“Wave of the future,” said Crake.
Next they went to NeoAgriculturals. AgriCouture was its nickname among the students. They had to put on biosuits before they entered the facility, and scrub their hands and wear nose-cone filters, because what they were about to see hadn’t been bioform-proofed, or not completely. A woman with a laugh like Woody Woodpecker led them through the corridors.
“This is the latest,” said Crake.
What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
“What the hell is it?” said Jimmy.
“Those are chickens,” said Crake. “Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.”
“But there aren’t any heads,” said Jimmy. He grasped the concept—he’d grown up with sus multiorganifer, after all—but this thing was going too far. At least the pigoons of his childhood hadn’t lacked heads.
“That’s the head in the middle,” said the woman. “There’s a mouth opening at the top, they dump the nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don’t need those.”
“This is horrible,” said Jimmy. The thing was a nightmare. It was like an animal-protein tuber.
“Picture the sea-anemone body plan,” said Crake. “That helps.”
“But what’s it thinking?” said Jimmy.
The woman gave her jocular woodpecker yodel, and explained that they’d removed all the brain functions that had nothing to do with digestion, assimilation, and growth.
“It’s sort of like a chicken hookworm,” said Crake.
“No need for added growth hormones,” said the woman, “the high growth rate’s built in. You get chicken breasts in two weeks—that’s a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal-welfare freaks won’t be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain.”
“Those kids are going to clean up,” said Crake after they’d left. The students at Watson-Crick got half the royalties from anything they invented there. Crake said it was a fierce incentive. “ChickieNobs, they’re thinking of calling the stuff.”
“Are they on the market yet?” asked Jimmy weakly. He couldn’t see eating a ChickieNob. It would be like eating a large wart. But as with the tit implants—the good ones—maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
“They’ve already got the takeout franchise operation in place,” said Crake. “Investors are lining up around the block. They can undercut the price of everyone else.”
Jimmy was becoming annoyed by Crake’s way of introducing him—“This is Jimmy, the neurotypical”—but he knew better than to show it. Still, it seemed to be like calling him a Cro-Magnon or something. Next step they’d be putting him in a cage, feeding him bananas, and poking him with electroprods.
Nor did he think much of the Watson-Crick women on offer. Maybe they weren’t even on offer: they seemed to have other things on their minds. Jimmy’s few attempts at flirtation got him some surprised stares—surprised and not at all pleased, as if he’d widdled on these women’s carpets.
Considering their slovenliness, their casual approach to personal hygiene and adornment, they ought to have fainted at the attention. Plaid shirts were their formal wear, hairstyles not their strong suit: a lot of them looked as if they’d had a close encounter with the kitchen shears. As a group, they reminded him of Bernice, the God’s Gardeners pyromaniac vegan. The Bernice model was an exception at Martha Graham, where the girls tried to give the impression they were, or had been once, or could well be, dancers or actresses or singers or performance artists or conceptual photographers or something else artistic. Willowy was their aim, style was their game, whether they played it well or not. But here the Bernice look was the rule, except that there were few religious T-shirts. More usual were ones with complex mathematical equations on them that caused snickers among those who could decode them.
“What’s the T-shirt say?” asked Jimmy, when he’d had one too many of these experiences—high-fives among the others, himself standing with the foolish look of someone who’s just had his pocket picked.
“That girl’s a physicist,” said Crake, as if this explained everything.
“So?”
“So, her T-shirt’s about the eleventh dimension.”
“What’s the joke?”
“It’s complicated,” said Crake.
“Try me.”
“You have to know about the dimensions and how they’re supposed to be all curled up inside the dimensions we know about.”
“And?”
“It’s sort of like, I can take you out of this world, but the route to it is just a few nanoseconds long, and the way of measuring those nanoseconds doesn’t exist in our space-frame.”
“All that in symbols and numbers?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t say it was funny,” said Crake. “These are physicists. It’s only funny to them. But you asked.”
“So it’s sort of like she’s saying they could make it together if he only had the right kind of dick, which he doesn’t?” said Jimmy, who’d been thinking hard.
“Jimmy, you’re a genius,” said Crake.
“This is BioDefences,” said Crake. “Last stop, I promise.” He could tell Jimmy was flagging. The truth was that all this was too reminiscent. The labs, the peculiar bioforms, the socially spastic scientists—they were too much like his former life, his life as a child. Which was the last place he wanted to go back to. Even Martha Graham was preferable.
They were standing in front of a series of cages. Each contained a dog. There were many different breeds and sizes, but all were gazing at Jimmy with eyes of love, all were wagging their tails.
“It’s a dog pound,” said Jimmy.
“Not quite,” said Crake. “Don’t go beyond the guardrail, don’t stick your hand in.”
“They look friendly enough,” said Jimmy. His old longing for a pet came over him. “Are they for sale?”
“They aren’t dogs, they just look like dogs. They’re wolvogs—they’re bred to deceive. Reach out to pat them, they’ll take your hand off. There’s a large pit-bull component.”
“Why make a dog like that?” said Jimmy, taking a step back. “Who’d want one?”
“It’s a CorpSeCorps thing,” said Crake. “Commission work. A lot of funding. They want to put them in moats, or something.”
“Moats?”
“Yeah. Better than an alarm system—no way of disarming these guys. And no way of making pals with them, not like real dogs.”
“What if they get out? Go on the rampage? Start breeding, then the population spirals out of control—like those big green rabbits?”
“That would be a problem,” said Crake. “But they won’t get out. Nature is to zoos as God is to churches.”
“Meaning what?” said Jimmy. He wasn’t paying close attention, he was worrying about the ChickieNobs and the wolvogs. Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?
“Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.”
“Them?”
“Nature and God.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy.
“I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.”