The Highest Frontier (4 page)

“Look, Mama! What a colorful bird.”

Soledad nodded. “
Recuerdas
, George, when there were birds?” She caught her husband’s arm. “When Jenny was little she would point to them in the tree. Her first word, ‘bird.’”

Jenny blinked her taxonomy button.
“
Carduelis tristis
, goldfinch,”
returned the Toynet database. In the neighboring tree sang a different bird, bright red as a light on a slot machine.
“
Cardinalis cardinalis
, Northern Cardinal.”
One flew overhead; she flinched, thinking it might poop on her.

A closer look down the “carpet roll,” along Buckeye Trail, revealed geometric shapes of farm tracts, fading out two kilometers “south” to end at a ring of blue. The blue ring was the Ohio River, an endless loop of water that ultimately sank “down” into the shell to feed the light-eating microbes. The loop surrounded a “solar,” a disk that shone too bright to watch. The light cast long Scandinavian shadows. But shadows also went the other way, cast by another solar “north.” Twin shadows.

Into the Ohio River, upside down, flowed the Scioto Creek, its water aflame with light reflected from the solar. Craning her neck, Jenny traced the creek upstream, back “north” overhead. Impossible, her mind said—that water had to rain “down.” But the stream flowed on amongst the green and brown arcs of upside-down farm and forest. A cluster of little tiles and streets; that would be the village of Mount Gilead, population 986, named for Ohio’s old colonial town. Colonists tilled their pristine farmlands, free of mosquitoes and ultraphytes.

Farther north, near the end of the capsule, rose the Mound. The Mound was a raised green hill imitating an ancient burial mound, actually the Shawnee Mound Casino and Worship Center, with the taxplayers inside and the powwow ground on top. Beyond the Mound, a racetrack ringed the cap. At the north end, where the creek waters welled up, shone the north solar. Around the solar, jagged hills lifted angular chocolate slopes, pointing inward like teeth into a mouth.

“Frogs over here.” Dean Kwon stood at the entrance to Wickett Hall, named for Frontera’s founder, Toynet executive Guillermo Wickett. Amyloid marble gleamed white, with four classic columns and a clock tower. A keystone topped every window, each showing one of Gil Wickett’s favorite toys. A rocking horse rocked back and forth, the animated amyloid flexing in and out around the sculpted shape. A box popped open and the “jack” sprang out. A mallet pounded pegs into a board, then the board flipped over. A shovel dug into a sand pile, then poured it into a pail. A wagon filled with alphabet blocks, then spilled them. Above them all, the cornice puckered out forming an antique toy locomotive with its cowcatcher and smokestack. Train cars followed all along the cornice till the caboose disappeared.

“Woo-woo!” cried someone’s younger brother, jumping up and down. Jenny smiled, recalling her own favorite toy, the cups and balls trick.

Past Wickett Hall strolled nose-ringed students with stylish little “moonhole” cutouts in the cheeks of their pants, and shoelaces trailing behind their feet. Amyloid toydogs wagged their tails, and anxious parents strained their glowing faces, as students met their upperclass advisors in purple Frontera T-shirts.

A high-pitched shriek, like a donkey. Startled, Jenny turned, and looked down. A tiny elephant, about waist high, extended its trunk to beg.

“¡Oye!”
The mini elephant was no bigger than Old Bet. Island evolution would shrink any animals that were larger than a rabbit, so Frontera’s habitat engineer stocked miniatures. The wrinkled little trunk and wide ear flaps looked classic, though the tail was bushy like a donkey’s. The little gray creature panted and waved its tusks, then two companions trotted over.
“
Elephas minimus
, mini-elephant.”
One extended a trunk to brush Jenny’s leg.

Soledad frowned.
“Animales,”
she whispered meaningfully. “Avoid them.
¿Entiendes?
”

Jenny rolled her eyes.
“Sí, Mama.”

“Don’t feed the elephants!” called Dean Kwon. “In fact, don’t touch them for
any
reason. Those little tusks can be deadly.” Kwon stared hard, as if there were a lot more left unsaid. “No organic pets, no unapproved produce, and
no
projectiles. All frogs turn in your FERPA forms and take your blood test, over here at the alphabet-blocks door.”

Easing her cramped neck, Jenny got in line for the blood sampler to stamp her arm. Besides mosquitoes and ultraphytes, Frontera kept its habitat free of most diseases. Years had passed since her dengue fever, and now the HIV cleaned her blood, but still her pulse raced. What if she carried some hidden plague?

“Remember,” warned Dean Kwon, “you’ll retake the test every time you return to campus.”

Soledad whispered in her ear, “Don’t count on it. The
chicos
all carry hepa Q.”

“Mama, not now.”

“And
los animales
carry—”

“And your Toynet account,” Dean Kwon added. “Remember to set the filter against flu and Ebola.” Infectious viruses could print out with uploaded baggage.

“Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six.” George Ramos anxiously counted aloud the students trudging down Buckeye Trail.

Jenny put her arm through her father’s elbow. “How fast do you suppose the hab rotates?”

George looked up.
“Toss your ball.”

Jenny took out her slanball. Precisely nine centimeters, crossed with red lines, the slanball was a regulation brainstream sensor. In the naked oak above her head, a cardinal sang “What-cheer, what-cheer.” Taking a breath, she launched the ball straight “up.” The ball curved, then shot out east, grazing the top of the oak. Jenny’s scalp twitched. “That’s the direction we’re rotating from. No, I mean toward.”

“One hundred meters per second,”
her father estimated.
“Rotation speed at one g.”

Jenny focused on the ball to draw it back. The ball came brushing through the leaves, then fell to the ground as the local grav overcame her brainstream. She wondered, “Where’s the slanball cage?”

“Overhead.” An upperclass
chico
stood by rather stiffly, with a very serious air. His window in Jenny’s toybox said,
“Rafael Marcaydo Acuña, from Mexico City. Politics major. Owl Advisor.”
Rafael’s nose ring confirmed his superior genetic health, and his double-X earring meant restored-X chromosome. His purple T-shirt showed the golden boy on the rocking horse, crossed by the colonial ax, and the Greek words
Sophias philai paromen
. “Friends of wisdom”; would she find them, Jenny wondered. Rafael put his heels together and bowed stiffly. “Welcome to Frontera, Jennifer Ramos Kennedy. I’m your ‘owl.’ Owls assist new students.”

Jenny took a breath and nodded. She flexed her hands uncomfortably, wishing she had her orchid. When meeting someone new, it was easier at first talking to the plant.

“Los Marcaydo,”
observed her mother. “Marcaydo Windfarms.” After solarplate, windfarms powered much of the Americas.

Rafael nodded again. “If you please, the slanball cage floats straight overhead.”

Jenny looked up. Across the hab lay a zipper track of homes—that was Mount Gilead. Rooftops of little square houses, like lollipops at the end of driveways. A church with its spire pointed down toward the college, its roof proclaiming in block letters,
LEVITICUS 18:23.

She focused closer, halfway. The slanball cage sprang into view: a gleaming cylindrical net of anthrax along the axis of the hab. Within the cage, at near-zero g, floated student players with their purple slancaps. They propelled themselves from the cage toward the slanball, aiming to get close enough to slan it toward the goal. Only the goalie was allowed to catch it in his hands.
“The Great Bears cage,”
Jenny texted her Somers friend, Tusker-12.
“What do you think?”

“
¡Fantástico!
Imagine if the Tuskers had a cage like that.”

Two windows appeared: Yola and Kendall Kearns-Clark, cocaptains of the Great Bears. Ken and Yola had helped Coach Porat recruit her at Somers High. Their purple jerseys had the Great Bear constellation, pointing toward the pole star. Ken’s window showed their residence below, a crenellated fortress they called “Castle Cockaigne.” Yola’s showed the drawbridge down, with two knights in chain mail riding out. The twins floated in the cage, eyelids swollen, wisps of hair streaming out beneath their slancaps.

“Hey, Jenny, that was a great assist, your last game.” Yola jittered a ball before her, her brainstream invisibly moving it side-to-side. Her space-black Aymara braids floated up in a V. Kendall’s hair floated free; he was cultured Inuit with a round nose and level eyes. Their Quaker parents had picked their two favorite ethnics. “Ready for practice?”

Jenny nodded. “When do I start?”

“Right away.”

The slanball flew off to Ken, who had snatched it invisibly from his sister. He jittered it before his chest. “You start tomorrow. Frogs must pick their courses first.”

With no outward move, Yola snatched the ball back. “Professors rule,” she agreed. “But get here the minute your courses come through.” Yola’s major was Life Science, which Jenny planned to follow.

“‘Who yields to time, finds time on his side.’” Ken majored in Religion. “But don’t be a moment late.”

Yola pointed her finger. “We’ll need you, to help us beat Whit.” Whitcomb College, Centrist affiliated, was Frontera’s big rival. “See you.” The cocaptains winked out.

Rafael nodded courteously. “Your brother was magnificent on the court.… My deepest sympathy.”

Jenny studied her shoes. Jordi had been the Somers captain, and their record scorer. She had boosted his shots with her own brainstream, to make sure. No one ever caught on.

“Students live south of Wickett. This way.” Rafael beckoned down the trail, his long shoelaces trailing stylishly behind.

“Jenny,”
her father mailed.
“You’ll watch your shoes, won’t you?”

No one Jenny’s age would be caught dead with tied laces. But trailing laces upset her dad. She never wore moonholes, either; they upset her mother.

She and her parents followed “owl” Rafael down the trail. The trail led “south” between rows of kudzu-less trees, trim as a grove in Iroquoia. Their shapely green crowns left no place an ultra could hide. Birds trilled, and insects popped up disconcertingly like spam in a toybox: dragonflies, a ladybird beetle, a butterfly. Flowers bloomed wild, broad purple petals with party-hat centers.
“Echinacea purpurea,”
texted her taxa window.
“Coneflowers.”
Above, along the spacehab axis, grew a long row of clouds like deer tails strung together. The cloud-tails sailed north, on a breeze that blew steadily from the south. A heli sailed lazily in the micrograv, not needing lift until it had to land.

“ToyNews—From our box to yours.” The national news again. “Clive Rusanov, here in Salt Lake, with a troubling turn in the War on Ultra. In Great Salt Lake, the ultraphytes take a new form.” The Great Salt Lake was where the salt-loving ultraphytes had first sprouted, first as single floating cells the size of an ostrich egg, then as elongated streamers, and then the crawlers that invaded dry land, their cyanide emissions killing a thousand people. Now the ultraphyte rose in towers like Mordor from the slick jaundiced biofilm that stretched for kilometers across the lake. “New ultraphytes broke off and turned green, like plants. The new plantlike form will be even more challenging to root out than the old.…”

Whatever could make the ultraphyte change its form; what internal signal, and why?

“Here for comment is Utah Governor Carrillo. Governor, do you think we are losing the War on Ultra? How does this affect your chances for the presidency?”

A statehouse veteran, the silver-haired Governor Anna Carrillo smiled and nodded to show everything was under control. “As you know, Clive, in Utah we spend more per capita on ultraphyte research and containment than any other state. Our state is the pioneer in the War on Ultra.” The Unity governor had doubled Utah’s economy, building its vast flock of flying windmills, and she’d done her best to contain ultra when the mysterious life-form first appeared. Dugway Proving Ground ran a huge alien invasion program. Still, this latest news did Carrillo no good.

“And how’s Glynnis holding up? All set for tonight?” The First Lady debate, when Glynnis Carrillo faced Guzmán’s wife Betsy. And Clive would want Jenny’s interview at the break.

“Jenny,” Rafael called back, “you’re in Fairfield East, no? A stylish address. This way, past the seniors.” A Victorian mansion with a steep roof and gables. A Frank Lloyd Wright–style ranch, with cantilevered deck. Castle Cockaigne, complete with keep, outer wall with four towers, and a moat all around; that’s where Ken and Yola lived. Rafael walked on ahead.

“Why ‘frogs’?” The lack of eye contact helped Jenny get out her first words.

“First-year students are ‘frogs.’ Fresh out of water, just gaining your legs.” Rafael turned to her, a superior twist to his lip. “Don’t miss the Frogs Chorus, this evening at eight. All frogs gather south down Buckeye Trail, at the Ohio River.”

The east side led between two rows of miniature New England–style houses. A pink one with a white porch and a garden of fluorescent orange flowers. “
Cosmos sulphureus,
orange cosmos.”
The next house was split down the middle, half cream, half mauve. Several maintenance workers in power bands stood outside brainstreaming the amyloid to push out a dormer window. Next door stood a square ranch, stucco-like finish, with open windows and a couch on the lawn. Out front sat a crimson race car, low-slung chassis with outsized wheels and a prominent steam vent from hydrogen fuel. The car was emblazoned
RED BULL MOTOR CLUB.

“Chusma,”
muttered Rafael. Then he straightened, as if recollecting himself. “A real community, that’s Frontera: ‘Home without Mosquitoes.’”