Year's Best Scifi 3 Part 39

"Look," I said. "I'm still not clear what's really going on here. I find Laurie unconscious-you, someone, could've put a drug in her orange juice for all I know.

The house just burned down-could've been arson with rags and lighter fluid, just like we have back in New York, New York." Though I knew I'd never seen a fire quite like that.

Laurie stared at me like I was nuts.

"They were fireflies, Mr. D'A- Phil," Amos said. "Fireflies caused the fire."

"How could they do that so quickly?"

"They can be bred that way," Amos said. "So that an hour or a day or week after they start flying around, they suddenly heat up to cause the fire. It's what you scientists," he said with ill-concealed derision, "call setting a genetical switch.

Mendelian lamps set to go off like clockwork and burn-Mendel bombs."

"Mendel bombs?""Wasn't he a genetical scientist? Worked with peas? Insects are simple like that too-easy to breed."

"Yeah, Gregor Mendel," I said. "You're saying Sarah- your sister-was involved in this?"

He nodded.

I thought about the lamp on Sarah's floor.

"Look, Amos, I'm sorry about before-I don't really think you did anything to Laurie. It's just-can you show me any actual evidence of this stuff? I mean, like, the fireflies before they burn down a house?"

Amos considered. "Yeah, I can take you to a barn-it's about five miles from here."

I looked at Laurie.

"The Lapp farm?" she asked.

Amos nodded.

"It's okay," she said to me. "It's safe. I've been there."

"All right, then," I said. But Mo's car-and my car- were still gone. "How are we going to get there?"

"I parked my buggy at my friend's-about a quarter of a mile from here," Amos said.

Clop, clop, clop, looking at a horse's behind, feeling like one-based on what I was able to make sense of in this case. Horses, flames, mysterious deaths-all the ingredients of a Jack Finney novel in the nineteenth century. Except this was the end of the twentieth. And so far all I'd done is manage to get dragged along to every awful event. Well, at least I'd managed to save Laurie-or let Amos save her. But I had to do more-I had to stop just witnessing and reacting, and instead get on top of things. I represented twentieth century science, for G.o.dsake. Okay, it wasn't perfect, it wasn't all powerful. But surely it had taught me enough to enable me to do something to counter these bombs and allergens, these... Men-delian things.

I'd also managed to get through to Corinne at the funeral home from a pay phone on a corner before we'd gotten into Amos's buggy. I'd half expected his horse and buggy to come with a car phone-a horse phone?-that was how crazy this "genetical" stuff was getting me. On the other hand, I guess the Amish could have rigged up a buggy with a cellular phone running on battery at that... Well, at least I was learning...

"We should be there in a few minutes." Amos leaned back from the driver's seat, where he held the reins and clucked the lone horse along. He-Amos had told me the horse was a he-was a dark brown beautiful animal, at least to my innocent city eyes. The whole scene, riding along in a horse and buggy on a bright crisp autumn day, was astonis.h.i.+ng-because it wasn't a buggy ride for a tourist's five dollar bill, itwas real life.

"You know, I ate some of your sister's food," I blurted out the qualm that occurred to me again. "You don't think, I mean, that maybe it had a slow-acting allergen-"

"We'll give you a swig of an antidote-it's pretty univer-sal-when we get to John Lapp's, don't worry," Amos leaned back and advised.

"Sarah-your sister-was telling me something about some low-grade allergen let loose on our population after World War II. Didn't kill anyone, but made most people more irritable than they'd been before. Come to think of it, I suppose it indeed could have been responsible for lots of deaths, when you take into account the manslaughters that result from people on edge, arguments gone out of control."

"You're talking the way Poppa used to," Laurie said.

"Your dad talked about those allergens?" I asked.

"No," Laurie said. "I mean he was always going on about manslaughter, and how it had just one or two little differences in spelling from man's laughter, and how those differences made all the difference."

"Yeah, that was Mo all right," I said.

"That's John Lapp's farm up ahead," Amos said.

The meadow was green, still lush in this autumn. It was bounded by fences that looked both old, and, implausibly, in very good condition. Like we'd been literally traveling back in time.

"So, Amos, your opinion on your sister's idea about the allergens?" I prompted.

"I don't know," he said. "That was my sister's area of study."

A barn, a big barn, but no different on the outside than hundreds of other barns in the countrysides of Pennsylvania and Ohio. How many of them had what this one had inside?

Variations of Sarah's words played in my ears. Why do we expect science to always come in high-tech wrappings? Darwin was a great scientist, wasn't he, and just the plain outside world was his laboratory. Mendel came upon the workings of genetics by cultivating purple and white flowering peas in his garden. Was a garden so different from a barn? If anything, it was even lower-tech.

A soft pervasive light embraced us as we walked inside- keener than fluorescent, more diffuse than incandescent, a cross between sepiatone and starlight maybe, but impossible to describe with any real precision if you hadn't actually seen it, felt its photons slide through your pupils like pieces of a breeze.

"Fireflight," Amos whispered, though I had realized that already. I'd seen fireflies before, loved them as a boy, poured over Audubon guides to insects with pictures of their light, but never anything like this.

"We have lots of uses for insects, more than just light," Amos said, and heguided me over, Laurie on his arm, to a series of wooden contraptions all entwined with nets. I looked closer, and saw swarms of insects-bees mostly, maybe other kinds-each in its own gauzed compartment. There were several sections with spiders too.

"These are our nets, Phil," Amos said. "The nets and webs of our information highway. Our insects are of course far slower and smaller in numbers than your electrons, but far more intelligent and motivated than those non-living things that convey information on yours. True, our communicators can't possibly match the pace and reach of the broadcast towers, the telephone lines, the computers all over your world. But we don't want that. We don't need the speed, the high blood pressure, the invasion of privacy, that your electrons breed. We don't want the numbers, the repet.i.tion, all the clutter. Our carriers get it right, for the jobs that we think are important, the first time."

"Well they certainly get it just as deadly," I said, "at least when it comes to burning down houses. Nature strikes back." And I marveled again at the wisdom of these people, this boy-which, though I disagreed about the advantages of bug-tech over electricity, bespoke a grasp of information theory that would do any telecom specialist proud- "Nature was never really gone, Dr. D'Amato," a deep voice that sounded familiar said.

I turned around. "Isaac..."

"I apologize for the deception, but my name is John Lapp. I pretended to be Jacob's brother at his farm because I couldn't be sure that you weren't videotaping me with some kind of concealed camera. Jacob and I are roughly the same height and weight, so I took the chance. You'll forgive me, but we have great distrust for your instruments." His face and voice were "Isaac Stoltzfus"'s, all right, but his delivery was vastly more commanding and urbane.

I noticed in the corner of my eye that Laurie's were wide with awe. "Mr. Lapp,"

she stammered, "I'm very honored to meet you. I mean, I've been here before with Amos," she squeezed his hand, "but I never expected to actually meet you-"

"Well, I'm honored too, young lady," Lapp said, "and I'm very very sorry about your father. I only met him once- when I was first pretending to be 'Isaac' the other day-but I know from Jacob that your father was a good man."

"Thank you," Laurie said, softly.

"I have something for you, Laurie Buhler," Lapp reached into his long, dark coat and pulled out what looked like a lady's handbag, constructed of a very attractive moss-green woven cloth. "Jacob Stoltzfus designed this. We call it a lamp-case. It's a weave of special plant fibers dyed in an extract from the glow-worm, with certain chemicals from luminescent mushrooms mixed into the dye to give the light staying power. It glows in the dark. It should last for several months, as long as the weather doesn't get too hot. Then you can get a new one. From now on, if you're out shopping after the sun sets, you'll be able to see what you have in your case, howmuch money you have left, wherever you are. From what I know of young lady's purses-I have three teenaged daughters-this can be very helpful. Some of you seem to be lugging half the world around with you in there!"

Laurie took the case, and beamed. "Thank you so much," she said. She looked at me. "This is what Poppa was going to get for me the other night. He thought I didn't know-he wanted to pick this purse up, at Jacob Stoltzfus's farm, and surprise me for my birthday tomorrow. But I knew." And her voice cracked and tears welled in her eyes.

Amos put his arms around her again, and I patted her hair.

"Mo would've wanted to get to the bottom of this," I said to Lapp. "What can you tell me about who killed him- and Amos's father?"

He regarded me, without much emotion. "The world is changing before your very eyes, Dr. D'Amato. Twelve-hundred pound moose walk down the mainstreet in Brattleboro, Vermont. People shoot 400-lb bears in the suburbs of New Hamps.h.i.+re-"

"New Hamps.h.i.+re is hardly a suburb, and Mo wasn't killed by a bear-he died right next to me in my car," I said.

"Same difference, Doctor. Animals are getting brazen, bacteria are going wild, allergies are rampant-it's all part of the same picture. It's no accident."

"Your people are doing this, deliberately?" I asked.

"My people?-No, I a.s.sure you, we don't believe in aggression. These things you see here"-he waved his hand around the barn, at all sorts of plants and small animals and insects I wanted to get a closer look at-"are only to make our lives better, in quiet ways. Like Laurie's handbag."

"Like die fireflies that burn down buildings?" I asked.

"Ah, we come full circle-this is where I came in. Alas, we unfortunately are not the only people on this Earth who understand more of the power of nature than is admitted by your technological world. You have plastics, used for good. You also have plastic used for evil-you have semtex, that blew up your airplane over Scotland. We have bred fireflies for good purposes, for light and moderate heat, as you see right here," he pointed to a corner of the barn, near where we were standing.

A fountain of the sepiatone and starlight seemed to emanate from it. I looked more carefully, and saw the fountain was really a myriad of tiny fireflies-a large Mendelian lamp. "We mix slightly different species in the swarm," Lapp continued, "carefully chosen so that their flas.h.i.+ngs overlap to give a continuous, long-lasting light. The mesh is so smooth that you can't see the insects themselves, unless you examine the light very closely. But there are those who have furthered this breeding for bad purposes, as you found out in both the Stoltzfus and Buhler homes."

"Well, if you know who these people are, tell me, and I'll see to it that they're put out of business," I said.

For the first time, I noticed a smear of contempt on John Lapp's face. "Yourpolice will put them out of business? How? In the same way you've put your industrial Mafia out of business? In the same way you've stopped the drug trade from South America? In the same way your United Nations, your NATO, all of your wonderful political organizations have ended wars in the Middle East, -in Europe, in Southeast Asia all these years? No thank you, Doctor. These people who misuse the power of nature are our problem-they're not our people any longer but they come originally from our people- and we'll handle them in our own way."

"But two people are dead-" I protested.

"You perhaps will be too," Amos said. He proffered a bottle with some kind of reddish, tomatoey-looking liquid.

"Here, drink this, just in case my sister gave you some slow-acting poison."

"A brother and a sister," I said. "Each tells me the other's the bad guy. Cla.s.sic dilemma-for all I know this is the poison."

Lapp shook his head. "Sarah Stoltzfus Fischer is definitely bad," he said solemnly. "I once thought I saw some good that could be rekindled in her, but now... Jacob told Mo Buhler about her-"

"Her name was on Mo's car phone list," I said.

"Yes, as someone Mo was likely investigating," Lapp said.

"I told Jacob he was wrong to tell Mo so much. But Jacob was stubborn-and he was an optimist. A dangerous combination. I'm sorry to say this," he looked with hurt eyes at Laurie, "but Mo Buhler may have brought this upon Jacob and himself because of his contacts with Sarah."

"If Poppa believed in her, then that's because he still saw some good in her,"

Laurie insisted.

John Lapp shook his head, sadly.

"And I guess I made things worse by contacting her, spending the night with her-" I started saying.

All three gave me a look.

"-alone, on the couch," I finished.

"Yes, perhaps you did make things worse," Lapp said. "Your style of investigation-Mo Buhler's-can't do any good here. These people will have you running around chasing your own tail. They'll taunt you with vague suggestions of possibilities of what they're up to-what they've been doing. They'll give you just enough taste of truth to keep you interested. But when you look for proof, you'll find you won't know which end is up."

Which was a pretty good capsule summary of what I'd being feeling like.

"They introduced long-term allergen catalysts into our bloodstreams, our biosphere, years ago," Lapp went on. "Everyone in this area has it. And once you do, you're a sitting duck. When they want to kill you, they give you another catalyst,short-term, any one of a number of handy biological agents, and you're dead within hours of a ma.s.sive allergic attack to some innocent thing in your environment. So the two catalysts work together to kill you. Of course, neither one on its own is dangerous, shows up as suspicious on your blood tests, so that's how they get away with it. And no one even notices the final innocent insult-no one is ordinarily allergic to an autumn leaf from a particular type of tree against your skin, or a certain kind of beetle on your finger. That's why we developed the antidote to the first catalyst- it's the only way we know of breaking the allergic cycle."

"Please, Phil, drink this." Amos pushed the bottle on me again.

"Any side effects I should know about? Like I'll be dead of an allergic attack in a few hours?"

"You'll probably feel a little more irritable than usual for the next week," Lapp said.

I sighed. "What else is new."

Decisions... Even if I had the first catalyst, I could live the rest of my life without ever encountering the second.

No, I couldn't go on being so vulnerable like that. I liked autumn leaves. But how did I know for sure that what Amos was offering me was the antidote, and not the second catalyst? I didn't-not for sure-but wouldn't Amos have tried to leave me in Mo's house to burn if he'd wanted me dead? Decisions...

I drank it down, and looked around the barn. Incredible scene of high Victorian science, like a nineteenth century trade card I'd once seen for an apothecary.

Enough to make my head spin. Then I realized it was spinning-was this some sort of reaction to the antidote? Jeez, or was the antidote the poison after all? No-the room wasn't so much spinning, as the light, the fireflight, was flickering... in an oddly familiar way.

Lapp was suddenly talking, fast, arguing with someone.

Sarah!

"There's a Mendel bomb here," she was shouting. "Please. You all have to leave."

Lapp looked desperately around the room, back at Sarah, and finally nodded.

"She's right," he said and caught my eye. "We all have to leave now." He grabbed on to Sarah's shoulder, and beckoned me to follow.

Amos had his arm around Laurie, and was already walking quickly with her towards the door. Everyone else was scurrying around, grabbing what netted cages they could.

"No," I said. "Wait." An insight was just nibbling its way into my mind.

"Doctor, please," Lapp said. "We have to leave now."

"No, you don't," I said. "I know how to stop the bomb."Lapp shook his head firmly. "I a.s.sure you, we know of no remedy to stop this.

We have perhaps seven, maybe eight minutes at most. We can rebuild the barn.

Human lives we cannot rebuild."

Sarah looked at me with pleading eyes.

"No," I insisted, looking past Sarah at Lapp. "You can't just keep running like this from your enemies, letting them burn you out. You have incredible work going on here. I can stop the bomb."

Lapp stared at me.