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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: In the bucolic Pennsylvania countryside, nestled amongst the Amish farms, an ancient community is quietly constructing low-tech, deadly weapons of bio-warfare, invisible to the casual observer. Phil D'Amato (whose other adventures are detailed in "The Chronology Protection Case" and "The Copyright Notice Case," and in The Silk Code and The Consciousness Plague) gets drawn into this deadly conspiracy when a friend in Lancaster mysteriously dies.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 1997
Fictionwise Release Date: June 2002

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Paul Levinson's Phil D'Amato Series

60 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [57 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [54 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [41 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [157 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [45 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [86 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [112 KB] , hiebook (KML) [134 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [75 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [37 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [48 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [75 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [65 KB]
Words: 13848
Reading time: 39-55 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"...explores the very meaning of technological advance by setting it in the world of the Amish, and making us remember that humans have done genetic engineering since the first animals and plants were domesticated."--Steve Carper, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

Most people think of California, or the midwest, when they think of farm country. I'll take Pennsylvania, and the deep greens on its red earth, any time. Small patches of tomatoes and corn, clothes snapping brightly on a line, and a farmhouse always attached to some corner. The scale is human...

Jenna was in England for a conference, my weekend calendar was clear, so I took Mo up on a visit to Lancaster. Over the GW Bridge, coughing down the Turnpike, over another bridge, down yet another highway stained and pitted then off on a side road where I can roll down my windows and breathe.

Mo and his wife and two girls were good people. He was a rarity for a forensic scientist. Maybe it was the pace of criminal science in this part of the country--lots of the people around here were Amish, and Amish are non-violent--or maybe it was his steady diet of those deep greens that quieted his soul. But Mo had none of the grit, none of the cynicism, that comes to most of us who traverse the territory of the dead and the maimed. No, Mo had an innocence, a delight, in the lights of science and people and their possibilities.

"Phil." He clapped me on the back with one hand and took my bag with another. "Phil, how are you?" his wife Corinne yoo-hooed from inside. "Hi Phil!" his elder daughter Laurie, probably 16 already, chimed in from the window, a quick splash of strawberry blond in a crystal frame.

"Hi--" I started to say, but Mo put my bag on the porch and ushered me towards his car.

"You got here early, good," he said, in that schoolboy conspiratorial whisper I'd heard him go into every time he came across some inviting new avenue of science. ESP, UFOs, Mayan ruins in unexpected places--these were all catnip to Mo. But the power of quiet nature, the hidden wisdom of the farmer, this was his special domain. "A little present I want to pick up for Laurie," he whispered even more, though she was well out of earshot. "And something I want to show you. You too tired for a quick drive?"

"Ah, no, I'm ok--"

"Great, let's go then," he said. "I came across some Amish techniques--well, you'll see for yourself, you're gonna love it."