Improbable Botany Read online

  “You’re not allowed to give them away,” she said.

  Alec nodded. “I could have looked the other way. Oh well. And then what? Repeat it on other farms for all the other parts?”

  By way of reply, she opened the upper compartment of her rucksack and took out and placed on the table sprocket wheels, gears, nuts and bolts, pedals, cables, brakes from lever to pad, the lockable components of handlebars and mudguards, a chain… Most were farmed, grown from engineered hardwood derivatives; others were old metal with the worst of the rust polished off. Alec picked up and turned over in his hand a toothed wheel that looked like some mahogany mandala. Silica glinted on the points. He could barely make out the stem-scar.

  “Christ,” he said. “You’ve been lugging all this around?”

  “I think I have everything,” Caitlin said, “except the frame, the wheels and the saddle.”

  “Oh, I have wheels and a saddle somewhere too…” Alec caught himself saying, and laughed. Caitlin cracked a smile.

  “Well… ” she said.

  “Fuck it,” said Alec. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  ~

  He sent the drone in the room and the one above the yard away to patrol the perimeter fences, and angled some cameras in the wrong direction. Then he sauntered to the lean-to in the corner of the cobbled yard and stood for a while looking down at a stack of frames from last year’s harvest that hadn’t passed quality control. In most the flaw was obvious: a warped tube here, a kink there. Good only for burning, as he’d intended and as his contract required. But as he sorted through them, dislodging spiders and dust, he found some that looked all right. He piled these as he went, then did a secondary sort: tapping, flexing, holding up to the light and sighting along. He found one that had been rejected only, it seemed, for a joint in the saddle strut that was evidently a stray atavistic expression of the original bamboo genes. Apart from that, it seemed sound.

  He looked in a closed shed at the side of the lean-to and found his old bike lying dusty at the back. On a shelf was a spare saddle, and hanging from a hook were a couple of spare wheels. He took the saddle and wheels out, gathered them up with the frame and carried the lot in, nudging the door open with his toe. Caitlin had the plates away and the components laid out on the table like a diagram. Alec came in looking at the drawer with the tools, but Caitlin had a bicycle spanner, a screwdriver and a ripe green pod of oil ready.

  They assembled the bike without talking much, in a smooth flow of reaching and handing, holding and turning, with now and again a slip, a scrape, a sucked knuckle. When it was complete, Alec cranked the pedals, spun the front wheel, pressed on the brake, released, spun again, listened to the hum. Satisfied, he heaved the bike up and turned it over and leaned it against the wall. They stood together admiring it for a moment.

  “You’ll need a pump,” he said, but she had one. He made another pot of tea. She kept looking at the bike.

  “Oh, I’m so excited!” she said. “Can’t wait to go on it.”

  “I’m sure.” He poured the tea. “Go where?”

  She wrapped her hands around the mug, as though to warm them, though the kitchen wasn’t cold.

  “North,” she said. “Over the bridge.”

  Alec smiled. “When I was a kid – I grew up just down the road, in South Queensferry – I used to love riding my bike across the bridge. There was an old book my Mum gave me, about a boy in Edinburgh who got a bike and did that. The Freedom Machine, it was called.” He checked on his glasses. “By Joan Lingard. I don’t know if I read it before I got a proper bike, but... yeah, that was what the bike was to me. A freedom machine.”

  “Did you go any farther on it?”

  “No, just around the village, or along to Society Beach at Hopetoun, or along the shore path to Cramond, or over the bridge and back.”

  “Not much freedom, then.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t that. I was free to go home, and I did. What about you? Going anywhere in particular?”

  “There’s an old farmhouse in Perthshire – some people I met on the road have settled in there. They grow vegetables and tools, but they’re building a smithy and learning metalwork and other old skills. To be ready, you know?”

  “Ready for what?”

  He knew, of course. He could guess where she was coming from. He’d met her type, usually younger. Dreadlocked kids he’d given lifts to, back when he had a car.

  “Ready for the ice.”

  It was a myth, a suburban legend of the disaffected – whether vaguely sinister geezers in bow ties selling their bought thoughts on dodgy channels or scruffy, earnest drop-outs cadging change – that the vast manufacturing applications of synthetic biology and the shift away from fossil fuels were taking so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that soon a tipping point would be reached, plunging the planet into a new glaciation.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Deniers.”

  She smiled thinly. “That’s what we’re called.”

  He broke the minute’s awkward silence that followed.

  “You seem to be... ”

  He flailed.

  “Not a mad bag lady?”

  “Yes. What happened to you?”

  “It was something I said. Something stupid. Something unforgiveable.”

  “Oh. And then your husband ...?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t my husband. It was after the divorce. No, it was ... my line manager, actually. I said something stupid, and she... took exception.”

  “What did you say?”

  He expected her to say nothing, or to admit some shocking insult.

  She leaned forward, shoulders hunched up.

  “I said: ‘I get so tired of having to ask myself,’ ‘Can you still call them that?’”

  She must have seen his face change.

  “It was meant as a joke,” she said.

  “That’s what people who say stuff like that always say,” he said.

  “Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean it always means the same thing. It wasn’t a ‘coded expression of hostility to equality policy’, which is what I got hauled up for.”

  “What was the context?”

  “It was some old council briefing about New Age Travellers.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “It was a term some... well, people who lived like I do now... called themselves, way back in the last century. Anyway, they were a bit of a nuisance to local authorities back then, and people very like them have become a bit of a nuisance again, and we were looking for precedents and what policy was already on the books and so forth and the old briefing got trawled up. And a question was raised of whether this was acceptable language, given that real Travellers are an ethnic group. And someone else said the right term was Travelling People, and I said... what I said.”

  “And that was it?”

  “That was the beginning of my downward spiral, yes. I don’t want to go through all the rest. So here I am. An Ice Age Traveller. Ironic, innit.”

  She spread her hands. Alec noticed she’d got them dirty – dirtier – working on the bike.

  “Look,” he said, standing up, sticking things in the sink, “I’ve got work to do. I’m going out. Why don’t you just have a shower, use the washing machine and the dryer if you want? If you’re not here when I get back, fine.”

  “Yes, a shower would be good. That motorway service station seems a long time ago. Thanks.”

  She put her palms on the table and pushed herself upright, and rubbed the small of her back.

  “Aren’t you worried I might steal something?”

  “Yes. Aren’t you worried I might come back and attack you in the shower?”

  “Yes, I am actually.”

  “Well then.”

  He left her frowning at her rucksack. When he came back, late in the afternoon, she, the bike, and the rucksack were gone. He stalked through the house, peering here and there, opening and closing cupboards and drawers. Nothing was missing.
For several days her smell, from before the shower, seemed to hang in the air.

  A year later he still caught it occasionally, a faint whiff here and there in the house, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his memory playing tricks. Another year, and even that faded, and the memories with them.

  ~

  “I don’t understand it,” Alec said. He was facing a smart-suited young man called Colin Humphries, across a desk in a glass-walled office near Fountainbridge in Edinburgh. Snow was falling. “Sales are still going up.”

  “Indeed they are,” said Humphries. “No question about it. But they’re not going up fast enough. The trend’s levelling off. Meanwhile, we’re getting our clocks cleaned by producers in the tropics. They’re growing forests of frames in Brazil.”

  “Brazil? Brazil? They can’t beat us on design and quality.”

  “Of course not,” said Humphries. “But they can beat us on price. Then they’ll beat us on design and quality. It’ll be China and cars all over again.”

  “Come on,” said Alec. “You can’t get the seasoning in the tropics, the winter hardening. Our frames are grown to last.”

  Humphries gave him a sad look. “Seasoning is a molecular reaction,” he said, in a tone of patient explanation that got Alec’s back up. “It can be engineered in from the start, and then you can grow the things in a rainforest or a bloody greenhouse for that matter.”

  “I know that, but surely there’s something we can compete on.”

  Even to himself he sounded feeble. He was using so much effort to hold himself together had nothing to spare for his voice.

  “Yes,” said Humphries. “But not frames, I’m afraid.”

  “Customise them!” said Alec. “I have some designs I’ve been working on – ”

  This was a small lie: it had been years since he’d played with the drafting tools, longer since it had been anything but a nostalgic hobby. It had been an ambition once, he remembered, with a flush of fury at himself. But Humphries was already waving his hands crosswise, and shaking his head.

  “We’ve checked that. People who want custom frames already have plenty of options, including printing them out in their own garages.”

  “But the designs – ”

  “You can get freeware algorithms. Nah, it’s a non-starter. Sorry.”

  “So what does this mean?” Alec already knew what it meant.

  Humphries looked apologetic. “I’m afraid it means we can no longer justify further investment in the Dalmeny farm. The figures are pretty conclusive.”

  Alec fumbled, making a thing of putting on his glasses.

  “Just a moment, let me check the spreadsheets – ”

  He cut straight to the farm’s cameras and drones. At first, all he could see was smoke. He flitted the POV about until he could see the flamethrowers and the heavy tractors and bulldozers. Oddly, it was the sight of the small soft robots crushed under treads or bursting into flames that affected him most. They fled and writhed like real animals. He took the glasses off.

  “Ah,” said Humphries. “You’ve seen it. Sorry about that. But we find that making a clean break is easier on all concerned in the long run.”

  “What are you going to do with the land?”

  Humphries shrugged. “We’ll find a buyer. It might even go to artisanal organic farming. Or housing, if we can swing the planning regulations. Nothing syn bio coming up, so nothing for you, I’m afraid. We’ll help you with the job search, of course. Naturally you’ll get three months’ salary, and occupancy of the house over the same period, in lieu of notice.”

  Alec wanted to tell him where he could stick that. Some vestige of caution warred with self-respect, and won.

  “Thank you,” he said. He stood up. “I think that will be all.”

  He shook hands and took the lift, not trusting himself on the stairs. Outside, the long canyon of Fountainbridge channelled the wind from the east, hurling the April snow in horizontal lines. Alec let the flakes hit his face as he walked, leaning forward, to Lothian Road, and then down to the West End where he took the 43 bus to Dalmeny, to find the fields still black and the snow hissing to steam where it fell.

  ~

  Overnight, the snow covered and cooled the ash. Everything smelled of wood smoke. Alec rolled out of bed and stood by the window, looking out. Snow fell in heavy, wet flakes. Crows formed a raucous caucus in the natural trees around the house. Perched on branches below the crows were the plantation’s drones, bedraggled and bereft, their landmarks lost and tasks obsolete. Alec put on his glasses and checked the feed from their cameras. They were still functioning. He supposed the company would recover, convert, or disable them in its own time. Maybe they’d remain as long as he had residency – they were, after all, part of the premises’ security system. He flew the drones under the lean-to’s shelter, parked them there, and went downstairs to make breakfast.

  He’d sometimes wondered why it was that, despite earning decent money and having more comfortable accommodation than ever before, he’d felt taking the job as a failure. Some of his cohort at Telford had gone on to found companies, and good luck to them. Most had ended up as designers or in management. They earned more than he did now but he didn’t envy them the responsibility or the long hours. He’d reached the lower rungs, done some good work, had the falling-out with his wife, and upped sticks and taken the job of plantation manager. It was convenient for visiting his parents, and the location was fine if you didn’t mind a bit of a trek to the pub. Not that there were many pubs in the Ferry these days, or much point in going to one.

  He now knew why the job had felt like failure. It was, simply, insecure. Right out on a limb. At the sharp end. It hadn’t felt like that, but it was a high-risk position. Exposed to the market, or at least to the complex programmes that mediated the market. Software was good at anticipating shifts in demand and supply, and he didn’t doubt the company had once seen the Dalmeny bicycle plantation as a sound long-term investment. But sometimes the programmes made mistakes, with results as impersonal and irresistible as the raw competitive market had been. Some of the hills around here were originally bings: heaps of waste, shale sucked dry of oil. In time, the grass had grown over them. Later, as recently as his own childhood, the fields had blazed yellow in summer with oilseed rape, making the air heavy with its scent. Just as the shale oil industry and then the vegetable oil industry had flourished in and passed from Dalmeny, so now it was the turn of the frame trees. Capital would find greener pastures, as ever. It was time for him to do the same.

  ~

  The snow melted; a late spring settled in. Damn, Alec thought, what a fine crop they’d missed this year, let go up in smoke! The job search dispirited him, and as April turned to May felt less rather than more urgent. He had enough money in the bank, and the pot for a decent pension, if it came to that. All he really had to find was a place to live, and that wouldn’t be hard. He browsed sites selling syn bio seed packs for growing houses, and others renting out JCBs for digging the hole for the foundation.

  He took to lying back in a reclining chair, indoors or out, and flying the redundant drones high and far. He told himself he was looking for a place, but he seldom bothered with the land-registry and housing-market overlays. Most of the time he sent the drones swooping and soaring along the Firth, darting in and out between the pillars and supports of the bridges, skimming the corroded gangways and pipework of the abandoned oil-pumping terminal at Hound Point, dare-devilling among the slow-whirling blades of the off-shore windmills, hovering over the puffin flocks and seal colonies on Inchcolm Island, prying on the sine-wave leaps of weasels on the sandy brow of the headland over by Cramond...

  One bright morning in mid-May he found himself rinsing his breakfast mug and plate and realised he wanted to do more with the day ahead. He walked out into the yard and opened the shed by the lean-to. After looking at the bicycle for a minute, he fetched a basin and cloths from the kitchen, dragged the bike out and started cleaning it up. T
he dust and cobwebs were just the start. The chain, gears, and cogs were all clogged. He found rusty but still functional aerosol cans of dubious-sounding chemicals, probably banned since he’d bought them, at the back of shelves, and sprayed and wiped. In the end he had to take the bike apart and put it together again.

  He rode it around the yard, bumping on the cobbles, wobbling, finding his legs. Everything worked. He parked the bike under the lean-to, against the heap of reject frames, and stared at that for a while.

  In the kitchen he poured himself a mug of coffee, put on his glasses, and launched a search on Caitlin Freeman’s face. He found her in a day-old satellite pic, looking up from the vegetable garden of a farmhouse with a cluster of outbuildings where the hills start north of Perth. She still didn’t have a phone. He recharged a drone, wrote a note and tied it to its landing leg, and sent it on its way. The drone didn’t have enough power to return, but that didn’t matter.

  He filled a small backpack and a bottle of water, locked up, and rode down the road to the bridge.

  ADAM ROBERTS

  Black Phil

  He spent time in Tunis, and then Greece, and then Austria. He stayed with friends in India and then spent a few days in a resort in Syria on his own. He went to Tanganyika. No sooner did he arrive than the news spread he was there. A crowd gathered outside his hotel, kept away by nervy local police officers. This had not been intolerable, or no more intolerable than it usually was. Then one afternoon somebody had tried to kill him, which was rather an inconvenience. The assassin (the police later said) hadn’t had time to plan his attack properly, a detail which had been in Younghusband’s favour. The guy had bought his gun from a shanty stall along with three Feat Bullets; but the ordnance was reconditioned and its navchip wasn’t properly calibrated. Younghusband was sitting on the hotel terrace smoking a cigar and staring across the cyan lawn at three huge black-blue acacias standing starkly out against the pale sky. And then the man came sprinting suddenly across the lawn, shouted something incoherent (surveillance mpegs later revealed this to be a line from the book of Genesis, yelled in Portuguese — the would-be assassin having been born in Sao Paolo) and fired his gun. But the bullets veered crazily and smashed great chunks of roof from the east wing. One woman, who had been on the terrace playing chess with a friend, was injured by the subsequent hail of fragmented tiles. The shooter, of course, was apprehended. The chef du maison, and later the police chief and mayor, offered Younghusband personal apologies. Really they could not be more sorry. It was appalling, terrible. It was particularly terrible in light of what had happened to Professor Acharya. “Being a botanist is a risky matter, in this day and age,” Younghusband said.