The barrage of genetically-engineered Flavr Savr tomatoes began slowly -- as it always did -- making red, wet thumps against the big, heavy Mercedes. The Flavr Savrs arced out of teeming mobs that lined both sides of the brick-paved road, a new street cut at great expense through the rusting and decayed warehouse district at the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. The road had its own exit off the Interstate 880 and lead straight to the equally new and expensive gates of the GenIntron Corporation.
The mobs lining the street surged against the striped crowd barriers as the Mercedes approached; riot-clad policemen stationed along the crowd barriers looked nervously about, at the crowd, at the approaching Mercedes, at themselves. As the police urged the crowds back behind the barriers, their hands lingered near service revolvers, batons, tear gas grenades, radios. The whack-whack of a helicopter's blades echoed in the street.
Those not throwing tomatoes waved signs demanding "No More Franken-Foods," along with scores of other placards calling for an end to genetic engineering, genetic testing, genetically-altered foods, genetically-engineered pharmacueticals and vaccines. Most prominent among the signs were the slick and expensive ones from Hands Off Our Genes, a well-funded operation run by Elliot Sporkin, a biotech demagogue who knew nothing about science and everything about making a profitable career off the fears of a scientifically-illiterate populace.
Inside the Benz, the postcard view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the soft early morning light painting San Francisco all rosy and warm under a clear blue sky quickly faded to an impressionistic red as the tomato barrage crescendoed.
Without consciously thinking about it, Kate Blackwood clicked the windshield wipers on as she scanned the crowd, recognizing many of the same anger- and hate-distorted faces who cursed her day after day.
Just ahead of the Benz, a police escort -- two motorcycle outriders and a van full of riot police added for today's annual meeting -- accelerated toward the heavily-guarded entrance to GenIntron. Kate pressed on the accelerator to keep up with the police escort.
"You put up with this shit every morning?"
"Almost every," she replied.
As the wipers cleared wave after wave of red pulp and juice, Kate glanced at her passenger. A tanned, silver-haired man in his late forties, dressed in the conservative pin-stripes, white shirt and boring rep tie that were the uniform for the top people at First Mercantile American Bank & Trust, Jason Woodruff, president of First Merc and GenIntron's newest board member smiled at her.
Before returning her gaze to the road, Kate gave a disapproving glance to the roll around his waist; she remembered how it had been a flat, hard washboard under her fingers a decade ago, how she had run her hands over it...and downward.
His head was in constant motion as he took in the crowd surrounding them.
"There's one with a big yellow star of David," he said mostly to himself, "it says 'No More Holocausts,' and then..." He squinted. With amazement in his voice, he continued, "...and then 'Death to the Nazi she-wolf."
Woodruff turned to her. "What...who... do they mean?"
"Me, mostly," Kate said equably. "Get used to it."
"Get used to what?" He went back to scanning the crowd.
"Our genetic screening tests," Kate said. "A lot of people think they'll be used for some kind of new eugenics program. You know, define a 'normal' test for the gene sequence, eliminate the rest." She paused to hit the windshield washers. "Dumb shits," she muttered. "That's not what we do. Reality's just too inconvenient for the delusional worlds these people live in."
Still scanning the crowd, Woodruff shook his head. "I guess that's what the placards are about from the Downs' Syndrome group there that seems to want you dead as well."
"You've always been a fast study, Jason."
"Yes, I see the sign clearly now: 'I'm not...not a mistake; I don't...don't need fixing.' That's from the Down's Syndrome group," he said, turning toward her.
"We might actually have had a treatment for Downs by now if the animal liberation lunatics hadn't broken into the labs in our old buildings and liberated the monkeys," Kate said evenly.
Again he shook his head; chants from the crowd filled a moment of silence.
"Well, your animal rights friends are over there," he pointed to the left side of the street. "Then there's the Operation Rescue Contingent," he said pointing to the right. "Let me guess. They're against screening because it might mean an abortion?"
"Bingo," Kate said as she deftly steered the Mercedes around a burning plastic trash can that came rolling out of the crowd.
"They're all here, every nut case. I never imagined there were so many."
Kate glanced over and smiled at the naked astonishment on the banker's face. Welcome to the real-world, she thought as he read the signs aloud.
Woodruff saw the smile on her face and frowned. "You actually enjoy this, don't you?"
"Enjoy what?"
"All..." he waved his arm to take in a street's worth of roiling movement, noise and anger, "...this."
"What makes you think that?" Kate asked.
"You're smiling."
She gave him an even broader smile, full of even white teeth, followed by a low chuckle that might have been confirmation or denial.
Woodruff frowned. Like most bankers, he found ambiguity subversive and spontaneity unsettling. He was more comfortable with hard numbers, conservative business people, clients who deferred to him by virtue of his position as head of America's largest bank. He frowned. Kate was neither, did neither.
Woodruff admitted he had never understood her, not as a lover, not as an entrepreneur, not as the brilliant scientist the rest of the world seemed to think she was. She had, however, been thrilling, exotic really, her shiny black hair that made rainbows in the sunlight, wheat-colored skin that gave her a perpetual all-over tan and just a hint of her Japanese grandmother lifting her eyes ever so slightly at the corners. And the eyes, those striking luminous eyes that shone like white jade. He let his thoughts drift then, remembering the excitement.
And the feeling of ... sin? Yes, that was it. Sin. He felt his groin stir at the memory. She was the only woman he had ever made love to who wasn't completely white like himself. It had been right then, back all those years ago. She was right as a lover but not as a business executive. He could tell that even now she was too full of appetites and desires.
Because of this, he had urged First Merc to avoid financing GenIntron. As happened more often than he'd like, orders from the Japanese zaibatsu, the conglomerate in Tokyo that ultimately owned First Merc, had overruled him. They had given no reason then, but he learned months later the zaibatsu had bought GenIntron as part of a massive program to acquire American biotech and genetic engineering companies.
The acquisition had made Kate Blackwood, the founder and president of GenIntron, an instant near-billionaire. He remained miffed that she refused to put her personal money in the hands of First Merc.
The crowd's screams grew louder, though they were still tolerable inside the custom-altered Mercedes, which had been sealed against poison gas and armored to withstand explosives and most armor-piercing ammunition.
"What are they screaming?" Woodruff asked anxiously as he watched the distance increase between the Mercedes and the police escort.
"Oh, the usual." She smiled faintly.
"And the usual is?" He was annoyed by her flip reply and that smile. That damned enigmatic smile.
"Well, here. Listen for yourself." She reached for the window switch and started to lower his window. An angry roar shot through the crack.
"Don't!" Woodruff snapped in alarm as he ducked away from the barely opened window.
Discrete words were still hard to distinguish above the rumble, but "killer bitch!" seemed to come through loudest.
Kate laughed, then she closed his window against the sound.
"I don't understand," he said. "They hate you...and you actually like that."
"Jason," she said evenly, "these are the most marginal of the marginal, extremists who understand nothing but fictional nightmares. Considering all that, I'd check myself in for some heavy-duty electroshock therapy if they liked me."
"I..." Woodruff hesitated, looking from her to the crowd and back. "Yeah, right."
They drove in silence as the GenIntron gates grew closer. Flavr Savrs continued to pelt the Mercedes.
Another company had gene-engineered that long-lasting tomato. Kate marveled at how it had become the rallying cry for all that might, in some lunatic's nightmares, go wrong with genetic engineering.
"Look at them all," she muttered, "an entire generation of techno-Luddites." She shook her head. "Two hundred years ago, they'd all have been trying to jam little wooden shoes into steam engines and gears."
Woodruff looked at her tensely, his anxiety growing over the increasingly hostile crowd, their increasing noise, the threatening way they seemed about to overwhelm the crowd barrier, and especially the increasing distance between the Benz and the police escort. As he gazed uneasily out the window, he realized how angry Kate's composure made him. He was thankful today was her last day as president. There was no way he was going to do business with her.
Kate pressed down on the accelerator, intending to close the distance with the police escort. All in all, it was a morning much like many others. She tuned them all out, concentrating on the keynote speech she had to give at GenIntron's annual meeting later in the morning.
It would be her last day at the company she had founded. She would leave it as one of the richest women in the world, but the circumstances that had forced the sale left her filled with ambiguity and anger. This, too, diverted her attention.
If she had not been distracted, she might have noticed the thicker crowds sooner, might have sensed the subtle differences in the crowd on this day, the presence of new faces, those who stood apart from the true believers in the mob. She might have noticed the patches of disturbed pavement.
But she didn't notice. The president of GenIntron, leading manufacturer of genetic testing kits and new treatments for genetically-related diseases, was on autopilot.
Suddenly a piercing cry shot through the crowds lining the right side of the street. Kate looked over just in time to see a blood-red, jelly-like blob fly out from the midst of the Operation Rescue members, shedding drips as it flew. It slammed against the windshield, leaving a broad slimy smear before the powerful wipers batted it off the windshield and into the animal liberation protesters on the other side of the street.
"What the hell was that? It looked like a fucking fetus."
"It was," Kate said as she hit the washers again to clear the smear from the windshield.
"It was?" Woodruff's voice had edged higher, heading toward hysteria.
"Fetal pig," Kate said matter of factly. "Like those from high school. The Operation Rescue people buy them by the barrel...for effect."
"It looked so...human."
"That's the point," Kate said. "It's -- "
Like an overstressed levee giving way, the crowd barriers on the left side of the street collapsed. Infuriated animal rights protesters, agitated by the fetal pig, stormed toward the Operation Rescue contingent.
It was like someone had thrown an unseen switch; instants later a guttural cry erupted from both sides of the street as protesters of every stripe overwhelmed the under-guarded barricades and poured into the streets, their pent-up emotions loosed by their motion.
"Uh oh," Kate said as the crowd closed in on them. She pressed the accelerator to get closer to the police van. The Mercedes quickly closed the gap, seconds later only feet behind it.
On the right, the animal rights crowd drew first blood with the Operation Rescue members. Kate's breath caught in her throat as she saw the young children and babies that seemed a fixture at Operation Rescue protests. She was disgusted by how those people exploited children, put them in danger.
Kate's thoughts quickly returned to her own survival as the brunt of the crowd bore down on her Mercedes. The police escort slowed to a crawl as the crowd pressed closer.
They were rolling slowly toward the GenIntron gate, close enough now for her to be blinded by the television camera lights behind the GenIntron fence.
She didn't see the first pavement brick as it tracked a lazy ballistic curve out of the crowd.
The impact focused her attention.
"Whoa! We've got killer tomatoes now," Kate said as she stared past the neatly symmetrical spider web that spread across the windshield just under the rear-view mirror.
"Oh God!," Woodruff cried out instants later as the Mercedes shuddered beneath a hailstorm of pavement bricks. He flinched away from his window as bricks smashed into it. Outside a cry of jubilation swept through the mob as they saw him jerk his head away.
"Don't let them see you react," Kate said evenly. "It just encourages them."
"Don't...what?" He gaped at her slack-jawed. "You...you're a fucking lunatic!"
Through the cracks in the bulletproof windshield, they saw the motorcycle officer wobble as a brick slammed into the small of his back. He twisted the throttle and accelerated, trying to close the remaining twenty or so yards to the GenIntron gate. He nearly made it before a brick found the side of his helmet, hammered him out of the saddle and dropped him to the pavement.
Kate held her breath for a beat. The policeman lay still and bleeding; instants later, as if smelling the first real blood, the mob uttered a guttural animal moan and surged forward for the kill.
Kate kept the Mercedes just inches behind the police van as it accelerated toward the fallen officer. As soon as the windowless van stopped, SWAT-equipped policemen sprang from its doors and began pelting the mob with tear gas.
At almost the same instant, GenIntron security and riot-clad reinforcements hired for the annual meeting moved forward, battering the edges of the mob with batons. Up ahead, television news crews, hungry for good bang-bang for the six-o'clock news, rolled their tape.
In just seconds, the mob surrounded the Mercedes and its police escort, cutting them all off from the gate. Ahead of them, reinforcements struggled to keep protesters from shoving their way past the now-open gate.
The protesters surrounding the Mercedes began rocking it with a rhythmic side-to-side motion. Kate had seen videotapes of other mobs. Rock-a-bye Mercedes, turn it over and burn it.
"Jesus Kate, do something. Don't just sit here, floor it and get us through the fucking gate!"
"Bad move," Kate replied.
"But they're trying to kill us!" His voice quivered, partly from the violent rocking, mostly from fear. "It's self defense," he insisted hysterically.
Kate shook her head. "See those TV cameras? When they roll the edited footage, you won't see bricks and bleeding cops. You'll see a big fucking Mercedes mowing down innocent community activists."
"But-- "
"Just hold your fucking water, Jason. Try not to shit your pants, okay?"
Pale now and perspiring heavily, the fight seemed to drain from him; the banker slumped in his seat.
Kate sat calmly and watched as SWAT members dragged the motorcyclist into the van and took refuge against the mob. She was more concerned for the van than for her Mercedes. Three years ago, she had watched the big Benz retrofitted with armor. It would take more than this mob had to breach its defenses.
Instead of fear, Kate felt anger. Anger at the senseless vandalism and greater anger over being wrong. That was the worst.
Three years ago, the GenIntron board of directors had hired a platoon of close-cropped security experts with murky government ties who warned her that all around the world previously harmless eccentrics were mutating into lethal lunatics who targeted corporate executives in general, those heading gene-engineering companies in particular.
She had laughed at them then and, in her usual direct manner, told them they were full of whatever it was that usually made spies unwelcome guests at the dinner table. She didn't like spies. She didn't like guns. She didn't like people whose business it was to make you feel paranoid and charge you high fees for the privilege.
Despite that, she had reluctantly accepted the huge Mercedes but had firmly rejected the armed and specially trained chauffeur/bodyguard. She was angry now at being wrong about that decision. Being wrong left you vulnerable to your enemies. She had made a career at being right...and damn near invulnerable.
As the crowd rocked both vehicles more and more violently, the solution came to Kate; she slipped the Mercedes into gear and released the brake. The huge car, with the overpowered engine standard on cars designed to outrun terrorists, lumbered forward. The movement destroyed the mob's rhythm. She tapped the accelerator and collided softly with the police van. It moved forward slowly, surprising those who were trying to overturn it.
The Mercedes pushed the van forward steadily, slowly.
That night, the TV video showed
protesters making a show of lying down in front of the van, then
scrambling away at the last second. The toothy blond anchorwoman
seemed upset that both the Mercedes and the police van reached
the safety of the GenIntron compound, robbing her of a bigger
story that might have gotten her national exposure and a ticket
to a larger market. The motorcycle cop, she reported with barely
disguised disappointment, was recovering.