Revolution World (13 page)

"It's interesting that Indian food translates so well to the locally grown Texas vegetables and spices," Clio said. "You would think that halfway across the planet the cuisine would be totally different, but I guess latitude is more important than longitude. All their vegetables and spices either grow easily here or the flavors adapt well to our local produce. We haven't had to tinker with any of them. Actually we keep getting requests to create a super-pepper with so much capsaicin it'll make your eyes bleed, but I just feel no good can come of something like that. Other than planting it in your yard to keep the deer out." Seth got the impression she was talking just to be talking.

Seth cleared his throat. "So what are you going to do with them?" He jerked his head towards the shed in which they had stored the rabbits.

Clio ate quietly for a minute, looking intently at her food. Then she looked up, gave him a broad grin and said in her thickest Texas twang, "Shoot boy, I'm makin' me some jerky. Rabbits is good eatin'."

He just stared at her. Maybe he had made a huge mistake in moving to Texas. The locals were obviously a lot crazier than he thought.

Clio cracked up laughing. "Oh my God, you should see your face," she giggled, wiping a laughter tear from her eye. Seth stuck his tongue out at her.

"Oh come on, the whole situation is nothing if not ridiculous," she said, by way of reply. "Anyway, we definitely got all of them and they will be incinerated in the lab. The mega-bunny menace is contained. From now on, I'm implanting GPS devices in everything that moves. I really can't thank you enough. I haven't had a full night's sleep in weeks trying to track them down. It's a huge embarrassment that they got out. I would have asked Kalliope to help, but she tends to have a 'Scorched Earth' philosophy when it comes to hunting and I wanted to have some trees left when we were done." She heaved a huge sigh of relief and gave him a grateful look.

Seth wondered if she really was crazy and he just couldn't tell because she was just so darn cute when she smiled like that. He decided he didn't care and grinned back.

"Oh well, after you swooped in and saved us from that serious confrontation with Colonel Crazypants, it was the very least I could do," Seth said modestly. "You should have called me sooner. I could have come prepared. All those years playing first-person shooter video games made me a pretty good shot."

"A gun? And miss you drop-kicking bunnies across my field?" she laughed.

He paused for a minute and then carefully asked, "Does this sort of thing happen often?"

"No, I'm not really big on hunting," she said.

He gave her a look.

She sighed. "And no, I don't have many escapees from my labs. And a further no, I don't normally make huge mutant herbivores."

He didn't say anything, but she could see his shoulders relax just a bit.

"There's not really a point to changing the size of animals. They adapt to the size their environment can support normally anyway," she chattered away as she cleared away their dishes. "But those guys were failed tests subjects for growing transplant organs. The vat organs we use now tend to be more fragile, you know? They have to be replaced more often and they fail more easily. Finding a better organ growing method that doesn't involve headless human clones is like winning the lottery in the genetech world. We'd be on easy street. Unfortunately, no luck with these guys." She said as she meditatively washed dishes. Seth helpfully dried and put them away.

"What really has me up at night is trying to figure out what I did that boosted their intelligence like that. They had some pretty advanced group defense methods and a rudimentary language they'd come up with and they were only a few months old. How cool would it be to be able to boost intelligence on command? Let's see the UN try to keep people from getting that one for their kids."

"Well, if you figure it out, sign me up. I could use a boost to my brains," Seth replied.

"Don't be silly, you are the smartest guy I know. And let me tell you I know a whole lot of nerds," Clio replied, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. He winced hard and she realized his sleeve was sticky with blood.

"Oh my God, why didn't you tell me about this?" she cried as she pulled up his sleeve and found a set of long gashes oozing blood.

"It's fine," he muttered, but she wasn't listening. He was interested to discover that Clio had enough first aid supplies in her house to stock a minor emergency room. He followed her into a supply cabinet stocked with enough food and supplies to let a family of four live comfortably after an apocalypse or two.

"What do you have all this for?" he asked.

Clio just shrugged as she rummaged around. "It never hurts to be prepared, I guess. After the Cow Plague, Texas was hurting pretty bad for food and you remember how slow the government was distributing emergency supplies? Well, maybe you don't. Anyhow, everybody around here does this."

Seth had the thought '
Crazy Texans'
so clearly written on his face that she said, "Oh please. I've heard how deep the foundation on that compound of yours is dug. Don't tell me you don't have some serious storage space of your own over there."

"That's different,' he said primly, but she just smirked.

*****

Clio cleaned out the gashes and sealed them up with wound glue. Then she spent a few minutes poking and prodding him to make sure he wasn't hiding any other injuries. After a little bickering, he agreed to take a painkiller and a small bottle of antibiotics. Finally satisfied that he was fine, she poured them both a cold beer and herded him into her small living room.

"This is nice, having company like this," she remarked.

"Maybe for our next date, I can just come over for dinner. You don't have to release dangerous monsters into the wild just to lure me over, you know," he said.

She punched him lightly on his good shoulder, "You wish. No, other than a few plants species that snuck some seeds out of the greenhouse, I've never had anything get loose before. Even the bunnies wouldn't have gotten out if we hadn't had that break-in."

"Really? Someone broke into your lab? Oh, that's right, I heard about that. Weren't you actually in the lab at the time?" he asked with a worried frown.

"Yep, all by myself," she said. Then Clio launched into an enthusiastic retelling of her little adventure. She was pretty sure that she hadn't delivered any karate kicks or thrown anything at them that actually hit, but she saw no need to ruin a good story with reality. Clio noticed that the longer she talked, the deeper his frown got.

She wrapped up the story with what she thought was a pretty good joke, but Seth didn't laugh. He just frowned and fiddled with the label on his beer.

Finally he spoke. "Well, I have talked to your sister about providing some security measures for Floracopia. We haven't really set anything up, but I'm thinking we really need to start on this immediately," he said. "From what it sounds like, the only reason that break-in wasn't a total disaster is that you have bad handwriting. And you don't scan your notes in and back them up like you should. If they try to break in again, I don't think sloppy documentation is going to stop them."

Clio bristled. Sloppy? Did he think she couldn't take care of herself? This guy had some nerve. She could have rounded up those rabbits by herself. Eventually. If not, she could always gas the forest. She sat back and glared at him.

"No, please don't take offense. I am terrible at talking in person," he said quickly. "You should meet me on the globenet. I'm really quite suave."

That was so stupid that she couldn't help but smile. Clio remembered how much Floracopia needed digital security, so she took a breath. She stood up, turned towards him and said, "You are right. We do need better security. I know you are trying to help and I appreciate it. Thank you for offering." There.
That sounded like a mature response,
she thought with satisfaction.

Seth jumped up and gave her an exuberant hug. Clio allowed herself to snuggle into his shoulders a bit. Just when she decided that his shoulders were at just the perfect height to rest her chin on, she realized he had been holding her for too long to be considered a friendly, meaningless squeeze. Her pulse raced. She felt his breath catch. She tilted her chin back and looked into his eyes.

"Clio," Seth whispered hoarsely.

"Yes?" she whispered, her mouth going dry.

As luck would have it, the wound glue was only barely able to hold the deep cuts on his shoulder closed. Hugging her caused them to break open again and ooze blood into her fingers. Oozing blood is always an instant mood killer.

Clio hastily put Seth into her car and drove him to her sister, Terpsi, to let the doctor fix him up. Six stitches and a shot of horse tranquilizer later, Seth was lightheaded from pain and queasy from the medicine. Terpsi apologized to Seth for not having any human painkillers in the house and sent them off into the night. Much as he would have liked to sweep Clio off her feet and into a bedroom, he could do nothing more than let her drag him home, covered in bandages.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he first time Seth told Clio that he was a vampire, she laughed so hard that she shot beer out of her nose and almost drowned. So hard, in fact, that she fell out of the old inner tube in which she had been gently floating. "It's true," he said. "Don't be stupid," she said.

"I'm totally serious," he slurred a bit, realizing he'd had a beer too many and perhaps this ruined his credibility.

They were night tubing down the Comal River. Because it is primarily spring-fed, it was one of the few rivers still running after The Troubles. Normally, people grab some old inner tubes and a cooler full of beer and tube during the day. The combination of cold river, hot sun and cool beer is something everyone should experience before they die. To go at night was a little dangerous, but Clio liked to think she lived dangerously and Seth claimed he sunburned easily.

It was to be their first date. It had been a few weeks since the rabbit escapade, but they had both been extremely busy at work. Seth hadn't been on very many first dates and he was nervous. He'd had a few beers to try and steady his nerves. They had done too good a job and now he was just blurting out whatever popped into his head.

"It's true," he said again. Leaning towards her, he accidentally poured beer in his lap. As he cursed, Clio started hiccupping and giggling at the same time. Seth sensed she was not taking him seriously.

He tried to compensate by lowering his voice seductively. "I really am a vampire. I can't go out in the sun or else I fry. I have a condition that requires fresh blood. Don't worry though, I confine myself to willing donors." He attempted to lean forward and give her a smoldering look, but fell out of his tube instead. Clio laughed even harder. He splashed and flailed down the river to prevent his tube from floating off without him while trying to keep his beer in its can. Clio sat in the cold water giggling and snorting, because beer really hurts when it shoots out of your nose.

"So I would assume that's why you lock yourself in with your computer all day and are the whitest man in Texas? Because you're a vampire?" Clio said eventually with a thoughtful nod. "I can see that. So do you have any special vampire powers? Turn into a bat? Read my mind? Influence my thoughts?" More snorting little giggles accompanied this last part. Seth knew he wasn't the best at social interaction, but was he really so bad at understanding her?

Seth sighed. This was not how he imagined his first official date with the girl of his dreams would go. In his mind, right now she should gasp and quiver and eventually there would be some hot and heavy make-out action like in all those old vampire movies he'd watched. That didn't seem too likely right now.

He had read scientific studies that indicated symmetry played a large role of attractiveness. He had scanned in his face and after many calculations comparing the evenness of his features, come to the conclusion that he must be reasonably attractive. He had made sure his dark straight hair was cut in a style that was currently socially acceptable, if a little on the long side. Gloria told him he was cute in a tall, skinny nerd-boy sort of way. Yet he worried that Clio would want someone more like the large, beefy men her sisters seemed to prefer.

"I have really good night vision," he countered.

"No you don't. You tripped twice getting into the water. And don't try to bring up the fact that your eyeballs and teeth glow the way they do. What? Did you think I hadn't noticed that? I'm a splicer, sugar, I mod out genes for a living. And even though our idiotic, narrow-minded government won't let us work on humans, I do know a porphyriatic episode when I see one. You should get that checked out. Hell, you should stop drinking beer and cut out all that crap you eat."

Clio realized she was about to start lecturing him and closed her mouth. It was insensitive to lecture someone about a medical condition. She'd get Terpsi to do it later. She thought about asking him for more details, but this didn't seem like the time. What if his symptoms included irritable bowels or chronic flatulence
? No, that would not be good first date conversation
, she decided.

For his part, Seth began to think that this would not be the magical night Clio fell into his arms and declared her undying love for him. He also began to think that he should start doing some exercise. How does one become beefy?

"It's a genetic disease," he sighed, ruminating on the mysteries of exercise. "The glowy eyes thing, I mean, not the clumsiness. I have an excellent specialist that I see for it."

"Oh good." She said quickly, "I just worry about you is all."

They found they could not look at each other for a while after that.

Clio was exhausted. She had been working long hours lately on a strain of hyper-intelligent guard dogs as a kind of surprise present for Seth. Strictly speaking, this was totally illegal. But with the DARPA people hanging around giving Seth a hard time, she figured it was better safe than sorry. She assumed they were trying to get him to work on another one of their evil warmonger projects. She felt that while all his high-tech security gadgets were neat, there's really nothing like a frothing mad dog chewing on your leg to deter someone. Clio was old fashioned like that.