The Kat and I were sluiced off the bucking station and into the sea. Beneath the waves, I finally managed to break his hold-or did he release me? In any case, I was free.
I fought my way to the surface There was no sigh of the Kat.
Instead there was a fleet of approaching swaths, into one of which I was soon unceremoniously hauled.
We searched for the Kat with eyes and instruments and remotes for several hours, but of that bad, bad splice there was no sign. He had gone to feed the hungry sea, or perhaps not. Though escape seemed impossible.
Before we left, we even managed to track clown Sonny and raise it from the ocean floor. The kibe had been heading back on the bottom under its own power and probably would have made it, if its brick hadn't run down.
The first call I took after getting patched up was from Chief Priestly, who dished out her usual mix of puffery and abuse.
The second one was from Xuly Beth.
"Isn't Global Positioning wonderful?" she said, joyfully teary-eyed.
"And aren't I lucky to have a friend in high places?"
"The stratosphere, to be precise," said Xuly Beth.
McGregor
Peter Rabbit stubbed out his cigarette on the rock upon which he sat, sent the dead butt spinning with a flick of a stubby claw, and sighed.
It was night. The fragrant country air around him carried cleanly the noises of noncultivar life, poignant cries, lonely calls, sly rustlings.
Frogs, but no Jeremy Fisher.
Owls, but no Mr. Brown.
Badgers, but no Tommy Brock.
Hedgehogs, but no Mrs. Tiggywinkle.
These, his fellow splices, were penned, not free to roam as was he.
Peter reached up to the tip of one long ear, the left. That ear had been illegally docked two years ago, shortly after Peter's escape from the Garden. This had been the only way to remove the silicrobe owner-tattoon, the Warne licensing mark, which had been injected at the Schering-Plough biofab facility, on behalf of McGregor's gembaitch,
before Peter was shipped. Afterwards, the ear had been regenerated. But the new part had always felt foreign. Peter had a tendency to finger it when he was nervous, as he was now.
His perch was high on a hill in the Lake District, near the village of Sawrey, in the western bioregion of the European Community. Below, the village was lit by the delicate glow of low-photonic reradiants. To the south Peter could see the grounds of the Beatrix Potter epcot, otherwise known as the Garden.
How long ago his life there seemed… He had spent only thirteen months in the Garden, but it had felt like forever. The silly skits, the gawping EC, NU, and CoPro tourists, the tasteless food-Through kinky proteins or rebel peptides, he had found himself totally unfit for his servitude.
The two years-a fifth of his warrantied lifespan-since his flight into the arms of the CLF had been packed with activity. On death's very doormat from lack of diet-supplements, he had stumbled upon the London nucleus of the CLF just in time. After the docking and the standard course of trope-training and soma toning, he had been ready to play his part in transgenic liberation.
He had participated in the infamous Corrida de la Muerte massacre in Madrid during the first part of '31. He had helped slag the board of directors of Hedonics Plus, the greedy human prokes, at their annual meeting in Geneva. He had been trapped in a shootout with the Brazz branch of the IMF police in the Jibaro maximall, barely escaping with his life. He had even assisted the CLF's leader, the legendary Bad
Splice, Krazy Kat, in Chicago, as they sought to turn the Big Eaters against the municipality.
In short, Peter had lived a full life in the past two years. The things he had seen and done had made him a hardened rabbit.
Yet now, contemplating the notion of facing McGregor again, remnants of his old factory conditioning surfaced, nearly rendering him helpless as a kit.
He had asked for this assignment. But that didn't mean he had to relish it.
Peter reached inside the pocket of his tarnished-brass-buttoned blue coat for a dose of angst-banger and swallowed it dry. Tugging at a whisker, he sought to focus his mind on the task at hand. As the renegade splice watched, the big holosign outside the epcot winked out, and the last tourbus skimmed off.
Now the only human (mere 51 percenter that he was, he still legally merited that status) left in the Garden was McGregor.
Now McGregor would begin to indulge in the "perks" of his position.
Now the splices had cause to fear.
Peter repressed his anger at the thought of what would be starting down in the Garden at this moment. The blocker was kicking in, and it helped him to be calm. He could not enter the Garden until McGregor retired for the night, some hours from now. Till then, there was nothing to do but wait.
Peter lit up another cigarette.
Filthy human habit.
But he would never live long enough to get cancer.
McGregor leaned on his cane, waving to the departing tour-bus in his creaky, lovable-irascible, old farmer way. When it had rounded the curve, he verbed off the holosign.
Then he straightened.
Standing erect, McGregor no longer radiated an air of cantankerous decrepitude. He seemed to bulk out, filling his suit of simulated brown homespun with limbs and torso powerful as one of the Deere-Goldstar autoharvesters that reaped the surrounding fields. The big white beard cascading to his shirtfront looked completely incongruous now, as did his spectacles and cane.
Of a sudden, with an uncanny howl, McGregor tossed his cane skyward. It soared higher than the chimney pots on Hill Top Farmhouse. Off came the glasses and beard, as well as the clothes and hat. (The animatronic beard crawled a few inches, then halted.)
Revealed was a body whose torso was plated ventrally and dorsally with tough overlapping armadillo-like scales. McGregor's arms and legs were wrapped with muscle, like those of a dock-ape. His skull was hairless; silicrobe patterns pulsated just under the scalp, synced electro-myographically with his extra cortical matter. His genitals, retractable, were hidden.
McGregor spun to face the darkened barn.
"Your act died today!"
There was no sound from the barn. Only a subliminal emotional quivering seemed to emanate in cold waves from the structure.
McGregor stalked to the splices' after-hours residence.
He banged the big door open.
The inside of the old-fashioned structure, which was not part of the tour, was one large open space walled and floored with seamless arbo-poly, for easy cleaning. D-compoz waste units stood out in the open in one corner. Cots were placed dormitory-style along the walls, each with a small footlocker for whatever personal possessions the splices had been allowed to accumulate: curry combs and liniment; sweets from the Ginger and Pickles concession stand, tossed to them by the patrons; a change of clothes.
By each cot stood its occupant, at full attention.
The smallest of the transgenics-the mice, the frogs, the squirrels-stood on their altered hindlegs as tall as McGregor's waist. The next largest-the rabbits, the dogs, the cats-came as high as his shoulder.
McGregor let the property sweat for a whole minute. Then he whirled and pointed a finger at Pigling Bland.
"You!"
Tears began to well from the pig's eyes, runnelling to either side of his snout. He dabbed at them with the sleeve of his brown frock coat.
"Please, sir, my pig license is all in order… "
But McGregor had already rounded on another victim.
"Puddleduck!"
Jemima's beak opened and closed several times in stupefaction, before she could finally clumsily articulate, "My bonnet is tied, my shawl is neat. My bonnet is tied, my shawl-"