CHAPTER SEVEN
“So are you boys settling in alright?” Clio asked as she put a steadying hand on Seth’s shoulder. They were trying to pick their way through a muddy field in as civilized a fashion as possible and meeting with little success.
“Sure,” Seth replied. “The new office is going up very quickly. I can’t believe we’ve already been here three weeks.” He turned to look at her as he said this and stopped paying attention to where he was going.
Seth slid across a mud patch like a surfer, only to trip over a shoelace and scrape his elbow on the one patch of grass as far as the eye could see.
“I begin to see the point of those uncomfortable looking cowboy boots everyone wears,” he said as he slipped again. This time he planted both knees in the mud. Clio had to help him up.
“Watch out for that rock,” she replied.
He turned to look and promptly tripped over the rock, anyway. He did a wobbling little dance to keep from falling and then blushed with embarrassment. “The past few weeks have gone much smoother than this,” said Seth with a self-conscious laugh, looking down. “I just put this shirt on.”
Seth turned to look at the lights strung up just ahead like a mirage in a mud desert. The parking lot was just a field and after hard rains and heavy trucks, the field had gotten fed up and struck back with a resentful tide of sticky muck.
“Whose birthday party is this again?” Seth asked her. “I felt I should bring a gift, but what do you get for someone you’ve never met?”
“Oh, sugar,” laughed Clio. “Nobody here ever met the birthday boy. Bigfoot Wallace has been dead for over two hundred years. He’s not even buried here.” Seth turned to face her. He could see by the amused glint in her eye that she was serious. He raised an eyebrow.
Clio answered his unasked question. “He’s a local folk hero. He fought in the war against Mexico for Texas independence. He was one of the first Texas Rangers. They say he kept the peace by being the scariest man south of Dallas. We celebrate his birthday because, well, I don’t really know why. Mostly I guess we like having a reason to have a big barbeque and a band. We all get together to drink beer, eat ourselves sick and dance until dawn.”
“Ah.” Seth said. That sounded reasonable to him. “Sure. So, is the rest of your family here?”
“Oh yes, they all took the day off and got here when the party started this afternoon. I had some work to do so I’m late. I always have some work to do so I’m always late,” Clio said with a sigh. “What about you? Didn’t anyone else from your new office come? I can’t imagine your uncle missing a party.”
Seth laughed. “No, Max would never miss a party, especially one with food at it. I too was working late so Max came with some of the others around eight. No doubt he is lying in a food coma in some corner of this field now. We’ve had to install some of those treadmill generators at the new office. We have to walk far enough to generate the electricity if we want to play globenet games. And we all love our games. Otherwise we’d have to build a bigger office because we’d all be enormously fat from eating all the delicious food.”
“It’s a problem that’s hard to complain about, what with so many parts of the world having problems getting enough nutrition. But yeah. Those treadmill generators are very popular around here. I have one at home for gaming too,” Clio replied as they walked into the laughing crowd of townspeople.
Clio put a hand on Bob the Money Guy’s shiny new convertible to steady herself as she cleared the last mud puddle. Where did he get the money for things like this? She knew Floracopia paid him well, but she thought he’d need a lot more money to support his expensive habits. Maybe he got money out of his many lady friends? She didn’t like to think about that. She turned to survey the scene. At one end of the big field a band was playing swinging honky-tonk to an enthusiastic crowd of dancers. A line of large black barbecue pits filled the field with delicious-smelling smoke. An enthusiastic crowd milled around in meaty bliss.
“What games do you play?” asked Seth. His eyes had wandered away from the scene to the blue jeans that hugged Clio’s curves. Clio caught his gaze.
She batted her eyelashes at him and struck a sultry pose. “Why, honey. I don’t play games, I win them.” Then she laughed at his expression. “No, I’m just kidding. It just sounded like a bad pick-up line the way you said it.”
“I’ll be sure to think of better pick-up lines,” he replied awkwardly.
She watched him blush in confusion and hurried to answer, “I spend way too much time playing Revolution World actually. It’s the re-enactment of the Texas Revolution, you know? There are other versions for a bunch of other revolutions or rebellions too. I hear the American Revolution and the Taiping Rebellion worlds are very popular. It’s kind of dorky, but I’m hooked on it and all my friends here play too.”
“Oh yes, I know that one. I actually designed some in-game security elements for the Texas Revolution World,” Seth replied, clearly more comfortable with virtual reality games than with flirting.
They spotted Max and a tall, pale woman talking to Kalliope. They were sitting at one of the long picnic tables set up next to large fans to cut the heat. Seth and Clio were both starving so they grabbed plates and hit the food tent.
“You worked on Revolution World? Really? Wow,” Clio said as she loaded up on potato salad, coleslaw, smoked chicken and peach cobbler. She set down two large bowls of guacamole and salsa she brought as her offering for the party.
“Yeah, just the security elements. It was an application of our privacy networks. The original programmers wanted a way to have secret meetings that couldn’t be infiltrated. Personally, I would think spies and secret agents would be part of that kind of game, but that’s what they wanted. It was fun to design,” Seth replied. He had piled his plate so high with sausage that there was no room for peach cobbler. He looked at it mournfully until Clio passed him another plate with a wink. They walked to meet the others while dodging a group of kids racing through the crowd.
“I use that security system for my gaming team,” said Clio. “So it really keeps people from impersonating someone with access to the secret meetings? I always wondered about that.” She spotted Eric and Joanna Guerrero sitting next to Kalliope and gestured that she wanted to join them. The group began rearranging itself to make room for them.
Seth dropped a link of sausage as he sat down. A dog snatched it up almost before it hit the dirt. “With so many people working remotely, there are companies that hire people they’ve never seen,” he answered. “So it’s much harder these days to make sure the person logging into the network is who they say they are. That’s what Omerta originally designed it for. I just adapted that software to the game. In the case of the game, it makes it impossible for someone to log in and play another person’s in-game avatar. I actually used Revolution World to test out a network system that keeps people who are supposed to have access from sharing any of the secure information. So your Revolution doesn’t have to worry about turncoats who sell secrets to the other side.”
“Really? I’m friends with the designers of Revolution World and that’s what they said, but I just don’t understand how you could do that.” Clio replied.
Seth shrugged. “Actually, that feature is only in the Texas part of Revolution World. I made it a while ago, but it’s still in test phase. I used a combination of cloud computing to distribute the information and encryption algorithms to make it secure. Basically, it involves a lot of ring theory and other abstract algebras. But the idea is that the only way to share the information in these encrypted meeting rooms is to be in the room. You can’t take it out with you. To get in the room, you have to agree to a downloaded program on your handheld that won’t let you even describe what you heard in the room. It wipes any mention to that information out of spoken or written communication. The only way you could do it is face to face or written down on an actual piece of paper.”
Kalliope had stopped her conversation with Max and Eric to listen to this last part.
“So it’s like you are a witch and you put a spell on the secret. So if anyone tries to tell the secret, they can’t speak. I didn’t know math could be that groovy, Seth,” Kalliope grinned and passed him a beer.
“Something like that,” Seth said modestly, but grinned with pleasure. Then he discovered mud in his hair and began trying to pick it out while still eating.
“We are all witches at Omerta,” Max said cackling like a crone, “I’ll get you my pretty! And your little dog Toto too!” He took an enthusiastic bite out of a turkey leg he’d been waving around for effect. Joanna laughed, but soon turned back to command the legion of little old ladies who kept the festivities running smoothly. Eric looked bored and wandered off towards the dancing.
Kalliope leaned forward and gave her sister a wicked grin. “Revolution World? Did Clio tell you she used to be hot and heavy with the guy that invented it? He still comes around, doesn’t he?”
“No, he does not,” replied Clio, kicking her sister under the table. “You know perfectly well I’ve been single for a while. Jason is just a friend.”
This last part was more for Seth’s benefit and her words did not fall on deaf ears. He grinned and moved closer to her. “Jason Schmidt? I worked with him. He’s a good guy,” he said.
Clio turned to find the tall, pale young woman sitting with Max giving her the evil eye. She wondered how she had failed to notice her until now. The girl would have fried Clio’s head off if she had laser vision. She scowled at Seth, too. Clio smiled. This woman was obviously interested in Seth and just as obviously hating Clio for sitting so close to him. How fascinating. It was rarely apparent to her what was going on socially. She almost wanted to brag to someone for having picked up on body language for once.
Clio stuck out her hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met. My name is Clio,” she said cheerfully.
It almost looked as though the woman would refuse to take her hand before Seth jumped in. “Clio, can I introduce my cousin, Gloria? She’s in charge of the satellite office here,” Seth said as he gestured to the young woman. Gloria shook Clio’s hand and inclined her head coldly. Clio gave her a big smile and wave. Kalliope shot Clio a look that plainly said she hadn’t been impressed with Gloria so far.
“Another relative?” Clio said as she eyed Gloria. “It sounds like Omerta is just as rife with nepotism as Floracopia is. Can’t throw a rock in our labs without hitting a family member.”
The woman looked to be in her early twenties. She was strikingly beautiful with long black hair, dark eyes, and a haughty expression on her pale face. Clio couldn’t understand how someone so young was put in charge of an office, especially with older and more experienced people like Seth and Max in it.
Gloria leaned forward gracefully as a cold smile curled her lips. “So it is with Omerta. Everyone is very close. Although we are not so closely related, Seth and I.” She gave him a smoldering look. “We are what you might call kissing cousins.”
Seth gave her an odd look. “I never find jokes about incest very funny. And it’s been a long time since I kissed anyone, being single like I am.” He looked at Clio significantly. She smiled and took a quick bite of pie. Seth did too. Except he was so busy looking at Clio that he missed his mouth and nearly jabbed himself in the eye with a fork.
“I’m afraid the ladies do not appreciate a man who spends more time with his computer than with them,” Max observed, handing Seth a napkin to wipe the pie off his face.
Gloria tossed her curtain of hair in a snit. “Seth here is actually the heir apparent to our little throne, you know. His parents are both on the Board of Directors. He and Max are our lead programmers. The rest of the family cannot understand their sudden insane desire to move out to this… well, this little place. So I was sent to keep an eye on them until they return to their senses and go home.”
She turned a disapproving eye on Seth who was now so close to Clio their shoulders were gently touching. Gloria reached over to smooth a flyaway strand of Seth’s hair. The contact startled Seth into moving away from Clio.
Clio took an instant dislike to this exotic woman. She reacted like a true Southern girl. Her smile got wider and she became even more charming. “Well I hope our little town will grow on you since you’ll be here for quite some time, won’t you?” she said sweetly, scooting closer to Seth just to make Gloria angry.
“Come. We must dance,” declared Max, spilling beer as he stood up. “I have been watching those young men near the stage twitch about like epileptic zombies and I am convinced I can look more foolish than they do.” He grabbed Gloria and dragged her across the field. Kalliope cheerfully joined them. Following in Kalliope’s wake was the gaggle of adoring farmers that always seemed to surround her.
*****
Seth and Clio remained seated and continued to eat as they watched the dancing. They talked enthusiastically about nothing much at all.
Some large, beefy men came over to talk to Clio about their next session of Revolution World gaming. It seems she was part of a group that met every Wednesday night. Seth listened and idly wondered if every man in this town was six feet tall and built like a refrigerator.
“You hear that Mr. Dennard was taken?” one of the men said to Clio.
“And his wife is sick,” the other man interjected with outrage.
She glanced at Seth, but he couldn’t read her face. “Government or terrorists?” she asked in a low voice.
“Government of course,” the man replied, his mouth set in a hard line. Clio cursed fluidly and pulled the two away for a quick conversation.
Seth looked around and it was large beefy men as far as the eye could see. He was six feet tall himself. He knew he was skinny, but he’d never felt so scrawny before. He could easily pick out Max’s lithe form in the crowd, dancing like a possessed hillbilly with Clio’s mother just now. Near him, Gloria looked bored as a large farmer whirled her about in an expert manner. Seth was really impressed by the dancing skills these rough men possessed.
“Hey, I’d like to play Revolution World like the locals. Can I join you on Wednesday night, maybe?” Seth asked after the men had gone and Clio sat back down.
Clio flushed and looked flustered. “Oh no. I mean I’m sure it wouldn’t really interest you,” she stammered. “The game is really only fun for Texas nuts like us.”
Seth was taken aback. He’d really just wanted some way to spend more time with her.
“I’m sorry. That came out rude,” she said quickly, putting a hand on his arm. “I just meant that those Wednesday meetings are for a bunch of us who are pretty hardcore into the game. Maybe we could play together on a different night until you decide whether or not you like it enough to keep playing?”
The feeling that she was trying to blow him off evaporated under the heat of her hand. “That would be great,” he said quietly. She took her hand back and they finished eating, occasionally looking up to smile at each other.
“This corn is good,” said Seth, just to have something to say after conversation petered out.
“I’m glad you like it. One of my early projects actually,” Clio laughed. “Mom let me start splicing as soon as I was old enough to pull things off her lab bench. This one is adapted to the high heat and low rainfall, but see?” She cupped her hands over the corn. He could see that it glowed a repulsive green color in the dark.
“I spliced in a fluorescence tag so I could tell if the graft took, but then couldn’t get it out without messing up the new genes.” She shrugged. “We sold it cheap to the local farmers.”
They got up and began strolling around the field when Seth heard gunfire. He was about to hit the deck when he thought the better of it and jumped to cover Clio with his body.
“No, it’s alright,” she said, pushing him back. “Look, it’s alright.” She giggled and pointed to a cleared area away from the main group. It was filled with people facing away from the party.
Seth watched as a line composed of everything from teens to graying ladies took aim with a variety of weapons and suddenly fired off a volley into the trees. As they walked up, he could see two holographic birds suddenly dart out and fly around in front of the line of gunners. They took aim again and fired. One of the birds flickered out of existence.
“Bubba wins!” called out the woman operating the holograms. The crowd cheered for an older man who accepted the praise with a nod.
“Sweet! So I guess they are using bullets with RFID tags in them to tell who hits the targets?” he asked Clio.
“You got it. We have a guy who makes plastic bullets with the tags in them. He can make all sorts of bullets.”
Seth laughed appreciatively. “I guess you couldn’t use laser guns?”
She shook her head. “Nope. They aren’t popular around here anyway. They gobble too much energy and most gun enthusiasts here take pride in the old-style shooters.”
“Do they do this regularly? Because I really want to play.” Seth rubbed his hands together gleefully.
“Oh sure. The Lions Club holds practice every other Tuesday. Nancy is the woman running it. Here, I’ll give you her contact information.” Clio tapped away on her handheld and it was done. Seth smiled at her with satisfaction. Every day he spent here, he was more convinced he’d made a wise choice in moving.
Seth watched a group of children lead around a small pony with a headless straw man tied to its back. Clio explained that one of Bigfoot Wallace’s escapades had been to tie the headless body of a horse thief to a wild mustang and turn it loose.
“He thought it might get the word out that horse stealing was frowned upon,” she said. “That horse ran around with a headless corpse on its back for a couple of years before someone caught it. Scared the bejeezus out of everyone for miles.”
“Charming,” he said, looking at the straw man.
Clio shrugged apologetically. “Not many of his stories are child friendly so we altered a few. In the kid version, he puts a headless straw man on a horse to scare everyone.”
The smile on his face disappeared and he stood up abruptly. Before she could ask what was the matter, he strode off without a word. Her mouth hung slightly open as she followed his path. Then she looked beyond him and understood his alarm.
*****
In the distance, she could see a group of men surrounding Max and Gloria. They were too far away to hear, but their gestures and posture were obviously hostile. She darted after Seth. Her pulse raced as Max backed away from the men with his hands up in an entreating gesture. He was clearly trying to diffuse whatever the situation was, even as they pushed him roughly. Max backed up and the group disappeared from view into the brush.
Seth plunged into the woods. As Clio hurried after him, she caught the eyes of Kalliope and Harmony and gestured to indicate that trouble was brewing. They quickly followed her.
Harmony made her way through the crowd, but her path attracted notice. She heard some of the workers from the next town over grumbling that these foreigners were asking for trouble and deserved what they got.
Clio knew she was just behind Seth, yet it seemed like hours before she caught up to him in the woods and stopped in amazement at what she saw.
There were five large, red-faced men wheezing on the ground in various poses of pain. Gloria was gently dabbing blood off Seth’s lip while unleashing a tidal wave of curses. Max was leaning against a tree, breathing hard and probing his jaw tenderly.
“What happened?” Clio cried. Max gestured to the men but didn’t elaborate. Clio had trouble believing that Seth and his uncle could have taken out five corn-fed rednecks even if they had some weapons. And to do it so quickly was simply impossible. Seth pushed Gloria away and gave Clio a broken smile as she rushed up. Gloria clenched her fists as she watched him stumble away from her towards Clio.
“These two fools decided to show off,” Gloria spat out heatedly. She stalked off towards the parking lot, flinging her shiny black hair over her shoulder.
Harmony arrived and, after a moment spent sizing up the situation, wordlessly began helping Max. Clio sputtered incoherently as she examined Seth and tried to form her question delicately.
“How on earth did two skinny nerd boys like you take on those huge rednecks?” she asked. She winced, knowing that had not been as diplomatic as it could be. Seth looked offended, which is to say he looked like a stuffed frog.
“We’ve been practicing Wing Tsun martial arts for decades,” he said indignantly. He flung the empty beer bottle in his hand down for emphasis.
“Really?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow with a hint of a smile on her lips. “Decades?”
“Years.” Max wheezed. Harmony began herding the men towards the cars. Kalliope bent down and spoke to the men on the ground in a low, growling tone. As Seth limped off with Clio in his wake, Kalliope waved them on and stayed where she was.
Seth got halfway to the parking lot before he turned and opened his mouth to lecture Clio on the benefits of not leaping to conclusions about people based on their physical appearance. Before he could start, Max spoke up.
“We also hit them with beer bottles the second they started throwing punches. All that time spent playing virtual games gives a man mighty quick reflexes,” said Max quickly, shaking his head at Seth.
Max whispered soonly his nephew could hear him, “Sometimes it’s best to lay low, nerd boy.” Then he clapped the younger man on the shoulder and began walking briskly towards the cars.
“Well ladies,” he announced with gusto, wincing just a little. “It appears we foreigners have derived all the fun allotted to us at this party. However, the night is cool, the stars are twinkling and it’s the weekend. We should continue this party elsewhere. Also that magnificent cow, Gloria, took my car. Can I tempt any of you ladies to give me a ride back to our site? I can offer quite an elaborate array of alcoholic delights in exchange.” He beamed at them optimistically.
“Uncle, I have my car,” Seth began.
“You shut up.” Max said to him with a poke in his ribs. “I think your car may be broken. Yes, it definitely looks broken. And who would not take pity on two marooned men?” His winning smile encompassed Kalliope as she walked up, shaking her head.
“My car is a nuclear-powered hover car,” laughed Seth. “It never breaks.”
“Really?” Kalliope asked with interest. “Nuclear?” She eyed the car with the piercing gaze of one who enjoys taking apart new things.
Clio knew that look well, since she currently possessed a compressed-air scooter that still made strange pinging noises after her sister had tinkered with it. She leapt into the conversation.
“Seth, you’ve been hit in the head and before that you had quite a lot of beer after a long day at work. You really shouldn’t drive. Why don’t we give you guys a lift over to our house for a while? Mom always has margarita fixings and an awesome collection of classic kung fu movies.”
The plan was enthusiastically endorsed. Seth insisted on driving his car and asked Clio to go with him. He claimed that he needed someone with him in case his head wound made him woozy. She agreed and the rest of them smirked openly. As they drove, Clio warned him not to leave Kalliope alone unattended near his car, especially with tools in her hand.
“And she always has tools in her hand,” Clio said as they followed Harmony’s battered old truck, retrofit with an algae fuel-cell battery. They could see Max’s animated form as he sat between Harmony and Kalliope.
“So those guys picked a fight with Max for being a foreigner,” Seth said with a frown. “But I don’t think they even realized that we aren’t from the US. They kept calling us Yankees.”
“I think Texans have always been a little house-proud,” Clio said sadly. “It’s pretty common to refer to all non-Texans as Yankees. Some folks around here think even Dallas is too far north to be considered safe from Yankee-ness. Since The Troubles, anti-foreigner sentiment has been pretty high. But I didn’t think you’d have that kind of problem,” She hoped this wouldn’t spook him into leaving, but she could understand if it did.
“Me neither,” he replied, lost in thought.
“Heck, most everybody in town is just tickled to have you here,” Clio continued. “Even the anti-foreigner guys were impressed after they heard how Omerta negotiated those islands away from Canada and set themselves up as an independent country. They all want to hear that story from y’all firsthand. Those boys that bothered you aren’t from our town, so they must not have heard when we put the word out.”
“And we do look like foreigners,” agreed Seth. “I think I must thank you again for helping to welcome us here. We can hardly expect everyone to be so receptive.”
Clio had to agree that the Omerta people all seemed to be exceptionally pale. She decided it was because she was used to darker skin. After all, she lived in a sun-drenched state where Caucasians were a minority. Even she and her sisters were all deeply tanned. She supposed the Omerta transplants would get darker if they would ever leave their compound during the day.
“It could be worse. You could be from the government. Everybody hates those guys,” she replied.
“Everyone outside of the US certainly hates your government,” he said. “They are not popular inside their own country either?”
“They do to us what they do to everybody else,” she said with disgust. “They accuse anyone who has what they want of being a terrorist and use it as an excuse to attack. At least other countries can fight back. Here, people just disappear in the night and their families find all their assets disappeared into the Homeland Security’s grubby little hands. It’s been pretty bad in Texas. We have lots of oil here and other things they want. On top of all the other problems, we have to worry about the government coming in to bulldoze our houses to get the oil underneath them.”
“No wonder you people drink so much,” Seth laughed as he pulled into the yard of a large rambling country house. The lights flickered on to reveal a long covered porch facing a large garden. Fireflies and the smell of honeysuckle floated through the night.
“Too true,” she said as she got out of the car. More cars pulled in behind them. Kalliope and Harmony had apparently called a few friends.
The group headed into the house, but Kalliope caught Clio and pulled her aside.
“He has a nuclear-powered hovercar,” Kalliope said significantly.
“I forbid you to take apart that man’s car,” Clio replied with feeling.
“No. I mean, yes, I would if given half a chance. But I was thinking the intruders in the lab a few months ago had a nuclear-powered hovercar.”
Clio dismissed the idea with a laugh. “You can’t be serious. Why on earth would Seth break into our lab? What could a bunch of computer guys want with gene techniques?”
Kalliope shrugged. “I don’t know. Why is a high-powered country-owning company like Omerta moving into a backwater nowhere town like this? And why would they send their top guys to run it? Look, the whole thing is strange. Maybe they needed the money and they couldn’t just hack in with their computers. I’m just saying they beat the snot out of those guys at the party in five seconds. That’s weird. You need to be careful, my dear sibling.”
“Oh come on, Kalli. We might as well suspect Bigfoot Wallace. We still have no idea who at Floracopia helped them out, do we?” Clio cried and threw up her hands.
Kalliope winced. “We are narrowing it down, anyway. And with all the new security features, it’s much harder for someone sneak stuff out,” she said defensively.
“Who is on the short list?”
“Bob the Money Guy, Joanna our Management Goddess, and Nancy the Super-Secretary,” Kalliope replied.
Clio winced. “Dang! Not a good list. I would have said any of them were one hundred percent on our team. If any of them are passing company secrets out the back door, it hits us pretty hard.”
“My bet is Bob. You know how he is,” whispered Kalliope dramatically. “He gets all choked up at the idea of a pile of money. He’d sell his Grandma for the right price. And where does he get the money for all those suits and trips to the big city?”
Kalliope shook her head. It was not good to wonder if your lifelong friends and neighbors were selling you out to make a quick buck. “Well, look into him and the other two, but do it quietly. We can’t really afford to lose any of them.”
Kalliope raised a hand. “What am I? An idiot? I’ll be the soul of stealth. We don’t want the guilty party to leave before we figure out what they sold and to whom they sold it.”
Clio shook her head again and changed the subject. “What did you say to those guys who attacked Max anyway?” Clio asked.
“I just explained a few things to them. We can’t have too much attention drawn to this town right now. It’s a sensitive time for us, as you well know.” Kalliope was referring to certain little side projects the sisters were involved in.
Clio nodded heavily and turned to enter the house with a sigh. Kalliope stopped her again.
“You like him,” Kalliope stated, giving her sister her total attention.
Clio just shrugged and blushed a little. “I’m single. He’s single. There are possibilities there.”
“Seriously. You need to be careful here. We have a lot going on right now and he is a foreigner. This really isn’t a good time for a romance with some mysterious stranger.”
“I know, alright?” Clio said and pushed past her sister to enter the house. “I know. But I can’t help liking him.”
“I suppose you can’t. On the bright side, you will inevitably say the exact wrong thing at the perfectly worst time. You have a gift for that, sis,” Kalliope called after her. Clio just scowled by way of a reply. She knew it was true.
They both joined the cheerful group as they made themselves drinks, turned on low gentle music, and collected on the back porch to watch the fireflies.
“Hey Clio, did you hear? The news is reporting that Jack Townsend over in Austin was snatched by the terrorists,” called one of the faces in the crowd. “His sister lives here. I bet she’s pretty upset.”
“Now is not the time to talk about tragedies,” Harmony interrupted with a sad smile. “Let’s drink tonight and worry about the problems of the world tomorrow.”
*****
Seth maneuvered himself into a seat next to Clio. She found herself unconsciously moving closer to him or brushing against him when she talked.
Seth, on the other hand, was acutely conscious of every movement she made. He watched the moonlight play over her face and felt that no man could resist the siren song of romance in such a setting and with such a woman, even if he had been smacked on the head that day.
As Max launched into a colorful and highly improbable story that involved fleeing platoons of Canadian Mounties, Seth leaned close to Clio and asked, “So Floracopia. I understand that with the collapse of the environment, there is a great need for modified crops, but how exactly does it all work?” He really was interested, but he also liked to hear her talk.
“Oh well, before The Troubles, most crops were grown in monocultures,” she started. “They’d have huge fields of just one type of potato or corn or whatever. Sometimes practically whole countries would be growing one kind of non-native crop. To do that, they had to use huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Not only did it destroy the local plants and wildlife that could have been cultivated, it killed the soil. There are still huge swaths of South America where nothing grows.”
She went on to explain how The Troubles practically stopped the import and export of all but the most extraordinary, and thus most expensive, crops. With everything grown locally in a rapidly changing environment, gene modding became necessary to survive.
“Imagine farmers in those parts of California that used to be lush farmland but are now deserts. They contract us to provide fruit or other crops for their new conditions. We send out Thalia to take samples of their water, soil, bugs, and any crops they currently have growing. I try to use natives as a base because they are best adapted to the area, but sometimes it’s not possible. Once a crop has done well in an area, we are usually called in to make complimentary species, either other crops or farm animals.”
Seth nodded and murmured encouragement. He also admired the way her eyes lit up when she spoke about a topic she loved.
She explained that they usually tested several potential splices in their greenhouses before sending out the most likely candidates. She told him about a project that required highly productive pollinators that could survive extreme cold.
“Those bees could make a hive on an icicle after I got through with them,” she finished.
“It seems strange that with gene modding so commonplace, the UN and the US would be so vehemently against human splicing,” he commented after he’d gone to get them more drinks. The group was winding down. Seth could see Harmony yawning and knew the evening was drawing to a close.
“It is silly that humans should be trickier than other animals, but they are. Mostly because no one cares if a gene mod in a cow makes it die younger of a heart attack. If it produces enough calves and milk, that is. And if a spliced strain of corn gets cancer, no one notices after they’ve eaten it. People, on the other hand…”
“People are complicated,” Seth concluded. He gestured to Max who was stretched out on a bench and openly snoring.
Although he wanted to wrap his arms around her and smother her with kisses, he settled for a lingering hug as he collected his uncle and made the journey back to their site.