Organic Future - Sparrowhawk Part 1

Organic Future.

Sparrowhawk.

Thomas Easton.

Chapter One.

FIVE-YEAR-OLD ANDY GILMAN, towheaded and gap-toothed, was kneeling on a chair by the kitchen window. Half a dozen plastic Warbirds were scattered on the floor beneath him. With the tip of one finger, he was writing his name in the large smudge his nose had left on the gla.s.s. Suddenly he stiffened and pointed beyond the pane. "Look, Daddy!" he cried. "See the bird! By the feeder! A big one!"

Nick Gilman grinned and crossed the room in a stride. He looked, and the kid was right. A Chickadee, the size of an old-fashioned Piper Cub, was on the lawn beside the back porch. It wasn't wearing its two-seater pa.s.senger or engine pods. As Nick watched, it c.o.c.ked its head to one side, inserted its beak between the shelf and the overhanging roof of the feeder, and seized a mouthful of seeds. Then, shaking its head as if the treat had been more effort than it was worth, it stepped back a pace.

As it did so, nongengineered birds of more normal size approached to try to reach the seeds remaining in the feeder. Few succeeded, for as they fluttered past the Chickadee, they fell prey instead to its darting beak. Nick shuddered, remembering when all chickadees had been vegetarians. "C'mon, Andy.

We're in a rush. Gotta go get Mommy."

"But, Daddy! I wanna watch!"

Nick had no time for nonsense. Emily's jet would be late, of course, but it was due in an hour, and he had to be there just in case she was on time or--G.o.d forbid!--early. He should have left ten minutes before, but the ca.s.serole had needed its finishing touches and he had had to adjust the oven and he had had to run a comb through his hair and he had had to straighten the throw rug that had slid beneath his feet and...It wasn't easy being a househusband.

The radio began to mutter that, on this hot and muggy Tuesday in July of 2044, terrorist attacks were becoming more frequent, but he had no time to listen. Nor did he care to think of what such a thing might mean for Emily, or him, or their towheaded son. He turned it off and grabbed his jacket. Then he picked the boy up in his arms, wiped the snot from the boy's nose with a handkerchief, and rushed from the room.

Emily was a high-bracket gengineer, she would be back soon from her trip--she had flown to Washington on Sunday to testify before a patent board on Monday--he loved her dearly, and he didn't want to leave her waiting.

Sometimes he wished their roles were reversed, with him the one wandering the world on high adventures and she the one at home in their small, old-fashioned brick house. But his doctorate had been in Romantic Poets, there were fewer new college students than ever, few colleges were hiring young faculty, and his attempts at selling his own poems and short stories had earned him the grand total of $79.85. He could have bought a pair of shoes. Cheap ones.

Nick had opened the garage door that morning and led the Tortoise out for relief from the heat. Now the family vehicle was waiting in the drive, shaded by nearby trees. Nick had bought it when he was in college and single. It hadbeen young then, with the pa.s.senger compartment in the sh.e.l.l just big enough, in a squeeze, for two. And he had squeezed more than one girl in it, he had, until he had found Emily and grown up a bit. As advertised, the Tortoise had grown too, maturing from the sports car stage to coupe. Eventually, timed by gengineers like Emily to match a family's growth, it would gain the capacity of a station wagon.

The Tortoise didn't look like a tortoise. Its chief ancestor had been a lean, low terrapin. The gengineers had given it size and speed, and a cavity beneath the sh.e.l.l. The General Bodies shops had fitted a windshield, side windows, and doors, installed plush seats, added headlights and taillights, and wired the controls into the Tortoise's nervous system. At periodic checkups, they added new fittings and enlarged or refitted the old to keep pace with the creature's growth.

Roachsters, half c.o.c.kroach and half lobster; Hoppers, derived from gra.s.shoppers; and other Buggies could keep pace with a family's needs just as well. But Nick preferred the more cla.s.sic lines of the Tortoise. Its shape reminded him of the gas-burners his parents had driven when he had been a child, when the Machine Age had still been vigorous. The oil that had made that Age possible had been on the verge of exhaustion, and most liquid fuels were being produced--expensively--from coal. But people had not yet recognized that new forms of technology were essential if civilization were to continue, nor that the replacement technology was already taking shape. The Biological Revolution had by then been fermenting in the world's laboratories for decades, and the gengineers had been on the verge of long-sought success.

As Nick and Andy left the house, the Tortoise's barrellike head turned toward them. The legs on the side facing the house flexed, Nick stepped onto the offered lip of sh.e.l.l, resembling an old-time running board, and opened the door. Andy scooted across the bucket seats to let his father take his position behind the tiller.

Even before the door clicked into its frame, the Tortoise's knees were rising and falling, pistonlike, in Nick's peripheral vision. He steered it onto the greenway that had long since replaced paved streets in his suburb, guided it toward the expressway on-ramp, and accelerated. The Tortoise's knees became a blur, its breathing an audible gale of wind.

The expressway itself was still paved. The Public Works Department kept promising to have it gra.s.sed, for almost all vehicles were now bioforms, or genimals. But public money was as short as ever, and the Biological Revolution was still new. Many residential neighborhoods, unlike Nick's, also still had paved streets. Only a few neighborhoods had yet gone to modern bioform houses, gengineered from pumpkins, squash, beanstalks, eggplants, and even more exotic stock.

Air transportation was somewhat more advanced. As Nick and Andy neared the airport, they pa.s.sed a zone of bedraggled hangars and paved runways.

Airplanes--Comanches, Beechcrafts, Boeings--stood about in varying states of dishabille. A few showed the faded, painted-over logos of major airlines. Most wore nothing but their serial numbers.

"What's that, Daddy? Jets?" To him, the gengineered birds were the normal technology. These were strange variants, stiff and featherless, emblems of a realm set askew from the world he knew, but oddly reminiscent of it.

"Obsolete junkers, Andy." The traffic had been light, they would be there in plenty of time, and Nick had relaxed. He spared a glance for the display beside the expressway. "Real airplanes. They used to carry people. Now it'sjust cargo." Many, the papers said, carried contraband--guns, illegal immigrants, fugitives from the law, laundered money--across the border. Many more carried banned bioforms such as cannibal gra.s.s, or cheap bootleg copies of glow-in-the-dark philodendrons and goldfish bushes.

Their Tortoise sped them past another airport zone. The runways were still paved, but the hangars were in better shape and the planes wore shiny coats of paint. "Hobbyists," said Nick. "Weekend flyers." One of the planes was a bulb-nosed giant, towering above all the others. On its tail was a stylized rabbit head.

"How do they fly?"

"They have engines, just like the jets. On the wings." He pointed. "And propeller engines, in the nose. And see the windows up front?" When Andy nodded, Nick added, "People drive them, like the old-time cars." He paused. "I took a few lessons once. On a small one."

The terminal loomed ahead, all gla.s.s and steel and concrete, with mown gra.s.s beyond. The control tower held a faceted ball above everything. Nick fantasized some Paul Bunyan of a golfer poised to send that ball down the green runways. He pointed and said, "Fore!" Andy giggled.

There was a parking barn whose attendants would feed and water vehicles for weeks at a time, while, the rumors went, breeding strange, illicit hybrids. Nick avoided it, searching for and finding a s.p.a.ce in an open lot nearer their destination. Once in the air-conditioned terminal, he checked a board to find that Emily's flight would, as he had expected, be a few minutes late. Then, at Andy's insistence, they took the escalator to the observation deck.

He let Andy lead him, running, to the edge of the deck. He braced himself against the warm wind, wished that they had stayed inside and cool, peered into the sky looking for his wife, and listened to the airport noises. The boy chinned himself on the railing, imitated his father's searching gaze, and pointed into the distance.

A flight was coming in above the ranks of trees that filled in the middle distance beyond the runways. The trees had been gengineered from a tropical species to stand more northern climates. Their diesel sap provided the fuel needed for the engines of jets and the few other powered vehicles civilization still used.

The approaching jet was still too far away to show any detail, but they could make out the distinctive curve of the extended wings, the elevated, horizontal tail without an upright, the rounded bulge of the forepart. It came closer, and they could see the two engines mounted just in front of the tail, the fuel tanks, the pa.s.senger pod strapped to the back. Still closer, and the slate-gray upper surfaces separated from the lighter underside.

Andy cried, "That's a Junco 47!" He had a plastic model of the huge genimal hanging from the ceiling of his room at home. Perhaps inevitably, the model had a more mechanical appearance than the real thing. So had the models of bombers and airliners and s.p.a.ce shuttles that had decorated Nick's childhood bedroom.

The Junco extended its feet and cupped its wings. Now Nick could make out the China Airlines logo on the side of one fuel tank. The gengineers had triumphed with the airliners, he thought. Birds, ordinary birds, had been redesigned to such extremes of size that they could no longer fly on their own. The biggest, like the Junco, even needed metal-composite implants tostrengthen their skeletons. Only the smallest, like that Chickadee at home, could get into the air without their jet engines and fuel tanks, and even they needed help when they were carrying pa.s.sengers or freight. Still, Nick knew, larger creatures had once flown entirely under their own power. Periodically, the press reminded the public that millions of years ago, in the age of dinosaurs, there had been a pteranodon the size of an Air Force fighter.

Emily had told him why the gengineers had bothered. Jets like the Junco needed much less in the way of the metals that cost so much to mine and process. They were more efficient and safer as well. Though they could not normally fly on their own, in emergencies they could manage a few flaps of their wings. They could control their machine-powered flight, and they needed very short runways. They were also self-building, once the gengineers were done with the design work, and self-repairing.

The landing was smooth. Nick followed Andy's pointing finger to the side, where an Alitalia Cardinal, free for the moment of its pa.s.senger pod and engines, preened its plumage. Bright red feathers littered the gra.s.s around it, most of them too big to blow in the wind.

Nearby were an American Bald Eagle, a Canadian Pacific Snow Goose, and a British Caledonian Chimney Swift, its morning-coat tails recalling the formalities of another age. A fat-bodied Wild Turkey bore the Delta logo, and Nick remembered that that was the complimentary bourbon they served on board.

He and Emily had flown Delta on their honeymoon. United, with its Lovebirds, had seemed too cute to appeal to them.

"What's that, Daddy?"

"That" was a metal box much like the trailer of an eighteen-wheel semi. As the Junco 47 approached the terminal, it converged on the same destination, drawn by a squat, heavy-muscled, squash-faced creature whose rootstock had clearly been a bulldog. Its top was covered by pleats of heavy fabric, and liquid dripped from its base onto the ground.

"Watch," said Nick. The Junco was in position. As the pa.s.senger tunnel snugged its mouth, lampreylike, against the jet's pod, the trailer drew under its nose. The ground crew turned cranks mounted on the trailer's ends, and the fabric rose on an internal frame to surround the Junco's head. The motions that promptly began to shake the fabric could not be misinterpreted. The jet's--the bird's--refueling was under way.

"What kind of seeds is it eating?" asked Andy. He had seen ordinary juncos on the ground beneath the bird feeder at home. He had even thrown out sunflower seeds for them.

Nick shook his head. "Uh-uh," he said. "It's like the Chickadee. When they're this big, they have to eat meat." It was cheaper than any alternative, for it was obtained from worms and slugs gengineered to thrive on human wastes and garbage. They had been among the first of the large-scale bioforms to be developed when the gengineers had stepped beyond single-gene changes in bacteria, viruses, and plants.

"See the litterbugs?" he added. The rattle of cloven hooves reached them even on the observation deck as a trio of strange-looking creatures raced toward the liner's other end from the service bay that had disgorged the feed trailer. They vaguely resembled pigs, but their limbs were longer and their snouts were distorted into broad scoops. Smaller versions patrolled city streets, seeking out and devouring the leavings of other genimals. They did not neglect banana peels, paper sc.r.a.ps, and beverage containers. They did not interest Andy. The boy glanced at them briefly, dismissed them as common, and looked skyward again. Nick chuckled quietly, thinking that someday the boy might see some small, wild bird release its wastes in flight.

Perhaps he would wonder, then, about the airliners. They had, Nick knew, been gengineered to discharge their wastes while feeding. Many mammals--even humans--did it without the gengineering. It was, Emily had told him once, a simple "make-room" reflex.

Andy shouted. He was pointing toward the horizon once more. In a moment, they could identify a Northwest Albatross. Once the jet was on the ground, Nick took Andy by the hand and they headed for the gate.

Emily was the third person to come striding up the ramp from the plane, grinning, eyes scanning the small crowd for her family. A slender, dark-haired woman whose wide mouth often showed its teeth in a smile that would have done justice to a veedo evangelist, she exuded alertness and energy. One hand held in place on a shoulder a garment bag and a purse. The other clutched a briefcase and a plastic bag from whose top protruded a few green leaves.

Nick, grinning as broadly as she, took the garment bag. She knelt then, to wrap her free arm around their son. "Ah, Andy," she said. "You need to blow.

And look what I've got right here."

She opened the bag she carried to reveal a plant whose dark green leaves alternated with white oblongs. One of the latter she picked and held to Andy's nose. "Blow!" The boy obliged, laughed, and cried, "A hanky bush!"

"Right!" She looked at her husband. "Something new. They're working on more productive models for the bathroom and kitchen."

"That should save a few trees," he said.

Her mouth twisted into a rueful grin, and she shook her head. "It won't help the paper industry. But..."

She didn't need to tell him more. The technology was changing. The gengineers had already changed the sewage treatment, aircraft, highway, housing, and automobile industries beyond recognition. Now it was the turn of the pulp and paper industry. Yet, in the nature of things, as old jobs vanished, new ones appeared. He did not believe what some claimed, that the Biological Revolution would in time free people entirely of the need to labor.

He did believe that, eventually, the labor market would stabilize and the unemployment rate would fall. Then their taxes need not be so high, and more of Emily's income could be theirs.

"Let's go," said Emily. "I want to put my feet up."

"How'd it go?" The patent hearing had concerned what she hoped would be her company's latest product, a jellyfish modified to inflate itself with hydrogen. It was the size of a blimp, and its tentacles gave it a built-in cargo-handling system.

She shook her head as she stood. Andy seized her hand. "I got some heavy interest from a van company. But no patent."

They were nearing a souvenir kiosk, and Andy was pointing at the jet feathers on display. "I wanta red one!"

Emily shrugged. "The Pentagon said they'd already grown some. Very few details." Nick snorted and reached for his wallet. A moment later, Andy had his feather--longer than his father was tall--and their Tortoise was in sight.

The expressway never seemed so crowded as when they were on their way home. While Emily cuddled Andy and listened to him chatter about his two days alone with Daddy, Nick swore at the Roachsters and other Buggies that dawdled in front of their Tortoise, the Mack trucks that strained to keep their heavy trailers up to speed, the Hoppers that plunged past them into whatever gaps opened up in the flow of traffic, the occasional old-style automobile whose noise made the Tortoise lurch aside. It occurred to him that if he were just a little paranoid, it would be very easy to believe in some vast conspiracy of other drivers: They knew he was in a rush to get home, and every slowcoach, every lane jumper, every flare of brake lights was one more deliberate, intended effort to drive him nuts!

"Can I have a soda? Please?"

A small cooler was built into the dashboard, beside the map compartment.

Emily unlatched its door and peered inside. "Ginger ale or root beer, honey.

Take your pick."

"Root beer."

She pa.s.sed the can into the back seat, and there was silence except for the small noises that went with opening and draining a can of soda. The odor of root beer drifted toward the front seat, and in a moment there was a loud burp and a giggle. "That was a good one," she said.

Fortunately, for all the apparent crowd, the expressway journey never seemed so short either. Even as Nick swore and Andy drank, while the tip of his feather fluttered in the wind outside his window, Emily talked of what had gone on in Washington--the general who had wanted to cla.s.sify both the patent application and the Bioblimp it described, the vice president of Mayflower Van Lines who had asked whether Emily's lab could give the Bioblimp built-in cargo pockets, the official from the Bioform Regulatory Administration who had wanted a more detailed Environmental Impact Statement, the...it seemed impossible that their journey from the airport could give her the time she needed to tell it all.

She was talking about the sort of environmental impacts a giant jellyfish could have when a gust of wind sent the Hopper before them staggering and a shadow fell across the road. She craned her neck to look out her window and up. "It's a Sparrow!"

The sound of the Sparrow's jet engine swelled until it dominated the air.

The shadow swept past the Tortoise, and the airliner was plainly visible. Long and sleek, the size of an old Boeing 707, its extended feet as large and stark as elm trees, stripped by death of all but major branches and turned upside down, it did not much resemble its rootstock. But its eye had the perky ancestral gleam and the feathers that showed on the wings and below the pa.s.senger pod were the proper streaky brown. Written along the side of the pa.s.senger pod, in both English and Arabic, was the Palestine Airways motto: "No Sparrow Falls."

The Sparrow sideslipped, swung broadside to their view, and landed in the road ahead. Its body spread across all six traffic lanes, its feet squashing a Roachster and a Hopper.

"What the...?" The brake pedal was in the traditional place, and Nick stepped on it, hard. As the Tortoise stiffened its legs and skidded toward a halt, the man's voice rose to a shout: "What are those idiots doing?" Emily's broad mouth hung open. She shook her head, both in disbelief and in admission that she too knew nothing about the motivations of idiots. The Tortoise slowed and stopped, as did the traffic around it. A cacophony of Buggy voices rose as traffic began to pile up and drivers leaned on their horns.

The Sparrow c.o.c.ked its head, first one way, then the other, casting its eyes by turns upon the chaos it had created. Its beak thrust, and a Hopper went down its throat, in pieces, one by one. A Roachster quickly followed.

Nick swore more genuinely as he reached for the panel hiding a control he had never dreamed he would have to use. Drops of sweat appeared on his forehead. "Where...? Ah."

The panel stuck, gave way to the bang of Nick's fist, and opened. He pushed the switch behind it, and the Tortoise lowered its belly-plate, or plastron, to the pavement. Then it drew its head and legs as far into its sh.e.l.l as possible. Unfortunately, it was not a box turtle and it could not protect itself entirely. Its nose and feet remained exposed.

The doors locked, and the windows slid smoothly all the way up, sealing the Tortoise's pa.s.sengers into as safe a redoubt as foresighted engineers could manage to provide. As a side effect, the severed tip of Andy's jet feather fell to the pavement outside.

"Wow!" said Andy. He ignored what on any other day would have been a major disaster. His nose was plastered to the window, just as it had been at home when Nick had collared him for this trip.

The day's heat wasted no time in making itself felt. The Tortoise had no air-conditioning, and its interior quickly became intolerable despite the best efforts of the ventilation system. But they dared not leave their shelter or open its windows. Nor did they want to. Nick thought that the ventilator admitted quite enough of the metallic scent of fresh blood.

Fortunately, the carnage and the chaos outside the Tortoise were more than enough to keep their minds off their suffering inside it. Buggies struggled to reverse in the middle of the road. But the traffic jam was now too thick. A few, luckily near the shoulder, tried to use the embankment to make the turn or as a route to off-road freedom. But soon that lane too was blocked. Drivers and pa.s.sengers fled their gridlocked vehicles. But nothing helped.

As soon as anyone left their Buggy, the Sparrow's eye turned their way.

Split seconds later, the beak thrust, clamped down on wildly struggling limbs, and choked off screams. Few who were within the Sparrow's reach escaped successfully.

Even those who cowered within their buggies were not safe. When the Sparrow saw no prey fleeing, it accepted the vehicles with every appearance of relish. Its ancestors had been opportunists, dining on seeds, crumbs, and insects as they found them. Now it faced a wealth of insectile creatures, all of a size proportionate to itself. Its satisfaction was obvious.

Only the few Tortoises on the road, each one pulled as much as possible into its sh.e.l.l; the old-style automobiles, even more hard-sh.e.l.led; and the trucks, too huge, seemed immune to the terrifying attack.

"Jesus!" Nick knew they were as safe as possible, given the circ.u.mstances, but that did not comfort him. When a limb--it might have been a Buggy's--bounced off the Tortoise's sh.e.l.l below the windshield, he clutched the tiller with a grip that death alone would slacken. "They probably still want the Israelis out of Tehran."

"The Palestinians?"

"Whoever." Emily shrugged and pointed at the logo on the airliner's flank.

"We should never have let Palestine Airways into the country. Once a terrorist, always a..."

"Look!" cried Andy. "Here come the cops!"

As the sound of sirens split the air, Nick peered upward through the windshield. Three Sparrowhawks were just coming out of their dives and sweeping into tight turns above the expressway.

Chapter Two.

THE LAND SPREAD out below, wheeling, turning, pivoting now on some skysc.r.a.per near the city's core, now on the crossing of two major roadways, now on the airport control tower. Small white clouds swung above. Broad, steel-gray wings swept through the peripheries of the pilot's vision, immense feathers twitching from time to time in response to the flow of air or the muscles that controlled his path through the sky.

The pilot's name was Bernie, Bernie Fischer, and he was letting his Hawk soar at will while he bathed morosely in the whirling views. His hands rested lightly on the control yoke as he stared out over the sheet-metal cabinets, round-cornered, gray-enameled, of the vehicle's console. Behind one of the panels, he knew, was the computer that translated his bendings of the yoke, his treadings of the pedals, and his twistings of k.n.o.bs into landings, liftoffs, and smoothly sweeping turns to left and right.

His seat was enclosed by a broad bubble or pod of clear plastic, marked only by an oval door frame, and, within that, a small porthole. The porthole seemed superfluous, unnecessary for vision when the door itself was transparent. It was there, he guessed, because the door's manufacturer used the pattern for all its doors, clear or not.

Bernie's field of view was interrupted only beneath his feet, for only there did his vehicle turn opaque. There was the bird itself and, behind him, the engines and fuel tanks strapped near the base of its tail. There were the metal fittings that bore the Hawk's serial number and to which attached the heavy straps that held the pod to the bird's back. There was no need for metal structural members in the pod itself, or for rotor-mountings, as in the helicopters that still were used at times.