Lalji stared back at him. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “It’s sterile.”
Bowman’s eyes held Lalji’s for a moment. His smile slipped. He ducked his head. “Yes. Indeed, indeed. A genetic dead-end. A one-way street. We now pay for a privilege that nature once provided willingly, for just a little labor.” He looked up at Lalji. “I’m sorry. I should have thought. You would have felt our accountants’ optimum demand estimates more than most.”
Lalji shook his head. “You cannot apologize.” He nodded at Creo. “Tell him the rest. Tell him what you can do. What I was told you can do.”
“Some things are perhaps better left unsaid.”
Lalji was undaunted. “Tell him. Tell me. Again.”
Bowman shrugged. “If you trust him, then I must trust him as well, yes?” He turned to Creo. “Do you know cheshires?”
Creo made a noise of disgust. “They’re pests.”
“Ah, yes. A bluebill for every dead one. I forgot. But what makes our cheshires such pests?”
“They molt. They kill birds.”
“And?” Bowman prodded.
Creo shrugged.
Bowman shook his head. “And to think it was for people like you that I wasted my life on research and my calories on computer cycles.
“You call cheshires a plague, and truly, they are. A few wealthy patrons, obsessed with Lewis Carroll, and suddenly they are everywhere, breeding with heirloom cats, killing birds, wailing in the night, but most importantly, their offspring, an astonishing ninety-two percent of the time, are cheshires themselves, pure, absolute. We create a new species in a heartbeat of evolutionary time, and our songbird populations disappear almost as quickly. A more perfect predator, but most importantly, one that spreads.
“With SoyPRO, or U-Tex, the calorie companies may patent the plants and use intellectual property police and sensitized dogs to sniff out their property, but even IP men can only inspect so many acres. Most importantly, the seeds are sterile, a locked box. Some may steal a little here and there, as you and Lalji do, but in the end, you are nothing but a small expense on a balance sheet fat with profit because no one except the calorie companies can grow the plants.
“But what would happen if we passed SoyPRO a different trait, stealthily, like a man climbing atop his best friend’s wife?” He waved his arm to indicate the green fields that lapped at the edges of the river. “What if someone were to drop bastardizing pollens amongst these crown jewels that surround us? Before the calorie companies harvested and shipped the resulting seeds across the world in their mighty clipper fleets, before the licensed dealers delivered the patented crop seed to their customers. What sorts of seeds might they be delivering then?”
Bowman began ticking traits off with his fingers. “Resistant to weevil and leafcurl, yes. High calorie, yes, of course. Genetically distinct and therefore unpatentable?” He smiled briefly. “Perhaps. But best of all, fecund. Unbelievably fecund. Ripe, fat with breeding potential.” He leaned forward. “Imagine it. Seeds distributed across the world by the very cuckolds who have always clutched them so tight, all of those seeds lusting to breed, lusting to produce their own fine offspring full of the same pollens that polluted the crown jewels in the first place.” He clapped his hands. “Oh, what an infection that would be! And how it would spread! ”
Creo stared, his expression contorting between horror and fascination. “You can do this?”
Bowman laughed and clapped his hands again. “I’m going to be the next Johnny Appleseed.”
Lalji woke suddenly. Around him, the darkness of the river was nearly complete. A few windup LED beacons glowed on grain barges, powered by the flow of the current’s drag against their ungainly bodies. Water lapped against the sides of the needleboat and the bank where they had tied up. Beside him on the deck the others lay bundled in blankets.
Why had he wakened? In the distance, a pair of village roosters were challenging one another across the darkness. A dog was barking, incensed by whatever hidden smells or sounds caused dogs to startle and defend their territory. Lalji closed his eyes and listened to the gentle undulation of the river, the sounds of the distant village. If he pressed his imagination, he could almost be lying in the early dawn of another village, far away, long ago dissolved.
Why was he awake? He opened his eyes again and sat up. He strained his eyes against the darkness. A shadow appeared on the river blackness, a subtle blot of movement.
Lalji shook Bowman awake, his hand over Bowman’s mouth. “Hide!” he whispered.
Lights swept over them. Bowman’s eyes widened. He fought off his blankets and scrambled for the hold. Lalji gathered Bowman’s blankets with his own, trying to obscure the number of sleepers as more lights flashed brightly, sliding across the deck, pasting them like insects on a collection board.
Abandoning its pretense of stealth, the IP boat opened its springs and rushed in. It slammed against the needleboat, pinning it to the shoreline as men swarmed aboard. Three of them, and two dogs.
“Everyone stay calm! Keep your hands in sight!”
Handlight beams swept across the deck, dazzlingly bright. Creo and Tazi clawed out of their blankets and stood, surprised. The sniffer dogs growled and lunged against their leashes. Creo backed away from them, his hands held before him, defensive.
One of the IP men swept his handlight across them. “Who owns this boat?”
Lalji took a breath. “It’s mine. This is my boat.” The beam swung back and speared his eyes. He squinted into the light. “Have we done something wrong?”
The leader didn’t answer. The other IP men fanned out, swinging their lights across the boat, marking the people on deck. Lalji realized that except for the leader, they were just boys, barely old enough to have mustaches and beards at all. Just peachfuzzed boys carrying spring guns and covered in armor that helped them swagger.
Two of them headed for the stairs with the dogs as a fourth jumped aboard from the secured IP boat. Handlight beams disappeared into the bowels of the needleboat, casting looming shadows from inside the stairway. Creo had somehow managed to end up backed against the needleboat’s cache of spring guns. His hand rested casually beside the catches. Lalji stepped toward the captain, hoping to head off Creo’s impulsiveness.
The captain swung his light on him. “What are you doing here?”
Lalji stopped and spread his hands helplessly. “Nothing.”
“No?”
Lalji wondered if Bowman had managed to secure himself. “What I mean is that we only moored here to sleep.”
“Why didn’t you tie up at Willow Bend?”
“I’m not familiar with this part of the river. It was getting dark. I didn’t want to be crushed by the barges.” He wrung his hands. “I deal with antiques. We were looking in the old suburbs to the north. It’s not illeg — ” A shout from below interrupted him. Lalji closed his eyes regretfully. The Mississippi would be his burial river. He would never find his way to the Ganges.
The IP men came up dragging Bowman. “Look what we found! Trying to hide under the decking!”
Bowman tried to shake them off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about — ”
“Shut up!” One of the boys shoved a club into Bowman’s stomach. The old man doubled over. Tazi lunged toward them, but the captain corralled her and held her tightly as he flashed his light over Bowman’s features. He gasped.