A Smuggler In Rose

If you've ever crossed a state border with a horse, or taken a cat to another country, you've run into what seem like pretty strange rules.

Same thing with plants. Here where I live, citrus plants are carefully controlled.

The point is to keep outbreaks of disease from impacting the local populations. Horses can conceal some pretty intense maladies, "swamp fever" and others, that would kill if they broke loose.

Same thing with oranges and lemons and so on. There are real reasons for these rules and controls.

And thus, thinking about such things, for this week's story I imagined the Gardens. Far in the future, a grand artificial environment dedicated to safely controlling and propagating plant species betweens the worlds of the settled galaxy.

We'll need something like that, I think. Some way of insuring that begonias and roses and dogwoods, and species from worlds we've never yet seen, can appear in our gardens. Safely, of course.

That said, I also think that, even the far future will require a certain type of flexibility. Even in the Gardens, you just know, dear reader, that there will always be a reason for...

A Smuggler In Rose by M. K. Dreysen

Under the light of two moons, an iron-veined mantis stalked a young dragonfly.

Inside, Rose Bridgette prepared for her trip to the Gardens.

She'd worked her plots for some three years to reach this point. Six years from school, three years from her internship on the Gardens itself. Here under the late-stage orange sun, she'd plied compost and water. Rose had turned, weeded.

Her gardens had only just reached what she believed to be an acceptable stage for visitors.

But most importantly for her trip, the first plants she'd set her eyes on when she'd arrived on Rexa had stood up to her tests.

She gauged them, half a dozen specimens in what she knew now were the primary stages of growth. First year's growth for stem and greenery, second year's for flowering.

Third year for a graceful arch, reaching for the ground and returning approximately twelve hundred earth standard days worth of life to the dirt which birthed it. Even in this stage, the one that had first caught Rose's imagination, her plants held their arch.

Just more than two hand's breadths above the dirt; through decomposition, the woody stems continued for some two more years before the twin-rooted ends let go and allowed the stem to rest at last. If her specimens survived the Garden's tests, Rose believed this feature would be what captured lasting interest.

She cased her first visit's prizes in environmental carrying crates, and then began her other preparations.

Seeds needed packing into the rings at her fingers and ears. Spores went into the false ends of ink cartridges of several pens. Simple objects, each with an aspect that shadowed x-rays and other simple security techniques.

****

One approached the Gardens at one of two ends of the massive cylinder. Those who came for the weekly shows came through the visitor's end.

Those, such as Rose Bridgitte, who sought to deposit candidates for trade and import, came through the Gardener's end.

"How many candidate types?" the import controls agent asked.

"Just the one, with three examples," Rose answered. "A three year lifecycle with an approximate two year decay cycle after that."

"Standard pollination pattern?" the agent asked as she spun the environment crate. "No major eruption?"

As in, did Rose's new candidate throw unusual clusters? Did its pods explode? Did the plants need to be contained under extraordinary conditions? "No, just pollen. The seed pods are heavy enough to drop in place."

The agent pursed her lips, making comments to her recording phone. "Do you have a request for a sponsor?"

An on-board botanist, one who'd take responsibility of Rose's candidate for the Garden's required testing cycle. "Doctor Orthling has agreed to sponsor my candidate."

The agent nodded. "A good choice."

"Thank you. I worked with Rana for my internship."

"Then I'll expect to see you back in another..."

"Probably two years."

"Good luck," the import agent said. "Doc Orthling's staff will take it from here."

"I can go?"

"Just go through the personnel gate and you're fine."

****

The import terminal, at least at the Gardener's entrance, didn't concern themselves overly with security, other than being able to provide proof of membership. This was, after all, the controlled end of the Gardens.

Row after row of laboratories. Thousands of botanists and biologists, carefully prising secrets from stem and spore, leaf and mold. Every living world in the galaxy was of interest to the Gardens and their members.

The lab spaces served the Gardeners for controlled experimentation. One gravity, a yellow sun at just the proper distance, here in the labs Doctor Rana Orthling and her colleagues teased out the life of the galaxy, from plants and molds and fungus, looking for secrets.

Rose's gardens on Rexa served as the first line. Here, the labs served as the second. If her candidates could be successfully monitored throughout their lifecycle, and no major impediments found, they would then be released to the Garden's main section.

"A three year cycle, Rose? Interesting indeed." Rana gave Rose a swift hug. "Tell me about what drew you to this one."

Rose's samples had made their way to the laboratory. She pointed out the arch of the third-year specimen. "The architecture of it. Next year, as it dies off, the little arch will have rooted at that end. I found an entire field of them on my first year survey."

"And you suspect our busy little gardeners will find this feature useful." Rana referred specifically to the Garden's breeders, those who sought interesting traits to expand upon.

Rose nodded. "If they can be encouraged to grow a little, of course."

"Of course. You're headed through to the main area, then? What about the show?"

The main Gardens, the bulk of the cylinder, acre after acre of carefully and not so carefully attended walking garden. A vast open space with its own weather, this was where the plants from all corners of the galaxy met the test of display and variation.

And, in the very middle, the Great Cacophony, where those that had passed all the other tests were turned loose to spread as naturally as they were able.

"Of course. What's this week's show?"

"Cut flowers." The two botanists nodded. "It's too bad, really..."

"With a little luck, our little new world rose will make it for next year."

The two discussed coloration and propagation over tea. And then Rose left to enter the Garden itself.

****

In a technical sense, the main Gardens constituted a high level biological containment facility. But, the whole purpose of the place was to test how well a garden could be built from the plants of all the worlds of a galaxy.

How well they cultivated. How poorly they shared space with others. And, just as importantly, how well they withstood fungus and mold and bacteria.

So the entrance controls on the Gardener's end of the cylinder were in fact loose. "Declarations?"

"None to speak of," Rose answered. And there weren't. "My candidates remain with Doctor Orthling for testing."

And the seeds and spores tucked away into her pockets weren't aimed for the Gardens, anyway. In principle, the trick was getting out.

But every inch of the Garden space was watched and recorded. Because her passage would be noted, Rose kept to the tram. Allowing the computer to classify her as "Gardener, lowest possible risk."

And thus pass through to the visitor's end of the cylinder with no examination at all.

****

The deals the Gardeners had agreed to, where they had agreements, were simple. The Gardeners would test for every known issue with the candidate plants. Disease and propagation risks, mostly.

The fungus and molds and bacteria were also tested; the home-world biologists cried out continuously for more stringent controls here, but the Gardeners pointed out, patiently, over and over again, that trying to control bacteria on plants while allowing the ambulatory biological experiments known as the Nine Species to move freely between worlds was to attempt to hold back the tides with a pocket umbrella.

Then, when a candidate had passed all agreed-upon testing protocols, and spent time in the Gardens proper with no sign of misbehavior, then and only then would the candidates be shown for general purchase.

The rules of the Trade were simple. The approved plants, flowers, and fungus of the Garden shows could be sold to any of the member planets. The plants of the Gardens could also be, with proper paperwork, imported to the controlled zones on many planets.

However, if you were a Gardener working to experiment with the next generation's plants, you had a problem. Rose needed a variety of candidates for release to the Rexa system in particular, from vegetables and mushrooms to fruit trees and decorative plants.

The Rexa Governor's list covered many varieties that the Gardens themselves did not necessarily have on hand, even if they'd been previously tested and released for sale. However vast the Gardens were, the arable space could hold only so many. Even if the particular grape variety Rose needed for the Governor was still available in the Gardens, in practice it had dropped off the inventory list more than a century before.

When she'd been an intern, Rose had more than once gone so far as to attempt the trackless Cacophony, hunting for lost varieties. She could search for a lifetime and not be successful at finding her needed test subjects.

So she, as did all Gardeners at some point, turned to the shadow trade. Thus, the spores and seeds tucked away into the everyday objects on her person.

Rose walked the aisles of the show, watching for the little things. The subtle signs from the Uxerry, a pass of tentacles that the water-born preferred to vocalization. Rose nodded, and signed her willingness to bargain for the fungus spores.

She suspected the Uxerry needed a particular kind of poison, but the rules of the shadow trade were, as they ever had been for cultivators of plants, ironclad: one didn't ask what the customer needed a poisonous material for.

The seeds and other spores she traded away were much more benign. In each case, no money traded hands, only propagation materials. The seeds from the lost grape variety, a handful of thorny berry varieties with similar intent and goals as the Governor's grapes.

And from the Uxerry, a delicate slurry of kelp seeds. Rose acknowledged the difficulty here; she had yet to set up a true saltwater-oriented regime in her own gardens, but these samples would force her to remedy that.

She boarded for passage home from the visitor's end. Here, the Gardener's ethic ruled: don't shit where you eat.

****

"Got everything you needed?" Rana asked via video link.

"Not as much as I hoped for, more than enough to keep me busy for a couple of years."

Rana nodded. Before she'd come home to the Gardens, she'd run her own front line garden on the Bogalinn system. "I miss it, you know?"

"The wildness?"

"Exactly. The reminder that we're never in complete control."

Rose giggled. "I'll remember that the next time a thunderstorm wipes out one of my spaces. Or a wildfire blows through."

Rana Orthling returned the laugh. "Just keep a space open for me when I retire. Oh, and are you going to try for that pond lily you told me of?"

"Among others, with a little luck I'll have three or four candidates for you next time. Take care, Rana."

The two Gardeners exchanged virtual hugs, then returned to their gardens.