Islands in the Net (18 page)

Laura pulled her mask below her chin. “No.”

“I'll have to ask you not to use the, um, toilets.” He paused. “It's all linked together down here, see—all sealed tight and recycled. Water, oxygen, the works! Just like a space station.” He smiled.

“This is Dr. Prentis,” Andrei told them.

“Oh!” Prentis said. “Yeah. I'm kind of the head honcho down here, as you must've guessed.… You're Americans, right? Call me Brian.”

“A pleasure, Brian.” David offered his hand.

Prentis winced. “Sorry, now, that's not kosher, either.… You guys want a Pepsi?” He set his sprayer on a desk and opened the fridge. “Got some Doo-Dads, Twinkies, beef jerky …”

“Uh, we just ate.…” David was listening to something online.

“Thanks anyway.”

“All plastic-sealed, all perfectly safe! Right out of the carton! You're sure? Laura?” Prentis popped a Pepsi. “Oh, well, all the more for me.”

“My contact online,” David said. “She wants to know if you're the Brian Prentis who did the paper on … I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that—polysaccharide something.”

Prentis nodded, shortly. “Yeah. I did that.”

“Reception's a little scratchy down here,” David apologized.

“At Ohio State. Long time ago,” Prentis said. “Who is this person? Somebody from your Rizzome, right?”

“Professor Millie Syers, a Rizome Fellow at North Carolina State …”

“Never heard of her,” Prentis said. “So! What's new Stateside, huh? How about that ‘L.A. Live' comedy show? I never miss an episode.”

“They say it's very funny,” Laura said. She never watched it.

“Those guys who do the ‘Breadhead Brothers,' they slay me.” Prentis paused. “We can get everything down here, y'know. Anything that hits the Net—not just American! Those Stateside cable companies, they edit out a lot. Brazilian exotics …” He winked clumsily. “And that Japanese blue stuff—whew!”

“Porn doesn't sell like it used to,” Laura said.

“Yeah, they're stuffy, they're uptight,” Prentis nodded. “I don't hold with that. I believe in total openness … honesty, y'know? People shouldn't go through life with blinders on.”

“Can you tell us what you do here?” Laura said.

“Oh. Surely. We use auxotrophic
E. coli
, they're homoserine auxotrophs mostly, though we use double auxotrophy if we're trying anything ticklish.… And the fermenters, the tower rigs, those are saccharomyces.… It's a standard strain, Pruteen copyright, nothing very advanced, just tried-and-true scop technology. At eighty percent capacity, we pump about fifteen metric tons per rig per day, dry weight.… Of course we don't leave it raw, though. We do a lot of what they call cosmetics—palate work.”

Prentis walked toward the windows. “Those smaller troughs are bell-and-whistle rigs. Texture, flavoring, secondary fermentation …” He smiled at Laura, glassily. “It's very much the normal things that any housewife might do in the comfort of her own kitchen! Blenders, microwaves, eggbeaters; just a little scaled up, that's all.”

Prentis glanced at David and away; the dark glasses bothered him. He looked to Laura, gazing raptly at her bustline. “It's not so new, really. If you've ever eaten bread or cheese or beer, you're eating molds and yeasts. All that stuff: tofu, soy sauce; you'd be amazed what they have to go through to make soy sauce. And believe it or not, it's far safer than so-called natural foods. Fresh vegetables!” Prentis barked with laughter. “They're chock-full of natural poisons! There are cases on record where people have died outright from eating potatoes!”

“Hey,” David said, “you're preaching to the converted, amigo.”

Laura turned away toward the windows. “This isn't exactly new to us, Dr. Prentis. Rizome has a synthetic foods division.… I did some P.R. for them once.”

“But that's good, that's good!” Prentis said, nodding in surprise. “People have, you know, absurd prejudices.… About ‘eating germs.'”

“Maybe they did years ago,” Laura said. “But nowadays it's mostly a class thing—that it's poor people's food. Cattle feed.”

Andrei folded his arms. “A bourgeois Yankee notion …”

“Well, it's a marketing problem,” Laura said. “But I agree with you. Rizome sees nothing wrong with feeding hungry people. We have our own expertise in this—and it's the kind of technology transfer that might be very helpful to a developing industry.…” She paused. “I heard your speech upstairs, Andrei, and there's more common ground between us than you may think.”

David chimed in, nodding. “There's a game in the States now called Worldrun. I play it a lot, it's very popular.… Protein tech, like this, is one of your major tools for world stability. Without it, there are food riots, cities crumble, governments go down.… And not just in Africa, either.”

“This is work,” Andrei said. “Not a game.”

“We don't make that distinction,” David told him seriously. “We don't have ‘work' in Rizome—just things to do, and people to do them.” He smiled winningly. “For us, play is learning … you play Worldrun, and you learn that you can't sit on your ass and let things go to hell. You can't just take a salary, make a profit, be a dead weight in the system. In Rizome, we know this—hell, that's why we came to Grenada.”

He turned to Prentis. “I got a copy on my rig—call me up, I can download it for you. You too, Andrei.”

Prentis snickered. “Uh, I can access the Bank from here, David.… Computer games, they've got a couple hundred thousand on file, all kinds, all languages.…”

“Pirated?” Laura said.

Prentis ignored her. “But Worldrun, I'll give it a shot, could be fun, I like to keep up with what's new.…”

David touched his earpiece. “How long have you been in Grenada, Dr. Prentis?”

“Ten years four months,” Prentis said. “And very rewarding work, too.” He gestured out at the thudding rigs outside the glass. “You look at this and you may think: secondhand plant, jury-rig, corner cutting.… But we got something they'll never match Stateside. We got the True Entrepreneurial Spirit.…” Prentis stepped behind the desk and yanked open a bottom drawer.

He started piling things on the scarred tabletop: pipe cleaners, X-acto knives, a magnifying glass, a stack of tape cassettes held with a rubber band. “We'll tackle anything here, shake it, turn it upside down, look at any angle … you can blue-sky it, brainstorm.… The money boys here, they're not like those jaspers back Stateside; once they trust you, well, it's just like a block grant, only better. You get True Intellectual Freedom.…”

More crap hit the desk: rubber stamps, paperweights, molecular tinker toys. “And they know how to party, too! You might not think so to see those Movement cadres up-deck, but you never seen a carnival fête in Grenada.… They go ape! They really know how to get loose.… Oh, here it is.” He pulled out an unmarked tube; it looked like toothpaste. “Now this is something!”

“What is it?” David said.

“What? Just the greatest suntan lotion ever made, that's all!” He tossed it to David. “We invented this right here in Grenada. It's not just sunscreens and emollients. Hell, that old crap just layers the epidermis. But this soaks right into the cells, changes the reaction structure.…”

David unscrewed the cap. A sharp, minty reek filled the room. “Whew!” He recapped it.

“No, keep it.”

David stuck the tube in his pocket. “I haven't seen this on the market.…”

“Hell, no, you haven't. And you know why? 'Cause the Yankee health feds flunked it, that's why. A ‘mutagen risk.' ‘Carcinogenic.' In a pig's eye, brother!” Prentis slammed the drawer shut. “Raw sunlight! Now
that
's a
real
cancer risk. But no, they'll let that go, won't they? 'Cause it's ‘natural.'” Prentis sneered. “Sure, you use that lotion every day for forty years, maybe you get a little problem. Or maybe you already got gastric ulcers from booze! That'll wreck you from top to bottom, but you don't see them banning alcohol, do you? Goddamn hypocrites.”

“I take your point,” Laura said. “But look what's been done about cigarettes. Alcohol's a drug too, and people's attitudes—”

Prentis stiffened. “You're not gonna start in on that, are you? Drugs?” He glared at Andrei.

“The
Charles Nogues
is a food ship,” Andrei said. “I have told them this already.”

“I don't make dope!” Prentis said. “You believe that?”

“Sure,” David said, surprised.

“People come down here, they try and hit off me,” Prentis complained. “They say, ‘Hey Brian, pal, bet you got tons of syncoke, never miss a couple teaspoons for us, huh?'” He glared. “Well, I'm off that. Totally.”

Laura blinked. “We weren't trying to imply—”

Prentis pointed angrily at David. “Look, he's listening. What are they telling you on the Net, huh? All about me, I bet. Jesus Christ.” Prentis stamped out from behind the desk.

“They never forget, do they? Sure, I'm famous! I did it—the Prentis Polysaccharide Process—man, I made millions for Biogen. And they had me on hot proteins, too.…” He held up thumb and finger. “I was that far from the Nobel, maybe! But that was live bioactives, Type Three Security. So they made me piss in a cup.” He glared at Laura. “You know what that means.”

“Drug tests,” Laura said. “Like for airline pilots.…”

“I had this girl friend,” Prentis said slowly. “Kind of a live wire. Not one of those Goddess types, but, you know, a party girl.… ‘Brian,' she says, ‘you'll make it really smooth, behind a couple lines.' And she was right!” He whipped off his glasses. “Goddamn it, she was the most fun I ever had.”

“I'm sorry,” Laura said in the sudden embarrassed silence. “Did they fire you?”

“Not at first. But they took me off everything important, wanted to give me to their goddamn shrinks.… A lab like that, it's like a fuckin' monastery. 'Cause what if you crack, y'know, what if you run out with some Jell-O in your pocket … dangerous Jell-O …
patented
Jell-O.”

“Yeah, it's tough,” David told him. “I guess they pretty much run your social life.”

“Well, more fools they,” Prentis said, a little calmer now. “Guys with imagination … visionaries … we need elbow room. Space to relax. An outfit like Biogen, it ends up with bureaucrats. Drones. That's why they're not getting anywhere.” He put his glasses back on. Then he sat on the desk, swinging his feet. “A conspiracy, that's what it is. All those Net multinationals, they're in each other's pockets. It's a closed market, no real competition. That's why they're fat and lazy. But not here.”

“But if it's dangerous …” Laura began.

“Dangerous? Hell, I'll show you
dangerous
.” Prentis brightened. “Stay here, I'll be back, you gotta see this. Everybody oughta see this.”

He hopped down and vanished into his back office.

Laura and David traded uneasy glances. They looked at Andrei. Andrei nodded. “He's right, you know.”

Prentis emerged. He was brandishing a yard-long scimitar.

“Jesus Christ!” David said.

“It's from Singapore,” Prentis said. “They make 'em for the Third World market. You ever see one of these?” He waved it. David stepped backward. “It's a machete,” Prentis said impatiently. “You're a Texan, right? You must have seen a machete before.”

“Yeah,” David said. “For clearing brush …”

Prentis slammed the machete down, overhand. It hit the desk with a shriek. The desk's corner flew off and hit the floor, spinning.

The machete blade had sheared completely through the wooden desk. It had sliced off an eight-inch triangle of tabletop, including two sections of desk wall and the back of a drawer.

Prentis picked up the severed chunk and set it on the desk like a little wooden pyramid. “Not a splinter! You want to give it a try, Dave?”

“No thanks,” David said.

Prentis grinned. “Go ahead! I can superglue it right back; I do this all the time. You're sure?” He held the machete loosely, at arm's length, and let it fall. It sank half an inch into the desktop.

“A wicked knife,” Prentis said, dusting his hands. “Maybe you think that's dangerous, but you don't see it all, yet. You know what that is? That's peasant technology, brother. It's slash-and-burn agriculture. You know what that might do to what's left of the planet's tropical forests? It'll make every straw-hat Brazilian into Paul Bunyan, that's what. The most dangerous bio-tech in the world is a guy with a goat and an axe.”

“Ax, hell,” David blurted, “that thing's a monster! It can't be legal!” He leaned toward the desk and scanned it with his glasses. “I can see I never thought this through … I know we use ceramic blades in machine-tools … but that's in factory settings, with safety standards! You can't just sell 'em to all and sundry—it's like handing out personal flame-throwers!”

Andrei spoke up. “Don't tell us, David—tell Singapore. They are radical technical capitalists. They don't care about forests—they have no forests to lose.”

Laura nodded. “That's not farming, it's mass destruction. That'll have to be stopped,” she said.

Prentis shook his head. “We got one chance to stop it, and that's to put every goddamn farmer in the world out of business.” He paused. “Yeah, honest old Mr. Yeoman Farmer, and the wife, and his million goddamn kids. They're eating the planet alive.”

Prentis reached absently through the hole in the desk and pulled out a tube of glue. “That's all that matters. Sure, maybe we've cooked a little dope in Grenada, liberated a few programs, but that's just for start-up money. We make food. And we make jobs to make food. See all those people working down there? You wouldn't see 'em in a Stateside plant. The way we do it here, it's labor-intensive—people who might have been farmers, making their own food, for their own country. Not just handouts, dumped from some charity plane by rich nations.”