Botanicaust

crystal jewelry winked flashes of color as he checked off items on his gamma pad. He didn ’ t bother to look up. “ You ’ ve been spending all your energy on the new captives. We can ’ t keep feeding all these prisoners. ”
    Guilt rose over Tula in a wave. “ Rhomy is ready for conversion. She showed me a drawing of herself as a convert the other day. ” Opening her gamma pad, she started filling in conversion forms for the girl.
    “ If you say so. ” Vitus rose. “ I have a Board meeting now, Sertularia. If you ’ ll excuse me. ”
    Tula frowned. Vitus hadn ’ t used her given name since he ’ d first taken the position as the Conversion Department Supervisor and learned she was a convert. “ You ’ ll approve it? You never give in to a conversion so easily. ”
    “ Just get them off my roster. ”
    A moment of hesitation might mean the end for the two children. “ I ’ ll get both girls into gene therapy this afternoon. ” She would have to give them a little more attention during their Integration sessions, but Albert would help her.
    “ Make sure you get me the forms. ” His words seemed like an afterthought as he pushed past her and out the door. She wondered what the Board meeting was about to have him so distracted.
    As long as the girls converted, she didn ’ t care. She wasn ’ t quite sure they trusted her enough to lie still for the gene therapy, yet. Conversion would be so much easier if sedatives didn ’ t interfere with the cellular uptake of chloroplasts. Then they wouldn ’ t have to feed the prisoners so much, and maybe Vitus would get off her back.
    But that was only a dream. She sighed and pulled up her bank balance on her gamma pad. The only way to get through to these girls would be their stomachs. She ’ d better take a trip to the candy maker. But first to get the forms files before Vitus changed his mind.
    As she filled out the telomerase acquisition forms, the dispatcher in Burn buzzed her com . An emergency on the Reaches required a genetic psychiatrist immediately. She sighed and pressed her tired eyes with finger and thumb. “ Can ’ t you get Patris out there? ”
    “ He says he ’ s in the middle of a tricky Integration session. Someone needs to get out there fast. The Team Leader is threatening to put Bats down if things get any worse. ”
    Bats was one of Tula ’ s first adolescent converts six years ago. He would be eighteen, now. If the Team Leader was threatening extermination, things must be bad. “ Is this Bats ’ first Burn run? ”
    “ He ’ s been at it a month. But this is his first Encounter. I ’ ll let them know you ’ re on your way. ”
    Tula hurried to the skimmer yard, leaving the shadow of the Liebert building behind. The solid, concrete structure housed the offices of the Board and rose above the underground labs of the Conversion Department like a fortress. The other office buildings along the three-block walk to the skimmer yard were single-story, extruded nuvoplast, designed to allow sunlight in at every angle. Clear roofs housed a photovoltaic bacterial layer between two nuvoplast sheets, filtering out ultraviolet light and converting it to power the city. One-way, reflective privacy screens bounced sunlight back onto the paved street.
    Nearby, an open end in the fence around the city swarmed with construction crews erecting a new residential expansion. Too low to keep out cannibals, the fence served to prevent tumbleweeds from entering and seeding the city with toxic plant material. The five-mile buffer of the Burn, plus the daily patrols, kept the cannibals in the Reaches at bay.
    The full spectrum daylight tickled Tula ’ s skin. She spent so much time in the underground lab or under glass in the Gardens, any UV exposure made her skin itch immediately.
    Rubbing the pink scar on her arm, she thought about Bats. Even long-time converts sometimes saw something that reminded them of their past, and they regressed into pre-conversion mentality. Reversion was the technical term. Some attacked fellow Haldanians, some collapsed into tears or catatonic stupors, and others tried to escape into the desert. If she couldn ’ t talk Bats through this, he ’ d have to be put down, and she didn ’ t want that. But they couldn ’ t have converts relapsing to cannibalism, either.
    At the yard, she turned a wary eye on the sand skimmer before she signed for it. “ Are you sure this thing will get me there and back? ” she asked the