“Your specimen is remarkably tame,” said Pelicanos politely, holding his hat in his hand.
The scientist shook his bearded head. “Oh, we never claim that we ‘tame’ animals here at the Collaboratory. He’s been de-feralized. But he’s not what you’d call friendly.”
The binturong detached itself from the bench slats and trundled through the lush grass on its bearlike paws. The beast examined Oscar’s leather shoes, lifted its pointed snout in disgust, and muttered like a maladjusted kettle. At such close and intimate range, the nature of the animal became more apparent to Oscar. A binturong was akin to a weasel. A large, tree-climbing wea-sel. With a hairy, prehensile tail. Also, it stank.
“We seem to be in the market for a binturong,” Oscar said, smiling. “Do you wrap them up in brown paper?”
“If you mean how do we get this sample specimen to your friend the Senator… well, we can do that through channels.”
Oscar arched his brows. “ ‘Channels’?”
“Channels, you know… Senator Dougal had his people han-dling that sort of thing…” Their guide trailed off, suddenly guilty and jittery, as if he’d drunk the last of the office coffee and neglected to change the pot. “Look, I’m just a lab guy, I don’t really know much about that. You should ask the people at Spinoffs.”
Oscar unfolded his laminated pocket map of the Buna National Collaboratory. “And where would ‘Spinoffs’ be?”
The guide tapped helpfully at Oscar’s plastic map. His hands were stained with chemicals and his callused thumb was a nice dull green. “Spinoffs was the building just on your left as you drove in through the main airlock.”
Oscar squinted at the map’s fine print. “The Archer Parr Memo-rial Competitive Enhancement Facility?”
“Yeah, that’s the place. Spinoffs.”
Oscar gazed upward, adjusting the brim of his hat against the Texas sun. A huge nexus of interlocking struts cut the sky overhead, like the exoskeleton of a monster diatom. The distant struts were great solid stony beams, holding greenhouse panes of plastic the size of hockey rinks. The federal lab had been funded, created, and built in an age when recombinant DNA had been considered as dangerous as nuclear power plants. The dome of the Buna National Collaboratory had been designed to survive tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, a saturation bombing. “I’ve never been in a sealed environment so large it required its own map,” Oscar said.
“You get used…,.to it.” Their guide shrugged. “You get used to the people who live in here, and even the cafeteria food… The Col-laboratory gets to be home, if you stay in here long enough.” Their guide scratched at his furry jaw. “Except for East Texas, outside the airlocks there. A lot of people never get used to East Texas.”
“We really appreciate your demoing the local livestock for us,” said Pelicanos. “It was good of you to spare us the time from your busy research schedule.”
The zoologist reached eagerly for his belt phone. “You want me to call back your little minder from Public Relations?”
“No,” said Oscar suavely, “since she was kind enough to pass us on to you, I think we’ll just make our own way around here from now on.”
The scientist brandished his antique and clunky federal-issue phone, which was covered with smudgy green thumbprints. “Do you need a lift to Spinoffs? I could call you a buggy.”
“We’ll stretch our legs a bit,” Pelicanos demurred.
“You’ve been very helpful, Dr. Parkash.” Oscar never forgot a name. There was no particular reason to remember the name of Dr. Averill Parkash, among the BNC’s two thousand federal researchers and their many assorted gofers, hucksters, krewepeople, and other associated hangers-on. Oscar knew, though, that he would soon accu-mulate the names, the faces, and the dossiers of no end of the local personnel. It was worse than a habit. He truly couldn’t help himself.
Their guide sidled backward toward the Animal Management Center, clearly eager to return to his cramped and spotty little office. Oscar waved a dismissal with a cheery smile.
Parkash tried a final yelp. “There’s a pretty good wine bar nearby! Across the road from Flux NMR and Instrumentation!”
“That’s great advice! We appreciate that! Thanks a lot!” Oscar turned on his heel and headed for a nearby wall of trees. Pelicanos quickly followed him.
Soon they were safely lost in the tall cover. Oscar and Pelicanos made their way along a crooked, squelchy, peat-moss path through a cut-and-paste jungle. The Collaboratory boasted huge botanical gar-dens — whole minor forests, really — of rare specimens. The threatened. The endangered. The all-but-technically extinct. Wildlife native to habitats long obliterated by climate change, rising seas, bulldozers, and the urban sprawl of 8.1 billion human beings.
The plants and animals were all clones. Deep in the bedrocked stronghold of the Collaboratory’s National Genome Preservation Center lurked tens of thousands of genetic samples, garnered from around the planet. The precious DNA was neatly racked in gleaming flasks of liquid nitrogen, secured in a bureaucratic maze of endless machine-carved limestone vaults.
It was considered wise to thaw out a few bits from the tissue samples every once in a while, and to use these bits to produce fullgrown organisms. This practice established that the genetic data was still viable. Generally, the resultant living creatures were also nicely photogenic. The clones were a useful public relations asset. Now that biotechnology had left the hermetic realm of the arcane to become standard everyday industries, the Collaboratory’s makeshift zoo was its best political showpiece.
The monster underground vaults were always first on the list for the victims of local tourism, but Oscar had found their Kafkaesque density oppressive. However, he found himself quite enjoying the lo-cal jungle. Genuine wilderness generally bored him, but there was something very modern and appealing about this rational, urbanized, pocket version of nature. The housebroken global greenery coruscated like Christmas trees with drip taps, sap samplers, and hormone squirt-ers. Trees and shrubs basked like drunken tourists in their own private grow lights.
According to their handy pocket maps, Oscar and Pelicanos were now in a mix-and-match jungle bordered by the Animal Engineering Lab, the Atmospheric Chemistry Lab, the Animal Management Cen-ter, and a very elaborate structure that was the Collaboratory’s garbage treatment plant. None of these rambling federal buildings were visible from within the potted forest-except, of course, for the brutal, for-tresslike towers of the Containment Facility. This gigantic Hot Zone was the massive central buttress for the Collaboratory’s dome. Its glazed cylindrical shoulders were always visible inside the dome, gleaming like a mighty acreage of fine china.
The probability of listening devices seemed rather low here in-side the mechanical forest. They could talk in confidence, if they kept moving.
“I thought we’d never lose that geek,” Pelicanos said.
“You have something you need to tell me, Yosh?”
Pelicanos sighed. “I want to know when we’re going home again.”
Oscar smiled. “We just got here. Don’t you like these Texas folks? They sure are mighty friendly.”
“Oscar, you brought twelve people in your entourage. The locals don’t even have the dorm rooms to put us up properly.”
“But I need twelve people. I need all of my krewe. I need to keep my options open here.”
Pelicanos grunted in surprise as a spined and cloven-hoofed beast — some kind of tapir, maybe? — scampered across their path. Rare beasts from aardwolves to zebu had the general run of the Col-laboratory. They were commonly sighted ambling harmlessly through the streets and gardens, like dope-stricken sacred cows.
“You arranged a few extras after the campaign,” Pelicanos said. “Well, Bambakias can certainly afford that, and they appreciate the gesture. But political campaigners are temp workers by nature. You just don’t need them anymore. You can’t need twelve people to put together a Senate committee report.”