“So talk. But if you’re going to tell me more bad news about the Chinese, forget it. I don’t want to hear it until I have to.”
“It’s not about the Chinese,” Lillie said. “We have a proposition. We want to convince you so you can convince the others.”
Theresa put down her pitchfork and looked at Lillie, who stood a little in front of the others and was clearly their designated spokesman. Lillie had regained her figure after the triplets’ birth more quickly than the other girls. She stood slim and young, direct, her gaze meeting Theresa’s squarely. Lillie’s babies, Theresa knew, were right now being bathed by Carolina and Lupe. Whenever Lillie looked at her children there was a faintly puzzled look in her gray eyes: Mine? Theresa did not understand.
“You know that we learned a lot of genetics aboard the pribir ship,” Lillie said. “We only know how to use pribir equipment, though. But Scott has been teaching Rafe and Emily how to use his Sparks-Markham, plus all the new stuff DeWayne bought, and they’ve been teaching Scott what the pribir taught us. They remember a lot, unlike me and the rest.”
“Yes,” Theresa said neutrally. Why didn’t Lillie feel more involved with her babies? They were adorable, especially little Cord. He had Lillie’s eyes, gray with gold flecks.
“Rafe and Emily put some of the hay genes through the scanner. Also rice from the sacks Carlo bought in Wenton. They experimented with the splicer, and they think they can create hay that will have three times the yield on the same plot of land, and rice that will grow here in the summer rains.”
Three times the yield. They could run more cattle, lots more. The range grew more vegetation than ever, but there was still not enough to sustain her herd year-round without feed. The amount of hay had been the limiting factor on how much cattle she could run. And if rice, which had never in the history of the world grown here, could be raised as a cash crop, the market for it would be large and close. Cheap transportation costs…
Suddenly it hit her. ”’ Create.’ You mean genetically engineered crops.”
“Yes,” Rafe said eagerly over Lillie’s shoulder.
“Anything to do with genetically engineered crops is illegal. You know that. Anything to do with genetically engineered anything — that’s why we’ve been so careful!”
“And we’ll go on being careful,” Lillie said. “No one will know, anymore than they know about us, or about the babies. And anyway you said there’s no law to—”
“There’s vigilantes,” Theresa said harshly. “God, you three don’t remember. You weren’t here during the war.” The labs and corporations that had been the targets of mob rage during and right after the biowar. The CEO of Monsanto had been disemboweled alive. Theresa had seen a Net video.
“That was eleven years ago,” Lillie said logically. “And anyway, no one will know. Wenton doesn’t have any gene-analyzing equipment. We’ll just say DeWayne bought a different kind of seed from back East, and we’ll offer to share planting seeds for the hay with anyone who wants them. Look, Tess, I’ve done some figures.”
Lillie held out a piece of DeWayne’s grayish paper, another new luxury, and began to go over the numbers for Tess. Costs, needed labor, projected market price, possible profit range. The handwriting was the round unformed hand of a schoolgirl.
“Lillie, who taught you to do this?”
Lillie looked surprised. “Nobody taught me. It’s just common sense.”
And Lillie had always had a lot of that. No maternal feelings, but a direct pragmatism even greater than Theresa’s own. She said, “Does Scott know all this?”
“No,” Lillie said.
Rafe said transparently, “We thought you, as boss, were entitled to see it first.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” Lillie said. “Scott isn’t going to like it. He wants us to keep as much out of public notice as possible. We’re showing it to you first so you can change his mind.”
Emily said eagerly, “We know it will work!” Unlike Lillie, she had baby-food stains all down the front of her maternity smock, which she was still wearing because she hadn’t lost all her pregnancy weight.
Theresa looked at the three young faces: Rafe excited, Emily hopeful, Lillie coolly considering. It was an interesting idea. Rice… Theresa could almost see the low green plants growing in the flat land below the cottongrove, where the creek flooded regularly. Regularly enough? Maybe they could build a little dam…
“I’ll talk to Scott,” she said, “and Jody, Senni, Carlo, and Spring. We’ll see.”
“We can increase farm income by about twenty percent, not counting DeWayne’s contribution,” Lillie said. “That’s a lot of flour and cloth and ammunition.”
“Not,” Theresa noticed, “a lot of diapers.” Oh, Lillie.
After much argument, they planted a test crop of the genetically engineered crops. Both hay and rice flourished. It was only a few inconspicuous square yards of land under cultivation this year, but next year…
Sajelle married DeWayne in July. She was fifteen, he was fifty-four. Senni thought it was “obscene,” but Theresa only shrugged. Things were different now. Statutory rape laws belonged to another life. DeWayne was good to Sajelle, she made him happy, and her children’s future was assured. Within two months Sajelle was pregnant again.
The babies turned eight months old. With Senni’s nine-month Clari, there were fifteen babies crawling around the great room, pulling themselves up on furniture, throwing around food, babbling at each other. Without the three Mexican girls, caring for them would have been impossible. All of the children were beautiful. None had ever had as much as a cold. Scott could find nothing abnormal in any of their physiology.
That summer Carlo married Rosalita. Theresa, who was afraid that Carlo would someday announce he wanted to be a priest, was relieved. Everyone pitched in to expand housing, and eventually there was a compound of four houses, one large and three smaller, and everyone had more room.
Another group of refugees attacked, but they were ill-equipped and easily driven off with guns. Only one was killed. Theresa didn’t ask where Jody, Bonnie, and Sam buried him.
The Chinese threat abated, presumably due to some mysterious cycle of political fluctuation. Maybe the Chinese were also becoming more prosperous, less desperate. Maybe not. Theresa didn’t care just so long as the word “war” disappeared from farm conversations.
That summer, the horrendous storms leveled off. Net news said the global warming seemed to have stabilized, perhaps due to the drastic cutback of greenhouse gases since the war. Theresa’s land remained fertile, and the range was better watered than ever before. She allowed herself to be hopeful, then grateful, then happy. They were going to make it.
Just after she’d decided this, the delegation from Wenton arrived.
“Come in,” Theresa said, because she couldn’t keep them standing on the porch. There were six of them, arriving in the early afternoon, an indication of how far the weather had softened. The wind still blew till sundown, but it had less force, less grit, less unrelenting howl. The delegation came in a car, as new as DeWayne’s but larger and very simple, a closed metal box on a slow-moving, fuel-cell-driven base. Still, the fact that new, non-luxury cars were available in a place like Wenton felt significant to Theresa.
She studied them as they filed into the great room. Three of the babies crawled around under Carolina’s watchful eye. The rest were either in the smaller houses or napping. Everyone else who could be was out harvesting.
Old Tom Carter, who used to run the storage building that was no longer needed. Rachel Monaghan, a woman Theresa’s age, who kept a cloth and clothing store. Lucy Tetrino from the train station. Bill Walewski, the grain buyer. Two hard-faced men she didn’t recognize. She saw Rachel’s lips purse at the sight of Carolina.