The Highest Frontier (27 page)

Above the desk appeared a projection through a brain. The sight of the toyview startled her, incongruous amid the antiques. The frontal and parietal lobes shone transparent, and within lit up regions of color. The colors flexed even as she watched.

“Here is where your brain lights up when you speak; not just Broca’s area, but these other regions as well, courage and fortitude perhaps?” Hamilton smiled apologetically. “Not that I would know, of course, but you can train these regions.”

He’d scanned her own brain. Her scalp tingled.
“Brain scans I’ve had before.”
The specialists had tried for years to train her brain to get around her problem.

“This is new technology,” Hamilton assured her. “I always get the latest.”

Technology; was that how he knew her father, Jenny wondered. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something moving. The cover of the cart was flexing, as if under stress.

“Even so, Jenny, I’m surprised your own clan hasn’t helped you before. Did they prefer to keep you the quiet one?”

“That’s a lie. I’m no pauline.”

The brain scan pulsed red in the same spots as before.

“There, your pattern is developing. Perhaps it’s a new experience for you to face ideas you really disagree with.”

Jenny kept silent. She’d heard plenty of Centrists before. But rarely in the same room, breathing her own air.

“You may keep the system running in your box. With a little practice, you can train it to stimulate your key regions as you need, just so—” He stopped, his eyes wide with consternation.

The cover of the cart was straining, as if something were alive underneath, like Rita Montalcini-Levi’s handbag. Out of the cart poked the two heads of Meg-El, Professor Abaynesh’s black snake. The two tongue-flicking heads batted back and forth a moment as if quarrelling over which way to go. They seemed to decide, and a loop of their body pressed outward and down the side of the cart in a leisurely way.

Jenny stared. This could not possibly be happening; it had to be a toyworld joke of some sort. But there it was, slinking down onto the plush carpet of the professor’s office.

Her mind clicked into emergency mode, like on EMS call. How to recapture a snake; the answer must be out there on Toynet. A couple of blinks led to a method: Catch the tail first, then behind the head. A stick would help, but there was none.

By the time she decided to act, Meg-El had slid nearly her entire bulk out of the cart. Jenny grabbed for the tail. As she held it up, the rest of the body stiffened. The two heads strained to flee in opposite directions. That made it easy for her free hand to grab behind the shared neck. She stuffed the whole snake back where it came from, then shoved the top onto the cart, hoping it would stay shut. Mortified, she turned to face the professor.

Professor Hamilton had retreated to his desk, where he stood upon the chair. His face was white, his arms limp, like someone about to faint away.

*   *   *

Jenny shoved the cart back into Abaynesh’s office. “I’m switching advisors.”

The professor looked up. Behind her, Tova was back from kindergarten, sitting amid a pile of crayon drawings of alien invaders.

Jenny blinked over the change-of-advisor form. “You did that on purpose,” she added, keeping her voice down.

“Did what?”

“Sent me off with a dangerous animal.”

The snake found its way out of the cart again and slithered to the floor. Seeing it, Tova got up and ran over. “There you are, Meg-El, I missed you.” She gathered up the snake around her neck. Why did the girl have no twin? Jenny wondered. It was as if the snake were her twin; unnatural.

“I’m reporting this to the dean,” Jenny added.

“What else is new.” The professor sighed. Her face looked downcast. “I thought you would be different.”

Jenny swallowed. “Just sign the form.”

The seconds ticked by. The professor tilted her head this way and that. Then at last the form pinged back, with the line signed. “By the way,” she asked, as Jenny turned to go, “what did he do when Meg-El came out?”

Without answering, Jenny left.

At her cottage, Jenny went up to the greenhouse to calm herself amid her orchids. She was still shaking all over. She was fed up with both professors, whatever their game. Above all, she was furious at Uncle Dylan. To hear him tell it, Frontera was always “the best college” in the universe, with the best faculty anywhere. But these professors were nuts. They probably couldn’t get a job anywhere else.

She called up the form in her toybox, wondering how to find a new advisor. Maybe the one with the pile worms.

Then she caught sight of Blood Star, the fresh buds starting to open. Abaynesh had taken care of those plants all right; and the vanda had grown twice as tall with her special treatment. The professor packed a lot into class;
adiós
high school. Jenny thought again how Hamilton had looked, the mayoral candidate, cringing on his chair. Abaynesh had wanted her to see that. She didn’t want Jenny to end up an acolyte, like the Ferrari suits.

And yet, Hamilton’s speech system was intriguing. If Centrists had new technology, why not use it for her own aims? He thought he could use her, try to make her Centrist like her aunts; but two could play that game. Campaign operatives always stole tricks from the other side.

She blinked to place a call. Hamilton appeared in the window, none the worse. “Professor, I’d like to apologize for—”

“Never mind.” He waved his hand. “It’s my pleasure, Jenny.”

“Professor, I was thinking, I would like to do a second major, in Politics. Would you be my advisor?” She called up a second-advisor form. Meanwhile, she put away the drop-advisor signed by Abaynesh, without turning it in.

Hamilton smiled with delight, thoroughly pleased. He’d be off his guard now, Jenny thought, and maybe divulge a few Centrist secrets. At the same time, she’d keep Abaynesh as her advisor for Life. She’d keep on learning about plants—and maybe ultra. These professors were nuts, all right, but she could still learn plenty.

21

Wednesday morning, ToyNews was full of disaster. “A major fall of Kessler debris, on the solar array in the Death Belt, just west of the Texas border. Homeworld Security nudged the object just past the habitable region. The trail of radioactive debris stretches toward—” An old mid-century station for space tourists. Thousands of such decrepit objects floated aimlessly around Earth and moon carrying bits of plutonium. Cleaning them out was not easy, not that the Centrists really tried. President Bud Guzmán praised Homeworld Security for doing a “heck of a job” steering the landfall.

“A major failure of Homeworld Security,” proclaimed Anna Carrillo at a rally in Indianapolis. “Expanding the Dead Zone and poisoning our children. America deserves better leadership.”

Her opponent, Gar Guzmán, was more sanguine. “Homeworld Security effectively steered the object to land in the Dead Zone, away from habitation,” the Centrist candidate told Clive. “This shows why we need to maintain a steady Centrist hand at the helm. Remember, Earth itself has its limits; someday we’ll all rise beyond.”

The scene cut to Rapture, an idyllic misty spacehab. In the distance rose its gaming center, the Holyland Hotel, a scale replica of ancient Jerusalem. Above rose a giant cross flanked by seraphs. In their slanball court, in October, Frontera’s Great Bears would meet Whitcomb’s Angels.

But neither Frontera nor Rapture could ever hold all the populations fleeing Earth. Had the poison reached New York? Jenny called her mother.

“We’re fine,” Soledad assured her. “The radioactive cloud will pass by New York, but we stepped up our HIV just in case.”

“Is the Death Belt still expanding?”

“The Death Belt is expanding, all right,” her mother assured her. “Drying out more every year.”

“Do they really think they can put everyone from Earth out in spacehabs?”

“Not if they do the math. We’ve reached a turning point on global drying—I truly believe this election is our last chance.” Her mother shook her head. “But the plutonium fall throws a wrench into the vice-presidential selection. Anna will have to pick someone who knows space security.”

Jenny absorbed this. “Not Sid Shaak.” The Connecticut senator was a ranking member of the Space Defense subcommittee. Shaak’s family fortune derived from the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, who owned the third largest casino empire. He was under investigation for running a child porn toyworld.

“Nothing’s final yet.” Hardly reassuring. “As for Guzmán, you know, he’s stuck; he can’t just pick some pretty face this time.” A pretty face to trade out for the Creep. Soledad smiled reassuringly. “
No te preocupes,
I shouldn’t distract you from your studies. How are your classes?”

“Chulo,”
said Jenny. “I’m growing plant nervous systems, and arguing with Teddy Roosevelt, and Professor Hamilton is training me to speak.”

“Public speaking?” Her mother pounced. “Really?”

“Well,” she muttered, “he’d like to think so anyway.”

“
¡Muy bien!
We’ll put you down for the convention.” The Unity convention was scheduled for the following Monday.

Jenny frowned, wishing she had not let it slip out. “I told you, I can visit the convention but I can’t do a speech.”

“Sure you can. You speak for Clive.”

“Clive is like family. He always cleans it up.”

Soledad waved her hand. “Clive cleans up for everyone—it’s his job, to keep up the ratings. Jenny, you’ve got to do it. For Anna. For the world. For the family.” For Jordi—the first convention since his death. “And don’t forget, the final debate at Frontera—October twenty-fifth.”

Presidential candidates in the hab—
fantástico.
Still, Jenny shook her head. “You’re sure you and Dad are okay?” The news was all so bad.

Soledad gave a sigh. “Your father misses you.”

Jenny swallowed. “I know.”

“I’m getting him out for a few days at Lake Taupo.” Their remote New Zealand hideaway. “Our last bit of rest before the convention.”

“I’m sure the rest will do him good.” Toynet could be all-consuming.

“Remember Iroquoia—the Condoling Council. He’ll feel so much better.”

“October break,” Jenny agreed. “I’ll play then, I promise.”

“And bring some of your new friends. They’ll enjoy it.”

Jenny shuddered. Iroquoia was no place for her friends. Her mother’s clients, and her father’s Toy Land engineers—they played hard.

*   *   *

For lunch at last she set out to meet Tom in Mount Gilead, at Lazza’s Diner. Tom had said he had business in the village, and would meet her there. She wondered what to wear—not moonholes, of course, but certainly no pioneer dress. At last she printed out overalls like Doc Uddin, and pulled on her heavy boots, mud-streaked from Homefair. Her Fifth Avenue flower-print blouse would soften the look.

By eleven she trudged into the village down Raccoon Run, the same dirt road the Homefair crew had taken. The college grounds rolled away behind her while the village grid straightened as if by magic, a trick of the eye. The steeple of the college All Saints Church now pointed down, while the Firmament Church pointed “heavenward,” with the college way up there. A purple pennant flickered upside down from the Kearns-Clark castle.

Along the road flowed a stream toward Scioto Creek. The stream grew increasingly turbid and soapy, with floating bits of carb and anthrax fiber. It seemed to get worse the nearer she approached the village center. This could hardly meet regulations. For a moment she stopped to dip her scanscope in, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Coliforms, manure minerals, and amyloid waste—the scanscope recorded high levels. All headed for the Scioto, and at last the Ohio River. The entire drainage must be polluted. Waste cycling in a spacehab was always a challenge, but this—how could it be?

She blinked the EMS snake to file a report. Then she hurried on to find Lazza’s. The squat storefront stood in the main square, pigeons clucking in the street with tiny power bands on their wings. Pigeons flocked across the street to the redbrick courthouse with classic pillars. And next door to Lazza’s stood the Smythe Power Bank, run by the late mayor to bank energy from all those power bands.

Jenny had arrived early at the diner, but never mind; a chance to watch people. She might as well get to know Lazza’s, as she was bound to end up there sometime on call. The diner was built of roughly finished carboxyplast, with a long bar and tables imitating knotty wood. Jenny found herself a stool and leaned her elbows on the counter. Several men and women in overalls lounged at the toywall watching football, all half a head shorter than she. One tipped a server with a few watt-hours from his power band. At a table sat two women in pioneer dresses and bonnets, with three small children. Even the children wore power bands; not good, as too much load could stunt their growth. Where was Tom, and why couldn’t he have come out along with her? On the back wall a blue-tailed lizard skittered up across a beer ad, and an elk jutted out with mugs dangling from its antler points.

Someone coughed loudly, right by her ear, as if to get her attention. On the stool next to Jenny sat a woman in a pioneer dress. Leora Smythe—the mayor’s widow, who had served lunch for the Homefair volunteers. Jenny smiled.
“Thanks for the Homefair lunch.”

“Homefair,”
texted Leora. She eyed Jenny intently.
“At the college?”

“I’m a student,”
Jenny returned.
“My first year.”

Leora’s eyes widened and she touched her bonnet. She took a deep breath. “Castle!” she exclaimed. “There’s a castle up there.”

Castle Cockaigne. From here in Mount Gilead, the castle must be the most striking landmark above. Jenny smiled. “My team captains live in the castle. There’s a tour this Saturday.”

“A tour of the castle? Really?”

“At noon it opens. Then at one is Flood Awareness Day. We’re flooding the main floor from the moat, then Kendall demonstrates the lifeboat.”

“Flooding?”

“In case the water ever leaks in from the shell.” It occurred to her that Mount Gilead colonists would be in trouble too. “Are your homes all carb?”