Cottonwood (14 page)

It was nothing, he was sure, but van Meyer stepped out to investigate regardless. He suspected he knew who he would see and he was not disappointed.

Pretty Pollyanna was deep in her papers. She did not look around, but continued to read, turning pages one after the other and singing gravely under her breath. “
I know there’s poison in your loving
…
I know there’s a demon in your skin
…” She paused to bring up a new window on her monitor and check what she read there against the manual in her hands. She frowned and turned the page, reading. “
And I know I’ll always be there when you invite me in. So don’t tell me that you love me
…
because I know it isn’t true
…
Love is, love is…love is
…” She raised her hand and touched a line in her manual, pinning it in place. “Dangerous.”

“We keep you very late tonight, Miss Fowler,” van Meyer said.

She jumped with a girlish scream, one hand flying to her throat, the other shoving papers so spastically that the topmost of them tore. Piotr laughed. His predictable hyena.

“My God! Mr. van Meyer! You scared me!” She looked around, her cheeks flaring pink, disoriented. “Oh. Oh wow. It’s late, isn’t it? I lost track of time.”

“What is this so fixating your attention, mm?” He reached for a paper and thought at first she might try to snatch it away, but in the end, she did not. She watched him read it, her eyes anxious. “The legal rules and restriction of our Recycling Program. Well well.”

“I…I was out there today.”

“An impressive operation,
nee
?” He handed back the paper, but did not immediately release it. “What exactly is it that concerns you? Oh, you are concerned,” he said calmly as she began the expected protest. “I would go so far as to say you are disturbed. This—” He brushed his hand across her papers, tapped her paz, finished with a knock on the top of her cubicle’s monitor. “—makes for such dense, dry study that only deep concern or financial reimbursement could lure one to read it. Your time is your own at the moment, Miss Fowler, and therefore, you are concerned. So.” He gestured to Piotr, who fetched a chair from the next cubicle over. He sat, folded his hands on the corner of her desk, and gave her all his attention. “Tell me.”

She ducked her head, abashed and rightly so, sweeping papers together and probably hoping he would forget about her if she stayed quiet long enough. Eventually, the silence would break her and she would make the usual mutters about the smell, the possibility of contamination beyond the wall, the health risk of working alongside a landfill. And because it had been a good day and he had some small affection for her, he would forgive these mutters, assuage her fears, and send her on her way. In the matter of the recycling program, he had nothing to hide.

These thoughts did not come to him in so many words, but only as a general feeling. He would not have had time to think it all out in words anyway. In certain situations, stillness could be as effective as hammers and pretty Pollyanna was predictably fragile.

“It was disturbing,” she confessed, avoiding his gaze. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t…that. It was just so…big.”

“By necessity. And you must remember, the waste treatment services that we provide benefit more than just the bug. We operate within legal guidelines regulated by EPA the same as any other landfill site. What the bug do not salvage is treated in a variety of ways and eliminated. It is all perfectly legal, perfectly safe.”

“Oh I’m sure it is!”

He gave the papers strewn across her desk a meaningful glance. “Somewhat less than sure, I should say.”

She began to sweep them together, blushing. “I wasn’t looking at that at all.”

“Then I must confess to some confusion, Miss Fowler. What were you looking at?”

“Nothing, really. I was just…I was thinking…”

“
Ja
?”

Another pause, longer than before, and then she suddenly said, “I was just thinking that we could maybe help them do more with it.”

Van Meyer felt his eyebrows climb. “More?”

Rapidly now, still staring fixedly at her hands, she said, “You know how all the scientists think the aliens are these worker drones? Well, I was watching them and for worker drones, they’re really not working very hard. I know how that sounds,” she said, stuffing papers quickly, almost frantically, into her case. “But I was thinking about ants and how ants are, like,
constantly
working, and our aliens are only kind of crawling back and forth a little…and I don’t really know that much about ants…and I don’t know anything about the aliens,” she said hurriedly, giving herself a charming slap over the eyes and rubbing it in. “Oh, I’m afraid this sounds just awful, but maybe the reason they’re all so apathetic is because they’re not doing what they should be doing…they’re not working as hard as they ought to be.”

“My dear, it sound as though you want to tell the bug what to do.”

“Well.” She kept her face covered, but her cheeks were now the dull red of dying coals. “Maybe they need to be told.”

Van Meyer glanced at Piotr. His hyena eyed the girl, much of the day’s frustrations eased by thoughts better not explored.

“Ants have queens,” the girl was saying. “It’s not completely impossible to think that the aliens need direction too. I mean, look what they do with the recycling program! They don’t all go out there, but the ones that do are out there all day. They must like what they’re doing, right?”

“Mm.”

“So…So I was looking to see what our restrictions are and if there’s a way to kind of expand the programs a little without expanding its…I’m not sure of the word I want…its scope? Its effects? More trucks bringing in more garbage isn’t the answer, but maybe we can get more good out of what’s already in there. So there’s less waste.”

“What did you have in mind exactly?”

That stumped her some. She kept glancing at him and away, as though unable to believe her opinions were still receiving his attention. It was flattering.

“Well…there are a bunch of reservoirs next to the causeway where my clients live and they’re just sitting there, stagnant. The residents don’t know what to do with them and I don’t think they ever used the sanitation stations…those are rusted completely out. The aliens are actually, um, urinating in the culvert…anyway, there’s a lot of non-recyclable organic material in garbage, like, oh, food and cardboard and stuff like that, so I was thinking…compost heaps.”

“Compost.”

She looked directly at him then, her eyes wide and clear and bottomless. “We could clean out the reservoirs and the aliens could turn them into compost heaps. They could mulch up all the good stuff they find that they can’t recycle, stuff that’s just rotting where it is today, and turn it into good gardening material. Then they could, I don’t know, either bag it and sell it back to the community—that would be such a great improvement on their image, plus it could defray at least some of the cost of feeding them—or they could use it inside Cottonwood.”

“But the bug do not grow food.”

“No, but some of them do have livestock.” She was speaking faster now, more earnestly, warming to her own idea. “And if they grew enough food to feed their pigs and sheep and stuff, they could take care of themselves better and we wouldn’t have to do it as much, you know, with the canned food. Of course, more cows means more compost, but see, then more aliens would be working. If we could get enough of them motivated, we could actually make the immigration camps self-sufficient.”

He studied her, his Pollyanna, his angel of innocent enthusiasm.

She dropped her eyes and sat quiet at her desk. “So that’s what I was thinking,” she said. “And there’s nothing in the restrictions to stop us from making changes, as long as we only change what happens inside Cottonwood. We’re kind of…We’re kind of on our own here, from what I’ve read.”

“
Ja
,” he agreed, still smiling. “Our own sovereign nation, so to speak.”

“If it worked,” she said, “maybe we could start, I don’t know, more labor-intensive stuff. They could…build real roads in there, or permanent housing, or water towers or even irrigation lines and real plumbing. Or even maybe do things outside Cottonwood, where people could see them and see that they’re nothing to be so scared of.”

“Outside, you say?”

“You could call it an outwork program, like they have in prisons.”

He chuckled, patting her head. “Such difficulties we would have with the human rights criers of this country. Bad enough they wail at President’s door day and night that bug is not enough protected, but if they see bug building highway, then it become slave labor.”

“Oh. But…But if they’re happy, shouldn’t that be what matters?”

“It should, but not in this country, not yet. But this is good thinking.” He tapped his temple, smiling at her. “In Buena Vista, the bug already quarry. In Golden Plains and Dapplegrey, the bug work in textile plants. In Silverbrook and Brackendale are mining and industry programs. As soon as Cedar Creek is to open, forestry contract begins.”

The girl’s lashes fluttered in surprise. “Really?”

“And in every camp, recycle. And in meantime, poor bug still breed.”

Her brows knitted. She looked away. “Yes, they do.”

“But even this serve a greater good,
nee
? Camps become more crowded, and then more camps must be built. As more countries see how successfully we teach the bug our work ethic, we hope to see more, what did you call them? Outwork program. Do you know what this is, Miss Fowler?”

It would have been a rhetorical question to any other sheep, but before he could answer himself, Pollyanna nodded, gazing deeply into her own open case.

“Integration,” she said softly.

He began to think he’d been wrong about this one.

“This,” he said warmly, resting his hand on her shoulder, “is how human and alien integrate. When human see the bug ready to work, to help build better world under human direction, so will come greater freedom for the bug. Of course, there will always be a need for the camps, but I foresee a future when these camps can be used only peripherally.”

“As training centers,” she said.

“Precisely. And perhaps some small security and re-education services. The psychology of the bug can be challenging. So you see, we think of these things already. But you, you worry only about your own clients for now.”

She accepted the gentle rebuke with downcast eyes and flushed cheeks. “I’m sorry, Mr. van Meyer. It wasn’t my place.”

“I like to see ambition in my employees, Miss Fowler, and I think that you go far with this company. Your heart is in the right place. If, in future, you have ideas, there is suggestion box outside Alien Affairs department,
nee
? Anonymous, but please to sign. I like the way you think.”

“Thank you, sir.” She gathered herself, closed her case and switched off her light. “Good night, sir. Good night, Mr. Lantz.”

“Good night.” Van Meyer stood aside and watched her leave, her little shoulders slumped. “Pretty Pollyanna,” he murmured, after the doors had closed behind the round swing of her hips. “And what are we thinking, old friend?”

“I wasn’t listening,” Piotr replied indifferently, but he was still staring after her. “Woman talks too much, like her tongue was hung in the fucking middle.”

“
Ja, ja
.” Van Meyer stirred himself and gave his hyena a smile. “I don’t think I shall need you tonight, Piotr, if there’s someplace you’d rather be. Do enjoy yourself, but, ah, keep away from the paddocks,
nee
? I think I keep that sheep a little while.” He laughed.

After a second, Piotr joined him, but it was forced. He went his way, and van Meyer went on alone, his thoughts cheerfully distracted.

Ants and workers. Carnivores win wars. Training centers. If Pollyanna could think such things, he had hope for all humanity.

CHAPTER SIX

Another day dawned, hot and grey and reeking the way only an open landfill in August in southern Kansas ever could. Now that she knew it was there, it was impossible for Sarah not to imagine the Heaps this morning: the trucks would be coming in soon and the lines would be forming outside the gates as aliens got ready for a full day of picking through garbage.

Sarah indulged in a few more of these bleak thoughts, but just the fact that she could indulge in them while lying in her memory-gel bed in the back of her two-bedroom house with her Konaluv waiting for her to come into the kitchen and ask it for some coffee made her feel even worse. And what good did that do? Whether or not she slept in a bed or drank coffee made no difference to the living conditions in Cottonwood, or any other camp, for that matter. Feeling bad didn’t fix anything.

Sarah got up, fed Fagin, opened the back door so he could access the yard when he was ready, and took her morning shower. It was too hot because she still hadn’t found her perfect TruTouch number, but she was tired of fussing with it, so she just got in and out as quickly as possible. With shampoo suds sticking to her feet, steam coating every surface and her mind wandering bleakly through the Heaps, Sarah stepped out of the bathtub and promptly slipped. Her legs skewed in opposite directions; she dropped hard, straddling the side of the tub bareback, which was admittedly not as painful than if she’d been a boy, but certainly the sort of landing that would be with her for a while.

Immediately, it became one of those days.

She put a run in her stockings getting dressed and had to change into slacks so she could get away with not wearing any. Fagin promptly brushed up against her when she called him in from the yard, depositing enough fur on her slacks to build a brand-new puppy. She wasted a little time trying to pick it off, then ducked into the guest bedroom for one of the few boxes she had left from the move which she hadn’t unpacked. She hadn’t even really labeled it.
Sundry and Misc
, it said, and way down at the bottom, underneath old magazines she might want to read again and t-shirts she’d found after packing her clothes and bank statements going back ten years, she found a roll of duct tape. A thousand uses, the commercials claimed. Lint-remover was something like Number Thirty-One. Thinking of that made her think of Sanford and she wondered where exactly ‘patch pants’ fell on that list of useful applications.