Winter Journeys

(Author's note: Genetic engineering in food production and the controversy surrounding it are real. The specific project and organization mentioned in this chapter are fictional.)

Chapter 4 Grace's Secret Garden

Grace walked down the corridor of the small, rural North Carolina airport. Jean Cavalo was supposed to meet her, but of course she had to wait behind the security gate. At the moment, Grace was alone.

Grace savored that. Grace always liked to think of herself as the lone rebel, but the fact of the matter was that whenever things got too hot, she could always retreat to the safety of her parents' home. No matter how frustrated she got with her mother's drinking or father's evasions, she had food to eat, and clothes and shelter. And when the tension got too much, she had a second home at the Girardi's. Even when she visited North Carolina before, she had been with Luke.

Now she was by herself. She was estranged from both the Girardis and her own parents. Even God was silent. She would fail or succeed on her own.

And there was another, less intimidating advantage to being here. Back in Arcadia, nearly everybody knew that she had lost her virginity, and it seemed to affect her relationships with everybody. Here, nobody needed to know, or care.

"Hello, Grace," said Jean Cavalo. "Let me help you with that second suitcase."

"Thank you, Mrs. Cavalo."

"Last summer you called me Aunt Jean."

"I can't work for a couple and call them Aunt and Uncle." One of Joan's witticisms came to mind. "It would be like incest."

The older woman laughed. "Jean and Jonathan, then. Diana used our first names, and so can you."

The two emerged from the airport building, and Grace was surprised by the nippiness in the air. But after all, this was December, and North Carolina wasn't that much further south than Maryland. She had just irrationally expected the same hot climate she had experienced last summer. Fortunately she had packed warm clothes.

After getting in the Cavalos' car, Grace asked "What's new? Is Diana still there?" The question was for appearance's sake. She knew that the efficient and attractive farm girl had been one of God's guises, and simply ceased to exist once God no longer had need of that personality. But Grace wasn't supposed to know that, and she doubted that the Cavalos had ever known the truth.

Jean shrugged. "No. Just announced one day that she needed to move on, and did. But she left things in remarkably fine order."

That was probably the best way for God to fade out -- have his character feign wanderlust. It occurred to Grace that it would be difficult for God to play a stranger here, in a sparsely populated neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else.

"Anything else?"

"We're taking part in a new project. Did Jonathan tell you that we donate to a Famine Relief organization overseas?"

"Yes." That was one of the things that impressed Grace enough to take a job with them.

"Some scientists have invented a new genetically engineered form of wheat, which will grow off-season, and might be helpful in the Third World. Do you know about genetically engineering?"

"I've had AP biology this year. There's a lot of controversy about G.E. food, particularly in Europe. They say it hasn't been tested enough, and might have hidden flaws." Grace really had no opinion about G.E. food herself. Some of her anarchist friends were automatically suspicious of Big Science's links with Big Business, but Grace knew too many honest scientific types -- Luke, Glynis, Ms. Lischak -- to share that hostility.

"Europe can afford niceties. But in the Third World, it might make the difference between life and death. So we've volunteered to grow some on our farm and send samples for testing. If it DOES fail, lives will not be at stake. If it succeeds, it can be used abroad with some confidence."

It seemed to make sense. "I'd like to see it."

"I'll show it to you, once you settle in."

Eventually they reached the farm, and Grace took her suitcases up to the guestroom that she had shared with Diana. Bonnie wasn't due to come until tomorrow; until then Grace had it to herself. But she couldn't stay up here at the moment; she had promised to look at the G.E. wheat with Mrs. Cavalo, and so she came downstairs as soon as she could.

Jean Cavalo was standing in the back yard, holding two horses by the reins. Grace hoisted herself onto one of the animal's backs and took the reins, while her boss mounted the other. Grace marveled at the way the powerful animal meekly submitted to her direction. If she were a horse, she would be tempted to rebel against the small and arrogant human species, and throw them from her back. Of course, as a rider, she hoped that such a thought never occurred to her mount.

"The G.E. must be a long ways out, if we need to ride there." she guessed, following her boss's animal.

"Yes, we want to avoid having it cross-pollinate with ordinary wheat." They took a dirt path that seemed to be designed as both a rudimentary road and a boundary between fields. Grace noticed several clumps of horse droppings on the path. Before last summer they would have just disgusted her; now she could just deduce, Sherlock Holmes style, that rides out to the G.E. patch were frequent.

The Cavalos must be used to refuting criticisms of their experiment, because Mrs. Cavalo immediately went back to that subject. "I understand people being afraid of new developments, but all developments were new once. See that cow? Cows didn't always have udders like that. They were bred for producing milk, and big udders were the result. Or take the horses that we're riding. I believe that modern horses are just a few centuries old, the results of intensive breeding. Two thousand years ago they were just ponies. In the Bible they weren't considered important; people rode donkeys, and measured wealth by how many of them and oxen and camels they owned."

"That's interesting. I studied Biblical Hebrew for my bat mitzvah, and I don't think I ever learned the word for 'horse'. You don't need to convince me, Jean. I was just arguing because, well, I like arguing."

Jean laughed. "Yeah, Cousin Helen warned me. There's the special wheat field," she said, pointing.

Grace looked. If she was expecting to see obvious mutants like the X-Men, she was disappointed. What she saw was simply one more field of wavy grain, surrounded by patches of bare earth.

But not quite. "The plants grow too close together, and have to be thinned out occasionally," Jean commented. "The geneticists are working on that, but in the meantime the stalks have to be cultivated by hand."

"That's a big drawback, isn't it?"

"Yes, but in an overpopulated country there isn't likely to be a shortage of labor. The problem is tending it here."

Grace said in the saddle, looking at the field with an odd sense of deja-vu. When she was little her parents used to bring home all the traditional books girls were supposed to like, but Grace had rejected most of them, because the heroines were too goody-good and girly. But there had been one book that she liked: the Secret Garden, about a temperamental girl who learned patience while tending a garden of her own.

The G.E. wheat field was going to be Grace's own Secret Garden.

TBC