The Highest Frontier (14 page)

Around the toyroom spliced sixteen different virtual slices of desk, one for each member of his senior staff. Dylan was proud of his staff, and he hated having to break bad news, especially at the height of Highest Frontier: the Tenth Anniversary Campaign for Frontera. Back when he first founded the orbital college, with Gil Wickett’s money, old Witherspoon at Harvard had warned him that fundraising was not the truest mark of a great college president, though certainly the most visible. The true mark was how one faced a crisis, like the one he faced today.

The slice of each staff member’s desk revealed much about its occupant. The tall true-oak desk, larger even than Dylan’s own, belonged to the vice president for finance, Orin Crawford, husband of the dean of students Nora Kwon. Orin taught a seven
A.M.
course on wealth creation, always full. Behind Orin’s desk hung a Persian that Dylan’s father would have envied, beside a large framed cartoon of medieval invaders ramming a castle gate with a giant wiener dog, which aptly depicted Orin’s view of college finance. Orin himself had not yet arrived; he generally managed to arrive last, by just a minute, as if daring Dylan to start without him.

The fullest desk belonged to the dean of faculty, Helen Tejedor, holder of the José Martí Chair of Humane Studies. One could tell the time of year by the height of toyprints and tenure review dossiers that accumulated on Helen’s desk beneath the colonial ax hung on the wall. At present, summer’s end, there lay only a
Times
toyprint topped by Helen’s latest book,
Nueva Cuba: A Postvirtualist Reading of Self and Society.

The most inviting desk belonged to toymaker Zari Valadkhani, who ran the local Toynet and trained the Toy Land teddies. Upon Zari’s desk sat an original Steif teddy bear, surrounded by Phaistos disks and Chinese puzzles. In the early days, the college had nearly folded when they couldn’t recruit Toynet staff out to the spacehab. Zari and her wife, the college physician, had pulled their own two children from elementary school to fill the breach. Then they’d adopted orphans from vanishing islands: the Maldives, the Marshalls, the Andamans. For the college, Zari taught Developmental Arithmetic.

Orin arrived and settled his imposing bulk behind his towering desk. The morning chitchat subsided. Dylan cleared his throat. “We’ll review the budget,
por favor,
then move on to
un problema
in the spacehab.” He hoped this hint got Orin through the accounts swiftly.

Unruffled, Orin reviewed the year’s balance sheet. “Investments are up eight percent, despite the black-hole trading climate.” Orin prided himself on his knack for the market. “Expenses are down, thanks to thoughtful economies shared by all divisions of the college. But income was still not what we’d like to see.” His eyebrows worked up and down as he spoke, and he gazed pointedly at the dean of admissions, Luis Herrera Smith.

Luis adjusted his sunglasses and leaned back on his poolside chair, out recruiting on the West Coast. Everyone had read Luis’s op-ed with their morning coffee; Frontera was “hot” with
Times
reporters, thanks to Luis’s connections. Hired the year before, the fresh-faced snub-nosed Angeleno still looked like he’d wandered off Sunset Boulevard. “We met our quota,” Luis reminded Orin.

Luis had filled the last spot with Mary Dyer, a late applicant from a reclusive West Coast family with a fortune in pearls. The
chica
’s guardian had paid cash for a custom residence with extra fees that covered half a dorm on financial aid. Frontera’s housing policy, of course, was another brainchild of Orin’s. Orin had predicted that parents willing and able to shell out a million a year for a “high frontier” education would come up with another few hundred thousand for custom accommodations, which subsidized more needy applicants. The Kearns-Clark twins, cocaptains of the slanball team, got their castle complete with drum towers and a moat with a drawbridge. Their parents would announce the new Kearns-Clark Library at the next Campaign Brunch. And for the Ramos Kennedy girl, her greenhouse; dear Soli had raised the endowment ten million. Thank goodness the girl had her parents’ brains, an easy admit.

Still, it was unsettling to be so fee-dependent year after year. A college took generations to build a strong donor base; alums had to reach a certain age. A patent, that’s what Frontera needed. One good patent could set up the college forever. Couldn’t those science faculty come up with something?

“Very well, Orin,” Dylan concluded, “thanks so much for the financial update. As you know, our staff retreat this year will focus on admissions. Helen?”

Helen Tejedor folded her hands upon her book. “I’m pleased to report that all positions are filled, and all faculty have returned on time for the start of class.” Helen was implacable; Dylan could always count on her to get all the grades in, to get the tenured faculty back from their summers at the Louvre, and to make them spread their courses throughout the day from seven
A.M.
to midnight. “Two colleagues have earned major awards.” The names flashed in midair above her desk. “Ten million from the Wellcome Trust for Sharon Abaynesh to study plant cognition…”

Dylan smiled through his teeth. The funds were welcome, all right; science was expensive. But from student grade appeals to sit-ins against cruelty to plants, one mess or another involved Abaynesh.

“And the American Association for Political Ideas has named Phil Hamilton their Teacher of the Year.” The one Centrist on the faculty, and students adored him.

“Dee-lighted,” exclaimed Dylan. “Such honors, for our small faculty.” Fifty full-time professors serving eight hundred students; half their courses were still piped in from Earth. This fact was not advertised. “Might this be a good time,” he ventured, “for the faculty to consider … requiring frog seminars?” Every first-year student would be guaranteed one course in a cozy room with a live professor to pat your back. It was Dylan’s cherished dream for his college.

“Six new positions.” Helen’s penetrating eyes commanded attention, concentrated by the blade of the colonial ax. “That’s what it will take.”

Orin shook his head. “Three would do it; I’ve done the math—”

“And the academic division has other urgent needs.” Only a full professor would dare cut Orin in mid-sentence. “Frontera has a growing digital divide,” Helen continued. “We valorize technology as empowering students; yet our discourse disconnects with the economically challenged students in our residence halls. Many lack adequate access to Toynet.”

Zari’s long Iranian brow furrowed, as her fingers twisted a 3D puzzle of fiendish complexity. “Universal access remains our goal,” assured the toymaker. “Today, half our students have private toyrooms; but the Erie and Huron residences have just one toyroom per floor. Frogs have to share classes, or beg access from a senior.”

Orin gave Zari a wide-eyed look. “Do you know what it would cost to outfit the rest? Do you have that in your budget somewhere?”

“Now Orin,” Dylan interposed smoothly, “we all know you’re the conscience of the college; our conscience, Orin, I’ve always said.” A record ten years operating in the black—despite playing out this same scene each September, barely making ends meet after all the divisions made agonizing cuts. Then each October, lo and behold a surplus appeared, at a time when everyone was too busy to spend it. The trustees adored Orin. “Nora,” Dylan asked, “what do you think? Do our dorms need more toyrooms?”

“It would help morale,” Nora admitted. “Myself, I still like the conventional classroom where you can squirt napping kids in the eye, but we’ve got to move with the times. Orin, have you checked the Witherspoon account? Its securities have appreciated, and the interest must get spent on technology.”

Orin nodded sagely at his wife’s suggestion. Much of Frontera business was smoothed by family ties; one couldn’t very well keep a spouse on Earth, thirty-six thousand klicks away. The president’s own marriage to the chaplain offered great symbolism. Parents could rest assured that good old Anglo-Roman morality informed college affairs.

“Besides,” added Nora, “the more virtual outlets, the better. Too much time on their hands, and they’re off molesting elephants. We’ve just had our first complaint.”

Dylan sighed again. Why couldn’t the bros stop with tipping mini-cows; one could always pay off the homesteader. This new generation, with their unspeakable tastes.
“Ahora,”
Dylan hurried on, “I’m afraid we must share some challenging news.” He turned to Quade. “Something we’ve always known could happen—would happen someday.”

The ecoengineer had introduced the miniature elephants, along with the mini-deer and teddy bears, and all the other spacehab flora and fauna. Behind Quade’s desk hung his waders, while the toywall played a mini-wolf nursing cubs. Quade cleared his throat. “We have a wolf introduction plan. Minis, of course. The insurance premium is manageable, and wolves will control deer, just as owls control—”

Dylan clenched his hands beneath his desk. “Some other time.” Wolves indeed; teddy bears were one thing, but a president had to draw the line.

Quade cleared his throat again. “Our hab’s been invaded.”

Heads turned in each wedge of the virtual pie. Zari asked, “What species?”

“Aedes albopictus.”

From his beach chair Luis sat up straight and pulled off his sunglasses.
“No puede ser.”

Nora looked grim and shook her head.

Dylan said quietly, “We always knew this could happen someday, though we hoped not in our lifetimes, but today it has. ‘Tiger mosquito,’ they call it, right, Quade?”

The ecoengineer nodded. “Tiger mocs carry dengue, yellow fever, meningitis, among other things.” From kudzu to Asian carp, long-horned beetles to yellow plague—every terrestrial habitat endured the curse of exotic alien species. The infamous mosquito carried some of the worst diseases humanity had ever known. But spacehabs such as Frontera were planned, seeded, and stocked according to precise planning and maintenance—designed to be free of exotics, never marred by pest or pollution. Indeed, that was Frontera’s claim to fame, perhaps its strongest selling point: No cancer-causing UV, no criminal element, and no mosquitoes.

“How could this happen?” demanded Helen. “How’d they get here?”

Orin leaned forward above his expansive desk. “Probably those unsterile orchids.”

“Of course not,” said Dylan quickly. “We were most careful about that, weren’t we, Nora?”

Nora pursed her lips. “Those plants practically went through a sieve. Who knows how the gnats hitched their ride? Probably in a Red Bull tire.”

Dylan winced. Motor clubs were a perennial bone of contention, though his own Lunar pastime pulled in major gifts from donors.

“Well now,” grinned Orin, “we’ll just have to put up with a few Windsor Bombers buzzing us.”

Dylan smiled through his teeth. “However they got here,
la cuestión ahora
is how to get rid of them.”

Behind Quade, the mini-wolf and her cubs gave way to a clutch of small brown furry animals with pointed ears and snub noses that hung from a branch with their wings folded. “Brown bats will consume more than a thousand mosquitoes per day—”

“I said get rid of them,
de golpe
. How?”

Quade ticked off his fingers. “Drain or treat all water systems, from river to treeholes. Hypercarb insecticide, delivered through our central precipitation. Recombinant biological larvicides, though that takes longer and never fully eliminates the target. If all else fails—” He paused. “Evacuate the spacehab, and put it in deep freeze.” That would mean losing all the farms and woodlands developed since the hab was founded, thirty years before the college. The Mound and the Mount Gilead colonists all displaced; that would do wonders for town-gown.

Orin shifted his bulk meaningfully. “Have you any idea how much these schemes will set us back? How’s your budget, Elephant Man?”

“I’ve identified potential economies,” said Quade without hesitation. “There’s our annual restocking of the Ohio River. We’ve put that on hold.”

“Let’s not be hasty.” The president’s annual Senior Class fish-off and beach party was legendary, essential to inaugurate new alumni. As a child, Dylan himself had fished the original Ohio, before the riverbed dried and the forests died. One summer you could hear the parched branches crashing, night after night. Fire swept through, leaving only blackened trunks, a charcoal desert. Dylan still dreamt of those fires raging down the valley, and he woke choking for air. But the new Frontera, the college he’d built with Gil Wickett’s money, would remain forever pristine, a drop of God’s country restored, safe from fire and drought, untouched by “the divine dice game” of terrestrial climate.

“The Shawnee,” asked Luis. “Won’t they help?” The Shawnee built and owned the spacehab, legally a tribal reservation, but they didn’t care about the fauna so long as they could pack players into the Mound. They let the college run the biosphere, in lieu of rent. It was best not to bother the Shawnee.

The president straightened in his chair. “As Teddy would say, ‘Nine-tenths of wisdom consists of being wise in time.’ Whatever it takes, the Board will help,” he promised. “I’ll head down to Gil’s.”

Everyone looked relieved except Orin, who hated going hat in hand to the Board. But Dylan knew the time had come. A spacehab lived in dread of alien invasion. Gil Wickett would understand.

Zari put down her puzzle, now a solid cube. “Don’t some of our faculty have expertise we could tap?”

The faculty were full of expertise, but they could be unpredictable—and unlike administrators, they couldn’t be fired when their schemes went awry. “Good idea, Zari,” Dylan replied after a slight pause. “Consult the faculty. We need all the help we can get.”

*   *   *

Dylan arrived home at his amyloid-oak study, where Clarence Flynn sat on the ebony amyloid couch before the virtual fireplace. He felt as if he had just extricated himself from the car after an eight-hour Formula One Lunar Grand Prix. With a sigh Dylan sank onto the couch next to Clare. “If I were a drinking man, which I’m not, I sure would have one now.”