The Great Chain of Being and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution Read online

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  Copyright ©1993 by Brian Stableford

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  CONTENTS

  THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

  About the Author

  INTRODUCTION

  FOLLOWING THE PHARMERS

  THE UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS

  THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

  SLEEPWALKER

  THE BEAUTY CONTEST

  BURNED OUT

  INHERIT THE EARTH

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  THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

  And Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  by Brian Stableford

  THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

  And Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

  Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2008, 2009 by Brian Stableford

  All rights reserved.

  www.wildsidepress.com

  FIRST EDITION

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  About the Author

  Brian Stableford was born in Yorkshire in 1948. He taught at the University of Reading for several years, but is now a full-time writer. He has written many science fiction and fantasy novels, including The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London, Year Zero, The Curse of the Coral Bride, and The Stones of Camelot. Collections of his short stories include Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution, Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution, and Sheena and Other Gothic Tales. He has written numerous nonfiction books, including Scientific Romance in Britain, 1890-1950, Glorious Perversity: The Decline and Fall of Literary Decadence, and Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. He has contributed hundreds of biographical and critical entries to reference books, including both editions of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and several editions of the library guide, Anatomy of Wonder. He has also translated numerous novels from the French language, including several by the feuilletonist Paul Féval and various classics of French scientific romance.

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  INTRODUCTION

  This is the sixth collection of “stories of the biotech revolution” that I have published, the others being Sexual Chemistry (Simon & Schuster UK, 1991), Designer Genes (Five Star, 2004), The Cure for Love (Borgo Press, 2007), The Tree of Life (Borgo Press, 2007) and In the Flesh (Borgo Press, 2009). There have also been seven novels of the same ilk: Inherit the Earth (Tor 1998), Architects of Emortality (Tor 1999), The Fountains of Youth (Tor 2000), The Cassandra Complex (Tor, 2001), Dark Ararat (Tor, 2002), The Omega Expedition (Tor, 2002) and The Dragon Man (Borgo Press, 2009). The majority, but by no means all, of the stories share a common future-historical background, an early version of which was first sketched out in a futurology book, The Third Millennium: A History of the World 2000-3000, written in collaboration with David Langford and published by Knopf and Sidgwick & Jackson in 1985. The series will continue for as long as I can see and type, and for as long as there are any publication outlets left (although I have to admit that all of those possibilities now seem to be direly short term prospects).

  The foreseeable future tends to date even more rapidly than frail human flesh, and any futurological project that does not see some of its more cherished hopes, paranoid fears and confident anticipations betrayed by twenty-five years of actual history cannot have risked much in its initial assertions, but the broad shape of the future trajectory mapped out for global society in this series has proved sufficiently robust to stand the test of time without shattering completely. The idea that the world is inevitably heading for a worldwide self-inflicted disaster, compounded from the ecocatastrophic effects of population growth and the climatic spin-off of the misnamed “greenhouse effect” seemed like a safe bet in 1984 and is now beyond the reach of any residual skepticism. The one thing that early versions of the scenario got wrong was the speed with which the disaster would unfold; it now seems so urgent and imminent that the second, and more speculative, part of the initial prospectus—that once the “Crash” has done its worst, the combination of bitter experience and new technologies might permit the construction of a better and more Utopian global society—now seems desperate in its optimism.

  Although the original version of the scenario extended over a thousand years, and had no alternative to painting in broad strokes, I took the decision when I began the series extrapolated from it to place most of the stories in small-scale domestic settings, and to depict future biotechnologies, wherever possible, as aspects of everyday life, working massive changes subtly and by stealth rather than by means of spectacular narrative twists and explosions. This was, of course, a fatal decision in terms of the series’ potential popularity within a genre that thrives on cheap but flashy melodrama, and helps to explain why such stubbornly low-key stories as “The Beauty Contest” never sold, while the cynically over-melodramatized “Inherit the Earth” proved so appealing that when a publisher finally consented to do the series of novels (ten years after the proposal was initially put on the market) he insisted on issuing the books out of chronological order so as to start with the expanded version of that one.

  Two of the stories here are very short, and the ideas might have been better displayed if they had been deployed over the 6,000 words that is nowadays compulsory for the “theme anthologies” that still continue to cling on to a tiny corner of the devastated marketplace, but the simple fact is that in days gone by there was often more demand for short stories than long ones, for various practical reasons. In the 1990s, when I used to submit work regularly to the British magazine Interzone my work was routinely rejected on the grounds of being too long, and if ever I happened to mention work that I was currently doing to David Pringle, the editor, he was prone to say: “For God's sake don't send it to us—we simply can't handle material of that length.” This never prevented him, however, from occasionally ringing me up and saying: “We've got a very long story in the next issue and we need some very short ones so that we can fill up the contents page—could you knock off a couple for us?"

  The present collection is named for “The Great Chain of Being” partly because that is my favorite among the stories it contains, partly because it is the most imposing title, and partly because it is by far the most optimistic story in the set. Two thousand years of Christian fantasy have not managed to produce a single image of a Heaven to which anyone would actually want to go, if they had the choice, and some attempts have been so perversely horrific as to make the less intimidating fraction of the imagery of Hell seem quite attractive, so my chances of doing any better seemed slim at first, but in the end, the task did not seem unduly difficult. On the other hand, such challenges inevitably come down to a matter of taste, and it is conceivable that mine is a trifle eccentric.

  "Following the Pharmers” first appeared in the March 2008 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction. “The Unkindness of Ravens” first appeared in Interzone 90 (December 1994). “The Great Chain of Being” first appeared in Future Americas, edited by John Helfers, published by DAW in 2008. “Sleepwalker” first appeared in Interzone 105 (March 1996). “The Beauty Contest” appears here for the first time. “Burned Out” first appeared
in Interzone 70 (April 1993). “Inherit the Earth” first appeared in the July 1995 issue of Analog. As indicated in the list above, an expanded version of the last-named novella was published in book form by Tor, but the ending of that version was extensively rewritten to editorial instruction, so the two works are markedly distinct.

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  FOLLOWING THE PHARMERS

  "When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."

  —Daniel Webster

  It was early in June that the antheric alates began appearing on my verandah. At first I assumed that they were natural insects—some new species of miniature butterfly nurtured in the evolutionary hothouse that the Holderness had recently become. Their tiny wings were brightly-colored, with a quasi-metallic sheen that enabled them to flare like sparks in the bright light of noon and twinkle like stars in the evening, when the sun sank into the bosom of the Wolds. Initially, I welcomed their arrival as a fortunate discovery, a safe distraction from the burdensome aspects of my isolation.

  Once I had examined a couple of the motiles with a magnifying glass I realized that they weren't insects, but I was still possessed by the idea that they might be some new kind of invertebrate animal—perhaps an entirely new branch of the arthropoda, spun off by bold mutation from one of the many former sea-creatures that were adapting with astonishing rapidity to the Yorkshire Everglades. Once I had put one under the microscope, though, I realized that they were vegetal, and also that they were artificial.

  That was when I started cursing. It meant that I had a new neighbor. The whole point of our moving to Hollyn—a place that wasn't even supposed to exist any more, in the official cartography of New England—had been to give us the opportunity to do our work in peace. I hadn't wanted neighbors when Marie was still around; I certainly didn't want one now that she was gone, unable to return.

  I wasn't completely isolated from human contact, of course, but I didn't count the Patrington communards as “neighbors". They performed a useful intermediary function in transmitting my produce to the wholesalers in Hull—a necessary function, given the amount of chemical assistance I'd have needed to go all the way to the city on my own behalf. In any case, Patrington, which had also benefited from an unexpected and so-far-unrecorded re-emergence from the shallows of the Holderness to become a substantial new island, was a good seven kilometers away. The alates, I judged, must have come from somewhere considerably closer.

  The communards were small pharmers like me; they planted, nurtured and processed their crops according to strict chemical rituals, never taking the risk of producing anything new. Whoever was producing plants with alate pollen-sacs, on the other hand, had to be an artist: an innovator of considerable daring as well as abundant talent. From the viewpoint of a small pharmer, artists qualify as loose cannons: mad, bad and dangerous to have around. I knew, because I'd fancied myself as a bit of an artist in the days of my folie à deux with Marie, and even before that, in the days when we had both been wage-slaves in one of the corporate giants making up Big Pharma.

  My verandah faced north, in order to give me shade from the hostile UV of the noonday sun, and that was the direction from which the alates were coming. There shouldn't have been anywhere in that direction for them to come from, but I knew that if the stubborn ancient walls of Hollyn and Patrington could provide the foundations for marvelous growths of littoral limestone, and hence for newborn islands where plastishacks could be securely bedded, there was every possibility that parts of Withernsea could do likewise.

  Of all the former dwelling-places in the Holderness, Withernsea was the one that generated the most legendary echoes—far more than Hornsea, which had been a considerably bigger town in the Ice Age. As its name proudly declared, Withernsea had been on the coast in those days, and would now be unsheltered on its eastern shore from the full wrath of the North Sea storms—but what it lacked in safety it might make up in romance, at least in the eyes of an artist.

  Withernsea was a lot closer to Hollyn than Patrington, as any sort of creature might fly, but I had no idea whether there was a navigable channel through the algal dendrites that reared up from the new sea bed, whose colonization of the Holderness grew more insistent with every year that passed. I never went out in the motor-boat for “leisure purposes", but if I ever had I would have headed vaguely eastwards, in the direction that would have qualified as “inland” before the old Ice Age land had been gradually swallowed up by the salt-marsh.

  I considered the possibility of ignoring the matter, simply hoping that it wouldn't become a problem. If I had been a fungal specialist, like the communards of Patrington, that would have been a justifiable strategy, but I wasn't. I had three species of flowering plants producing reliable cash crops. The rape and the poppies were safe enough for the time being, but there was no way of knowing how far across the angiospermal spectrum the artist's experiments might eventually range, and the foxgloves might already be in hazard. Pharmed foxgloves are notoriously vulnerable to what the technical jargon terms “bizarre pollination", in spite of the insect-repellents built into their nectar. I didn't suppose for a moment that those inbuilt insect repellents would have the slightest effect on antheric alates.

  For that reason, I really needed to talk to my new neighbor about the situation, if I could. With luck, all I'd have to do would be to ask him politely to tighten up his security-measures, and he'd be willing to oblige. There is, after all, a certain code of politeness involved in living outside the law; no one with any sense wants to give anyone else too powerful a reason to stir up trouble. I'd have to get my head in condition to make the trip, but I trusted my own products and visiting wasn't something I'd ever had to do with sufficient frequency to risk another hook.

  I didn't know how long it would take me to find a viable route to Withernsea, but I didn't dare set off in the early morning, even with a canopy over the boat and the shade of the algal dendrites to limit my UV exposure. Given that it was June, when the days lasted far longer than the nights, the prudent thing to do was to pop the requisite pills in late afternoon and set off in the right direction, establishing a deadline for the search that would guarantee me a safe passage home before the twilight dwindled away.

  I didn't make it on the first day, but I figured out a mazy route that got me close enough to the re-risen Withernsea not merely to estimate the contours of the island but actually to glimpse the roof of the largest of the plastishacks in which the artist had set up production. It was hard to miss, not only because of its capacious size and flamboyant architectural design, but because of its blatant disregard for the most elementary camouflage. If a copter were ever to fly over my place, its pilot would need a keen and attentive eye to make it out, but the new building stuck out from its surroundings like a tarantula on a lacy net curtain. The Hull police had far more urgent things to do at present than explore the Holderness, which lay outside their jurisdiction, but the boldness of the new development was still reckless.

  The next day, I followed the mazy path I'd already mapped out with all possible speed, starting at four-thirty, and had found a way to the shore of the new island by six. I tied the boat up in the shade of a mock-willow, and made my way stealthily over the virgin coraloids to the sturdy platform on which the complex of plastishacks had been erected. The central element, at least, was more mansion than shack.

  Ever since the Great Migration had begun, technologies for erecting instant houses had been subject to tremendous selective pressure, forcing them to evolve with the same tachytelic fervor as the new littoral ecosystems that were recolonizing the drowned land. Even so, the house seemed to institute a significant step forward. I'd never seen anything like it advertised on TV. The artist was obviously an exceedingly rich amateur rather than the kind of impoverished optimist who was accustomed to starving in the proverbial garrets of the Ice Age.

  My heart sank as I looked at the place from a distance, shelte
red by the algal undergrowth, and I nearly lost my nerve. In spite of the chemical fortification, I wanted to change my mind, turn around and go back home. I knew, though, that if I did that I'd eventually have to come back, probably sooner rather than later. The combination of necessity and curiosity was just powerful enough to give me the courage to continue going forward and knock on the door. My approach was tentative, as much for fear of guard dogs or an entourage of bodyguards as my native inclinations, but the place was utterly quiet. If there was anyone at home, they were busy about their daily toil.

  I knocked, and waited.

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  The person who answered the door was a casually-dressed female, whose apparent age was about twenty-one. I didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that she was a lowly servant, though. The kind of wealth necessary to buy a mansion-sized plastishack could also buy a great deal of cosmetic somatic engineering, and I assumed that even rich people dressed casually when they weren't expecting visitors. The woman might easily be the kind of apparent twenty-one-year-old who'd been around for more than a century. Those kinds of people, so rumor had it, often went in for exotic hobbies.

  "I'm Daniel Anderson,” I told her, while she looked me coolly up and down. “I'm probably your nearest neighbor, unless there's someone closer to the north."

  "I'm not supposed to have any neighbors,” the woman replied, her use of the personal pronoun suggesting that she was the artist herself rather than any mere hireling. “That was the whole point of moving out here. There isn't supposed to be anyone living between here and Hull. There isn't even supposed to be anywhere for them to live.” The way she stood in the doorway was manifestly imperious; she was definitely the mistress of the house.

  "This place isn't supposed to exist either,” I pointed out. “My smallholding is on new ground that formed above the walls of the church at an Ice Age village called Hollyn—the steeple came down and the roof caved in, but the rest stood firm. I run a small pharm there."