Nature's Shift by Brian Stableford Read Free Book Online Page A

Crowthorne a polite farewell, and thanked him warmly for coming. To me, however, the man in charge said: “Rosalind would prefer it if you would remain in the grounds, Mr. Bell.”
    Even her Praetorian Guard referred to her by her given name, and not as “Ms. Usher.”
    That was all that was said—there was no vestige of a threat. I could not imagine that any of the burly men would physically retrain me if I insisted on leaving, even if I didn’t tell them that I intended to come straight back after seeing the professor off. The simple fact was, however, that “Rosalind would prefer it if I would remain in the grounds,” and they could not imagine that anyone in the world would not want to comply with Rosalind’s preferences, today of all days.
    The professor certainly couldn’t imagine it. “It’s perfectly all right, Peter,” he assured me. “I really don’t mind walking on my own. It was good to see you again. We really must make more effort to keep in touch. Occasions like this serve as a salutary reminder of the need to maintain contacts, don’t you think?”
    â€œYes,” I said, “they certainly do.”
    I let him walk away, while I turned back, a prisoner of my error. I shouldn’t have come—but I had, and now I was trapped. Now I had to face up to Rosalind, unarmed.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Having little or no alternative, I did as Rosalind had suggested, and took a stroll around Eden—or, more specifically, its Crystal Palaces. I was by no means the only person taking advantage of Rosalind’s regal invitation, but I no longer felt part of a crowd going with a general flow. None of the other strollers in the great glass houses was waiting for an interview with Rosalind; in that respect, I was alone, and that was exactly how I felt. I was no longer in the company of those who had merely been given the freedom of the grounds and were taking advantage of the fact. I was moving through a parallel reality, in a different direction.
    Relatively few of my fellow mourners were prisoners of the railway timetable, of course. Only the rich have private cars nowadays, but there weren’t very many people who could count themselves intimates of Magdalen and Rosalind who weren’t either rich or employees, and none of the employees had far to go if and when they left the grounds. Those who were prisoners of the timetable had grabbed all the available taxis, or settled for walking to the station, but there were plenty of people in no hurry, who welcomed the opportunity to take a peek at the latest wonders of the Hive of Industry. Under different circumstances, I might have thought the opportunity welcome myself, but as things were, I experienced my freedom to roam as a mere mockery, an ironic inversion of my captivity.
    There was a sense, of course, in which Rosalind’s Crystal Palaces were merely glorified greenhouses, some of them laid out as showcases of past achievements, others dedicated to the careful cultivation of plants that weren’t yet ready, or licensed, for outdoor cultivation. The time was long gone when plants needed much protection from the British weather, which had been well-disciplined by the ingenious wind farms that surrounded the shores of the various islands in the group, reducing transatlantic hurricane-relics to light breezes that the Met Office could virtually steer at will, but experimentation demanded conditions controlled to a much finer degree than practical meteorologists could contrive, and many of the Hive’s products were, in any case, designed for hotter climes than ours. At least half the palaces were tropical.
    The tropical houses were the most popular with certain elements of the remaining crowd, but I was working up enough of a sweat without assistance, so I stuck to the temperate ones. I wasn’t running any risk of being dosed with insidious psychotropics: the flowers producing active scents