The Highest Frontier (25 page)

“Oh, but Monte Carlo Night, next month—you’ll see, the Ferraris are different. They wait till classes are under way. They are most civilized.”

“Campus Bulletin.” Quade Vincenzo on Toynet. The ecoengineer cleared his throat, seeming more subdued than usual. “The college has decided to commence smartspray for mosquitoes, starting at seven
A.M.
Monday. The sprayers will cruise along the axis, emitting spray in all directions. The spray will appear in the form of pink rain, most of which will dissipate before reaching the habitation surface.” Vincenzo paused before continuing. “The community should remember that the mosquitoes in our hab, about a thousand so far, constitute just a tiny fraction of their entire world population of mosquitoes, estimated at a billion billions. Elimination here won’t endanger their species. It’s just culling them where they don’t belong, like weeding a garden or trimming a hedge. Hopefully they’ll be gone, and we won’t have to do it again.” His face brightened as he held up a furry winged creature. “Still, we’ll establish a bat colony, just in case.”

19

That Sunday, Jenny got her homework done by midnight. But Monday morning, she was up at five for slanball. She reached the court with seconds to spare. The faintest of light dribbled through the sausage-shaped cloud.

Coach strode along the cage on his footgrips. His long smile had lines that betrayed strain; players got to know the slightest nuance in a coach’s moods. When he reached Jenny he slowed to a halt. She clenched her teeth against a yawn.

“I should send you back to bed.”

“I—I slept.” She’d learned to fall asleep in an instant, anywhere, on any campaign bus.

“Not enough,” he said. “Sleep deprivation is a drug. My players don’t play sleep-drunk.” He raised a finger. “You’ve been warned.”

After Coach moved on, she turned questioningly to Yola. “Where are…”

Kendall crossed his arms and set his chin. He looked grim as one of those old stills of an Inuit elder. “Rickie pledged Ferrari. And Reesie, Begonia.”

Yola shrugged. “Frog attrition is always high. That’s how we get our team down to regulation size.”

Charlie looked downcast, hiding his face. “I gave up the Bulls,” he told Jenny, after the captains had left for drill. “The bros had checked in with me all month before—they really made me feel welcome. I never had brothers before.”

Jenny patted his arm. “Hey, you’ll be okay. Look at the team—we’re your brothers and sisters.”

“Pair up and jitter down the cage.”

They each picked up a ball and jittered it, zigzagging from side to side while crossing the ball right to left, front to back, head to toe. To evade a guard the ball could jitter in any direction, straight up, down, or backward. Jenny crossed, then double-crossed the ball, at unpredictable angles and intervals, showing off her dexterity despite her short sleep.

At last Coach gathered everyone to strategize for their first game. Frontera hosted the Melbourne Scorpions the next Sunday. Yola was center, of course. “For forwards, we’re fielding Fran and David; and guards, Ken and Iris.” Iris was a solid sophomore; both she and Ken were guards able to take a beating. “Xiang covers goal for the first half, then we send in Charlie. The Melbourne players don’t like change; they’ll be rattled. Charlie’s as quick as our opponent is slow.”

Everyone cheered, and Charlie looked as thrilled as when he’d bested the knights in DNA World. It was hard to believe they’d really be ready; the first game always came too soon. But somehow, a good team always got to where it needed to be, just in time.

Coach added, “Jenny rotates in later at a critical point, to execute Play Twenty-nine. Not to overuse it—we need to hold off suspicion as long as we can.” Until Whitcomb, the last game before October break, followed by the Feast of Fools at the castle.

Jenny paired up with Ken for wall passes, slanning across the court. Then she moved out at a new angle to receive the ball again. Guard Fran was surprisingly slick; she almost seemed to read which direction Jenny would take. For her final slan to the goal, Jenny took care to “assist” Ken only twice. The spying helis were out of sight, but they could always be hiding in the long axial cloud that pulsed and billowed, orange in the morning light.

“How do you always know, Fran?” Jenny asked, catching her breath during time out.

Fran gave a crooked grin. “You always glance that way. Frogs often have habits like that.”

She smiled ruefully. “I need to get used to the cage.”

“You won’t always be in home cage. The Whitcomb Angels play at Rapture.” Rapture, the Mississippi spacehab. Where every day was Judgment Day.

From the cloud emerged a saucer-shaped floater crawling with spider bots. Another appeared, a dark menacing shape, farther south.
“Sprayers,”
texted someone. The mosquito sprayers were moving into position.

The sprayers slid back and forth, their shapes dipping in and out of the cloud like plates loose in a washer, as the south end gradually brightened. It was just after six
A.M.
when one sprayer moved slowly up to the cage. The metallic surface stopped outside.

“EVERYONE OUT.”
Outsized text invaded her box, and a loudspeaker blared.
“CLEAR OUT AND DESCEND TO SURFACE LEVEL.”

Jenny caught herself in midair, floating slowly to the side. Everyone stared, unsure what to do. Nobody ever dared interrupt slanball.

“NO TRESPASSING,”
Coach Porat broadcast back.
“GET OFF MY CAGE.”

The students stared, exchanging furtive glances. A breeze whistled through the cage, then died, and shadows shifted in the cloud. At length the rim of the sprayer slowly backed off. Jenny reached the side of the cage, grabbing a cable, her pulse getting back to normal as the players got back in line to complete their drill.

*   *   *

As Jenny left her room, having showered and changed for breakfast, the pink rain was just starting. Starbursts of pink exploded silently along the morning cloud, breaking up into spots like cherry blossoms drifting down. The petals floated and dispersed, spelling doom for the dreaded mosquitoes. A lizard skittered up the porch rail.

Just around the corner, at the bear gouge with the pipe loops, stood Mary Dyer. Mary was leaning down to fill her bottle with the brackish water.

“Mary,
¿qué haces?
There’s clean water from the tap, inside the cottage.”

Mary looked up at her but said nothing. She always wore the same tie-dyed shift, and her face had the same iconic look; not Monroe, but something vaguely familiar.

“You cannot drink that water,” Jenny tried to explain. “It’s full of salt. And it needs to be filtered.” Like sewage, a microbial stew.

Suddenly Mary smiled. “What a good idea! Thank you!” Her voice lilted exactly like Dean Nora Kwon.

Jenny smiled. “Have you been seeing the dean?”

Mary stood up with her bottle. “We’re having therapy. We learn to say things.”

“What things?”

Mary’s face lit up, expressing executive confidence. “‘Hello, how are you? That’s a pretty necklace.’ ‘Professor, may I ask a question?’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I hope you feel better soon.’”

Jenny bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Hey, Mary, that’s okay. Catch you later.”

Along Buckeye Trail the gravel crunched beneath her feet. Her soles picked up so many pebbles, she had to print new shoes every night. Meanwhile she was famished, and looking forward to Café de la Paix. That morning the Belgian waffles were great, but Tom was kept busy with Orin Crawford’s investment committee. The investors sounded like her mother’s office crowd, all about Anthradyne and the falling markets. Her own trust fund had lost some, not that she’d ever spend it. She thought of Wednesday, when she planned to meet Tom for lunch in Mount Gilead.

“ToyNews Mount Gilead. We have a candidate for mayor.” Mount Gilead’s mayor had died in office the previous spring. Apparently the town of a thousand had managed without one since then. “Phil Hamilton has just filed for the ballot, with a petition containing fifty-seven valid signatures.”

Jenny stared in surprise. Her professor, running for mayor? There in her news window stood Professor Hamilton, looking just like he would lecture on Aristotle. “Although no one can ever fill Dick Smythe’s shoes, I am truly humbled to be considered for service to this God-fearing community beneath the stars. I thank members of my congregation for encouraging me to run, and for collecting the signatures on my behalf.”

The voiceover added, “We asked Mrs. Smythe to comment on Hamilton’s nomination.”

Leora Smythe, the lady in the pioneer dress who had served the lunch for Homefair. So she was the mayor’s widow. Leora kept her eyes downcast, the typical pauline.
“Dick would be pleased to know that Phil will be shepherding our village in God’s name.”
They seemed to assume the election was done. Were there no other candidates?

“Another week till the filing deadline. The mayoral election is Tuesday, October ninth. All votes are cast at the courthouse, between six
A.M.
and seven
P.M
.”

A special election, a month before Election Day? At the courthouse? Why not through ToyVote? All on one day? The second Tuesday—that was Fall Break, when most students would be away.

Jenny was tempted to ask Hamilton in class about the election, but she lacked the nerve. Her paper from Friday returned to her toybox with an A
+++
, and a reminder of her private conference with him scheduled for Tuesday. He returned papers quickly, she thought, a sign of a good teacher.

In the plush seminar room, Hamilton left the podium to pace back and forth as he lectured; it was good neck exercise to follow him this way or that. But never for long before he shot out one of those dreaded questions. “Should the possessions of citizens all be equal, as in the Regime of Phaleus? What do you think?”

A couple of students leafed through the crinkly pages of their books, as though the answer could be found there. The professor’s penetrating eyes stared at Enrico.

Enrico ventured, “Before you can have equality of possessions, you need equality of desires.”

“Equality of desires. Enrico, I believe you’ve hit upon a profound problem with the Phaleus regime.” When Hamilton liked a point, he always made the student feel like the first to ever make this discovery.

Priscilla, in her neck brace from her Homefair misadventure, was hard put to follow Hamilton’s perambulation but nonetheless waved her hand so high that he could not ignore it. “Slaves by definition are owned; like, they own nothing, desire or not. So if there is slavery, then Phaleus’s regime doesn’t just have a problem, it’s a logical impossibility.”

A pretzel crunched between Mary’s prosthetic jaws.

*   *   *

At the Ohioana, servers in power bands passed gravy dishes right and left, while the evening peepers chorused outside. In Jenny’s toybox, a thousand playmate notes scrolled down.
“My best class is Antarctic Studies. What’s yours?”
Her Somers friend Tusker-12 attended virtual University of Miami, in a toyworld that re-created the submerged city. The real Miamians had long since fled, most to Havana.

“I’ve lined up the music for Saturday.” Ken was planning the Flood Awareness Day. “An authentic Jackson Square tribute band. The castle tour starts at noon, then afterward, the flood.”

Jenny nodded and smiled as she ate. The only way she’d get her work done was to keep at it every available minute. So in her toybox she resumed reading her first chapter on Cuba. In her toyHarvard class, she’d hoped to learn more about her mother’s roots, about the revolution and Guantánamo, how the rebel island had rescued thousands from flooded Florida, and how it become the fifty-second state. But so far, the course was all ancient history—how the highlands had formed from sedimentary rock, and how pretribal peoples left petroglyphs in the caverns centuries before Aristotle. At this rate they’d never get to the present, how
los cubanos
today combined revolutionary fervor with retro Romanism. Many Cubans still couldn’t see Archbishop Eliza on equal terms with the Pope, whereas others still worshiped Che. The ultimate swing state.

Yola nudged her arm. “You awake?”

She looked up, startled. “Um, about flooding the castle?”

Kendall said, “I asked, will you help row the lifeboat out of the flooded castle?”

“Um, thanks, you can do that part. I’ll prepare the handout.”

Yola shook her head. “As if anyone will read it. Jenny, you’ve become a dwork.”

“A what?”

“A dwork is someone who reads all the time and thinks everyone else does the same.”

Charlie looked up. “Hey, Jenny’s okay. She’s an honors student.”

Kendall leaned forward, remembering something. “Watch out for that politics class,” he warned. “‘Warm yourself before the fire of the wise, but beware of their embers, lest you be singed.’”

“Politics,” muttered Yola. “That’s for motor clubs.”

Anouk was fuming and muttering under her breath. “It’s an outrage,” she abruptly exclaimed. “They told me,” she hissed, “to meet with the
Christian
chaplain.”

“You must be a hard case,” said Kendall. “Like the guys that hump elephants.”

Anouk’s silverware clattered on the table. “I knew this abominable college would try to convert me. The Euro minister will hear of it.”

“Why don’t you see Coach instead?” offered Kendall. “Coach won’t convert anybody. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Jenny said, “Father Clare won’t convert you either. Look, Anouk, you’ve just got to quit hacking the Pentagon.” And all your friends, she nearly added.

“I cut way back. I only … explore once a week.”

Yola eyed her with interest. “You hack the Pentagon? Really?”

Anouk gave a modest shrug.

“Ever hack the Creep?”

At the mention of the Creep, heads turned. The Creep, originally an Idaho senator with ties to the solar industry, had been vice president since anyone could remember. Every Centrist candidate picked some rifle-toting blonde to drum up the votes, but always ditched her at the last minute, ending back with the Creep. Obsessed with the war on ultra, the Creep never appeared in public, but he ran much of the government; how much was never known for sure.