Glass and Gardens Read online

  I spare a look back at New-Ur, the plants blooming among the stucco and terracotta. Arthur will understand my regret despite our success.

  At first, I think the figure approaching me is an illusion, summoned by my heartache and the strengthening sun.

  But it’s him, Khadir, carrying the plant in a small translucent capsule. “You left this behind,” he pants when he reaches me. “Why?”

  I shake my head. “Bari—I’m sorry. Truly. It was wrong of me.”

  He presses the pod into my palm, covering both with his hands. “The greens aren’t quite right. Too bitter. And they don’t keep long. There’s still work to do. The truth is,” he continues. “We need another talented botanist. Someone willing to experiment, debate merits. That kind of thing. Know anyone?”

  His eyes are earnest, searching mine. Stay with me, he doesn’t say.

  There are, I see, flowers and leaves and twigs in his hair again. I reach to pluck one out with my free hand. Caress his cheek. “Yes, I believe I do.”

  ***

  Julia K. Patt is a writer, teacher, and editor living in Maryland. Her science fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Escape Pod, and Luna Station Quarterly, among other places. Follow her on Twitter (@chidorme) or check out her website juliakpatt.com for more.

  The Spider and the Stars

  by D.K. Mok

  Del’s childhood, like many others, was woven from enchanted tales. Every night, as the warmth of the day radiated back through the glass water-wall of her bedroom, Del curled up with her plush quokka and listened, enthralled, as her mother spun wondrous stories.

  These were never stories of dragons and fairies, mermaids and centaurs. No, these were stories of fierce young women with flocks of tree-planting drones, firing seeds into the barren sands and rolling back the desert. Or tales of ravenous locusts sweeping across the land in suffocating plagues, and the farmers who responded by cultivating carnivorous wheat.

  But tonight, there had been no story. Del waited in bed until even Quokka’s genial features seemed to furrow with impatience.

  “Wait here,” whispered Del. She was almost five, and therefore officially allowed to negotiate the terms of Bedtime. Stories were a requirement under Article Three, since she had fulfilled the conditions of Article Two: specifically, the Brushing of Teeth.

  She trod softly towards the sound of voices in the kitchen. Her mother sounded uncharacteristically frustrated; her father, uncharacteristically chipper.

  “It’s their loss,” he was saying. “There’ll be other competitions—”

  “Not like the Solaria Grande Exhibition.” Her mother’s voice was thick with disappointment. “It’ll be twenty years before it comes this way again—”

  “So we’ll travel to the next one—”

  “With all this gear? What if the truck overturns? The last thing we need is a hysterical headline like Mutant Bugs on Rampage! It’s hard enough getting people not to gag at the word ‘entomophagy’—”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t use that word next time. How about ‘alternative protein’?”

  There was a soul-crushing sigh. “People won’t eat spiders because they have too many legs, but they’ll happily eat crabs. They won’t eat shea caterpillars because they’re too gooey, but they’ll slurp down oysters. Gram for gram, insect protein is cheaper, healthier and more sustainable than red meat. To make a single beef patty, it takes two thousand litres of water. To make the same amount of cricket flour, you need a moist towelette and a tolerance for swarms—”

  “I know. And that’s why you’ll make this work. You don’t need some fancy prize. You have your passion, and your entomology degree. And you have me and my winning way with a hot wok and spices—”

  “And me,” Del blurted from the doorway. “I’ll help you look after the bugs.”

  “Oh, Del, daughter of mine…” Her mother scooped her up like a rugby ball, the comforting scent of ripe apricots and jasmine lingering in her mother’s thick brown hair. “Am I late for story time?”

  As the cicadas bleated their one-note love songs from the eucalypts outside, Del settled onto her sleeping mat, the straw cool against her skin. She slid her night terrarium a little closer, the bioluminescent mushrooms and glow-worms suffusing the room with a gentle blue-green radiance.

  “Can I have a story about ogres?” Del’s playmates at preschool had terrified each other with stories of child-guzzling ogres, and Del wondered if the ogre had considered eating cricket damper and jam instead.

  “Hmm… I don’t know many stories about ogres. Oh, wait, there is one very special ogre—the ogre-faced spider, Deinopis ravida. A huntress of the night who stalks her prey with a silken net, with eyes so keen and clever she can see the galaxy Andromeda.”

  And it was in this moment—her mind filled beyond capacity with this wordless, moonlit image of a stargazing spider—that Del chose her destiny.

  ***

  Ten Years Later

  It had rained all summer, and the water tanks were overflowing, but the local frogs kept the mosquitos at bay. Even so, citronella candles lined the backyard deck, adding their fragrant glow to the festive solar fairy lights. Del wove through the convivial crowd, carrying one last platter of crispy garlic tortilla chips, setting it down between the creamy mango curry and the crunchy lime and chilli beer snacks.

  Del glimpsed her mother in lively conversation with the mayor, while her father manned the barbecue, an aroma like char-grilled prawns and capsicum infusing the balmy air. On the bandstand, a woman on an electric oud was trying to drown out an enthusiastic accordionist, and Del’s temples twinged.

  Her work done, she slipped quietly into an adjoining paddock and down a wide stone stairwell that descended into the earth. The wall console blinked as it recognised her wrist-chip, and she passed through the airlock, entering a sprawling underground chamber. The humid air smelled of fresh oats and loam, and the room was almost entirely dark. Dim red guide-strips marked the floor, and overhead, the ceiling was studded with thousands of pinprick lights.

  Countless rows of two-metre tall racks stretched into the distance, each filled with shallow drawers constructed from corn-starch plastic. A ventilation gap separated each drawer from its neighbour, so that the room resembled a cross between a bakery and library. Large signs were affixed to the end of each row, along with smaller labels on each drawer:

  CRICKETS (ACHETA DOMESTICUS)

  MEALWORMS (TENEBRIO MOLITOR)

  SILKWORMS (BOMBYX MORI)

  Del’s father had been right. They hadn’t needed some fancy prize to realise her mother’s vision; just a few years, a new marketing angle, an environmental emergency, and a gutful of hard work. A faint flush of pride warmed Del as she surveyed the tidy insect farm, her mother’s colourful logo printed on every crate and carton.

  KOUMI’S ORGANIC FOODS: DELICIOUS SUSTAINABLE PROTEIN

  Overcoming people’s aversion to creepy crawlies had been their greatest challenge, until they realised that cultural attitudes weren’t an obstacle, but an asset. If most people hadn’t cared when their corn chips were made from palm oil and the tears of orangutans, why would they care now that their cheese-powder fix was made from sustainably farmed, gluten-free crickets? As long as it looked and tasted like a corn chip, most people didn’t care where it came from.

  Lilana Koumi’s banquet parties had become a thing of local legend. They’d started as sales and networking events for potential clients, but as the business prospered, they’d become an annual victory celebration for the family. And it was true, no one really cared that the tortilla chips were made from cricket flour, or that the mango curry included pepper-roasted termite puree, or that the beer snacks consisted of deep-fried, salt-and-pepper grasshoppers. Everything was delicious, and almost nothing looked like bugs.

  Del walked down the softly lit aisle, the chorus of chirrups washing over her. While most of the crickets’ songs were probably entomological booty-calls, she couldn’t help imagining tha
t some were wistful odes to waving grass and summer rain. She lifted the mesh of a passing drawer and tossed in a few pieces of carrot. The facility had automated feeding systems, but Del still liked to drop them extra snacks.

  The underground chamber was naturally climate-controlled, and the lights were powered by biogas from the nearby cheese factory. And while Del knew it was only her imagination, she sometimes thought the light smelled faintly of cheddar.

  At the far end of the subterranean shed, through a small, plain door, lay Del’s realm. It had been intended as a supply closet, but Del had begged her mother for the cosy space.

  You have a big lab in the warehouse upstairs, Del had said. Let this be mine.

  And so it was.

  Tanks and terrariums and trays and aquariums crammed the small space, brimming with grasses and ferns and multi-legged residents. Giant water bugs paddled lazily, while peacock spiders danced their nervous rhumbas. Charts covered the walls, and boxes of slides were neatly arranged around a scuffed microscope. Stern signs were prominently attached to every insect residence: NOT FOR EATING!

  Del reached into a leafy terrarium and gently lifted out a delicate, caramel-coloured spider about the size of a dime. The ogre-faced spider scurried up Del’s arm and perched on her shoulder, staring at her with limpid black eyes.

  “Hello, Artemis,” Del smiled. “Ready to go stargazing again?”

  Artemis continued to stare, and, not for the first time, Del wondered if deciphering the expression on a tiny arachnid face was like trying to read a poem inked onto a grain of rice.

  While Del’s mother spent much of her time researching the nutritional value of insects, Del had become fascinated by the engineering marvel of termite mounds and the dazzling aerodynamics of dragonflies’ wings. Her mind sprouted with possibilities, imagining how this knowledge might transform her own world. She envisioned gigantic skyscrapers with convection ventilation systems, requiring no artificial heating or cooling, and agile drones flying through dense jungles in urgent search-and-rescue missions.

  Often, as Del peered down her microscope, Artemis would keep her company, ambling thoughtfully across Del’s pages of notes, or hanging upside-down from a potted fern, occasionally waving a leg as though in encouragement. Or perhaps telling her to hurry up so they could go outside.

  Del conducted a routine check of the room’s filters and meshes, double-checking the seals on a tall cylindrical terrarium. Inside, the fire ants were forming another tower, climbing determinedly on top of one another to create a sturdy latticework that resembled an Eiffel Tower of ants. They seemed to do this every time they outgrew their existing home, but Del wondered how high they might go if left unchecked, and if, perhaps, somewhere in that seething lattice, there was a fire ant who longed to reach the clouds.

  She would have to get them a larger tank.

  Back outside, Del found a quiet spot by the jacarandas, the fallen purple blooms already wilting into potpourri. From her perch, Artemis turned her gaze towards the sky.

  Someone coughed from the shadows.

  “Hey, am I interrupting?”

  A teenage boy with light brown skin and an easy smile stood holding a rustic wooden plate. Del returned the smile.

  “Hey, Ziad. Thanks for coming.”

  Ziad’s family ran a busy bakery in town. They were vegetarians, but they came to every banquet, bearing pastries and warm wishes.

  “Well, Dad loves a good party. I saw you were frantically busy, as usual. I thought you might be hungry.”

  He offered the unfamiliar plate, which seemed to bear a delicate sculptural work of contemporary art.

  “Wow,” said Del. “That looks like it belongs in a gallery.”

  Ziad beamed. “It’s a kangaroo grass sable with lemon myrtle ice cream, quandong tart and a sweet potato twill.”

  Just as meat had become a luxury in an increasingly arid world, so too, thirsty crops like rice and wheat were beginning to attract concern. Those with foresight were turning to plants like kangaroo grass and saltbush, which required no irrigation, no synthetic fertilisers and no pesticides. Unfortunately, the palate of the masses was yet to be convinced.

  Del took a bite of the warm, buttery pastry and tried not to salivate as the tangy quandong jam hit her tastebuds.

  “It tastes like a perfect day. I’m sure you’ll have your own patisserie in no time.”

  “Not just a patisserie. It’ll have its own garden, its own farm, with heirloom vegetables and heritage fruits and exciting new varieties of grains and berries and honeys.” He sighed. “Or, at least, that’s the dream.”

  “Maybe this’ll help.” Del bumped her wrist-chip gently against his, and a holographic screen blinked into life between them. An ornate certificate shimmered briefly before being replaced by a page of dense disclaimers. Finally, a large title swooshed into view:

  WELCOME TO CRISPR FOR BEGINNERS.

  PLEASE EDIT GENES RESPONSIBLY.

  Ziad’s wide-eyed expression made him look almost like a human version of Artemis. “You got a CRISPR kit?”

  “We got a CRISPR kit. Don’t get too excited; it’s just the student version with a vial of Drosophila, but we can share the equipment. Now you can make your pest-resistant chives—”

  “And you can make your flame-resistant moths!”

  They grinned at each other as bogong moths fluttered through the sultry air, and Artemis gazed at the stars.

  ***

  Another Ten Years Later

  In the canopy of the scrubland, perched on ten-metre stilts, there nestled a sleek cabin of photovoltaic glass and reclaimed timber. In the eaves, elderly spiders knitted cobwebs, while on the roof, corellas rode the spinning ventilators, cackling uproariously.

  Within the airy sunlit rooms, Del rushed from bench to shelf, flicking items off a holographic list that hovered to her right. She slotted one last carefully sealed terrarium into her trolley case before plucking a pristine flyer from her corkboard.

  THE SOLARIA GRANDE EXHIBITION AND PRIZE

  INNOVATORS, VISIONARIES, INVENTORS, ENTREPRENEURS, ACTIVISTS

  COMING TO TERRARIUM CITY

  Del pressed the flyer to her chest. Terrarium City was only twelve hours away by levitation train. Her mother’s experience at the exhibition had been less than heartening, but her descriptions of the magnificent halls and cosmopolitan crowd had ignited Del’s imagination. And while Del loved her cabin in the canopy, and her job at the local Community Knowledge Centre, she longed to venture beyond the red dust and scribbly gum trees of her home town. Far beyond.

  A quiet pitter-patter announced the arrival of her housemate. A tawny spider the size of a Labrador skittered into the room, clutching a ruffled net of cobweb silk between her forelegs. At the sight of the trolley case, her huge black eyes shone with worried disapproval.

  Del clipped the case shut. “Sorry, Devana. I wish I could bring you with me, but I just know someone’s going to panic and try to squish you.”

  Devana was a distant daughter of Artemis, and the benefactor of Del’s years of tinkering with CRISPR. However, the more Del probed the cryptic genome of insects and arachnids, and the more she studied their complex behaviours, the less inclined she felt to modify them, and the more she longed to understand their strange and alluring worlds.

  Del withdrew a translucent golden pod from a warming cabinet and tossed it to Devana, who snatched it from the air and sank her fangs through the soft gel skin, greedily drinking up the bottlebrush nectar. It had taken Del almost a year to devise this latest formulation, but Devana seemed to find it palatable, and it gave her carapace a healthy sheen.

  “Be good,” said Del. “Make sure the cockatoos don’t chew my house to sawdust while I’m away.”

  “Everything will be here when you get back,” said a voice from the foyer. Del’s mother leaned against the gently curving doorframe, an insulated lunchbox in one hand. “Your father sends his love, and dumplings. Vegetarian.”

  It had been a
wrenching decision for Del, many years ago, when she’d excised meat from her diet, including insect protein. But having spent so much time with her tiny companions, having seen their rich, complex lives filled with as much hope, tragedy and delight as her own, in the end, it had hardly been a decision at all. The choice had wounded her parents, but they understood. Or, at least, they said they did.

  “All the filters have been changed,” said Del. “The cabinet is full of nectar pods. You don’t have to do anything with the incubators, but if the fire-ants start building again—”

  “It’ll be fine. Just enjoy yourself, and remember, the prize doesn’t matter.”

  “I know.” Del tucked the flyer into her jacket, her stomach suddenly fluttering. “It’s just…what if they laugh at me?”

  “Then it’ll be a family tradition. My dearest Del, daughter of mine, they can laugh at us, but they can’t stop us.”

  Del’s mother drew her into a hug, and for a brief moment, it was twenty summers ago, when the days smelled of ripe apricots and jasmine.

  As Del walked down the leafy track away from her cabin, she turned to see Devana standing on the roof, waving her forelegs. Whether in farewell or in the hopes of netting an unwary cockatoo, Del couldn’t be sure, but she waved back.

  ***

  Ziad was already waiting for her at the levitation station, his two storage drones following him obediently. Their sleek cylindrical forms made them look like a pair of patisserie refrigerators moonlighting as henchmen. As Del jogged over with her luggage, Ziad gave her an excited grin.

  “Ready to transform the world with your entomology research?”

  “We’ll see. Ready to make incremental but meaningful change with your climate-resilient crops and nutritionally responsible, mind-blowing desserts?”

  “I have two tower-cases of pastries, puddings and cakes, so whatever happens, I’ll be having a good time.”

  The station was a curving sandstone platform, partially enclosed by lofty timber beams and tinted skylights. Even in the baking summer heat, the angular design of the roof drew cool air in from the surrounding native gardens and exhaled warm air through the ceiling vents. A bell-like tone signalled the arrival of the train, and Del watched with anxious delight as it snaked across the sand.