The Highest Frontier (24 page)

“No, I’m self taught. On Toynet.”

“Did you always like to cook?”

“Always had to. It was something I could do,” he added cryptically.

“You’re good with the hammer too.”

“I made furniture. Mostly pine, I never worked carb before. The nails don’t set as well. Hey, it’s good you were there for Homefair. You’re almost a doctor.”

She smiled, her eyes briefly closed. “I really want to breed orchids.”

“Really? An orchid breeder for president.”

“I’ll never be president.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t speak in public.”

“I never noticed.”

That was true, she thought. She never had the least trouble talking with him. “What do you want to be?”

“A doctor, of course. To fix things my people have.”

“Like what?”

“We’re all sensitive to light. Blind by age thirty.” The UV through the lost ozone. “My mother died of melanoma soon after I was born.”

“I see.” She swallowed hard.

“After that, they decided to keep me indoors. I was the one who’d get to see for an extra decade.” Tom shrugged. “In the daytime, I looked after babies, cooked meals, built furniture. I went out only at night, under the stars.”

Jenny kept rinsing one plate over.

“I never went to school, but one day the social worker brought me a solar tablet. I hid it on the roof to recharge. Then, at night, when everyone was asleep, I surfed Toynet until the charge ran down.”

“So that’s where you learned French cooking.”

“And everything else. News, history, medicine. Chemistry was my favorite subject, all the colored atoms. But the only chemistry I could do at home was cooking. Eggs turning white as the proteins came apart—that was
chulo
.”

She smiled. “Did you get the molecule of the day?”

“I think it’s anthocyanin. The doublet shifts in the NMR.”

She put the plate in the drain board and leaned her elbows on the counter. “So how’d you get to Frontera?”

“They told me that on my sixteenth birthday I’d have to go outside. My father was blind by then, and we all had to earn a living.” He leaned his chin on his hands. “The night before my birthday, I left home. Walked by moonlight, all the way to town. The social worker took me to the gene clinic for treatments, until the state funds ran out. Then I heard about Frontera. The ‘solar’ light sources exclude UV.”

“That’s right, the light is all artificial.” No way to get a tan.

“So here I am.”

“And your family?”

“They wouldn’t see me again.” He looked at her curiously. “What about you? You came here for the adventure? A step toward Jupiter?”

“After Jordi drowned, my head was messed up. I couldn’t go to Harvard; too close to Boston Harbor. I thought Frontera was as far from drowning as you could get.”

Tom nodded.

“But today, I just found out the whole hab could drown. If the power goes out, it will flood two meters deep.” She swallowed. “I know it sounds silly, but I feel as if I could drown in my sleep. It’s a scary way to die.”

Tom thought this over. “I could sleep downstairs and look out for you.” Then he shook his head. “Sorry, just a dumb idea.”

Jenny smiled. “I could adopt you as my brother.”

He laughed, just how Paul Newman would laugh. “You could at that. Say, I know you’re all busy but what time do you go to the dining hall?”

She said carefully, “I usually go somewhere quiet.” So as not to insult the food that all could afford.

“There’s Lazza’s Diner in Mount Gilead. We could go there.”

The two of them, away from it all. Jenny felt warm all over.

18

Sunday morning at All Saints Church, the campus chapel, Jenny brought flowers for the communion table, white dendrobiums nestled with maidenhair ferns. The stained-glass windows depicted lives of the saints: St. Peter with the key, St. Francis, St. Clare. The hues were shaded in Renaissance style, yet the borders looked decidedly contemporary, a row of jigsaw pieces. Jenny wondered who’d designed them. Then she thought about Tom the night before, and at Homefair, how he’d looked on the roof. She had dreamt of him all night, and she couldn’t stop thinking of him.

“Remember, God’s answer to the problem of evil is compassion.” Father Clare’s sermon drew to a close. “God is good, and all-powerful, and He and She will deal with evil. Our task is to love God and love our neighbor. Through our love, the barriers that divide us will crumble; and our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace.

“But what is love? Love is patient and kind. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

“Where is love? Colonists, you came up here leaving loved ones behind, farther than any immigrants before left theirs. If love feels distant now, as distant as Earth, keep looking here. Students, the toys of Wickett Hall remind you of your loving parents throughout childhood. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see only a blur in the glass, a puzzle, like a funhouse mirror. But then, when perfection comes, we shall see face-to-face.

“Above all, hope. ‘For in hope are we saved,’ through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Jenny recalled a funhouse mirror, how it had stretched her four-year-old arms, hobbled her feet, and doubled her nose. So long ago. With a start she realized that the students, faculty, and about an equal number of colonists in power bands were all up from their seats and passing through the pews. So Mount Gilead wasn’t all Firmament. She waited in her seat during the organ postlude.

When the others had left, she asked Father Clare about Flood Awareness Day.

The chaplain regarded her reflectively. “Did one of the staff suggest this?”

“No, but my cottage has a leak. It must sit right on top of a crack in the substratum.”

“I see, Jenny. I’m so sorry. Has Maintenance addressed your problem?”

“Yes, but it could happen anywhere, and nobody thinks about it.” Father Clare seemed oddly reluctant, Jenny thought; why? “We just want people to know. Kendall will hire a band, and demonstrate lifeboats in the moat.”

The chaplain nodded. “So long as it’s all students, sure, you can do it. Just fill out the form.”

Jenny blinked through the Toynet form, checking off the items they’d need, including Maintenance support; perhaps Mr. Tharp would help. As she finished, it occurred to her to dip into the Toynet archive about the church. To her surprise, she read that Father Clare himself had designed the windows. She took a closer look, admiring the St. Francis with his hand outstretched holding a bird, alongside St. Clare in her black robe. Something about St. Francis caught her eye. The face; the features were definitely Uncle Dylan.

As soon as she stepped outside, squinting in the filtered sun, a flurry of delayed campus memos popped up.

“I want the campus to know,” began Fritz Hoffman indignantly, “that we had
nada
to do with the Ferrari car compacted into an F sign on their roof last night. The Red Bulls condemn all such acts of vandalism—”

Blink.

Rob LaSalle appeared, with a self-satisfied smirk. “Of course, the Bulls will say they had nothing to do with this act of hooliganism, as if they didn’t order their pledges to wreck one of our cars every fall for the past ten years. As usual, the Ferrari men forgive our brothers in Christian humility—”

Blink, and blink to the rest of them. She had just two hours to get some Life done before the Begonia Garden Club reception. The Life articles were the kind where every sentence had to be read twice, then a third time after getting through the paragraph. In the first article, certain groups of
Arabidopsis sapiens
neurons connected in a feedback loop, which maintained a steady state. Others made feed-forward loops that amplified their signal. A combined circuit of twenty neurons could release a powerful semiochemical. For instance, moth eggs induced the plant to release an insecticide. Moth eggs—would she have to subject plants to that? The thought of worms anywhere near her orchids made her scalp crawl.

“ToyNews—From our box to yours.” Clive again. “President Guzmán thanks Homeworld Security for ‘doing a heck of a job clearing shipping lanes to the Firmament.’ The off-world casinos are taking bids on the selection of vice-presidential running mates for Anna Carrillo and Gar Guzmán…”

Jenny listened on her way out with Anouk to the garden club. Of course, Guzmán would pick the Creep again, the same secretive vice president picked by the previous two Guzmáns, always tucked away in a secure location to fight ultra. As for Carrillo, hopefully she’d avoid picking the Connecticut senator who’d made his fortune running zoophile toyworlds.

The Begonia Club reception was an exclusive affair for potential recruits. The club maintained a spectacular greenhouse, with windows of self-cleaning amyloid. At the door, Viv introduced the club sisters. “Our recruiting director, Suzan Gruman-Iberia.”

“Call me Suze, girls.” A sophomore with Monroe cheeks and lips, a round salmon-colored flower opened at the shoulder of her slash-neck blouse. Suze gave Jenny and Anouk each a pink begonia bud to pin. The bud sat prettily on Anouk’s shoulder. Suze admired Anouk’s dress, a floor-length tessellation of interlocking triangles, beneath which her toes turned out in third position. “The pattern is quasicrystalline,” Anouk explained.

“My goodness,” Suze exclaimed at the sight of Berthe.
“Caramelo.”
She playfully pressed the DIRG’s arm. “I hope she’ll submit a bid too.”

To Jenny’s relief, Berthe stayed outside, peering discreetly through the greenhouse glass window while the frogs went in. Inside the greenhouse stretched rows upon rows of flats and light banks, with a surprising variety of begonias. Not Jenny’s favorite, but the range of colors impressed her: golden, red, pink, and white. And the leaves varied intriguingly, from serrated green to filamentous silver.

Suze took her hand and gave her a tour. “We raise all kinds of begonias, from tuberous to dragonwings. Each sister selects her own variety. Mine is the Springtime Elatior.” Salmon-colored petals, large inviting flowers with handsome leaves. Viv’s Butter Praline had creamy blossoms with yellow centers. The leaves had interesting asymmetric heart shapes with a wrinkled texture. Beyond the last row of flats was a furnished lounge with a bar where the sisters gathered.

“Of course, we keep professional help to maintain our plants, while we focus on our studies. James is our full-time horticulturalist.”

The gardener James stood by in a neat cap and uniform, nodding deferentially to each guest. Beyond the garden rows strolled several older students, in the latest slash-neck blouses. Reesie Tsien greeted each sister with an exclamation and a hug, as if she’d played their toyworld for a month. This club might be okay, Jenny thought. A place she might bring Tom; with the right haircut, he could pass for a Newman.

Viv was explaining the club’s virtues to a group of
chicas
with buds on their shoulders and strawberry daiquiris in hand, all Monroe lips and Newman chins, with gold rings through their perfect noses. “Academic excellence is our first priority,” she assured them. “To help, we provide a large study archive, including exams and essays from the past decade of classes. Hamilton especially, all his Aristotle assignments with grades and comments. ‘Is man’s foremost aim to govern the
polis
?’ Ten years’ worth of that one.”

Jenny’s eyes widened, suddenly curious. She’d love to see what Hamilton wrote on a decade’s worth of papers.

Reesie asked, “How’s your career network?” She twirled her daiquiri, hopefully without rum or she’d be in trouble with Coach.

“The best,” Viv assured her. “The Cleft Palate Investment Fund,” she ticked off, “they donate reconstructive surgery. The Islands Fund, they resettle refugees. And start you with a six-figure income.”

“Chulo,”
said Reesie. “Can you get us an internship?”

Anouk asked, “A stint at the femtosecond toytrade?”

“Whatever you want, through our growing network of sister alumnae.” Viv added in a whisper, “We’re affiliated with the Alphas.”

Another frog asked, “Which motor club do you date?”

Viv shrugged. “We keep our options open. Remember, if you earn the paycheck you don’t have to catch one. You can date whoever’s hot.”

Suze chuckled. “And ditch them when they screw up. Speaking of hot, don’t you think it’s time for our show?”

Music filled the room with a Times Square beat and the voice of a male crooner. In the lounge at the end, the Begonia sisters pulled back the chaises for more room. James pranced languidly up to the lounge, apparently a gentleman of multiple talents.
Chicas
with their drinks gathered with nervous giggles. As the tie came off, they squealed and caught each other’s arms. One caught the tie and held it up like a trophy. A drink splattered droplets in the air.

Jenny looked around for Anouk, wondering how she would take this. Then she caught sight of Berthe in full view, just outside the greenhouse window. She clapped her hands to her face. “
Anouk!
” The last thing she needed was a scene with a disapproving DIRG. She texted,
“Get out of here with Berthe.”

Anouk was off to the side, explaining the quasicrystalline pattern to sisters admiring her dress. She looked up, seeming confused. Then she caught sight of the stage.

“Viv, my friend and I need a restroom, quick.”

“Out the door, to your left. Stocked with underwear.”

Jenny grabbed Anouk’s arm and dragged her down the greenhouse rows. At last they got outdoors, breathing quickly.

Berthe took a step toward Anouk. “Are you all right,
chérie
?”

“Of course, no problem. That was close,” Anouk added to Jenny. “Berthe would certainly not allow me in the presence of—
enfin,
it’s too bad,” she concluded. “Such interesting connections. Well, I can find my own job in toytrade, thank you.”

Jenny sighed. Times Square shows were not really her thing. “Well, I’ll just stick with the team.”