The Highest Frontier (56 page)

The students at first said nothing. Of course, the plant was not in their toyrooms, so they would not feel its influence. And perhaps the professor was just being unpredictable as usual.

Charlie let out a laugh. “Sure, I’m terrified. Ever since the beginning. But, hey, I’ll put up with it.” Like Ken, a good sport, he’d always take it on the chin.

Abaynesh listened thoughtfully. “When people are terrified, it’s hard for them to learn.” She thought again. “When I was a child, I was terrified by anything larger than myself. Children feel comfortable with toys they can handle, toys their own size. And adults learning something new are like children.” Then she started blinking like crazy into her toybox.

Within each student’s toyroom, a model protein appeared. A model about the same size as a student, containing about twenty amino-acid building blocks.

“You all care to know this, or else you would have left by now. Figure out for yourself how each building block works; ask, and it will tell you. And if not, ask the class.”

Jenny looked at Tom. Then together, they looked at the protein, with its blue and red atoms, and gold for occasional sulfur. She touched one sulfur atom.

“I am methionine,” said the amino acid. “I always start the protein. What kind of atoms do I have?”

The proteins talked, and the students asked questions. They continued thus till the end of the period.

“DID REVERSE CONTROL WORK?”

*   *   *

Jenny met Father Clare in his office. “I have to know something very important.” Her hands flexed in agitation, like Mary’s hands. “If you could make someone wise, would it be right? I mean, what if an evil person became wise? What if, say, they wanted to blow up Earth; would they become wise enough not to do it, or would they just learn a wiser way to do it?”

The chaplain listened considerately. “Jenny, by this time of year, students become convinced that all they’ve experienced has cosmic impact—”

“Can’t you just tell me? I mean, just to think about.”

His face shifted, and he rubbed his forehead. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that. Of course—everything you learn
does
have cosmic impact. That’s why you’re here, to learn the key things. The heart of the universe.”

“Claro.”

“What if an evildoer became wise? Would the person cease evil? Or is the evildoer a subtler part of God’s plan?” Father Clare shook his head. “And I have to tell you—in truth, I don’t know. I don’t know, because so much of God’s plan is incomprehensible to me. Unknowable now.” The puzzle in the mirror. “God’s folly is wiser than our wisdom.”

Jenny looked down, disappointed.

“I’ll say one thing.” The chaplain’s voice intensified. “If destroying Earth is wisdom, I’m a fool.”

*   *   *

In Anouk’s sitting room, Jenny sat on the sumak, her diad off, her mental banished by Anouk’s bit of code. Anouk sat on a Mandelbrot chair, Berthe nowhere in sight. Tom tried to sit on the floor in a Mandelbrot valley, until a cushion arose to push him aside.

“We can’t take long,” Jenny warned. “I’m in good with Marilyn right now; I don’t want to risk a setback.”

“Risk,” repeated Anouk. “I’ll tell you about risk. The time has come to risk everything.”

“Sure; let’s tell the professor. She can put it in her grant, with clinical trials—”

“I mean everything.
Tout le monde.
Two days from now.”

The debate. Jenny’s eyes widened. She shared a look with Tom.

“You’re crazy,” Tom exclaimed. “You’re in enough trouble. Keep Jenny out of this.”

“You’ve said for weeks the fate of the Earth is at stake,” Anouk reminded her. “Yet whoever wins is consumed by folly. It’s lose-lose right now, isn’t it?”

“It always is,” Jenny sighed. “We always say the Earth is at stake, every election.”

“Well this time, it
really
is,” said Anouk. “The ice is boiling. I’ve seen the numbers.”

“So what’s the use? Even if Americans—”

“Everyone follows America. Why do you think we give your presidents Nobel Prizes, just for stumbling in the right direction?” Anouk nodded. “You can do it, Jenny. You can wise them up.”

“But—” Tom was getting upset. “These semiochemicals; you can’t know what they’re really doing, or even how long it lasts.” The laughing plants, they’d got tired and stopped.

“Every response adapts,” said Anouk. “So what? A little wisdom is better than zero.”

Jenny caught Tom’s hand. “It’s impossible anyhow,” she told Anouk. “The candidates’ security—you’ve seen all the DIRGs.”

“But your mother runs the show. Won’t she let you in … inside the bell jar?”

*   *   *

Jenny’s mother appeared in her window, conferring with the Centrist codirector.

“The seats,” said Jenny. “We’ve still got the eight?”

“Claro.”

The Centrist assured her, “And our side’s included another purple. Fair is fair.”

Jenny hesitated. “The front row gets under the bell jar, right?”

The two heads shook in unison. “Sorry,” her mother told her.

“Nobody gets inside that bell jar,” the Centrist agreed. “Not with the candidates.”

“Security is firm,” said Soledad. “Just the two candidates, and Clive. But you’ll be right up front; you’ll see everything.” A model appeared in her toybox: the stage on the Mound, and the positions of the three podiums, with the seats around in a semicircle.

Disappointed, Jenny also felt relieved.

Then she froze. Staring at the model, she recalled the stage right there atop the Mound, on the first day she arrived back in August. The teddies fussing around the podium to get everything right. “Um—” She took a breath. “The stage. It looks so plain without … decorations.” Coneflowers and Indian grass, they’d had around the podium. “Could I provide flowers?”

“Floral decor?” Soledad turned to the Centrist. “What do you think? A touch of class, no?”

He frowned. “Not usually done. It would have to be professional.”

“But I do flowers every week,” Jenny said, “for the sanctuary.”

“Oh, well then.” He nodded. “Flowers blessed by the Lord.”

48

Jenny and her friends joined the crowd of visitors, feathered tourists, news media in big hair, DIRGs, and professors in academic gowns heading north up Buckeye Trail. Above sailed dozens of medibots and security skybikers, one of whom had already crashed in the unfamiliar grav. In the naked maples, the foliage had yellowed, preparing to fall. Students wore fewer moonholes and more sweaters. They brain-juggled balls of amyloid in loops of eight. From behind, the south solar was starting to dim, while ahead the north solar brightened; the brightest time of day. The space between trees burst with blue heather and yellow coneflowers. The peepers had dwindled, although Jenny stepped around one squashed underfoot. As she passed the Reagan Hall of Science sprouting its jelly beans, she recalled the first time she’d looked up her professor’s plant in Toynet.
“Arabidopsis thaliana,
var.
sapiens,”
at the Levi-Montalcini Brain Research Institute.
“Modified to form human neurons. Model system for nerve function and development.”

The deer had dwindled, thanks to the ecoengineer’s hormone treatments, but the elephants were hopeless. A whole family of the minis ambled across the trail. They bunched up and pulled each other’s ears, until a DIRG did something that made them squeal. Their trunks blared like toy trumpets, as they hurried indignantly into the woods.

“All debate attenders must present tickets and submit to full body scan.”
The announcement texted amid a hundred others.

“Jenny?”
From Professor Abaynesh.
“Have you seen Mary?”

Jenny had not, and she fervently hoped her
compañera
would spend the day elsewhere, drinking her saltwater. She gripped Tom’s hand tight, and also Anouk’s. Rafael walked slightly ahead, playing the owl again, with a touch of his former superior air. “We’ll see which questions they select. I put in a question on reform of children’s education.” Students and community members had sent in questions. “Remember, though,” Rafael added, “it’s just a sideshow. The real action happens next.” He meant, once the parties had counted their polls, if they’d fallen behind, they would quickly switch out the running mate and hope for a bounce. Centrists had put in the Creep three times, and it worked for them. But this time, Aunt Meg could not be replaced. Unity had tried a switch once, with less success; they would not try again.

The crowd jostled, pressing in and up climbing the Mound toward the stage.
“Watch your step,”
texted Dean Kwon as everyone approached the risers surrounding the powwow ground.
“Visitors, remember: You lose weight as you rise.”
Below ground, amid the buried maze of halls patrolled by Shawnee warriors, the taxplayers toiled without ceasing at blackjack, roulette, and slots.

Clearing her box, Jenny zoomed to center stage. Light from the south solar glinted on the upper curve of the bell jar. At the sight, Jenny’s hands squeezed those of her friends. Beneath the bell jar were three podiums. Around the base of each were arranged purple coneflowers and Indian grass. And the little spoon leaves, she could just barely make out. The pots were well watered and artfully placed.

The seats took forever to fill, while everyone got through security. The candidates’ entourage, including Glynnis and Betty, had their roped-off section. Jenny stared pensively into the bell jar, at the plant decorations she had placed. Then she looked a little closer, and zoomed her box.

Something had changed. Originally she had placed the
Arabidopsis
plants only before Anna’s podium, artfully hidden amongst the Indian grass. But someone had redone the arrangement. The little round leaves were now distributed evenly amongst the three places.

“Anouk! They moved the plants all around.
Desastre—”

“Shh, we’re all watched.”

She had planned to influence the Unity candidate more than the rest; but someone had redistributed the plants. Everything had to be equal, even the decorations. If only she had brought some blank plants that didn’t make the semiochemicals. The one experiment where she’d forgot the control.

At two o’clock, the drums began. The eagle-feathered Shawnee elders led the way in, a quaint touch requested by Soledad and her Centrist counterpart.
“All feathers are cultured; no animals were harmed to conduct this ceremony.”
Elders carried the American flag, the Ohio state flag, then the eagle staff with its proudly hooked beak.
“Veterans of the Antarctic Defense.”
Black and white feathers fanned out from their backs, swaying in the breeze. The elders planted their flags before the stage.

“Our first Americans.” Clive in her toybox provided running commentary. “Proud of their traditions, and proud to serve our country. And likewise, coming up, the college faculty with their frontier traditions…”

Dean Helen Tejedor carried the frontier ax, leading the faculty in their black robes to take their seats in the section reserved.

The bell jar on the stage remained empty, as President Chase came up to the side. Jenny could imagine how Uncle Dylan would feel, at his big moment at last.

“Welcome friends and visitors. Welcome Gar Guzmán, governor of Cuba; and Anna Carrillo, governor of Utah. Welcome to our moderator, Clive Rusanov of ToyNews. We welcome you all to our beloved habitat, our outpost on the highest frontier.” A dramatic pause. “Frontera, the world’s first permanent and self-sustaining space habitat, is a radical venture in the project of human civilization. Some would call our spacehab a refuge from Earth. But remember—no matter how perfect our habitat, it remains truly a
frontera
; a frontier in outer space, just as Frontera College is a frontier in humankind’s search for knowledge. What better place to debate the future leadership of our country?”

Far above, the second “firmament” of amyloid was growing upward all around, the edges contracting inward. At last the second bell jar was complete.

“If democracy,” continued President Chase, “is the highest calling of our country, and of all the free peoples of Earth, as we believe it is; and if Frontera College is one of the world’s finest institutions of free inquiry, as we know it is; and if the entire community of our college and spacehab are the wisest and most industrious we know, then we are most grateful for the truly unprecedented honor of hosting this final presidential debate.”

The stage floor opened. Up rose the two candidates and their moderator. The applause echoed throughout the hab. Clive had a new hairstyle; Jenny was certain she’d not seen quite this wave before. The candidates smiled and shook hands; it was obvious that Anna’s face had a few wrinkles, compared to Gar’s boyish grin. They took their place behind the podiums with their Ohio floral decorations, including the little spoon-shaped leaves.

“ToyNews—From our box to yours.” Clive proceeded to summarize the rules of debate. “Our previous two debates focused on foreign and domestic affairs. Tonight’s final debate focuses on our president’s most weighty responsibility: the morality of our nation.” A reverent pause. “Our questions,” he reminded the audience, “were selected from a list of thousands submitted from across the country, based on our collective brainstream response. The result of the coin toss is that Governor Carrillo goes first, and Governor Guzmán has the last word.”

Another pause. Somewhere in the distance called a barred owl, “Oo-oo-oo
oo-aw
.”

“First question. Our country faces a grave threat to our existence—our very existence as a nation, a people. That threat is moral decline. At every turn, we find our citizens drawing more public largesse from games of chance, denying the Firmament, and sinking deeper into animal relations. These forms of moral decline harm our economy, disrespect our Creator, and debase our humanity. How will you as president turn our country around?”

Jenny tried to sink into her chair.