Improbable Botany Read online

  “You can go up, Professor Brolin,” she said, waving me on. “Just take the main elevator to the last stop and then follow the tape. Dr Paphides and the team are up there waiting for you.”

  ~

  Inside the elevator there was a strong smell of damp and rot. I looked at my hands in the bioluminescent glow of the roof panels and then on second thoughts put my gloves on as the lift slowed. I felt uneasy and it was safer to treat the place as a hazard zone. When I stepped out I paused in surprise. Usually the top of the arcological buildings were dry areas that might show extensive signs of the plant life that had built them up over their steel and concrete skeletons, but instead of elegant aerial roots woven into wall coverings or artistically trailing airplants in furry bluegreen patches, the corridor was a thick, overgrown jumble of intense, rich greenery that had nearly choked out all the light coming from the mirrored tubes that fed down from the roof. The lift doors hissed closed. Around them vines had been hacked back and the debris was still in a pile to one side, wilted. Crushed greenery was giving off a sharp, sappy odour and the damp and water was visible everywhere, staining what surfaces hadn’t been colonised. Besides the sap other smells were present, moulds, fungal spores... I pulled up my mask before moving along.

  A strip of red and white police tape showed the way, vanishing quickly into the labyrinthine gloom of a human-sized passage, hacked and trodden into place amid the lush growth. I followed the tread of the many before me, finding a path that led past long closed doors and abandoned rooms to the stairwell. The doors had been wedged open but it looked like that had been done by the thick, arm-width taproots passing around and through them on both sides. The stairs were barely visible under the layers of fallen leaf and dripping slime that coated them. They were a death trap. I moved cautiously up and up, around the turns. Finally I reached the door to the open roof and parted a swathe of hanging ivy to see a collection of figures in white biosuits, police and medical authority badges on their backs, halogen lights set up and all the tape and paraphernalia of a crime scene liberally spread around amid freshly cut stacks of dying greenery. The only person not in white was the camo-coloured figure who must be Dr Paphides, a mask over her face and a small paper caterer’s cap over her hair like a Victorian mobcap. She was looking out for me and beckoned as she saw me arrive.

  “Thank you for coming at such short notice, Dr Brolin,” she said, holding her hand out and shaking mine vigorously in her own gloved hand. “This is Inspector Cullen and Detective Ash.”

  We completed all our formalities, me waiting with curiosity, them grim and strangely uneasy, eyeing me with hope and lack of expectation in equal part.

  “This way,” Ash led the way along a slippery, muddy track, our footing improving only where hessian mats had been thrown down, but heavily impregnated with mulch – they were clearly not recent.

  As we went I puzzled over what I was seeing. I knew these places were wild but I hadn’t expected the sheer scale of the growth – the massive trees, the variety of plants and the fact that so many of them were clearly diverging from the engineered forms that they must have had when they were cultivated in place. They were second order systems now – superseded by the living arcologies that were springing up in the moneyed sectors, and care of them had fallen into that uninteresting zone where they were merely a maintenance issue rather than the heady cutting edge of the science. In particular these towers, used to house the lowest of those on the social care ladder, had been left neglected and their rogue canopies had become favoured locations for illegal splicing outfits and sap-tappers.

  I figured this is what we were looking at here. The amount of human traffic that had passed over the paths must have been considerable recently to cause so much churn, and the hessian mats said they’d been in place a while. I was used to dealing with the aftermath of tappers who would search out the water and glucose supply plants and temporarily graft valves to them for a harvest to fuel black market alcohol and fuel production, but what I saw as I came into the glade was nothing like that. The heady, transfixing odour I’d smelled earlier was much more intense here, like a fug that you could nearly lick out of the air with your tongue; rotting lilies overlaid with a sweet, tempting trace which was clearly narcotic... I saw others pulling up their masks and checked mine, tightening it across my face and pulling up my close fitted hood as a precaution against spore infestation.

  As we reached the scene they stood back and the temporary arc lighting, mercilessly harsh, illuminated everything. White things were everywhere, pale green shadowed, purple and pink lined. They were so unusual that at first I couldn’t identify them, then I suddenly saw. The massed green wall of the thick jungle was studded with gigantic flowers, some of which were in a fresh state, some fallen and discarded into heaps. They looked like a kind of orchid, their petals with that bright, waxy finish and stiff strength at the centres, although they ballooned out into enormous fans of the most delicate lacework at their edges. The smallest must have been five feet across. The largest nearer seven. How they even kept their weight up was a mystery, but their beauty was undeniable; they looked like someone had hung a set of wedding dresses up to dry, but in a peculiar way, spreading the skirts out into their fullest. Paphides beckoned me and I went after her to the nearest one for a closer look. Even through the mask it was clear that the smell was being given off by these. At close quarters I even felt my eyes tear faintly, though I experienced no ill effects.

  Paphides stepped over the tape that had been strung a metre clear of the giant flower’s centre and waited for me to join her. Close to, a soft pink and subtle purple shading to the petals could be much more clearly seen, intensifying where they surrounded a central white hood shape, which was reminiscent of a foxglove albeit on a much larger scale. This trumpet was about the size of a human head and belled downwards at an angle. Paphides waited until she had my attention, her brown eyes over the mask looking like she was trying to prepare me for something. I nodded, and she put her hand under the heavy structure, which parted unexpectedly into two equal pieces along a vertical line. I held back one side and she the other as the flower’s heart was revealed.

  There was a long minute in which I tried to consider it not being what it so clearly was. The inner petals and the stamen surrounded the deep, close heart of the trumpet in what was a disturbingly exact replica of female human external genitalia, complete with inner and outer labia in exquisite shades of blushed pink, a clitoral hood and a clitoris itself – the stamen of the flower, which looked as if it bore a thick coating of rich red pollen, some of which had dusted down and stuck to the paler pink petals and the white flesh beneath where a slick of sticky clear nectar ran out and coated the entire lower half of the flower and the trumpet. I tried very, very hard to see something coincidental or accidental or some other kind of –ental in the setup, but it was so exact and so blatant, even the sizing was to scale, that finally I had to admit defeat. I let go of my foxglove half and Paphides let go of hers. The flower bounced gently, elastically, on its huge stem, skirts fluttering in the slight breeze.

  “Is there anything else?”

  She nodded and beckoned again, her gaze sharing with me her own reluctant acceptance of things – yes, that really is what it seems to look like. Neither she nor I said a word about it: the time for that would come soon enough.

  “I’ll come back and take samples a bit later?” I suggested, needing space to consider and mentally stand back from whatever was coming next.

  She nodded again. “Yes of course. I have many but you will want your own too. It would help if we did our analyses separately. The police photographer and recordist will give you all that they can.”

  The camerawoman was already stepping into place behind us with her assistant. Whatever they were thinking, they said nothing other than discuss moving the flowerhead to get every angle on it.

  Deeper into the maze of paths that had been pounded into the overgrowth we came to a place with similar fo
liage and signs of intense human activity: fertiliser pods, discarded water tubes and bits and pieces of quick fix packing equipment scattered all over in a huge mess. They had been rained on and were turning back into pulp, so the people had left at least a day or two before.

  “Here, look these are cut stems,” Paphides showed me the browned and dried ends of huge stalks that had once held the bizarre flowers. White sap had oozed and set in thick, sticky runnels. “It’s not unlike rubber tree sap,” she said, confirming my guess. “But it contains opioids. I’m dreading to think what a full scan will reveal.”

  But whatever was in the sap it wasn’t what they’d come for.

  “This way,” she said and led me to a lumpen white shape on the floor surrounded by more tape. I froze before continuing. You always think you’re prepared to see a body, but when you realise you’re about to get close to one there’s this second of cringing and imagined horrors, at least for me. I wasn’t used to it. I had seen people killed by Trenchant Ivy and other bioengineered monstrosities and I knew what kind of things toxins and acids could do to a human being. Paphides clearly knew the routine and waited for me to get myself in order. She looked pale, almost as pale as her mask – one of those superhightech carbon disposables. Mine, heavy and old, was already weighting my head down as I made it to her side.

  “Won’t see one of these every day,” she said in a grimly humorous tone as we both looked down.

  I saw instantly that what I’d taken for the naked body of a woman wasn’t what I thought. It looked like someone had made a model of a voluptuous female out of pale clay in the style of those very oldest of statuettes from the prehistoric ages of the world. There was no head and no arms beyond elbow length, no legs below the knee. Instead all these processes were stubby fleshy cones that ended in blunted points, as if to emphasise that the really important parts were the well-formed breasts, almost spherical belly and exaggerated, hairless pudenda. The body was on the large side. Its whiteness had the odd purity of common mushroom flesh and, when I touched it with a gloved hand and felt the weight and the texture that impression was reinforced. It all moved as one solid piece. The skin was broken and peeling back in places and was marked all over with bruising that had discoloured in yellow, purple and brown very vividly, giving it an even more ghoulishly realistic turn. There were handprints and the straight marks of dragging and shallow gouges that looked like they were made by straps. There was no smell except a fresh, fungal kind of odour. Where the neck terminated there was the dull, browned mark of the place where it had separated from the stalk. Underneath it, the Bubble Wrap that it had been half cocooned with lay and flapped wanly in the wind. This was a fruit.

  “What the fuck?” I said, barely aware of speaking aloud.

  “An apt sentiment,” Paphides said, dry as dust. “You’re not the first to make it.”

  I straightened up and looked around. The layout, the service tracks, the rubbish... now it looked less like a small mess made by passing sappers or splicers. It looked like a factory floor. In the swaying darkness of the night woods I glimpsed other pale, bulbous shapes shifting restlessly in and out of the shadows, close to the ground.

  All in all we counted twenty-one unripe fruits of the same type hanging from dense vines or else shored up against rot on the ground by heaps of straw under their generous bottoms. They were clearly the body stage of the flowers we had seen in the previous section and it looked like both were being harvested. While the police concentrated on tracing the packaging and lab materials Dr Paphides and I took as many samples as we could, the host plant and the surrounding vegetation, the air and soil. It was nearly midnight by the time we were done and the rising sun slipping between the leaves found us exhausted, our masks in the red zone, our packs jammed with vials.

  Meantime somewhere in the back of the works they had found a genuine body, this one all too human and shot to death by an ordinary gun. He’d been laid out seven hours by the time the police had found him, and they had only spotted him because his boot had stuck out onto the path. His body had been snaked around and dragged away by creeping tendrils, some of which had entered through his mouth, nose eyes and anus and had been liquidising him from the inside. It was a variant of Zombie’s Blindweed – something that should have been spotted and killed long before maturity by the maintenance crews. But it only proved that splicers had been up here practicing their trade a long time undisturbed. The larger gangs liked to use it as a disposal and deterrence plant around their nests.

  The inspector called me over as we passed his tent, set up to oversee the local investigation. “I thought you might like to see this.” He showed me an advert – on a porn site of course – offering, “Happy Wedding Flower Vine for Discerning Botanical Collector.” There were pictures of the plant that was growing here, illustrating in unquestionable graphic detail the intended usage of the flower – a naked white male with an impressive member embedded halfway into the inner tubal petals. “Exceptionally rare annual. Blooms last 5 days. Sweet nectar, heavenly perfume improves sensation. Flowering consistent from May to September or all year around in glasshouse and hot climate. Minimal care requirements: water, good light, special Wedding Flower Nutrient Blend, available in 5 and 10 kilo packs. Deadheading and pruning essential to prolong flowering period and for general plant health. Full instructions with starter kit.”

  They were charging two thousand euros a pop.

  “All anonymous addresses of course,” the inspector said. “More bloody tracking work. Looks like a pro job. Been on it hours and all dead ends and false IP addresses.”

  I barely heard him, what he said not being my interest at all. “I need to get back to my lab and start testing, see exactly what all this is. Do you think I could have that fruit to dissect?”

  “You’ll have to fight that out with Dr Paphides,” he said. “She’s the one with her name on the case.”

  ~

  Dr Paphides considered it as she packed her final case and had an assistant take it away. “I think that you should have it. I still have to spend some time here and write a protocol for dealing with what’s left. I’ll take one of the unripened ones. But I’d like copies of all your findings. The police will take it to your lab in an unmarked van. Now’s pretty good as I assume it’s too early for anyone to be in and see it? Remember you’re now part of my team. I expect you to adhere to the legal procedures, and it’s best if nobody sees anything until either this goes to trial or it’s closed.”

  I nodded. “What are you going to do with all this?” I gestured at the factory.

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s all evidence that I have to log, but I’m reasonably sure there’s a moderate hazard here. I’ll put it under quarantine and have it monitored 24-7 unless you find something to change my mind. It occurred to me to look for the seeds, but so far I haven’t seen anything like that, have you?”

  “No. Might be inside the matured fruit,” I said.

  “Yeah, my thoughts entirely. Go get on that.” She shuddered as she turned away.

  I went to do what she said, feeling a lot less squeamish until a stretcher team moved past me with an oddly lightweight figure between them, its details hidden under heavy plastic. It only then occurred to me to wonder how safe the situation was. The plants bothered me less than the people. I’d had run-ins with splicer gangs before, which is how Paphides had located me on the police database. I was known for decoding their work and creating pathogens to wipe out lucrative illegal crops. I might never have seen anything like this before and it might be as smalltime as it looked, but the world of bioscam was pretty small. Chances were this was done by someone I’d met before and pissed off a good deal.

  The inspector seemed to agree with me. Our van was packed with non-uniform officers to keep an eye on my labs and the evidence. It was five thirty by the time we reached our destination and unloaded successfully. I broke off my efforts to get breakfast and coffee before setting up my equipment for the dissection. Then, for
the first time since I got the phone call, I was alone again with my gear and the specimen – that strange, oddly terrible specimen. I took a long time setting up my recording equipment, but eventually there was just me and it left. The one reason I didn’t go into animal biology was that I didn’t want to cut up bodies. Plants on the other hand – no problem. But now here was something that all the evidence suggested was purely a plant that had grown into a certain shape. And I still stood over it and hesitated. It didn’t even look that realistic close-to. It was crude and there was little detail. The texture wasn’t like human skin. When pressed it didn’t yield like human flesh, it felt spongy and moist and now the brown staining had gained some spotting too, like ripening banana peel, which lent it a faintly aged and decrepit air. It smelled pungently like fungus and a little bit like something sweet – cupcake frosting or bubblegum. The belly was enormous, so grotesque in size that I wondered if it was rotting and building up gas inside it. But that was a human corpse thing too. There was no reason to think it any more human on the inside than it was on the outside.

  I laid my hand on it and took a small sample of one appendage with a corer so that I could use it for sequencing genes. As I did so I felt something move below the surface.

  I leapt backwards and crashed into the counter behind me. In the small space left by the shed’s crowded gear store it was as far back as I could get.

  Reason suggested an insect infestation or a burrowing rodent that had come to eat the fallen fruit and tucked itself away inside, creating a temporary home for itself while it feasted. My hand however, which had felt the movement, said otherwise. It took a time in my sleep deprived state before I could consider things, my gaze all the while fixated on the prone blob of the specimen. My back hurt where it had smacked the counter. All plans of dissecting now turned my stomach. I knew, knew for certain, this was not what it looked like, and it didn’t look much like that now anyway. I knew it. But instead of proceeding I decided to do other jobs first and send down to the zoology lab for an ultrasound scanner. Just in case. There could be angry rats in there for all I knew, and most of the ones that fed and bred in the high abandoned forests were riddled with diseases that they had a vigorous immunity to but which regularly poisoned human water and killed hundreds.