLE

…was the city-wide nickname for the floating extension to Guangzhou University, whose curving roof-plates bordered with guttering to catch precious rain did somewhat resemble a turtle’s carapace. Pressure on living-space was not yet as intense as in Hong Kong or many cities in Japan, but rather than sacrifice more precious agricultural land for a new and badly needed biology laboratory it had been decided to moor it, along with a student dormitory and extra staff accommodation, to the bank of the Zhujiang, there being far less river traffic than formerly. Access to the area was restricted, at least in theory, but in practice there were so many people with a valid excuse to come and go that security was a joke. There wasn’t even a guard on duty at the end of the gangway where they dismounted. Wang pushed the Kawasaki to the alcove where it was kept, frowning at such laxness.

At least the laboratory Dr. Long then led him to was properly protected. In a large room smelling faintly of ozone computer screens glowed and automatic machinery, somewhat like the device she had been using at the Tower of Strength, purred unattended. She began by transferring her day’s findings to a university in America, via satellite, a process that took only moments. Then she chose from her satchel one of Lin’s unbitten fruit and fed it to a machine that automatically cut sections off it, examined their macrostructure, triturated them, fractionated the pulp and peel separately using eight different solvents each at four temperatures, recording everything at every stage.…Used as he was to analyzers in police-work, for DNA comparison and the like, Wang could not help being impressed by the speed and compactness of Dr. Long’s equipment.

“There,” she said at length. “Now I could do with some tea. Do you have time for a cup before you leave?”

Suddenly Wang realized he was hungry, thirsty, and tired. He accepted gratefully, and she led him to her room, off a corridor beyond the lab. It was as spartan as the police barracks he had lived in before his marriage. Waving him to a chair, she filled a kettle, made tea, opened a box of crackers, and sat down with a barely suppressed yawn.

He did honestly want to learn more about her work, but now he had the chance he felt too nervous. This self-assured young woman—she couldn’t be more than five years older than his own count of thirty—was utterly different from anyone he had met before. He did at least manage to ask how long it would take to identify the fruit.

“Don’t expect miracles,” was the wry answer. “Amazing changes can be brought about by altering even a tiny sequence of DNA. You know we’re more than 99 percent identical with chimpanzees? But there’s quite a difference, isn’t there?”

“Do you think it’s a—a natural mutation?”

“How natural is natural? If it does come from Green Phoenix—well, admittedly they were desperate when they launched the project, but no one had the faintest idea how genes like those would react in the wild, especially the ones for accelerated growth. There are some which, if they got into bacteria.… Still, it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe Gaea is on our side again. More tea?”

“No, I must be going. Thank you very much.” He rose, resigned to home, to the cramped flat always full of his wife’s complaints.

“Did you take the key out of my bike?”

“I’m sorry—I thought you had.”

“No, I had to leave it in or the front wheel would have locked and you couldn’t have pushed it. I’ll collect it now.”

And at the point where he turned for shore and she toward where the bike was kept, they wished each other good night.

Halfway down the gangway he heard her exclaim, and glanced back. Barely visible in shadow, a man was bending over her machine. Startled by her approach, he jerked upright. Light flashed: a long-bladed knife.

Wang clawed for a grip on his baton, wishing he were allowed a gun, but before he had taken his first step in Dr. Long’s direction he was rushed by two other men from the shore end of the gangway. Swinging wildly, he clouted the first on the head hard enough to make him curse and sway, but the second kicked his legs from under him and then kicked him again in the belly, driving the wind out of him.

For a long moment all he could think of was that now he would never know the truth about the marten and the Green Phoenix fruit.

Then there was a scream, a shout, the noise of feet on the steel floor. He felt something warmly wet splatter his bare arms as a man stumbled past him, ordering the other two to follow. But he had no chance to see what any of them looked like.

He shut his eyes and spent a long and welcome moment working his belly-muscles free of agony.

* * * *

“Are you all right?”

It was Dr. Long’s voice. Wang managed to drag himself to his feet, using the rail for support. “How—?” he husked.

“You saved my life.”

“What?”

“For official purposes!” she snapped. Feeling something sticky on his skin, he glanced down. It looked black in the artificial light but it had to be blood. Shed by the man who had staggered past from the direction of where the bike was kept.… Comprehension dawned.

“Not his knife. Yours.”

“Correct. I’d better lose it before your chums show up.”

“They won’t have been told yet,” he objected.

“Of course not! Who likes getting mixed up in police business? Same everywhere, you know: in any American city you can be beaten to death with a hundred people in earshot… But you’ve got to radio in, haven’t you?”

“I—uh—I suppose so.”

“Go ahead, then. It’ll look suspicious if you delay. Don’t mention a knife. Say you came to the bike with me and when he jumped us you cracked him in the face and made his nose bleed, or split his lip, or something.”

“But you actually cut him, didn’t you? How deep?”

“How should I know?”—angrily. Then, relenting: “Yes, pretty deep. I don’t suppose he’ll get very far.”

“Then the story won’t hold water. If they find him alive—”

“It’s
got
to hold water!” She turned blazing eyes on him. “I can’t afford to be hamstrung by some petty criminal!”

He was on the point of saying something to the effect that robbery with violence wasn’t so petty, when the look on her face prevented him. He said after a moment, “I’ll do what I can.”

“Good. Then I’d be obliged if you could stick around for a while.” A quaver crept into her self-assured tone. “I never hurt anyone before. I mean not really meaning to hurt.”

“He was going to steal your bike,” Wang grunted, poising his radio.

“That’s what he wanted me to think.”

He checked as the implications sank in.

“What he wanted you to think?” he repeated slowly.

“The key was in. If all he was after was the bike he could have got away before I interrupted. I ride it down the gangplank all the time.”

“What else, if not theft?”

“I don’t know. But I can think of one peculiar thing that’s happened today.” She passed a weary hand across her hair. “Oh, maybe I’m paranoid, but a lot of high-ranking politicians staked their futures on Green Phoenix. And bioengineering has erupted from nowhere to become a multi-billion business.… Are you never going to call in?”

Wang came back to himself with a start. Her comments had brought to mind countless rumors he himself had heard ever since Green Phoenix was first announced. It was the most ambitious reclamation project in history—not just reforestation, but an attempt to create on ruined hills a unique, precisely calculated mix of trees, shrubs, grasses, epiphytes, saprophytes, fungi, every kind of plant, together with the micro-organisms necessary for their proper coexistence. All the plants were to be of proven benefit to humanity, whether by supplying food, or timber, or fibers, or drugs, or dyes; but all of them had been modified. That was what frightened people. Probably that was what was troubling Dr. Long. Though—the thought ran through Wang’s mind as he whispered into his radio—how could anyone in Guangzhou have learned about the mysterious fruit so quickly, let alone where it was being taken? Could one of the regular traders in endangered animals have been waiting at the station? Unlikely; they were too recognizable. An agent, perhaps a new recruit, who had sneaked away baffled? How about the man who had tried to steal Lin’s belongings? No, he would scarcely have been so blatant if he worked for one of the big traffickers…

Meantime he was uttering mechanical words.

There proved to be a patrol car within two blocks. It rounded the corner, siren wailing. He knew one of its crew by sight. They recorded statements, took samples of the drying blood, sighed over the unlikelihood of finding the culprit unless he was silly enough to get arrested on a different charge, and eventually gave Wang a lift to a stop on the busline serving his home district. Weary to the marrow, hungry and thirsty all over again, he returned to a note from his wife: since he hadn’t turned up at the promised time she had gone to her mother’s for the evening and might or might not be back.

He ate what he could find, stepped under a cool shower, and fell asleep as soon as he lay down. He dreamed about unwholesome creatures emerging from the Zhujiang and feeding on shiny metallic fruit that had erupted all over the Ugly Turtle like so many boils.

On arriving for work exactly one week later, he was summoned before Chief Superintendent Tan. Wondering what he might have done wrong, he obeyed at once. Others were already there. Inspector Chen’s presence as his squad commander was no surprise, but with him was Dr. Long. She looked not just tired but exhausted, indeed visibly older, as though as many years had passed for her as days had for the rest of the world.

The chief spoke up without preamble. “Your report about last week’s incident at the University Biological Department was incomplete,” he rumbled. Wang felt a stir of apprehension, assuming that the man Dr. Long had stabbed must have been found and recounted his side of the story. But he was wrong.

“Dr. Long tells me your prompt intervention saved her life. You made no mention of the fact.”

“Sir, I think—”

“There’s no need to be modest,” Dr. Long sighed. “I’ve said you deserve a commendation.”

“Well, that’s—uh…” His voice faltered from incredulity.

“It’s too late to object,” Tan said. “Sit down, by the way.” Waving at a vacant chair, he leaned back in his own.

“Dr. Long has come with an unusual request,” he went on, “but before I tell you what it is I gather there’s something else she wants to say. Dr. Long?”

“Thank you.” She rubbed her eyes, suppressing a yawn, and interpolated with a grimace, “Sorry, but I haven’t had much sleep lately. I received a preliminary report from the States about that peculiar fruit not long after you went home, and it’s kept me busy ever since. It’s—uh—disturbing.”

Wang tensed. “Is the fruit in fact from Green Phoenix?”

“That’s the strangest aspect of the matter. They say not. That’s to say, everyone except Lin says not.”

Chen’s eyes widened; Wang noticed from the corner of his own gaze. Tan was rather better at controlling his expression, but even he showed the ghost of a reaction.

“On the other hand,” Dr. Long pursued, “I’ve traced reports of something similar from other places: Singapore, Hawaii, Australia. Not documented, not scientifically investigated. Not until now, that is.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow,” Wang admitted, sensing that the others would welcome a confession of ignorance.

“The fruit derives from a plum. As you must have noticed, though, it doesn’t smell like a plum.”

“No, it smells more like—well—raw meat. Like pork, maybe.”

“To judge by the way the marten ate it, it must taste like pork as well. In fact that’s exactly what Lin compared it to. When the report from America came through I made myself very unpopular by having him hauled out of his cell and carted off to City Hospital. I thought I’d had a bright idea. I was wrong.” She rubbed her eyes again and this time failed to overrule a yawn.

“He’s in pretty good health all things considered. On the other hand his wife is not likely to last out the year. She has a massive fibroid growth in her abdomen. It was discovered last month when she was undergoing a hysterectomy. Lin was able to tell me where the operation was performed, and even the name of the surgeon. I made myself unpopular with him too, by routing him out before breakfast.” She drew a deep breath.

“In the far west the incidence of this type of growth has shown an upsurge in the past few years. Commonest continues to be stomach cancer attributable to a diet high in spiced and salted food. Next commonest are cancer of the lung, mouth, and colon. However, in a remarkably short time this new one has achieved fifth place. Stranger yet, it’s confined exclusively to adult women. What do you make of that?”

Wang licked his lips. “Something to do with the fruit?” he hazarded. “You’re implying it’s been modified to make its flesh more like animal tissue. But in that case the UN—”

“Quite right: the forest is nominally under UN supervision, though in practice that boils down to satellite inspections and an occasional guided tour for VIP’s. However, they are supposed to receive details of all gene-modifying experiments, and there is no mention of any such project in records made available to FAO.”

“Accidentally, then? It seems so unlikely… “

“Under normal circumstances I’d agree.” Despite her fatigue, Dr. Long’s tone was regaining some of its former crispness. “However, as I remember telling you, these circumstances aren’t normal.”

Wang nodded thoughtfully. He could well understand what lay behind Dr. Long’s disquiet. There were political and economic factors, too. He recalled her reference to the powerful individuals who had staked their futures on the success of Green Phoenix. They wouldn’t like it at all if it turned out that one of their creations—or rather one of the creations they had lent their blessing to—was responsible for an epidemic of cancer.