Task Force E: The Reservation by Jason Rubis

Author:Jason Rubis [Rubis, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2024-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

The back room in the House which served as Edmund Thierry’s quarters and workspace reminded Rhiannon of nothing so much as a colossal greenhouse, with condensation-glazed glass walls whose thickness she assumed to be for something more than heat conservation. Here Stone’s assistant spent whatever time left over from his other duties working on his true passion: cryptobotany.

The greenhouse’s contents represented only a fraction of New Eden’s work; cryptobotany was Thierry’s obsession, not Stone’s, but the older man was willing to give his majordomo some wiggle room to pursue his private interests. Thierry had been hired as an administrator, but over time managed to move up considerably. The few times Stone had directly brought up Thierry in Rhi’s presence, it had been in the company of words like “brilliant” and “genius.” Spending much of her adult life in various graduate programs had left Rhi with a healthy skepticism about “geniuses,” but there wasn’t much doubt the Frenchman was one of a kind.

Rhi and Getz moved slowly into the greenhouse, coughing a little at the mingled floral scents that filled the air, already perspiring under a blanket of intense, humid heat. Underlying these was a pervasive reek of decay, so strong it was difficult to tell if it were from vegetation or meat. The plants that filled the greenhouse ranged from pocket-sized succulents and oddly-shaped fungi to an actual tree, nearly twenty feet tall with strangely curving limbs that put Rhi in mind of the kraken in the Central Lake. She gave it a wide berth, whereas Getz gave it a quick, idle kick in passing. The tree’s limbs immediately went into flailing spasms, proving the resemblance she saw to a kraken was no idle fancy.

“I will thank you, Mr. Getz, not to tease my subjects,” a voice said. Thierry appeared from behind the tree, frowning with his hands thrust in the pockets of his lab coat. He was slender, with dark blonde hair pulled back in a dangling ponytail and round glasses whose lenses were heavily marked with thumbprints. Despite his slovenly habits of dress, Rhi had always found him remarkably handsome, with that indefinable air of sophistication many Europeans had. But within a month of their first meeting, she was thoroughly over him. Thierry was seldom actually unpleasant and never unprofessional, but he had a way of looking at you that made you think he was comparing you to his favorite specimen of Dionaea muscipula, and finding you distinctly on the losing end of the spectrum.

“Most of these plants are from tropical regions,” Thierry went on, touching the tree’s scaly trunk as though to comfort it. “Cultivating them here in Alaska has posed some very difficult challenges. They are used to far more temperate climates. We already lost the upas, as you know.”

Rhi glanced at Getz. The upas was a tree in Thierry’s collection that, technically, shouldn’t have been considered a botanical cryptid at all. It wasn’t the subject of travelers’ tales or scientific reports, at least not for the last three hundred years.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.