The Aeon seed bank was the last major seed bank in the world. It was in Annecy, France, not far across the border from the Geneva office of the United Nations, which, along with a dozen other foundations and entities, had subsidized its existence. But it was still a French property, still under the aegis of the French government, and with the spiral toward bankruptcy looming, they were vulnerable to Semillon making an offer they could hardly believe, let alone refuse. The papers and magazines that made a stink about the purchase comforted their readers with editorials arguing that transporting one and a half billion seeds in cold storage from eastern France to Nebraska was a logistical problem that would take at least five years to solve. What they didn’t know was that Semillon had been working on the problem for eight years. Only a few conspiracy nuts were right about that part, though they destroyed any credibility with claims that Semillon had manufactured the French fiscal crisis to begin with.
On the first day of delivery, a line of semis stretches out of the campus and six miles down the highway. Exhaust hangs above the string of them like a heat mirage. Each carries a specially equipped refrigeration trailer, and at four docks the semis back in and robotic overhead cranes hook onto the trailers and guide them via a track system to a preprogrammed spot in the main refrigeration chamber, where they automatically sync with the facility’s power system. No manual labor is required.
The protesters are late, showing up at 7:30 a.m., like me. The first trucks had queued up at 5:00. The procession is so slow, though, that the activists have no trouble lying down in front of an arbitrary truck and halting the line there. But a crowd of state police has been on the scene since 8:00, and the company has a cart full of coffee urns set out for them, and they haul the long-bearded activists out of the street pretty much as soon as their backs touch the ground. They leave unmolested the protesters standing on the shoulder with signs that read BIODIVERSITY IS PUBLIC PROPERTY or show poorly painted images of a globe locked in a jail cell. I’m a little embarrassed to agree with them. But then, they are looking at the issue from only one angle. Our population is growing at an exponential rate, and crop yields at a linear rate. Already we have 9 billion people on a planet that can feed only 8 billion, while the ten-year projections have the population at 10 billion and food production at enough for 8.1 billion. And what happens when the food wars migrate to countries with nuclear arsenals?
There are two weeks of days like this, trucks creeping patiently along the highway, dejected protesters using one hand to hold picket signs and the other to check their phones. There are a lot of plant species in the world. Some of the seeds in this collection are from plants no longer extant, plants waiting to be revived, though mostly they wait in vain.
At the end of the second week of transit, Meadows calls me into his office and tells me I can have access to anything not earmarked by corn or soy, carte blanche, for one year. No need to file project memos and wait for approval, so long as I track what I use in the master database. It’s an unprecedented level of access, an unprecedented cutting of red tape.
“Mind your deadlines, and don’t take on too much.”
“I’ve got a few big ideas.”
“It all expires after a year,” he reminds me.
“What happens in a year?”
I look at him. He looks at me. He’s mastered the expression that says: I’m a scientist; I wish these weren’t the realities we live with; I care. He’s even better at it than I am.
“Pete,” he says as I’m leaving. I stop in his doorframe. “You’re doing important work.”
“Everyone is, right?”
Our part of the campus is unadorned, utilitarian, but the Carthy Building, which faces the road, is designed to welcome corporate affiliates, board members, diplomats, and congressional representatives. It houses a tropical courtyard with one of the top-ranked koi ponds in the world. I don’t know who ranks these things, but it is marvelous. Unreasonably calming. I spend the rest of the day there. I’m thinking about my most ambitious projects, narrowing them by those I can get off the ground within a year and have a reasonable chance of success. But mostly I’m thinking about nothing. Mostly I’m trying not to think about what happens in a year.
Sharon Saxon has been waiting for me in the parking lot every Tuesday night. She must be seeing signs that I’ll crack, though I’m not sure what they are. I haven’t stopped combing my hair. I’m still brushing my teeth. The Tuesday after my meeting with Meadows, I snap a berry off the Synsepalum dulcificum, perfectly red now, the shape of a grape tomato but a few shades darker. She’s out there, all right. Her attire has mutated from what you’d wear to a client meeting to what you’d wear on a date. I imagine it’s like a lockpick testing out a lock. A skirt now, respectable but shiny. Higher heels. A blouse coincidentally the same shade as my berry. Though how trustworthy is any coincidence when you’re dealing with an investigative reporter? One of those silly jackets women wear that only go down as far as the ribs.
“Your father would tell you to wear a coat,” I say.
“A gentleman would offer me his own.”
I look down at the sleeves of my thin sweater. “Sorry. I’m from Vermont.”
“I know.” She manages the aura of a smoker without having a cigarette, a real miracle of science.
“I don’t really want to know how much you know about me.”
“Yes, you do. Just not all at once.”
What I like is not her in her professional garb or her date clothes, not an inch more or an inch less of leg, not a certain amount of décolletage or the right heels. I like the process of it all, despite the constructions, despite the obvious ends fueling all these different means. What can I say? Who doesn’t want to feel like a lock being picked?
“Any news?”
“No news,” I say, as usual. But this time I hold out my closed fist, and she puts her hand under it, open. I place the red berry in the bowl of her palm.
“Eat this,” I say. “Then eat a lemon.”
On the way home I stop at the hardware store and buy ten feet of four-inch PVC and a few plastic totes.
Sharon Saxon is sitting in my garden early Wednesday morning when I head out with my watering can and trowel. She’s holed up in the corner of my park bench, wearing the kind of sweats that fancy people jog in, and she lights up when she sees me. She’s waiting for a good morning or something, but I’ve decided to play it coy. Coy is as close to charming as a plant geneticist can get.
“It took me about three hours to convince myself you weren’t trying to poison me.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“And I kept thinking it was some kind of code. But what is this berry, what’s the lemon supposed to mean?”
“Did you try it?”
“Yeah, I finally went out and bought a bag of fucking lemons. This is incredible, Pete. Did you make it?”
I laugh. “The climate of west Africa made it, and a thousand individual pressures. Though it’s anyone’s guess as to why it’s a selected-for trait. Nothing too useful, or it would be more common. Synsepalum dulcificum. They call it the miracle fruit.”
“Have you thought of selling this to New York chefs? They’d pay a fortune.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not familiar with the pleasure of keeping a secret.”
My mother shuffles out the back door with a bowl of Frosted Flakes, leaving the screen open behind her. She’s up two hours earlier than usual. Either Sharon woke her hopping the fence, or she sensed my happiness and has emerged to destroy it. She sits down on the other corner of the bench while I go on watering.