The Bryce Connection by Blaze Ward

Author:Blaze Ward [Ward, Blaze]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64470-182-9
Publisher: Knotted Road Press

The second floor conference room Rainier entered was specifically set up to have the best view of the research forest on the south side of the campus. Ancient, heirloom varieties of things that could be used as a source, if you needed to start from a known point when breeding outwards.

Humans had once used all manner of technologies to modify plants and animals, back before they understood the risks. A wheat crop that was immune to pesticides and only digestible to ninety percent of people was still likely to poison a vast swath of humanity. Ten percent of a trillion humans was a big number.

And using viruses to inject new genes into things might have been brilliant technical engineering, but no squid ever bred with a cow. And the chances of the outcomes being entirely beneficial were low.

Thus, the University of Uelkal was an agronomy institute. Back to the old days of breeding by carefully selecting for traits on children plants, rather than playing God and hoping for the best when rolling the dice. Using that forest of carefully-selected bushes and trees across the road.

Some fool always tried something exciting, but with ten thousand worlds to inhabit, there were always going to be successes and failures. Fortunately, the stupidity of that approach was also illegal on most worlds, and not just ostracized by reputable scientists.

Rainier channeled her inner anger at sociopathic botanists, the narcissists with God complexes, and focused all that loathing on this room she hated and all it stood for, rather than the two men inhabiting it. Too much money had been spent here, on expensive carpets, pictures and art, and a table made from a single slab of wood, two meters wide and five long.

Just decorating this space three years ago had been enough cash that the university could have endowed a chair of botany for a decade, or provided a dozen full scholarships to bright kids. Money wasted on pretty things, rather than useful.

But she understood the need. MacWilliam, the university president, was forever caught up in the hustle, calling old graduates and pleading for money, selling naming rights to anything and everything he could. Whatever would bring in the drachmas to keep this institute afloat.

Rainier half-expected to see corporate logos appear on the sides of her Erlenmeyer flasks, one of these days. She didn’t dare suggest it aloud. MacWilliam might do it.

She smiled at the university president as he rose, as politely as she could, even if friendly might be a bit too far today. MacWilliam Harvison was a tall, buff man, with broad shoulders, a flat stomach, and a ready smile. He was a genial fellow, if a bit shallow. Rainier had always found him something of a smarmy con man, but at least he was on their side, an administrator forever hustling others to keep the school going.

She supposed he was even handsome, if you were into that sort of thing. Happily, she and Emma had been married long before the man came along, so he’d never tried to work his charms on her.

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