Nature's Shift by Brian Stableford

Sacontalá . She was also the proud owner of several paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe.
    As an honored visitor to Eden, I had been required to study all those specimens of peculiar eroticism, not only in Rosalind’s company but in Magadalen’s—and, of course, Rowland’s. It had not been an entirely comfortable series of experiences.
    â€œFlowers evolved in order to be beautiful,” Rosalind had once told me, “and not merely to be beautiful, but to be sensual. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that because natural selection designed them to appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of insects, any appeal they make to human aesthetics is mere coincidence. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not to mention the organs of touch, hearing, taste and smell, but in terms of what our sense organs report to us, and how that information is neurologically translated into sensation and experience, all complex organisms have a great deal more in common than was once imagined. You’re a geneticist, so you’re well enough aware of the degree of kinship that exists between all organisms.”
    â€œSome insects are beautiful too,” I remembered pointing out, “but some very definitely aren’t.”
    â€œAnd some are both,” Rowland had chipped in. “Butterflies, dragonflies and the like all start off as ugly larvae.”
    â€œWhich means,” Rosalind had observed, “that beauty is attainable, even from ugly raw material, if only you have the trick of it. That what the real mission of genetic engineering is: to produce beauty…including, and perhaps especially, the beauty that is the true soul of erotic attraction, and stands in desperate need of purification.”
    Given that kind of mind-set on the part of the genius of the place, it’s hardly surprising that the Crystal Palaces of Eden were filled with flowers that were truly beautiful, not merely in terms of their color, design and scent but in terms of the way they felt to the touch: their softness and their delicacy. It wasn’t the case that every bed of flowers was an orgy of sorts, but it was impossible not to take the suggestion that they might be: that botanical debauchery was not only possible, but potentially capable of surpassing any other kind. There were flowers whose petals were colored in such a way as to resemble child-like faces, and flowers designed to recall other parts of the human anatomy. Natural selection had, of course, got there long before Rosalind, in the artistry of orchids, but natural selection had always been an amateur, and had always been slow in its endeavors. Rosalind was a professional, and lightning fast by comparison.
    Not only did the time pass quickly as I wandered, lonely as a cloud, through hosts of every kind of flower under the sun, but I actually began to enjoy myself, once I had settled my mind to absorption in my surroundings and shoved anxiety aside, pro tempore .
    What, after all, did I have to worry about? Rosalind would ask me about Rowland; I would explain, apologetically, that I hadn’t heard from him; end of story. She wouldn’t want to spin things out any longer than I did, today of all days. All she wanted was to ask a question, and it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have the ghost of an answer. I wouldn’t even mention the inconvenience that she’d caused me; I’d simply take the next available train to Bristol, and stay overnight there while awaiting the first northbound train in the morning. It was no big deal.
    There is something essentially restful about the beauty of temperate flowers, and the quiet hum of friendly insects. Perhaps there was also a little something in the air of the Palaces, in spite of the bell-jars—something tranquilizing, if not actually euphoric.
    It was not until five to four that I presented myself at the main door of the pyramid, and explained to the concierge that I had an