CHAPTER FIVE
“Just so I’m clear, why exactly are we having a meeting with our evil arch nemeses?” Thalia asked the other members of the Floracopia Cooperative Board of Directors.
Her mother, Harmony, sighed. “They asked for a meeting. We want to know what they want. So here we are.” Harmony stirred her coffee casually, but her eyes had a pinched, worried look.
For a moment, Thalia realized that her beautiful mother was getting older. She’d have known her mother was stressed out without looking at her, though. Her Texas twang always got worse when she was worried. Thalia was happy to have inherited her mother’s green eyes and curvy body, but wished she could have gotten her height and shiny bronze hair as well. Well, you can’t have everything, Thalia sighed inwardly and smoothed the skirt on her Chinese-style suit. She’d made sure it exactly matched her green eyes. She wasn’t going to let one little meeting ruin one of the rare weeks she had at home.
Her position as site evaluator and sample collector for their gene mod projects meant she was one of the few people on the planet who traveled extensively. Since The Troubles, only a very few could afford the luxury of travel. It was nice to be back home in Texas though, at least for a little while. She checked to make sure her long blond curls were still carefully arranged and sipped her coffee.
“But why did I have to come? And why are we wearing these stupid suits?” asked Kalliope plaintively. She felt more at home in overalls and a baseball cap. She’d much rather be knee-deep in tractor engines or hammering on the water recapture system from their mini-nuke generator.
She tugged on her tie mournfully as she thought of the temperature system in Greenhouse Five that needed work. They were testing a tobacco-like plant for use in the Alaskan desert and the refrigerators were running overtime to simulate that environment. Of course, it was hot everywhere now, but the trick with Alaska was the extreme highs in the summers and the lows in the winters.
Kalliope meditated on the problem of reproducing an icy sandstorm in Greenhouse Five while the others worried about their impending meeting with the largest gene warfare company on the planet.
Harmony straightened Kalliope’s tie for her and smiled soothingly. “Honey, you are a Board Member for the Co-op and although we try to keep you from too many official duties, we thought we’d like to see you today.”
“Is that the suit we made you buy for Terpsi’s wedding, Kalli?” Thalia asked with an encouraging smile.
“Yep. That was a real fine shindig,” Kalliope replied. She rubbed the laser tattoo on her forearm thoughtfully and seemed to unwind a bit.
Thalia helped herself to a breakfast taco left over from the morning, trying not to get any on her new dress. Privately she hoped she looked as competent and professional as Joanna and her mother did, but she rather doubted it. Then she remembered to freak out about this meeting again.
“So, are we thinking the new wallscreen is going to impress them? It’s big enough to drive a truck through.” Thalia asked the room, in awe of the huge screen that could be rolled up and moved almost anywhere. She briefly wondered if their tech guys would watch porn or action flicks on this monstrosity at night after they all went home. She winced at that mental image and tried to think of something else.
This time, Joanna Guerrero looking every inch the power broker, answered without looking up. “Yes. And I know they won’t see it because we’ll be looking at them through it. But we’ve been needing to upgrade our connectivity for a while.” She never paused tapping away at her handheld. She’d had its view screen enlarged so she could run more applications simultaneously.
Thalia was in awe of Joanna. She managed the business aspects of the Co-op, a task they were all thankful to give to the dynamic woman. Not content to manage a cutting edge genetech company, Joanna also ruled the local Junior League with an iron fist and was practically the local Chamber of Commerce all by herself. Really, they took this meeting with Malsanto today because Joanna said they had to and she further threatened them with dire consequences if they failed to show up in anything less than their finest business wear.
Joanna’s suit was obviously tailored to hug her well-toned curves and highlight her lovely Mexican coloring. It did a remarkable job. It was all the more amazing since they were located in a very small town in the middle of Texas, and there really wasn’t anywhere to go that required a suit. People here were mostly concerned with fashion choices that would keep them cool and protect them from the sun and bugs.
The bugs had gotten to be a huge problem since The Troubles, but Harmony was working on a few solutions of her own. It was the sort of side project she liked.
Kalliope finally asked the question Thalia was dying to. “Seriously, what’s the deal here? We hate these guys. Right? They stand for everything that’s wrong with the world. They crank out cheap, crappy gene mods that strip the local flora and make the buyers forever dependent on Malsanto for upgrades and resplices. And that’s not even considering all the gene warfare products they churn out for any government that asks nicely. If any of their junky splices actually worked, the whole world would have been an empty rock years ago. Why are we suddenly having a cozy little chat with them in our most uncomfortable shoes?”
Bob Breun, AKA Bob the Money Guy, finally breezed into the room and replied, “They wanted to chat. That means they either want to buy us out or they want to buy some of our cool stuff or they want to do something evil and nefarious to us. Aren’t you curious which it is? Personally I’m rooting for buy some of our cool stuff, but I could go for evil and nefarious too. It’s been a slow week.”
He grinned confidently at Kalliope and winked lecherously at Thalia, even though he was closer to their mother’s age than theirs. Thalia had always wondered what a smart frat boy from Texas Tech would grow up to be and in Bob they had the answer. She couldn’t help but return his smile.
She noticed that his short brown hair had gotten thicker and more stylish since his latest divorce. The rest of him was looking more toned and buff too. It was wonderful what you could do with your looks these days. Fruit from India was a thing of the past, but if you wanted lush hair and shiny teeth no matter your age, you could have it, for a price. She didn’t realize that the Co-op paid him that well. Thalia hoped that when Bob went trolling for a new lady friend, he would do it outside the office. But this was not a high hope.
“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.